#i’m so happy about these shoes because i got them for 50$ and paid a cobbler to repair them and now they’re basically new

[c0mmencement]

please enjoy all the 10 pixels in these terrible quality photos lol

[ladymoody]

hi!! i was wondering if u could make a story with sid jenkins and y/n where they're friends and she drags sid out to go shopping with her and she's in the changing room trying on a dress and the zipper gets stuck so sid goes in to help her and things get a little spicy? basically that one scene with jal but it leads to more lmao

HANDS ON ME

sid jenkins x fem!reader

warnings: nsfw +18, swearing, explicit language, breast squeezing, loss of verginity (sid), p in v penetration, cum.

word count: 2,3k

. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁ masterlist ; playlist ; characters list ; my website

I was on sid’s bed as he played some stupid video games on his computer. the constant electronic voice that said “you lost” was getting on my nerves and the annoying sound of him pressing those buttons on the joystick wasn’t helping at all. I laid there, staring at the ceiling as I played with a small ball that I had previously found in a drawer of his nightstand, next to a playboy magazine.

sometimes I shifted my gaze on sid, who was focused on the screen and slightly leaned in to have a better look at the game. he had his messy hair all over his forehead and he wasn’t wearing his usual woolen hat — he was still wearing his pajamas at the top but nothing at the bottom, except for his boxers and high socks with some little ducks printed on the fabric.

“ugh! it keeps making me start all over!” he groaned throwing the joystick on his desk.

“then do something else other than letting a damn game brainwash you.”

“but I’ve got only 50 coins left to unlock a new level!”

I huffed and sat up, crossing my arms against my chest. “I am not going to sit here doing nothing just because you have to win that fucking game. get your ass off that chair and spend some time with me.”

sid stared at me and I could tell that he felt bad for ignoring me this whole time. he hesitated as his gaze kept shifting between the computer and me, but then he spoke. “you’re right, I’m sorry.”

I let out a little sound of pride and untangled my arms to place them on the bed, propping myself up.

“wanna do something more productive?”

“like what?” he stood up and grabbed an already-opened pack of chips and started munching them.

“shall we go to the mall?”

“no.”

“aw why not?” I pouted and stood up as well.

“well, I don’t want to follow you like a puppy the whole time while you try clothes on.”

“but you are a puppy.” I joked. sid blushed, just slightly, and scratched the back of his head.

“don’t call me that.”

“why not?” I smirked and stepped closer.

“I don’t like it.”

“come to the mall with me and I’ll stop calling you that.”

he sighed.

he never liked going to the mall with me because he knew I would’ve paid more attention to the clothes and completely forgot about him. though, I knew he enjoyed following me around and giving me recommendations about clothes.

“come on… make your friend happy.” I smiled and got even closer to him, placing my hands on his lower chest narrowly tickling him.

sid blushed, this time more visibly, and he hesitatingly nodded.

(skip time)

I was walking down the mall, checking at the windows and popping in the shops every now and then. sid was behind me holding my shopping bags — I had bought two pairs of jeans, a pair of shoes, jewelry and a beautiful brown scarf — yet, I felt like there was something missing… a dress!

“one last shop, then we’ll go home.” I reassured sid and he sheepishly murmured “okay.”

I headed towards a shop that looked quite nice, it seemed fancy and by its window I could tell it had clothes of my color palette.

sid and I walked in and I started scanning the big room — there were beautiful coats, fancy shoes, long and short skirts and gaudy tops. no. I needed a dress.

“oh! there they are.” I rushed to a smaller section of the shop where I found a large hanger full of marvelous dresses. I started looking through it, examining the pieces of clothing one by one. sid waited patiently behind me, his gaze wandering around the shop in curiosity but also embarrassment to find himself in such a girly place.

suddenly I picked up a beautiful mini purple dress, tight and soft.

“found something you like?” he asked.

“yes, I think I’ll try it on.” I said as I turned to ask a shop assistant where I would’ve found the fitting rooms.

sid watched me disappear behind a wall not so far from where I picked up the dress from. he followed me and stood next to the fitting room I had got in. I closed the curtain and started taking my clothes off.

“how come you have all this money?” he asked from outside.

“it’s my parents’.” I said as I slipped the dress on.

“oh, I see…”

I turned around, looked behind my shoulder and into the mirror to zip it up. the dress fitted perfectly.

“how do I look?” I opened the curtain and did a quick spin to allow sid to have a full view of the dress. his mouth went dry and he blinked fast, he was struggling to keep his calm demeanor.

“g-good.. i-it looks good…” he stuttered as his nervous eyes darted over my figure.

“great, I’ll buy it.” I went back in the fitting room and closed to curtain.

after some moments I opened it again, finding sid touching where he was not supposed to touch — he almost jumped as I peeked my head out, catching him admiring some lingerie nearby.

“uhh… I was.. well, there was.. uhhh…”

I totally ignored what he was trying to say or what he was doing before I opened the curtain, instead, I just went straight to the point.

“the zip got stuck, could you help me?”

sid’s eyes lit up, but his nervous expression took back over right after.

“y-you want me to help you with the zipper?”

“yes.”

“am I supposed to… go in with you?”

“well, yes, if you don’t want the whole shop to see me naked.”

sid blushed and I assumed it was the word “naked” that had him getting uncomfortable. or the thought of me being it.

he quickly pulled himself together, rushing inside the fitting room with me and placing down the shopping bags he previously had in his hands.

I knew how sid was, so shy with girls and also a bit of a klutz too. I wanted him to get out of his comfort zone and the only way I could have done it was leaving him room to make the first move.

sid noticed I was just standing there, staring at myself in the mirror, and understood he needed to get his hands on me to help me fix the zipper. he gently moved my hair aside, letting fall on my cleavage as his hands worked on my back to take the zip down.

I looked at him through the mirror with a proud expression on my face, content that I was making him do a nice thing for his friend but also intimate from a certain point of view.

he struggled a bit, but he eventually managed to let the zip slide down effortlessly. “done.”

I breathed out and thanked him, but then I felt his hands roaming on the small of my back longer than necessary. at first I didn’t know how to feel about it, knowing sid was shy about everything that had to do with girls, but somehow his hands felt expert as if he knew what he was doing.

“you look amazing in this color.”

did he just compliment me? out of the blue? no stuttering?

“thank you, sid.” I cooed.

I saw him smiling behind me, before skimming his hands around my waist. oh. that felt nice.

“you.. like it?” I spoke again referring to the dress and he just hummed in response.

sid’s hands roamed on my hips, touching my curves as he admired my back — the zipper down allowed him to glance at my bra. he brought one of his hands back on my back, now delicately touching my bare skin right under the clasp of my bra.

“sid…”

his hands trembled a bit, so I knew he was still the same, but this time he was… bolder. I loved the feeling of his hands on me, he just felt too good.

sid’s face lowered on my shoulder and I tilted my head aside to give him better access. I kept looking at him through the fitting room mirror, his eyes making eye contact with mine as he started placing wet kisses on my skin. his hands went back around my waist and I placed mine on his. I couldn’t hold back a moan of pleasure as I threw my head back, making it fall on his shoulder. sid smirked and started sucking on my skin, probably leaving a hickey.

“sid… what are you doing?” I chuckled.

he didn’t respond but just brought his hands on my shoulders, slowly and a bit hesitantly lowering my dress straps. I watched him moving both inexpertly and confidently, now pulling my dress down until it exposed my perfectly-sitting breasts in my black bra. I saw sid’s eyes falling on my chest shamelessly, before shifting back on mine and blushing.

“it’s okay… you can touch.” I reassured him as I guided his hands to cup my boobs. he touched them both, at first squeezing them from the bra shyly and cautiously, but then getting a sudden burst of confidence as he heard me moan and shut my eyes under his touch. his grip grew firmer and slid his hands under my bra to touch me fully. I couldn’t wait anymore and I undid it, letting it fall onto the ground and making sid nearly drool at the sight. I quickly stepped out of my dress to remain in my underwear only — I turned around, facing sid and wrapping my arms around his neck. his hands instinctively grabbed my hips and pulled me closer, his eyes eating mine behind those glasses. despite he was making a lot of moves, I could hear his heartbeat louder and faster than normal, his hands a bit sweaty and his cheeks flushed of a light shade of pink.

“we’ve become temerarious, mh?” I teased him as my right hand started touching his chest, playing and tugging at his shirt.

“a bit…” he sheepishly answered. he was so sexy and cute at the same time.

he leaned in, crashing his lips to mine. oh my god, he was a good kisser! we started heavily eating each other, completely skipping the slow and romantic initial part of make-outs. his tongue tapped falteringly on my bottom lip, slipping into my mouth to tangle it with mine.

he pressed me against the mirror making a loud sound that didn’t bother any of us, who were apparently too focused on the kiss — then he grabbed my thighs and lifted me in his arms.

I was aware of the people outside who might have heard us. the kissing sounds were obvious and noisy, but I didn’t care — my friend, who was no longer just a friend, was making out with me! everybody knew sid was a virgin — his friend tony called him a loser because he had never touched a girl that was not in a friendly hug, let alone ever kissed one.

sid and I kept kissing, the noise of the chatter outside, the sound of our lips seeking each other, his hands all over me… god, I was in heaven.

he suddenly broke the kiss and rested his forehead against mine. our eyes were both shut and our breaths came out in ragged gasps. his right hand left my arse and went on his jeans, his fingers hurrying to unzip them.

“are you sure?” I asked him.

“yeah… you don’t understand how badly I wanted you for all these years, y/n… having to stand there watching you hooking up with other boys while I couldn’t make a move…”

I smiled at his words, feeling flattered and also relieved that the attraction I felt was mutual. I let him unzip his jeans and drop them down at his ankles, his boxers next. he quickly moved my panties aside, his hand slightly shaking as he did so.

“mhh…” I bit my lip as I gazed at sid’s size. fuck. that was… certainly not small!

his cheeks colored red again, but this time I couldn’t tell if it was because he was embarrassed or just very hot and aroused.

he slowly guided his cock against my core, letting it lubricate with the wetness of my pussy. then he gradually let it slither inside. I felt it filling me up inch by inch (around 7 inches) and I moaned for each thrust.

“don’t- shh…” he tried to quiet me down, we were still in public after all, but luckily we were in a crowded shop and I guess people were barely hearing what happened in that fitting room.

it took all of my will not to scream at each movement of his thick member, his thrusts were rough and uneven, yet so strong and defined. I kept feeling his cock head hitting my g-spot repeatedly and relentlessly, almost forgetting that I needed to be quiet.

my hands grabbed his shoulders, my nails dug in his skin. “I’m… I’m close, sid…”

he listened to my moans and pleas and fastened his pace, pistoning inside me. I hit the edge, I overcame it. I moaned in his ear not to let the other people hear us, and I rode the wave of pleasure he was able to give me.

my juices covered his cock, which made him come right after me. he pulled out, stroking his head with his hand, and spurred his seed on my stomach.

“oh my god…” he slowed down and panted in my ear. we both chuckled, our eyes still closed due to pleasure.

I never thought I would’ve had sex with my friend.

[butwhyduh]

The Farm

Damian Wayne x Jon Kent

Summary: just 2 boys in love but won’t admit it. I have the attention span of a butterfly so this is as close as I get to a slow burn lmao. I just think they are adorable and I headcanon Damian as demisexual. I did actually age them above 18 but this is sfw. Only a little kissing. There’s a bigot but he gets punched.

“I heard about the farm,” Damian said as they sat on a rooftop in New York. “Sorry.” They were drinking milkshakes after saving the city. Well Jon was as Damian had a vegan smoothie instead.

“Yeah, they foreclosed,” Jon said, his bright blue eyes uncharacteristically stony. “Thanks. Just wasn’t expecting it is all.”

“You know I could help you.. financially. If you need,” Damian offered carefully. Jon shifted in his seat and took a drink of his shake.

“It’s not your job. I’ll figure out how to keep it. Don’t worry,” Jon said with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Congrats on vet school. Not that it’s a surprise. You were top of your class.”

“Oh thanks. But seriously, I have no problem writing a check right now, Jon,” Damian emphasized. Jon stared at him silently. It was so tempting to let Damian solve his problems but that wasn’t the Kent way.

“I don’t know,” Jon said shifting uncomfortably. Damian noted that it wasn’t a no.

“I will be going to school in Metropolis in the fall. The farm in Smallville is a lot closer to the university than my place in Gotham,” Damian said hoping to come off as casual. Apparently not as Jon almost fell off the roof in shock.

“Live- with me,” he asked, his eyebrows rose quickly.

“Oh, I suppose. Yes, that is what I would be proposing,” Damian answered. Jon looked at him with wide eyes before clearing his throat and softening the look on his face to more neutral. Damian definitely wasn’t meaning ‘moving in’ moving in. He was just being practical. He wasn’t in love with Jon the same way Jon was head over heels for Damian since he was like 13.

“It would be practical for us both,” he said and Jon relaxed. Yep, normal Damian not thinking of the social meaning of his words.

“I don’t have a butler,” Jon warned. “And I sometimes forget to do laundry or dishes.”

“Then I will make a chore chart,” Damian answered and Jon’s heart soared a little at the domestics of it all. Jon nodded with a grin.

“So when do I get my roommate?” Jon asked lightly. Or what he hoped was lightly. His farm was saved and Damian was moving in. He was surprised he wasn’t levitating yet.

“I need to sell my apartment first. And pack,” Damian contemplated. “Also I need to buy the farm. I’ll need 4 days.”

“4?!? I mean- that’s fine,” Jon answered. He began immediately imagining all the work he needed to do before Damian could move in. “You work fast.”

“Yes, money talks,” Damian answered as if it was normal for a 20 year old to say. Jon nodded and resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

True to his words, a moving truck showed up 4 days later. Jon had cleaned and organized everything, even scrubbing the walls and sweeping the barn. The workers quickly set up everything in the spare room just as Damian arrived.

Damian arriving was a sight Jon would never forget. Damian wore a black turtleneck with the sleeves rolled up and a tan pair of dress pants over shiny black leather shoes as he carried in a large paper bag of produce. Damian had grown so much from the tiny 13 year old Jon had first known. He was now a full inch taller than Jon and probably 10 lbs heavier. It was funny since Jon was the one currently running around as Superman.

Damian sat his bag on the kitchen counter and wiped sweat from his brow. Jon was much more casually dressed in old blue jeans and a white t shirt with a rolled up and open red plaid button down over it. An old blue baseball cap was thrown over backwards on his head and little curls stuck out.

“You brought food. You know this is a farm, right?” Jon said with a smile. “We’re kinda known for having food.”

“I brought food to cook tonight,” Damian said trying to be casual. He had actually taken far too long deciding on the perfect food for him and Jon to eat their first night as roommates.

“Are you cooking for me?” Jon said with a pleased smile. The moving company was leaving and it was just the two of them.

“Yes, I thought it would be a good start,” Damian said formally. “No need to be so happy. It’s just dinner.”

“Of course,” Jon said trying to straighten his face. But how could he when Damian was living with him and cooking for him? Impossible task.

Damian busied himself in the small kitchen, looking in every drawer and cabinet. He noted that in the dying evening light, it perfectly captured the sunset. That was something that people paid huge amounts to even glimpse from their place in Gotham and Jon got a 360 view everyday.

“Well I have to feed the animals but I’ll be back soon. Do you need anything before I go?” Jon said in the doorway to the kitchen. He had thrown on a pair of rubber boots.

“Tt, you dare care for animals without me?” Damian said with a frown.

“Well I just thought- I mean you can- but you’re cooking,” Jon sputtered and Damian smiled.

“I’m playing with you. I’ll see them tomorrow. Otherwise the meal will be ruined,” Damian said. Jon laughed and shook his head as he left.

Damian looked at the photos that lined the hallway, smiling as he saw pictures of Jon as a child. Jon holding a fish he caught. Jon swinging a baseball bat. Jon holding up one end of a tractor. Right above it was a young Clark Kent doing the same. Damian shook his head with a little smile. He would never admit it but he was head over heels for Jon. Had been for a few years now.

“That’s the first time I lifted a tractor,” Jon said beside him. “Dad was so proud.”

“I imagine,” Damian answered. Clark was such a sore subject for Jon. His father had only been presumed dead the year before. Jon took it hard. He didn’t speak but watched Jon from the corner of his eyes.

“He never wanted to force me to be Superboy. I practically begged him. He was scared it was too dangerous,” Jon said with a sad smile. They both walked in the kitchen and Damian finished the food. Damian brought it to the table just as Jon shyly brought out a bottle of wine.

“Mr Kent, where did you get that?” Damian said with a little smile.

“Actually there’s an entire wine cellar full of the good stuff. Your father is quite fond of giving wine as a gift and Dad never liked to drink. So he stored it here,” Jon said pulling out a wine opener. “I thought we could drink it for him.”

“That’s very illegal,” Damian said expertly opening the bottle. “We’re both technically underage.”

“Anything is legal with enough money,” Jon said with a little grin and Damian laughed.

I’m an awful influence,” Damian replied. They spend the rest of the night eating and drinking wine before both crashing in their separate rooms in the early morning.

Jon crawled out of bed only a few hours later to feed the animals and get started on his day. He thanked his Kryptonian DNA for the lack of hang over he worried Damian would have. He crept quietly past his roommate’s door on his way out.

Jon returned a few hours later, still rather early, and was surprised by the smell of coffee. Damian was cooking breakfast for him. For them, Jon reminded himself. Damian was just his roommate. Damian nodded and poured Jon a cup of coffee.

“I thought you would still be asleep,” Jon admitted.

“I don’t require much sleep. Plus I want a tour of the property,” he said. Practical Damian as always, Jon thought.

“Sure, I’ll take you around. The farm and then town,” Jon added taking a huge plate of scrambled tofu and fried tomatoes. Damian had anticipated that.

“That’s a good plan. I don’t want to stand out in town. Should I wear a plaid shirt,” Damian asked.

“Uh, yeah. If you want. T shirts and jeans are fine too,” Jon said.

“May i borough these clothing from you? Mine are not appropriate for a farm,” Damian said casually and Jon willed himself to not have any emotion that Damian was going to wear his clothing.

Damian was extremely handsome in Jon’s plaid shirt and a pair of jeans. His bright green eyes and tan skin popped in the shirt and he had brushed his black hair neatly back as it had gotten long enough to fall in his eyes. Jon couldn’t help but stare at his Damian in his clothing. Logic be damned.

“What?” Damian asked looking at himself. “Does it look bad? I don’t want to appear foolish,” he said about to pull off the plaid shirt.

“No! No you look good. Nice,” Jon said and Damian’s lip twitched towards a smile.

“Thank you. Would you like to show me town first? Before we get muddy,” Damian said.

“Sure, that sounds good. I need to pick up feed anyways,” Jon said. They loaded into Jon’s old pickup. Krypto hopped into Damian’s lap as if he always had done it and they set off to town a few miles away.

“Here’s the library and the best Waffle House in Kansas. Second only to Ma Kent’s,” Jon said as they drove around. He showed Damian all the important sights in town. Damian had a hard time believing that everything was so compact and so small. Even the diner that Jon said they would eat lunch because they had the best pie short of Ma Kent.

They both, and Krypto, got out at the feed store and they treated Jon like old friends. He grabbed a basket and pushed it to the back as he chatted about all the interesting animals people owned to Damian. The Ferguson’s owned a pair of alpacas and old Skipper Smith had a parrot and monkey as pets.

Jon didn’t pay any attention as he easily lifted 4 50 lb bags of feed and casually put 200 lbs of feed in the basket. Damian looked around to see no one near. Jon did it again.

“Should get us through the week,” he said with a grin.

“You do know that most people don’t pick up 4 at once?” Damian told him quietly as they moved to the register. Jon stopped before nodded and laughing.

“You know I’ve never thought about it. Let’s get going before the diner gets a lunch rush,” he said. Jon tried to act more normal putting up the feed bags but tossing them one handed like bags of bread into the bed of a pick up truck was far from normal. Damian couldn’t help but roll his eyes.

The diner had about 12 booths and a row across the counter like old times. It probably was an older restaurant with the light blue tile and actual jukebox. Damian didn’t know what rush hour could possibly look like with all 7 people he’d seen since entering town but Jon seemed pleased to be earlier than them.

An older lady laid down a menu between them both and offered them coffee with a big grin. Jon ordered a chicken fried steak and Damian ended up getting the waffles. It was the only thing probably vegetarian on the menu.

“Oh shoot, I forgot you don’t eat meat. Sorry. Should I change my order,” Jon said raising his hand.

“No,” Damian said grasping Jon’s hand and pulling it down to the table. Jon’s heart just about beat out of his chest. “It’s fine. You don’t have to change what you eat for me.”

“Okay,” Jon said and the waitress came back to the table with drinks and eyed Damian’s hand on Jon’s.

“This your new partner, Kent,” she asked and Jon noted the judge tone to her voice as she sat down their glasses. Homophobia was still alive in the country. Damian didn’t notice.

“Yes, I just moved in last night,” Damian answered and Jon was frozen in time. Damian doesn’t understand what he means, Jon thought. He can’t.

“Oh, is that right? Took off to the city and brought back a city slicker. Well, each to their own,” she said with a passive aggressive smile. Jon sighed as she walked away. He didn’t know how to explain that to Damian. Was Damian even gay? Too late now. The whole town thought he was.

After eating their meal, Jon asked the waitress for pie to go. The diner had filled up and far too many people were glancing at the pair. Damian assumed it was because he was new in town or possibly they recognized him as a Wayne. Jon knew it was that he had brought home a man. Damian also didn’t quite pass as white with his tan skin and Arabic features so probably a dash of racism too.

Jon drive down to the park at the edge of town and parked by the pond. He put on a nice face but worried that Damian wouldn’t have as easy time in Smallville as Jon hoped.

“Something on your mind, Kent,” Damian said, sitting on the back hatch of the truck watching, the ducks swim.

“Nothing. Maybe I’m a little tired. Should have gone to bed earlier last night,” he said with a laugh. Damian looked at him out the corner of his eye but said nothing and continued eating his pie.

“This pie is made with quality,” Damian said and Jon smiled.

“Better than Alfred’s?”

“Different. Alfred makes amazing meat pies but he never quite understood American pies,” Damian answered. Jon nodded.

“I have to work the rest of the week,” he warned Damian.

“I have plenty of paperwork to keep me busy,” Damian answered. Jon knew he never had to worry about Damian that way. He always kept busy. This was probably his longest break.

The next 3 weeks consisted of getting up early to care for the animals before Jon left to work at the local paper. Damian would jog 3 miles down the dirt road that the Kent farm sat at the end of. By the end of the first week, a few of the neighbors would even wave at him. Jon counted himself as having the will of a Green Lantern to leave before Damian returned every morning. Damian was a sight to behold in his post workout glow pre-shower. He would come home and most of the time Damian was cooking dinner for him. Jon was really falling for the domestics of it all.

“Don’t get used to it, Kent,” Damian warned after Jon complimented an amazing dish Damian made. “Once school starts I can not act as a housewife to you.”

“You aren’t- Dami, you’re far from a housewife,” Jon sputtered. “I know that Flamebird has been seen in metropolis a few times this week alone.”

“Well, I needed to keep busy,” Damian said with a shrug. “Eat your eggplant.”

“I’ve probably eaten more vegetables this week than I have since I would summer with Ma,” Jon said. “But this is pretty good.”

“You’re welcome,” Damian said with a pleased smile. After dinner they sat on the swing on the porch and swung as they watched the sunset like an old married couple. Damian looked at Jon more often than he needed to as they talked about nothing. Jon was so pretty in the golden light. His bright blue eye and freckles looked adorable to Damian.

“And then in August we harvest-“ Jon had been saying before Damian cupped his face and pushed his lips against Jon’s. It was rough and their teeth clanged together and Jon pulled back with an “ow.”

“Shit,” Damian said, moving to get up. “I shouldn’t have- forget I-“

“Wait,” Jon said and Damian froze. He looked so uncertain and Jon had never seen that before. “Can we- can we try again?”

“You don’t have to pity me,�� Damian said curtly, getting up. “Forget I did that. I apologize,” he said going inside.

Jon sat for a minute in shock. He had been in love with Damian forever and Damian finally kissed him and he couldn’t even enjoy it. Jon went inside and stood in front of Damian’s door. His hand tentatively considered knocking but Jon couldn’t do it. Just as he turned to walk away, Damian opened his door.

“I have to go to Gotham,” he said suddenly.

“What? If it’s me, you don’t have to leave,” Jon said quickly.

“No. My brothers need me,” Damian said and Jon noticed he had his suit on under his clothing.

“Do I need to come?”

“No. It’s okay. I’ll be back later this week hopefully,” Damian said dashing outside. The screen door swung and slapped the doorframe loudly. Jon ran on the porch.

“Week?” He called as Damian’s car pulled out the drive.

Jon fretted and obsessively watched the news everyday. Krypto was getting anxious without his 3 mile jog every morning. Late on the fourth day after Damian left, Jon heard the front door open. He raced to the door. Damian looked weary and had a slight limp.

“Hi,” Jon said looking Damian over and Damian offered a tired smile. Nothing broken. “Do you need help?”

“No. I need to sleep and I will be fine,” Damian said stubbornly. Jon rolled his eyes and helped him to his bed.

“Do you need anything?”

“No thank you. I will probably sleep late tomorrow,” Damian warned.

“Sure. Of course,” Jon said slowly closing the door as Damian fell asleep. Jon barely slept that night and got up early and called out of work for the day. Damian got up uncharacteristically late around 10 am.

“How are you?” Jon asked, offering him coffee. Damian took the drink before sitting next to Jon. He had a black eye and that limp was still around. The sun shone in bright in the kitchen and Damian was once again reminded the vast difference between smallville and Gotham.

“I’m fine. Thanks,” he said quietly. Jon didn’t want to pounce Damian the first second he got home but it was very hard to not want to talk about the kiss.

“You got mail,” Jon said, handing Damian a big Manila envelope that had come in the day before. Damian wordlessly opened it as he sipped coffee.

“Oh it’s yours,” he handed it over to Jon. Jon opened it with a confused look.

It was a deed. The Kent farm deed. The Kent farm deed in Jon’s name. He looked up at Damian who had a tired half smile.

“It’s in my name. You put it in my name,” he said. “W-why?”

“It’s the Kent farm. There’s too many things with the Wayne name on it,” he shrugged. “Plus I’m far from a farmer. It should be yours.”

“God Damian,” Jon said with tears in his eyes. He pulled Damian into a hug who squawked a protest that Jon ignored. “Thank you. I can’t- thank you,” he said wetly. Damian ignored how Jon was quietly crying on him. His grandma and dad passing had affected him hard and Damian knew he was crying over more than a house and land.

“You’re welcome,” Damian finally whispered and Jon cried even harder. Damian softly pat his back awkwardly. Jon leaned back but didn’t let Damian go. He gazed at Damian with the softest look.

“God Damian,” Jon repeated. “Do you even know how much I love you?”

Damian froze and just blinked at Jon who had pulled back but not out of the hug. “What?” He simply said and Jon’s face started to contort in pain. “Hold on,” Damian said and Jon warily looked at him. Damian knew he had to lean in or Jon would take it back and Damian would be too scared to do anything until Jon did this again. And he wasn’t sure how long Jon would wait.

Damian gently cupped Jon’s face in his hands and Jon breathed in quickly. Damian was clearly nervous. Damian noted how his face was soft and his skin warm. This time he gently bent over and softly pressed his lips against Jon’s. Jon quickly reacted by leaning in toward Damian. Jon could feel the rough pads of Damian’s fingers and taste the coffee Damian had been drinking. After a short while, Damian pulled back but not away.

“I truly care for you too,” he said softly and Jon grinned. “I’ve cared for you for a long time.”

“Same,” Jon said before leaning in to kiss Damian again. Damian kissed for another few seconds before pulling back again. This time Jon tried to follow his lips before stopping. Jon’s breath was erratic and fast. “Sorry,” he muttered.

“No. It’s okay. I’ve just never- I’ve never“ Damian started a bit lost for words. Jon understood what he meant.

“You’ve never been with a man,” Jon said gently.

“I’ve never taken the time for relationships with anyone. I’ve always been too busy,” Damian admitted. He played with the edge of a napkin nervously. He would never openly admit to being worried that his lack of experience was a flaw.

“We can go slow. Whatever you want,” Jon said and he finally looked at Damian the way he had never let himself before: like he was in love with him. Damian nodded.

“I’ve just never found anyone that interesting. I mean, beside you. After a while. I wanted to throw you off a bridge at first,” Damian said and Jon smiled.

“I know. You told me,” Jon said. “We should go out to eat. There’s a place downtown that has vegan options.”

“I didn’t even know there was a downtown here,” Damian admitted and Jon laughed.

“It’s a small town. Not a hut in the woods.”

The place wasn’t ‘rush hour’ packed but had plenty of tables with patrons. Damian and Jon sat at a booth and Damian almost couldn’t handle the lovey way Jon was looking at him. Jon was staring at Damian like he was the moon, even though Damian stood out like a sore thumb in the rural town in his turtleneck and dress slacks. But that was his comfort clothing and he had given up on fitting in long ago.

“I’m going to the restroom. Order for me?” Damian asked and Jon nodded. As Damian walked towards the back of the restaurant, a man in a brown jacket and rubber boots purposefully shoved Damian with his shoulder as he walked by. Damian turned to glare at him.

“Sorry, didn’t see any fruitcakes around here,” the guy said and Damian bristled. Before he could make a scene, Jon moved over to them.

“Hi Tyler. Do we have a problem here?” Jon said uncharacteristically cold. That guy didn’t realize that he picked the worst pair to insult. Tyler looked between Damian and Jon before deciding the fight wasn’t worth it.

“Nothing worth it,” Tyler said turning around. “Bad enough to bring a fruitcake to town, it had to a brown one too,” he muttered and Damian stiffened. He knew that he got looks when he went into town. He was probably the only person that spoke more than English or Spanish in town and certainly the only one to speak Arabic.

But before Damian could do anything else but feel disgust, Jon had punched the guy in the face. Well it was more of a flick with his fist but the guy went down like a rock. Damian hid his smile as him and Jon were hurried out of the restaurant with their food to go by a worried waitress who apologized to the pair.

As they walked back to the pickup truck, Damian reached out and grabbed Jon’s hand who lit up almost instantly. Damian ignored the butterflies in his stomach as he walked. He couldn’t bring himself to look at Jon either.

“You know, it’s not everyday that a guy gets Superman to defend his honor,” Damian said quietly but playfully and Jon laughed.

“Can’t handle bigots. I’ll let you punch the next one,” Jon said with a shrug.

“I would have punched that one,” Damian answered. He turned and pulled Jon to face him before taking his free hand that wasn’t carrying a bag. Damian gently cupped Jon’s face to place a kiss on Jon’s lips before going back to walking. Jon had a stupid smile all the way back home.

[burnedbyshoto]

shinsou and the very terrible, horrible, no good, very bad shift

— You, a new sidekick, screw up a case for a Pro Hero Shinsou, and he demands compensation.

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pairing: older!shinsou hitoshi x younger fem!reader

warnings: age gap (shinsou 25, reader 18), nsfw, 18+, pwp, DEGRADATION, power imbalance, spanking, marking, cursing, shinsou is a major asshole, mindbreak, sorta subspace, happy ending for shinsou, depending on person unhappy ending for reader, public sex, dubcon because of power imbalance

word count: 3,892

a/n: happy halloween. this is mean degradation imo like I thought ive done degradation but this made all those look like praise kink. be careful and click out if its too much

kinktober day 20 main kink: degradation | kinktober masterlist

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How you ever forgot that as a high school hero-in-training student, you were a big fish in a tiny pond was beyond you. Well, to be quite honest, you never thought yourself to be a big fish, to begin with.

You were eighteen, a few months from turning nineteen and had just graduated from the hero course over at UA. That in itself was a huge accomplishment, one that you should take with bubbling pride and joy, but to be quite honest, having such a big name attached to you only made you nervous. To tell the truth, you often wondered just why a hero within the top 50 even scouted you to work as an intern with them and then offer you a position as a sidekick as soon as you entered your third year. Still, it seemed to be a common predicament with BMI Hero: FatGum.

Today was your first day on the job, no longer a student part of a hero work-study, but as a physical, government paid hero — a fickle sidekick! You shuddered as you slipped on the shoes to your outfit, your teeth gnawing at your bottom lip as you made your way out of the locker room, ready to report to your first assignment.

FatGum agency was quite a lovely place, loud and warm, being the first two adjectives you thought of when you first joined their ranks. It did wonders for your self-esteem, and seeing newly turned Pro Hero Suneater, who apparently was a million times more of a nervous mess than you were, made you feel oddly in good hands.

But still, nothing could keep you from the shock that ran through your body when FatGum proudly thrust forward a patrol route for you to follow.

“Alright, pipsqueak,” FatGum jovially spoke, his eyes closed while he smiled. “This is your route for the day! It should take about an hour to get through unless anything happens! You’ll go on the route every three hours, and in between those patrols, it’s the same paper system as before! Good luck out there, y/h/n, you got this!”

“Oh my god, no, I do not?!” you spluttered, hands shaking wildly as you went through the folder Fat had so quickly presented. “What if I die?!”

“You’ll be fine. Remember how Deku and Ground Zero complimented you the other day?”

“Yeah!” you exclaim, your face burning with your shame as you remembered that confrontation. “But that only happened because Deku is a living saint, and I spilled my noodles all over him and Ground Zero! Ground Zero was also, by the way, forced to compliment me by Deku! And all he said was that my combat skills were absolutely shitty but not as shitty as he thought they would be!”

“Ah yes, I remember Red Riot discussing how his friend was less than inept at expressing his gratitude,” FatGum hummed in memory, although that dumb, proud smile never left his face. “If I remember correctly, that means he has great respect for you!”

You made a dying noise at the back of your throat.

“But Deku doesn’t lie! He speaks honestly, so all his compliments were definitely true. Now, y/h/n, let's get through this day together, ne?”

You didn’t agree, but that wouldn’t stop him from throwing you out to the streets, your heart hammering in your throat as you walked through the path he used to take you on every day. Your smile was shaky and wobbly as the people you recognized waved and cheered you on. They were all excited to see you on your own. 

However, they did point out that you were here an entire hour earlier than usual, but hey! That’s what happened when you went from being a student to trying to function as an adult!

“You’re okay, you’re okay, you’re okay,” you chanted as you passed by the spookiest alleyway on your patrol.

The hour-long patrol was almost done if your watch wasn’t lying to you: a full patrol and not a single instance of needing to help. Well, you had assisted some people in carrying groceries and holding a child as a mother shopped for dinner that night, but there were no altercations, nothing out of the ordinary. 

You marched through the alleyway, your fists in a shaky clenched grip as cold, nervous sweat dripped down your neck.

You were okay, you are okay, you will be okay.

“Nothing to be afraid of! Just a normal, average, no villains insight day!” you spoke to yourself, your body shaking as you pass an opening in the alleyway, and you turn your head to look and freeze.

“Alright, and I don’t want fucking nobody hearing goddamn shit about this drug, got it?!” a man with a quirk that made him look like a blowfish snapped.

Six men stood in the alleyway, all with tall, massive, threatening vibes. You didn’t make a single noise; you knew that for a fact, but their gazes still fell on you the moment the man stopped speaking. A horrible, stupid movie cliche that happened too often in hero life.

Your life probably flashed before your eyes at that single moment, your body and mind instinctively moving to call the heroes before realizing that you were the hero now. What do you do?! What could you do?! Drugs?! Did they have drugs?!

Panicking greatly, you watched their mouths move, but you couldn’t hear them as you took in their faces in a blur. Before you knew it, your mind shut down, and your body took over. You weren’t sure what it was. If you were way stronger than the entire group or if you just had an untapped potential that burst open right now, because you blinked and suddenly there were all thrown onto the floor, busted and bloody and tied up.

You… you did it?!

“Oh my god!” you exclaimed, your hands rising to your mouth as you looked at each and every one of their smushed, dirty faces. “I WON?! I won, oh my god, I won — wait?!”

You stepped over to the purple-haired man on the floor, his mouth stuffed with a cloth fabric you probably shoved in there at some point.

“M-Mindjack-sensei?!” you cried, your excitement of betting this drug handoff simmering off immediately. “W-What are you doing? Were you gonna stop this drug handoff? I — oh my god, let me get this off!” You scrambled to get the restraints off of Shinsou, unaware of the way the other captured men glared at Shinsou, utterly shocked and betrayed as you cleared him.

“Thank you for the capture, y/h/n!” a police officer congratulated you as you freed Shinsou, and you smiled, nodding your head. “Is it just four of them?”

You froze.

You had counted six men at first, and with Shinsou recovered, that made five men.

“I didn’t… I lost one of them?” you deflated, all sense of confidence draining you as Shinsou remained on the floor.

“Ah,” the police officer grimaced, his head shaking before he paused and looked up at you with a halfhearted smile. “Well, you still did good work! We’ll see what drug they were talking about, and if it’s nothing too crazy, they’ll be good to go!”

“Yeah, of course,” you smile weakly, feeling ready to cry as you hold onto your wrist.

“But, uh, who’s the guy on the ground?” he nodded towards Shinsou, who was looking entirely pissed off and ready to bite like some cornered, raging animal.

“Oh, Mindjack!” you respond, hands motioning toward one of the other older Pro Heroes you looked up to. 

The police officer stared at Shinsou, an unconvinced look on his face.

“I thought he was… ah, well, old? And didn’t he have black hair?” he muttered before shrugging. You didn’t manage to stutter out your knowledge of the older man with black hair being Eraserhead because he was long gone already, fingers pressed to his radio, chatting with his HQ.

Breathing out a nervous sigh, you turned to Shinsou with a shy and fully apologetic smile. “I am so sorry for hurting you! Are you okay?” you asked, your eyes scanning the older heroes' stance, unable to read anything but annoyance radiating from his body. 

“No, I’m not okay, actually,” Shinsou spat, his face finally looking up from the floor, and you felt your throat run thick at the rage and anger simmering from his face. 

“W-Wha—” you stammer, taking a step back, overwhelmed.

“You just fucking ruined six months of undercover work,” he seethed, his feet moving to stalk towards you. You found yourself stumbling backward, looking everywhere but at him. You can feel your balance giving; the cold filth of the alleyway wall your saving grace as his fingers grabbed your jaw, forcing you to face him. His purple eyes black in his fury. “I don’t think you realized just how badly you fucked up?! You stupid fucking child!”

A wash of ice-cold realization flooded through you, the horror of what you knew you just did completely dawning on you as tears sprung in your eyes. You felt nauseous, utterly sick to your stomach because this seasoned Pro Hero definitely had shit to do, and you practically shat all over it.

“I am so sorry,” you whimper, pain shooting through you just slightly at the grip he has on your chin. “I am so so sorry, i-is there anything that I c-can do?! How can I-I fix it?!”

“You think I need help from some crybaby?” Shinsou snapped, thoroughly unimpressed by you, his eyes narrowing further. You didn’t even realize you were crying already. 

“I-I’m useful, I promise!” you cry a bit more, your body struggling as the older hero trapped you against the wall, his face glowering down at you with the intensity of a million suns. “I-I’m a sidekick over a-at Fatgum’s agency, but, oh fuck, I’m so sorry! I’ll do anything you ask of me!”

There’s a looming silence, a heavy tension as his eyes drop from your eyes to your parted wet lips. He’s much taller than you, and you can feel every heavy breath expelling on your face. 

“You think a pathetic, worthless little sidekick is able to do anything for me?” Shinsou snapped, his eyes narrowing as he loomed even closer. “A pathetic fucking bitch like you? I don’t think you can give me even a simple fucking action that would prove your worth.”

The words are hot embers on your ears, making your jaw drop, and your body trembles at the simple degradation. You feel your tears hot on your cheeks, your parted lips invaded by his dirt-covered fingers as he pressed onto your tongue. It had to be the shock of it, the reality of the hot, hard dick pressing into your stomach and the way he was staring at you like some piece of fucking meat, but you gagged around his fingers.

“Why am I not fucking surprised, you goddamn fucking whore,” he sneered, his fingers shoving faster into your mouth, pressing dangerously hard against your tongue, trying to get you to gag and choke around his fingers. “You fucking sure you’re a fucking sidekick? Look at you, pathetic, stupid, crying like a baby in an alleyway? You’re a hero, aren’t you? Fucking save yourself from this, you fucking bitch.”

You violently shake, your hands finding themselves tethered to his shirt, your head shaking nonetheless.

“Oh, you don’t want to save yourself?” He coos, his expression turning the slightest bit amused, maybe a bit possessive, but it lasts a second. You blink, and anger has replaced the amusement, red streaking in his vision. “Why the fuck not?”

“B-Because,” you strangle, your tongue flat against your mouth, your throat instinctively opening and closing against his fingers. “I said I’ll do anything y-you wanted!”

There’s another pause, and you wait pressed against the wall, your chest heaving with your anxiety and weird turned-on state. Shinsou was a Pro Hero, someone who was eight years older than you, someone you had respected since you were in grade school. Yet, here you were, looking nothing more than a slab of meat to him, a hole for him to abuse in his anger because you had fucked up.

“Oh, you stupid fucking slut,” he laughed, his teethed bared into a feral smirk. “You want this, huh. You want to please me any way I see fucking fit, fucking perfect. Turn around.”

There’s no room to argue or think; he turns you around without a second's notice. His hand shoving your chest into the wall, and you cry at the discomfort. He grabs your ass, pushing you uncomfortably into an arched position as he tears your pants down from your legs.

 “You’re a worthless fucking cumdump. Not even noon yet, and I’m going use your fucking body however I see fit.” Shinsou promises, fingers raking down your supple ass. Nails tearing into your skin, fingers slapping your covered cunt. “You worthless fucking slut, dirty fucking whore, already goddamn wet.”

“I’m n-not wet!” you cry, hips spasming against his rough hold, and slaps to your aching cunt. You know it’s a lie, you know that clear as day, but it doesn’t keep you from lying. Doesn’t stop you from shivering when he pinches at the cloth of your panties and removes them from your sopping wet folds.

“You think I don’t know if you’re wet or not?” Shinsou growled in warning, his fingers pinching together your soaked folds. An action that makes you cry loudly, the sharp pain too much for you. “You think I’m some fucking idiot?”

“N-No!” you cry, his fingers shifting to where your throbbing entrance is and his other hand going to your mouth, once again claiming your lips as his nails purposefully impose pain on your heated cunt. 

“You must think that since you’re lying to me,” he snaps, his mouth pressed to your ear, his hot breaths making your eyes roll to the back of your head. You want to speak up, say something, but his fingers are fucking your mouth, keeping you from speaking back. “But again, you aren’t fucking worth anything, are you? You’re not fucking anything.”

Those words whip against your skin, making you twist in his arms, hot tears pushing past your eyes again as you cry.

“Oh, you don’t like that?” Shinsou comments, his fingers pinching and pulling your tongue, and his hips begin to grind his hot, burning flesh into your ass. “Well, you better stop fucking crying because I’m not gonna stop until I’m fucking done — until I’m fucking relieved. This isn’t about you; this is for me. You aren’t shit, fucking worthless piece of shit whore.”

You sob into the brick wall, the tears unable to be stopped, unable to clear as his fingers that were scraping at your folds begin to fuck you at the same time as he fingers your mouth faster. The sensation of being outside, finger fucked in an alleyway by a Pro Hero you admired and respected beyond comparison, made you tremble with want and need. His cruel, completely degrading words a warm fire in your belly and against your skin. 

The sounds of the wet caverns he was currently fucking begin to echo in the wall, his throbbing cock grinding against your ass. It’s a sensation that makes you cry with need, your ass shifting back to feel him more, to get more from the contact he’s giving you.

“Of course some screwup like you likes this shit,” Shinsou grunted, his fingers fishing and rubbing against the spongy warmth of your walls, fingers scraping ever so gently against the velvetiness. You spasm against his touch, your whiney, pleasure-filled noises filling up the alleyway almost as loudly as the choking and the squelching of your pussy.

His hands suddenly leave your mouth, and you’re heaving at the deserted feeling in your mouth. You whip your head around, trying to see just why he had abandoned your mouth, desperate to please him more in any way he saw fit. But instead, you’re met with the sicky coldness of your saliva spread across your face. Almost instantly drying against your face as your still tear-soaked eyes looked into his dark ones.

“Don’t look so fucking sad, stupid cockslut,” Shinsou snapped, his hand that had been fucking your cunt abandoning your warmth and meeting your face. You whined, unable to come up with words as he spreads your slick against your face. A shiver wrecks your spine, a pathetic whimper at the smell, and the feel of the warm thickness of your slick. “You wanted this, fucking asked me to wreck your worthless holes.”

“I-I’m not sad,” you try to defend yourself, your body shaking as you feel the heated warmth of his cock suddenly between the curves of your ass. It presses heavily onto you, skin twitching and throbbing with its emitting warmth and simmering heat. 

Shinsou pauses, his eyes deadly and threatening as he glares at you. Unamusement heavy in his gaze, his mouth set in a small, teeth-baring snarl. “Then why the fuck are you crying? You think you deserve to be crying right now? No. You fucking worthless slut, you don’t. You ruined my damn shift, my damn case, I should be the one fucking crying. Your pathetic ass is worthless and tried to make my life the same, and that won’t fucking fly.”

The words tighten at your throat, your body trembling as tears continue to flow. His words are white-hot against your skin, and although it hurts to hear it, your cunt clenches in response, slicking even more.

His hand comes down suddenly onto your ass. The slap sharp and stinging, echoing loudly against the alleyway walls as you scream in pain. It throbs, your back contorting as you try to stretch the skin that makes you ache. But Shinsou spanks your ass again, without warning, his hand unmerciful against your soft, swelling flesh. You yelp again.

He spanks again, and again, and again. Each echoing action sending your voice screaming, counting them without even being told, succumbed to him and his every action and thought without needing to be. He spanks you until your ass feels raw and bloody, the bruises undoubtedly forming as he pinches the folds of your dripping cunt.

“Stick your ass out more,” he growls, tugging at the fold, making you stumble. The cock pressing onto the split of your ass feels heavy, and you twitch at the seeping pre-cum dripping onto your muscled rim. The bricks scratch at your face, and you find your ass wiggling out further from the wall, your back arched more as the cold wall sings through the clothes on your breast. “I’m not gonna put more fucking effort into fucking a goddamn worthless bitch than I should.”

And with that, your ass perfectly exposed for him to use and fuck. His throbbing cock presses through your pussy and slams all the way into you.

There were many pains you were used to as an aspiring hero. You were used to being punched, kicked, stabbed, thrown about, etc. Each of those pains were something you had been taught to make feel better, each pain demonstrated to you so that it wouldn’t be the thing that took you out. But there was no training for the way that his thick cock pressed through your impossibly tight entrance. There was no pain that could relate to the white fire of your rapidly fluttering entrance that was trying too hard to keep up with his slamming thick cock.

“IT HURTS!” you shriek, body twisting, tears flooding your cheeks as you feel weak in the legs. Body moments from falling. “It hurts so much! Please! It hurts!”

“Oh? It hurts? It's supposed to fucking hurt you fucking idiot, fucking whore,” Shinsou snapped in return, his hips firing into even faster than before. His massive body practically caving onto you as his cock rockets into you. Unforgiving, relentless, and with the drive to make him cum. Your vision swirls and spins as the pain reaches its peak, your mouth opening, your voice no longer working. But oh, how the saliva dripped from your mouth as his hands abandoned your waist to grab onto your stretched cheeks. He held onto your cheeks like some gag, slamming your head into his chest so your dazed eyes could stare up at him as his menacing gaze bore down on you. “You think this was supposed to make you feel good? I don’t give a shit if you cum. This is for me. I’m not fucking stopping until I’m done using you, so shut the fuck up.”

Your whimper is soft, no longer able to keep up with the pleasure your body begins to reach as the pain becomes one of pure bliss. Your eyes crossing as every thrust of his welcomed cock drives you further and further up the wall. The squelching of your meeting sexes almost sounds like a nursery rhyme. A pleasant noise that makes you giggle deliriously as Shinsou continues to degrade you continues to spout how insignificant you are.

“Your only purpose in your shit life is to be my fucking cumdump, fucking bitch, do you understand me?” Shinsou spat, his thrusting becoming barbaric, stammering in his power and speed. You laugh, your head nodding as you stare up at him with loving eyes, the drool and tears on your face trailing down your throat, soaking your uniform. “Tell me what your purpose is?”

“To be your cumdump!” you laugh, elation bubbling in your chest, fluttering deep around your cunt until you felt Shinsou’s teeth sink into your throat.

The feeling of hot, sticky cum expelling into your cunt feels like blistering euphoria, his heavy, rough breathing on your skin, making you moan softly. Your own orgasm hits, much softer, much more controlled than his as your walls clamp down like a vice around him. Your orgasm is warm, sounding deep within you that you almost didn’t realize you were dropped to the floor.

A soft, pitiful moan sounds from your lip, your eyes focused on Shinsou, who’s shoving his limp cock back into his pants, but his eyes are on the skyline.

“I-I’m sorry for messing up your… your case,” you rasp on the floor. 

Shinsou shifts on his feet, his gaze lingering longer onto the skyline before finally setting onto you. The anger seems to have disappeared, a look of slight boredom but the excitement in his eyes as he leans down over you. You feel breathless when his mouth presses against yours in a short, chaste kiss.

“I think you just helped me keep my cover, slut; maybe you do have some worth,” he laughed against your mouth.

He leaves you there, your body going limp and blackness taking over the moment he disappears.

[solitaria-fantasma]

The Zoo, Part 3!

Honk’s player was running late so we started up without him (don’t worry he caught up pretty quick).

Lin Shi is alive, and not very happy with us (for very valid reasons).

Turns out he only eats dried mangos because he has sensory issues and it’s one of the few textures he can stand (mood, honestly).

Koira canonically tricks peasants out of their extra snacks with puppy dog eyes.

The zombies are all so happy to be doing the jobs they are because Lin Shi specifically raises them into undeath to perform jobs or skills that they enjoyed or were good at in life. That’s more than considerations that some IRL employers have given me.

Nosca: Do you have the zombie’s ongoing consent to be undead?

Lin Shi: Yes.

Nosca:

Nosca: Can you elaborate?

Lin Shi: No.

The necromancer agreed to give the party an altered and disguised corpse that we can turn in to the townsfolk as ‘proof’ that we did our job, but it’s going to take a few days.

Lin Shi: “I’m going back into my lab. If anyone needs me, don’t.”

Miraculously, Lin Shi offered us temporary rooms in his castle while he’s crafting his own fake corpse.

Dynamite revealed that she’s actually from the Feywild, and has been stuck on this Plane.

Nosca gave the four gallons of beer in her Jug of Alchemy to John the zombie (who’s name is actually Miles? Whoops??), and he paid her 4 platinum, and then ‘subtly’ asked her to bring more if we were ever in the area again.

Koira befriended all 50 zombies in the castle, because meeting Lilly has made her a little bit homesick, and she uses affection to fill in the void.

Dynamite scoured the castle for a mummified foot, to the dismay of the zombies, and when the zombie’s wouldn’t give her one, she started kicking Lin Shi’s lab door every half-hour and shouting “KNOCK KNOCK!” until he opened it.

He gave her a jar on a strap with two mummified, magically preserved human feet inside to make her stop kicking the door.

Honk’s PC: “Do you wanna make a corpse-man? It doesn’t have to be a corpse-man…”

Honk turned the abandoned ballroom into a disco, and set about trapping as many zombies as he was able.

He couldn’t get the zombies to dance, however; they would just clean up the room and then leave.

Dynamite’s PC: “Now we just have to make the zombie’s panic so there’ll be a Panic at the Disco!”

After several days, Lin Shi gave us an alarmingly accurate body double corpse of himself, complete with a very convincing axe wound to the back of the head that’s just the right size to fit Dynamite’s axe.

“Honk!” (derogatory)

The party: “We’ll come back and visit!”

Lin Shi: “Please don’t.”

“It’s too late - most of us have already mentally adopted this dried sponge of a man. He has no choice.”

Honk then promptly walked up to Lin Shi, turned around, shit on his shoes, and ran out of the room.

It takes a couple days for us to haul the corpse back to town, and along the way, the DM makes us all roll a Perception check.

Literally everyone in the party passed the check except for Koira - my girl had advantage and STILL couldn’t roll above a 10. 

“I mean, we DID kill him. That’s valid.”

Thankfully, the thing we needed the check for wasn’t hostile - it was a forest elemental who claimed to recognize the magic of Koira’s patron (called ‘Ally’) as that of a friend.

She offered Koira a boon, and Nosca and Dynamite both jokingly suggested she say “surprise me”.

Koira is just the kind of naive to say “surprise me!” out loud, and the elemental gave her a beautiful glass bottle that seemed to contain the dark and glittering essence of deep space, along with the instructions to open it if she ever “needed some space”.

Nosca identified it as a Bottle of Gust of Wind, which Dynamite promptly re-named the ‘Fart Bottle’.”

When we got back to town, the party joined a queue at Town Hall to turn in our quest for the reward, and Honk decided to try and harass the other people in line.

Honk’s PC: “I want to tie the shoelaces of the front person to the back person’s shoelaces, and then steal from one of them.”

DM: “They watch you tie the shoelaces together, kind of in awe - like, ‘We can’t believe a goose is this dexterous!’. You then yoink a beautiful pocket knife from the one adventurer.”

Honk is just going to recreate Untitled Goose Game at least once per session and I love it.

As Honk slowly led the tangled adventurers away from the line, Koira tried not to be caught watching, because she is a Good Girl, and if someone saw her watching this chaos, then she’d have to do something about it.

Nosca lost her quest paperwork in her bag of holding, and had to slowly unload its contents (on top of the corpse she’d already laid out on the table) until she found the paperwork.

This secretary hates us now.

With the proper paperwork finally filed, we got sent to another building to claim our reward.

Dynamite and Honk badgered the secretary for a lollipop, like bored children at a bank.

Koira scammed the harassed adventurers for a few quick pets before joining the party to leave, and accidentally upended their worldviews when she shouted “thank you!” back at them.

We went to turn in the body at the other building, and Dynamite called the mortician on duty a ‘nerd’ in Sylvan. Koira, who can speak Sylvan, laughed. The mortician, who could ALSO speak Sylvan, winked at them.

Honk has eaten so many coins that he jingles when he shimmies: Confirmed.

Mortician: “…and that should be it for you! Unless something comes back weird from the morgue.”

The Party: HAH! Yeah. Why would it? We, uh. We’ve got to go now.

Something is DEFINITELY going to come back weird from the morgue.

Nosca: “So….who wants to get a drink?”

Koira, paw raised: “Can we get a drink somewhere that’s dog-friendly?”

The party found a place with outside seating and settled down, at which point, Dynamite bought two bottles of glittery raspberry wine purely because it was advertised as being imported from the Feywilds.

Waitress: “Would you like a lemon for your water?”

Koira, seated at the table like a person with a salad bowl of water instead of a glass: “Ooh, yes please!”

While the rest of the party is having a lovely conversation with the waitress at the cafe, Honk was across town, causing mischief and starting fires to feel alive.

A large, dark, bird-like silhouette rolled over the town around dusk. Only Honk recognized that this was not a bird, and took flight to investigate it closer.

THAT IS NOT A BIRD.

This lumpy, many-limbed amalgamation of too many things can apparently bREATHE FIRE?!?

DM: “So what’s Honk gonna do with that information?”

Honk’s Player: “It doesn’t affect Honk, so nothing.”

Honk’s newfound motivation is to fight this flying monstrosity, because “if anyone’s going to burn down the forest, it’s going to be Honk.”

Honk’s PC: “This is my most OP character, and it’s a fucking goose.”

There’s a rider on the back of the flying amalgamation….one covered in horrible burn scars, and tattoos that are almost identical to those of Lin Shi…oh. O H. I think I know who this is.

Honk tried and failed to attack the monstrosity and it’s rider, but was quickly outflown. Defeated, he flew back to the party and began biting Nosca to get her attention.

“The waitress speaks Abyssal??”

“Her third cousin twice-removed was a Tiefing.”

The party finally packed up to follow Honk, and Koira generously gave the waitress one of the rocks from her precious collection as a tip.

The DM had me roll to see what the rock actually was, and it turned out to be a ruby the size of the waitress’s hand.

We went back out into the forest, heading toward the castle, and after a day or two, the forest started to feel….warm. The air tastes like smoke, and there’s an orange glow on the horizon.

Uh oh.

No, yeah, the forest is on fire.

“You come out of the smoldering forest to a field of ash and soot. The stone castle is now scorched, though still standing, the once-beautiful stained glass windows are blown out, and the roof - which was made of wood - is completely gone.”

Koira took off full-tilt across the ash field to the castle beCAUSE LILLY WAS IN THERE OH NO OH NO-

There’s just a skeleton of a building left; we can see straight up to the sky and down to the deepest dungeons, and there’s piles and PILES of corpses in the stairwells.

Koira and Dynamite split off from Nosca and Honk to search the basements while the other two went up, but the entire building is uncomfortably quiet.

Koira started tracking Lilly by the scent of her laundry detergent, with Dynamite hanging onto her back to keep up.

They found the source, but it was just a container of the detergent, not Lilly, herself.

We did find John/Miles, however. Or…at least, what was left of him (poor guy’s just a one-armed torso now).

Dynamite woke him up by uncorking her remaining bottle of raspberry wine and pouring some of it down his throat. He woke up very grateful.

Meanwhile, Honk and Nosca (but really Nosca) found Lin Shi’s lab still intact. The door lock had melted, and all the traps were disabled from the heat, but it was intact.

Inside a bathroom within the lab, Nosca found both Lin Shi and Lilly (thank god!) hiding in a half-filled tub of water. Both are alive (…ish), although unconscious.

Nosca instinctively ducked when Koira came hurtling into the room, still armed with her quarterstaff, and tried to body Lilly with relieved affection.

Lin Shi wasn’t so lucky, and got beamed in the head (no damage tho).

We had players who had to get up early tomorrow for work so we ended there, but now we’ve got an attempted murder-mystery to solve!!

[shhhlikeme]

hi can u do a headcanon when a fem reader moves from karasuno to aoba johsai and still is friends with the karasuno boys.Iwaizumi falls for her because of her skills as a setter and also for being independent and not crushing on oikawa lol.She occasionally smiles at him and likes him too but shes too scared of relationships because of her past one and, scenario where iwaizumi is watching her lead her team and making fun of the other team lol after that he confesses to her

This is the first request I’ve received that is this specific and while I found it harder to write than the rest.... it was a fun challenge trying to follow your plot! I had so much fun! Thank you anon youre awesome💜

TRIGGER WARNING: this story slightly explores themes of abusive relationships. Please tread carefully.

Iwaizumi Hajime x “The Spicy New Girl” Crush

Iwaizumi x Reader

———————————————-

After 2 1/2 years on the Karasuno’s volleyball team, you kind of figured that if you were really serious about getting a volleyball scholarship for University, you had to get on a better team.

A full-ride athletic scholarship was very important because you knew your parents couldn’t afford it otherwise and you’d just love to take that stress away from them

You were already in 3rd year and time as ticking

Not that anyone knew it, but your parents couldn’t afford your post secondary education because they had to tap into/empty your entire college savings fund in order to afford your lawyer expenses

The money had been used to fight a case against your abusive (all types), much older ex-boyfriend. You were susceptible and groomed in middle school by a 20-year old volleyball coach and you fell for him. It went how it usually goes for girls who stand up against their abuser who has power and was known as a stand-up coach in the community. No one believed you. The restraining order never worked or stopped him and the last time he found you he had beaten you so badly that you were able to put him away for battery only.

Your parents and yourself decided to pick up and move to the countryside of Japan in the hopes of starting fresh. You got to start high school at the charming Karasuno High School since the beginning.

They had a volleyball team, and you would be damned if you let your ex ruin your love for volleyball like he tried ruining your life

Each summer you trained like crazy and even though you were your own judge, you knew you were a force to be reckoned with as a player.

Of course you made the team and you were pretty happy

But you soon realized ‘happy’ did not equate to ‘scholarship’ not even close.

The Karasuno girls volleyball team wasn’t like the boys team, where it took shaking them up, new first years and determination to make them a killer team....

Your team didn’t even garner a 20% turnout at practices.

While your teammates are nice, none of them really saw volleyball as more than a club to satisfy a credit

Which meant you would constantly go over to the boys’ practice and wait until Ukai thought it was fine for you to set some spikes for them....

Kageyama, who became like a little brother to you, would bitch at you for stealing his reps while Sugawara (who was more like a twin brother since you were the same age) would give you corrections

While you had a strict personality by nature, It was great to watch talented setters like them

Improving was imperative because you just had to get that scholarship & if Universities were going to recruit you then you’d need to get to Nationals, at the very least

This was not going to be possible on your current team at Karasuno

Even though you adored your captain/bestie Michimiya —or what you liked to call her: Daichi’s dickrider who was always the only other girl at practice — even she had mentioned to your parents at a sleepover that they should look into other volleyball programs at other schools

She had known of your story because you trusted her so she was set on getting you that scholarship also

Your parents listened to Michimiya and sent your highlight tapes out.

Before you knew it you had been invited to multiple crash-tryouts mid-semester

Soon your parents received many offers, but they believed the best one was from a wealthy private school called Aoba Johsai (aka Seijoh) because they not only had an amazing team, they offered their daughter fully paid room and board on campus.

You immediately agreed because that meant even more money your parents could save after emptying their bank accounts on your awful lawsuit

So, after saying goodbye to your lovable Karasuno boys team and Michimiya, you traded your Karasuno high school uniforms much to Nishinoya’s displeasure for Seijoh’s turquoise accented fits

One week went by

You settled into Aobo Johsai school pretty quickly. The team was practically a shoe-in to win Nationals, especially with you, and your teammates were a little boy crazy but SO intense which you kind of loved.

The intense not the boy crazy .

You could get aggressive when it came to volleyball because you had so much on the line so it was nice to know the girls could take your attitude

Your team and coaches really got your head in the game to the point where you would caught yourself not even thinking about your past relationship some days

You made budding friends especially your roommate who was also on your team and everything was going smoothly for the first week

On your first Friday after move in you and your roommate were running late for practice

On the opposite side of school, Seijoh setter and Ace Oikawa Toru and Iwaizumi Hajime were making their way over to the gym too

They had just finished eating and were asked to run some errands for their coach, which included giving some time sheets to the girls volleyball teams head coach who they knew very well

Their coach happened to be the old captain of the boys team when Iwa and Toru were wee little first years

Iwaizumi had a little pet peeve of long treks with his best friend .... because they would be stopped 50 fucking times by his fan girls for shit-all.

It’s not that Iwaizumi was jealous of his best friend, not really. He knew he was a pretty good looking guy and he was sure Oikawa would die if he didn’t receive that kind of attention so it didn’t matter

It didn’t bother him most the time

But when it interrupted even a simple 10-minute walk to the girls gym it got pretty damn annoying

Granted, he would probably like for the hot girls in school to fawn over him as much as Oikawa but even when girls saw Iwa first and thought he was attractive, they would then see his best friend approaching and Iwaizumi would ultimately be eclipsed by his pretty-boy of a best friend

Oikawa’s bitch of an ex girlfriend once said that if Toru was “The Great King,” then Hajime was the attractive Lord Commander of the Kings Guard. Not as good as the king but, definitely still good.

He hated her lol. ❌ She really thought this was Game of Thrones or something

Iwa’s analogy was better:

It was kind of like that singing group The Pussycat Dolls...... while the other 5 members were smoking hot and talented, Nicole Scherzinger was the main event.

Toru was Nicole.

Maybe he should start calling him “Pussykawa” as a commemoration

Back to the present

Iwa-chan waited with his hands stuffed in his pockets like he always did while his friend thanked his admirers profusely for the compliments and gifts

The girls squealed and told him they’ve been trying to accidentally run into him all day

Yuck, are these chicks not embarassed to admit that? Iwa thought in disgust.

He’s heard worse before though. And then some. Even when they go off-campus on a normal outing to the movies or something with just the boys - Oikawa would be recognized from that volleyball magazine and tv and consequently get swarmed by cute girls. It made a lot of guys unable to even be around Oikawa because they were so insanely jealous

Over the years, Toru lost a lot of friends because of it

But Iwa-chan was a better friend than that. While everyone ditched annoyingkawa.... he endured the eclipse that was his best friend’s so-called peak-attractiveness because he was a real ass friend. They’ve been inseparable since they were kids. So, as much as he hated to admit it, and as much as they tease each other: he’d take a bullet for shittykawa and shittykawa would do the same tenfold.

Anyway, in double the time it should have taken, the 2 boys finally made it to the gym to deliver the sheets to the coach

Iwa walked over to the coach coolly while the girls team mostly stopped to wave and bat their eyelashes at Toru.

“Hey ladies, I saw your last game. Amazing pinch serve Natalie. Leah, awesome receives and—“

Iwa drowned him out as the coach began talking to him.

“Hajime, I thought I told you to keep Mr. Oikawa out of my practices? He distracts my players way too much.”

Iwa shrugged. “I’m not his keeper, coach.”

- Iwa squinted his eyes when he noticed there was one girl on the team that wasn’t gushing over shittykawa. She was setting herself in perfect sets, looking up at the gym ceiling so he couldn’t see her/your face.

Hajime looked away when the other squealed at something Toru said. He sighed. “You need someone on the team that will whip them into shape coac—“ Iwa started to say but he was interrupted by the yelling of that mystery girl. You had your back facing Iwa now because you were facing the group of girls who should be bloody practicing surrounding a boy who just walked into the gym. Getting PTSD from the times when your last team wouldn’t take volleyball seriously, you snapped at them.

“LADIES!” You belted. All the girls jumped from being startled. “I KNOW I’M NEW BUT YOUR AMAZING PARENTS DO NOT PAY 30K A YEAR TO THIS SCHOOL FOR YOU TO BE OVER THERE BEGGING FOR LIKES IN REAL LIFE. WE SHOULD BE PRACTICING! GET YOUR ASSES BACK HERE! NOW.”

The girls looked back with widened eyes before they jogged away from the boy, muttering their apologies to you and getting straight to drills.

“You were saying.....?” Laughed Seijoh’s coach to Iwa. He cupped his ear like he was listening. “I need someone on the team that does what now?”

Iwa barely heard because he was too busy staring at you in awe.

“W-wh-who is that?” Iwaizumi asked the coach as he crossed his arms in front of him.

“Meet Y/N L/N. 3rd year. New recruit. Used to be a crow, can you believe it? Tryna get a last minute scholarship. But she’s good. Very analytical. Setter. Brilliant and—“

“Gorgeous.” Iwa finished for the coach, finally gifted with the luxury of seeing your face as you let your bouncy hair out of its ponytail only to do it up again. His throat went dry temporarily.

“Iwa-chan, the new girl is pretty cute right?” Iwaizumi jumped out of his skin when he heard his best friend’s voice right beside him.

“Wha-when when did you get here?!” Hajime accused in surprise.

Oikawa studied his best friend with an amused smile. “Iwa-chan...are you blushing while you stare at our girls team’s new starting setter?!” He clutched his heart for dramatic effect. “I can admit that she’s almost as good looking as me but.... I don’t think I’ve ever seen you blush before. My little boy is discovering the joys of the fairer sex.”

Iwaizumi was just about to punch the lights out of his friend for saying something so embarrassing before a volleyball did it for him. It hit Oikawa smack in the head and he fell to the ground.

You ran over in panic because you totally didn’t mean for your flying receive to go that far!

“Oh my God, oh my God I’m soooo sorry!” You ran past another tall boy and attempted to help the one that was on the floor back onto his feet.

Iwaizumi was on cloud nine when you brushed past him because you smelled like citrus. He openly stared at your ass as you bent down.

ya he was definitely going to be attending all of the girls games from now on just to see you

To Iwaizumi, you weren’t just gorgeous with a drool-worthy body, you were athletic, you put your team in their place just like he did without caring about being mean

which ultimately made you a fantasy of his

He wanted to know more about you

He wanted you to choose him.

For the first time, Iwaizumi silently held his breath because now was the part where you would come face-to-face with “the great kingkawa” and fall in love with him like every other girl did.

Iwa braced himself for dejection because for all he knew you hit Toru on purpose to have an excuse to talk to him

It was a volleyball players pick up strategy number #1

I’m serious lol

Well, if you did, at least she is better than the “we tried to run into you” girls, -__- thought Iwa.

“I didn’t hurt you, did I?” You asked, genuinely concerned.

Iwaizumi caught himself staring at your lips as you spoke to his friend. Keep fucking talking, he thought, as he felt himself get a little aroused at the mere fact that you were so close. Blame him as you may but he wanted those lips of yours to move against his lips, and on his chest, and on his.....well, you know.

Iwa mentally slapped himself. God, he’s already having day dreams about you?! And he had just seen you for the first time 10 minutes ago??!! He needed to get it together.

Oikawa shook his head and blushed in response to your question. While he may get tons of female attention, he was still a guy, and he still recognized that you were really beautiful. Standing up, Oikawa smiled down at you. “I’m fine. No need for alarm, new princess. I can still attend the boys vs. girls game next week so there’s no need to cry or worry....”

You looked up at the boy curiously.

No one could have prepared themselves for what you were about to say to Oikawa next:

“Oh, are you on the boys team? Are you the manager?”

“World Stop.” - *Beyoncé voice*

..........

ummmmmmm

ummmmmmmmm

err-what’s worse than saying RIP Oikawa?

‘Sorry that you just ceased to exist’, Oikawa?

Iwaizumi froze when he heard what you said, instantaneously falling in love with you.

it’s possible ok? fight me

If there was ever a time when fast love was possible it would be now aight

Stunnedkawa, on the other hand, had frozen too.... but for entirely different reasons than his friend’s. He drew into himself, shutting his mouth and walking away like he was in a trance. He muttered something about going back to the room he and Iwaizumi shared and Iwaizumi watched him pass a few girls who were calling to him like he couldn’t even hear them.

“Strange guy.” You shrugged, turning your attention to the other guy who you thought truly looked like a volleyball player. “Can you make sure to tell your manager that I’m sorry for hitting him?” You ask hopefully.

Iwaizumi nods as you two maintain eye contact.

She’s perfect, he thinks

This man is so fine, you think. Tall, broad shoulders, brunette, looks like he could go for rounds, yes ma’am!

You snap back out of it, giving him an apologetic smile before running back to the court to finish the drills. Iwa melted at your smile. You yelled some more at your teammates who looked to be flirting with some more boys who came in.

Iwa’s gaze followed you as you moved out of earshot, unable to take his eyes off of you as you yelled again.

He thought you were beyonnnnd sexy when you yelled like that

Hajime didn’t know he had a type before today but he knows now that his ideal type is whatever comes closest to you

The girl’s coach, who was still standing beside Iwaizumi, nudged him lightly with his elbow.

“You stare at Y/N any harder and I think you actually will manage to ask her out telepathically.”

Iwa let a small smile grace his face. The desire to ask you out had taken off when he saw your little ponytail release. Now it was about — “Hey, thanks for the advice.” He mumbled sarcastically. “But, hey coach?” Iwaizumi asks in his deep voice, clearing his throat and still not taking his eyes off of you.

The coach turned to Iwa.

“Yeah?”

He smirked to himself. “Know any good jewelry stores in the city? I’m ready to buy your new setter an engagement ring.”

—————————-

Let me know if you guys want a part 2 to this bc I couldn’t get to the confession in this post obviously.... I was writing too much. In part 2 I’m thinking you and Iwa run into your ex one day? And we see that Seijoh boys vs. Girls volleyball match? You decide!

Ps. I almost titled this story Iwaizumi x “The New Girl That Fucked Shit Up” lmao

[flutistbyday-1]

Simple Man Part I

This is a Supernatural AU, featuring an OFC (reader). The reader meets Dean in high school, and they face challenges together. They’re separated and reunite after the reader hears Dean sing a song that they wrote together.

Based on the song, “Simple Man” by Lynyrd Skynyrd, but inspired by Jensen Ackles’ version, WHICH I HIGHLY RECOMMEND LISTENING TO before reading this! If you’re a sucker like me, it’ll make you cry.

TW: angst, cussing, mentions of sex (this is probably one of THE tamest things I’ve ever written!!) May make you cry if you’re a weenie like me.

Tags at the bottom. Want to be added to my tag list? Go here.

Characters: Dean x OFC (reader), Sammy Winchester John Winchester(mentioned), Mary Winchester

Part II soon!

Word Count: 3,113

Credit for the image here.

PART I

Dean Winchester remembers his fourth birthday like it was only yesterday. On said birthday, Mary Winchester, belly swollen with Dean’s little brother, patted the couch beside her.

“Come here, baby,” she had said.

Dean can still remember how pretty his momma looked with a baby in her tummy. He padded over to here, and less-than-gracefully clambered onto the couch. Mary pulled him into her lap, cradling him close. Dean was careful not to hurt his momma.

“I want to talk to you before your little brother is born, Dean. I want you to know that your daddy and I will always love you and that nothing will ever change that, okay?”

Dean nodded. “Okay, momma.”

Mary smiled down at her son. “Pay attention, Dean. This is important.��� When she knew she had Dean’s attention, she continued. “I want you to promise me when you’re older, you’ll find someone to love as much as I love your daddy.”

Dean looked up at his mom, hanging on to every word.

“You’ll have troubles, but they won’t last, okay? There’s more to life than money, Dean. Remember to pray. Remember to never take anything for granted, and never be greedy for money. Be a simple man, Dean, and you’ll never want.”

Dean Winchester would never forget the speech his mom gave him.

Dean was three months shy of five when his mother died in a fire. She sacrificed herself to save his little brother, Sammy.

“Take your brother and run Dean!” she yelled at her eldest son, and that’s what he did. He didn’t stop until he was three houses down.

Mary Winchester was dead before the firefighters arrived.

Dean crawled into the crib that a local church had provided for Sammy that night. He bit John when he tried to remove Dean.

“I gotta protect him, Daddy!” Dean screamed at his father. John never tried to pull Dean from Sammy’s crib after that.

John remembers Sammy’s first word—he was nine months old, playing with his older brother. The word spilled out of Sammy’s chubby-cheeked smile quickly, almost like he’d said it a hundred times. Sammy reached over and tugged on his brother’s shirt.

“Bean,” Sammy said.

Sure, it hurt John to not be Sammy’s first word, but the love in Dean’s eyes as he scooped up his brother made John smile.

Dean Winchester cried on his first day of school—not because he was scared, but because he didn’t want to be separated from Sammy. He had just learned to walk, and Dean always watched Sammy like a hawk, picking him up and encouraging him to try again when he fell.

Sammy loved following his big brother everywhere and didn’t understand why he couldn’t stay with Dean. “Bean?” he’d ask his brother.

“I don’t want to go, Daddy,” Dean protested, alligator tears streaming down his face. John sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“I know, Dean. But you have to go to school.” John’s voice was reserved. He’d had this fight every day since he told Dean about kindergarten.

Dean held Sammy closer to his chest, turning so his back was to his father, acting more like a twenty-five-year-old than a five-year-old. “Who will watch him while I’m at school?”

“I will, Dean.”

Dean couldn’t help but roll his eyes, once again acting twenty years older than he was.

John had no interest in being a father. A cool uncle, maybe.

Dean was the primary caretaker of Sammy—fed him, changed him, bathed him.

John provided housing, clothing, and food.

Dean’s teacher came over and knelt to his eye level.

“It’s okay to be scared, Dean,” she said. “Your brother will be fine without you. You’ll be home before you know it.” Her smile was warm and Dean almost felt better. He handed Sammy over to his father and took Miss. Lenhard’s hand. She guided Dean to his seat, but the boy didn’t take his eyes off his father and brother until they were out of sight.

After Dean started school, something changed in John, and his depression began eating him alive. He could barely be bothered to make sure there was enough food on the table, let alone wake up in time to take Dean to school. John didn’t know or care that Dean’s shoes had holes in them, or that Dean’s jacket was tight around the shoulders, or that the onesies were getting too small on Sammy.

John only cared about numbing the pain in his heart with liquor.

So Dean took it upon himself to be a father. He learned how to pickpocket at six—he never once got caught—and used the money to buy shoes, food, and clothes.

His dad taught him how to play and hustle billiards when he was seven. Dean was a natural. It was one of the last times Dean saw a glimpse of the father he remembered.

He’d used the money he won hustling for food, clothes, and even helped his dad pay some bills. Dean never told his father how he and Sammy always managed to have new clothes, but John didn’t care.

When Dean was nine, he held Sammy’s hand until his little brother pulled away from him to meet his classmates. For the first time in four years, he felt at ease. Two meals a day and he didn’t have to worry about his dad neglecting Sammy.

One day, John dropped them off and Dean heard a teacher say, “Good Lord, look how filthy those boys are!” The first thing Dean felt wasn’t anger at his dad for letting them leave the house like that, but fear that he’d be taken from his dad, and therefore, Sammy.

So, Dean got himself and Sammy ready every day— he took his dad’s alarm clock to his room and set it for 6:50 AM— dressed, then got Sammy ready, fed them both breakfast, and woke his dad up to drive them to school. He did this five days a week until Sammy could wake up himself, but he still made breakfast and made sure they were presentable for school so that they wouldn’t be taken away from John and separated.

Dean took shears to Sammy’s hair in an attempt to tame it and he did okay. Dean got better at it over the years, and once Sammy was old enough to cut Dean’s hair, he got good at it, too.

When Dean Winchester was 15, he got his first job and could put food on the table—legally, at least. He got hired on as a mechanic at a local shop. The only time John had paid him any attention as a child was when they worked on the Impala, so Dean was good with cars.

He had been taking care of Sammy for 11 years and thought he was doing amazing, thank you. He was happy. He didn’t take anything for granted like his mom had made him promise.

So when Y/N walked into his life at 16, he was unprepared for how much he had to learn.

******

It was your first day at Lawrence High, and you were nervous. You had transferred from a small town called Arlington, Kansas. Your class had been all of 20 people whom you’d grown up with your entire life, and you didn’t know how to feel about being dropped into a school full of strangers. You were 16, in your second semester of junior year, a band geek, and totally lost.

You groaned, looking over your schedule—homeroom was in five minutes and you had no idea where to go. You turned, desperately searching for clues as to where to go when a wall of a boy ran into you.

You went down in a tangle of limbs and backpacks.

“Oops, I’m sorry—”

“My bad—”

Both of you tripped over your words as he picked himself off the ground. You rolled over to your backside and sat up.

“It’s okay,” you said, shaking your head and smiling. “I wasn’t really paying attention.”

He offered you his hand, and you took it gratefully.

“Thanks.”

You looked up at him—he had to be almost six foot. He was well built for his age, and even though he was on the skinnier side, you could still see his muscles. His eyes were bright green, and freckles danced on his face. His smile was killer, too.

“So, where ya headed?” He asked as he situated his backpack on his shoulder.

You shook your head. “I don’t really know. It’s my first day and I’m lost.”

The boy chuckled. It wasn’t a mean sound, more like amused. “Who’s your homeroom teacher?”

You shoved your schedule into his hands and he examined it. His face lit up, and you couldn’t help but smile at his excitement. “Mrs. Lanning. Me, too. Let’s go!”

He tugged on your hand and took off running. You laughed as you tried to keep up with him—he was almost a full foot taller than you. You kept up, though. You were both out of breath by the time you reached room 207.

The two of you darted into the classroom just before the bell rang.

“Just in time,” he grinned.

You shook your head but returned the grin.

He made a point of sitting near the back and placing his backpack on the empty seat next to him while you approached the teacher to introduce yourself.

Mrs. Lanning smiled brightly as she signed a piece of paper indicating you showed up for class. “It’s great to have you, dear.”

You returned the smile. “Thanks.”

You awkwardly made your way to the back of the classroom and sat at the desk with the boy’s backpack.

“I’m Dean, by the way.”

You didn’t hear him right and you knew it. “Bean?” you asked with a teasing smile.

You could see the wheels turn in his head. He was sad for half a second, but the mood was fleeting. He shook his head and returned his own cheeky smile.

“Dean,” he repeated, emphasizing the D. “Dean Winchester.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m Y/N Y/L/N.”

Mrs. Lanning shushed the class and you tried to pay attention, but you felt two green eyes boring into you for the entire period, making it hard to concentrate.

When the bell finally rang, you looked at your schedule again. Math was next, room 412. You groaned.

You stood and gathered your things, noticing that a certain someone was waiting for you. He looked relaxed and at ease with his body, things you were definitely not.

“Where’s your next class?”

“Math with Mr. Alan.”

Dean smiled again. “Me, too.”

You laughed, calling after him as you left the classroom, “Come on, Bean.”

You and Dean got along great. You had three out of seven classes a day together—four out of eight on days with homeroom—and he lived just down the block from you, so he offered to drive you to and from school every day.

Dean teased you relentlessly about being a band geek, but when you started dishing it back about him being a jock—a football player—he dialed it back just a little. Sammy took to you immediately—you bonded over nerdy things like math and history, making Dean roll his eyes. Sam listened to you and soon gave you just as much affection as his brother. You quickly became the mother figure he had to grow up without.

You helped Sam—and Dean—with their homework, helped Dean come up with age-appropriate punishments for Sam when he misbehaved (he was only twelve, regardless of how mature he acted), and taught Dean how to cook something besides meals that came in a box. You even taught Sam and Dean how to cut their hair in a more age-appropriate style.

You didn’t think twice about taking Sam and Dean in—you loved and trusted them both with your life after just one afternoon. It was second nature for you to want to care for them, and boy, did they need you.

Dean Winchester had known you all of three weeks before he knew he loved you.

Dean was careful not to take you home. He didn’t want John seeing you, talking to you… Or scaring you away. He didn’t want you to see the dark, dirty secrets of his life. He worked really hard to make sure that nobody saw what happened behind closed doors. And he wasn’t about to let you see.

Your mom was a nurse who works nights, so you and Dean were in the same boat. Your mom wasn’t absent, though, just busy.

Dean and Sammy spent a lot of time at your house when Dean wasn’t at work. They came over after school and did homework, you would make dinner for them and your mother, and you and Dean would sit down at the piano after dinner was put away and homework was finished. You would play, Dean would try to play, but the two of you sang together.

While you could play the piano, Dean could play the guitar. He loved singing with you—your voices complemented each other. Sammy would always stop whatever he was doing to listen to you sing.

One day, Dean came over with a notebook full of empty sheet music and asked for a pencil.

“Sit at the piano, would ya?” he asked, not even paying attention to you.

“Would it kill you to use manners?” you joked as you sat at the piano bench.

Dean looked up at you and gave you a cheeky smile. “Please?”

You rolled your eyes but turned to the keys. “What am I doing?”

“We are writing a song.”

“Oh, really, now?”

Dean nodded. “You have a better ear than I do, so I’ll sing a note and you’ll match it.”

“And what’s the name of this song?”

A blush crept over Dean’s face.

“I don’t have a name yet, just a few words.”

“Okay. What are they? Start singing, Winchester,” you mock ordered.

He sat down next to you, notebook in hand.

He began strumming his guitar, and the chords pulled on your heartstrings. The words were achingly beautiful, too. He began to sing, a beautiful tenor, almost bass voice coming from the boy who was on the cusp of being a man. You could tell he was trying to keep his emotions in check as he sang, his voice wavering occasionally. He got through two verses before he had to stop.

“Oh, take your time, don't live too fast

Troubles will come and they will pass

You'll find a woman, yeah, and you'll find love

And don't forget son, there is someone up above"

“And be a simple kind of man

“Be someone you love and understand

“Baby, be a simple kind of man

“Won’t you do this for me, if you can”

The words tore at your soul. You didn’t have to pry to know that song was about his late mother.

You easily matched the pitches and rhythms of his tune and helped him write it down. By the end of the day, you only had one verse done, but you could tell Dean had poured his heart into this song. That was the day things changed for you.

Dean, sitting there, writing a song about his mother, was the tipping point in your relationship with him. It was that day you knew you loved Dean Winchester and would never love another man as much as him.

Eventually, Dean started spending less time with you. You felt hurt and upset, wondering what you did for him to pull back. When you confronted him, you were not prepared for his response.

“I’ll tell you after school,” he said. He looked up at you and his green eyes were dark with grief. You pulled him into a hug and waited for him to hug you back. He squeezed you eventually and you let go.

That day after school, you were anxiously waiting with Sammy in ‘your spot’ that you and Dean had claimed. When Sammy spotted Dean, he ran over and hugged him. It was odd for a 12-year-old to show so much affection, especially to another male, but you just figured that they were really close.

You offered your hand to Dean platonically. You found comfort in his warmth, and he found comfort in your friendship. The three of you started walking towards Dean’s car.

“It’s not gonna be easy for me to tell you this,” he said quietly. “I’m only telling you because I trust you. And if you tell anyone, I swear—”

“I won’t tell anyone,” you promised quietly.

Dean nodded as he looked at Sammy.

“My dad, uh… well, when Sammy was a baby, my mom died. My dad tried really hard to keep himself together… And he did. For a little while.”

Dean started the car and pulled out of the parking lot.

You didn’t say anything.

“But when I started kindergarten, something changed. I mean, I guess I always took care of Sammy. I changed his diapers and fed him when Dad was at work, but when Dad came home he would help. When I started kindergarten, he stopped caring. I had to learn how to fend for myself. And Sammy.“

Your heart broke. You looked over at Dean, tears threatening to spill. Dean glanced at you briefly and you could see that he had tears of his own. You reached out and squeezed his shoulder.

“I did OK. I really did. But Dad‘s been acting really weird lately and… He’s not working as much as he used to. I got a job a few months ago and it helps, but my dad takes my paycheck and buys liquor instead of food. I got into a fight with him a few days ago about it and he left. Haven’t seen him since.”

You gasped.

“How long?” You asked quietly.

“Three days,” Sam answered vehemently.

You turned and looked at Sammy. No tears in his eyes, just hate. You looked at Dean again, and his face had hardened.

“Oh, Bean,” you whispered.

“Is it wrong that a part of me wishes he would leave us alone for good?”

You didn’t have an answer. The rest of the car ride was silent. He had just delivered such an emotional blow and you were reeling. Your head hurt a little. When Dean pulled up to your house, you looked over at him, then at Sammy.

“If you need anything,” you started. Dean just nodded. You made eye contact with Sammy and he just gave you a tight smile.

Your heart was heavy when you fell asleep that night.

PERMA//FOREVER

@kingliam2019

@glaimtruelovealways

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@kimmiedoo5

@imthequeenofcordonia

@texaskitten30

@dcbbw

@cordonia-gothqueen

@custaroonie

@shz256

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@sanchita012

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[itsjustmyfantasyroom]

Fresh start: First date

It’s a Saturday Night in Australia, and I know we all wish we were getting ready to go out with our one and only Barba/Raul. This was fun to write. This is the final part to Fresh Start, i didn’t think about it till I finished the story. Enjoy xx

Rafael knew that you had never really been taken out on a date. The one serious boyfriend you had pretty much just happened in high school, while the rest were just hock ups here and there.

After telling each other how you both felt about each other soon after you meet, he wanted to take you out. His feelings for you ran deep, but you both decided to take things slow so nothing was ruined.

It was Friday night just a week after the conversation in his apartment after a night out with the squad after a win. He was working late, you had come by to see him. You were sitting on his couch with your button down untucked, your hair lose around you, shoes off and legs stretched out in front of you. You were reading a book you had picked up last week.

Rafael was sitting at his desk going through a case file and writing, he looked up and you took his breath away. He had never met a women that was just content in being in his space. Every other women demanded his time, you didn't, and you got it. And if that meant sitting in his office reading a book on a Friday night, just so you could be around him, you did it. He stared at you for a while and couldn't get over how you made something so simple look so sexy.

He cleared his throat, you slowly looked up from your page and met his gaze.

"Hermosa, what are you doing tomorrow night?"

“Ah....nothing. I thought I would probably end up being with you?"

"I want to take you on a date, our first date." he got up from behind his desk and walked over to sit with you, you crossed your legs to make room for him to sit.

"I would love to Rafi" you were delighted. You had never been taken out on a date before, this was going to be amazing.

He reached over and took the book out of your hands and placed it on the coffee table, he lent in towards you. You uncrossed your legs and spread them apart so he could lay between them. He came closer and you could feel his warm breath as he lent in, you swallowed the lump in your throat and butterflies filled your belly.

He lent in and placed his lips on yours gently and pulled away looking into your eyes. You reached out with both hands to either side of his face and pulled him back into you, the kissing was intense, deep and all tongues. You slowly slide down into a laying position with Rafael on top of you between your legs. His hands were up your shirt rubbing up and down your naked sides. You were running your hands up and down his back. You could feel him starting to harden in his pants, and he pulled out his hands from under your shirt and pulled away from the kiss. He looked you in the eyes with a little side smile seeing the frustration in your face, you seeing the frustration in his. He kissed you on the forehead and moved to get up off the couch.

"I have to get back to work, I have a date tomorrow night that I don't want to reschedule" he winked at you. You rolled your eyes at him and laughed as he walked away back to his desk.

You had never taken things slow with anyone before, but you both agreed it was best for this relationship. Things could get complicated and neither of you wanted to risk anything happening and losing each other. But at the same time you were both getting frustrated, sexually frustrated, it was taking a lot for Rafael to pull himself away from you and he could see your frustration every time he pulled away, but it had to be like that, just for now.

----

The taxi pulled up in front of your building,

"Just wait 5 minutes please" the taxi driver nodded and you both slide out of the taxi. He took you in his arms and kissed you lightly on the lips.

"I'm looking forward to tomorrow" he said smiling at you.

"Me too Rafi"

"Be ready at 6 and I'll come and pick you up" you smiled back and lent in and kissed him again, he hugged you tighter and pulled you closer. The taxi driver beeped his horn,

"I better go, I’ll see you tomorrow"

"Night Rafi"

****

The next morning you got up early and went through all your cloths. You knew Rafael’s style, and tonight wasn't going to be a slice of pizza down the block, it would be something amazing, so you wanted to look the part and impress. You got dressed, had a quick breakfast and headed out the door. 3 blocks down was a whole row of small boutique stores and you hoped you found the right outfit in one of them.

After the 3rd store, trying on about 50 dresses, you found the one. The store had shoes too, so the sales lady helped you pick a pair that felt comfortable and went with the dress.

----

You were all dressed and ready by 5.50, so you decided to have a quick drink to settle the nerves. You had a glass of wine. You put a spare pair of underwear in the zip of your clutch, just in case you ended up back at Rafael’s.

6 on the dot, the buzzer went off and you walked over and pressed it,

"Who is it?"

"Your date Hermosa"

You looked in your hall mirror and quickly replaced your lip gloss that had come off on your wine glass.

*knock knock knock*

"One second" you took a deep breath and tried to tame the butterflies, then you opened the door to the most handsome person you had ever seen. Rafael was in a navy 2 piece suit with a light grey button down and black shoes. His hair was perfect as always. It took a lot of self-control on your part. He was holding a white long stemmed rose.

----

Rafael had been on dates here and there, but he never found what he was looking for, partly because of his trust issues and partly because of work. This was the first date he was going to be on in a while. He was excited and nervous. After shaking your hand the first time seeing you, he felt something, something new, something he liked. The short time you had been at SVU were the best he had, in such a long time, you made him happy, you made him feel wanted, you made him feel human. He knew you felt the same. There was no beating around the bush this time, it was straight to the point with both expressing how you felt. Even with the age gap, it didn't matter to you. Although you were taking things slow, he was enjoying himself. He loved the little make out sessions, although they were frustrating, they were exciting.

----

“OH WOW Hermosa, you look stunning" he looked at you up and down taking you all in.

What he seen when you opened the door, was all his fantasy coming true in one night. He had to control himself, dinner was booked. You had a black lace boob tube tight fitted dress down to your knees, which then had a frill around the bottom hem. It was short at the front and longer at the back, “High low” the lady in the store told you. You had a dusty blue pair of low heel sandals which wrapped around your ankle and had one strap across the toes. Your toe nails were painted white. The heel was only an inch high, and they seemed comfortable for now. Your hair was down straight parted to the side.

He lent in and kissed you on lightly on the lips, getting lip gloss on his, you both giggled, and you rubbed your thumb over his lips to get it off.

"This is for you" he handed you the rose.

"OH Rafi, it's beautiful. Thank you" and you gave him a hug.

"Just let me put it in some water before we go" he nodded and you walked off into your apartment, he closed the door and followed. When he seen you walk in front of him, your shoes caught his eye and he giggled,

"What's funny?"

"You’re wearing heels Hermosa?"

"I wouldn't really call them heels, they matched nice with dress" you laughed. "I may not be in them by the end of the night, but they look nice" you smiled at him as you put the rose in a vase of water and started to walk back towards him.

He walked over to you and wrapped an arm around your waist and put his other hand on the side of your neck, while he kissed the other side.

You closed your eyes as the sensation ran through you. He was kissing you in just the right spot, your hands on his arms and you squeezed him hard as he kissed you more, down to your collar bone.

"You look so handsome tonight Rafi" you managed to get out, he pulled away from you and looked in your eyes.

"And you, mi Hermosa, look absolutely gorgeous. We better go or we will be late for dinner"

----

"Mr Barba, welcome back, your table is waiting"

He nodded at the host, and started to follow, holding your hand, as they lead you both to your table. Menus were placed in front of you, and water poured into the glasses.

"Do you come here often?" You asked, by the way the host greeted him, it was like he had been here before.

"I do actually, but I'm usually by myself. This is the first time I have booked a table for two" he winked at you.

Dinner was amazing and you guys talked and laughed.

"So this is what first dates are meant to be like hey?" You asked as you took a sip of your cocktail.

"Well, yes and no. Every first date is the different. But this is what I wanted our first date to be like" he grabbed your hand and kissed the top of it. “To be completely honest, I hope this will be my last first date" he smiled at you with so much love.

"Me too Rafi, me too" and you gave his hand a squeeze.

"Mr Barba would you and your guest like to see the dessert and coffee menu?"

"No thank you, may I get the check please?"

"Sure Mr Barba"

He looked back at you, "I want to take you somewhere else for dessert"

Butterflies filled your stomach, were you going back to his and this was the night.

The check came and he paid it and you both walked out hand in hand and he hailed down a cab. He gave some address in Brooklyn.

"Brooklyn?"

"You'll see when we get there Hermosa"

A little while later, with giggles, laughing and talking in the cab, you guys pulled up at brightly lit store. You both jumped out of cab and you stood there in awe of what was in front of you, looking up at the sign that you had only seen photos of on the internet.

Rafael walked in front of you, facing you looking at you in your eyes, he could see so much happiness in your face which made him extra happy knowing he had made your first date amazing for you.

"Remember that cab ride home from the Gala, I was teasing you about how you wanted to come to Brooklyn for cakes?"

You nodded with a huge smile on your face.

"This is the best cake shop in Brooklyn, which I know you know that" he laughed "They win prizes every year. And I know how much you love ice cream as well, which they serve here too. So you will have the best of both worlds"

You jumped onto him, almost making him lose his balance and wrapped your arms around his neck, kissing him passionately.

"Rafi, this is the best first date ever. Thank you."

[artificialqueens]

Stupid For You, Chapter 5 (Crygi, Jankie, Jaida x Nicky) - Metaluna

Summary: In which everyone makes mistakes, and have to face consequences. 

A/N: Hey everyone! This does have a tw of domestic abuse.

The rest of the month went by smoothly for Jaida. She got to be team lead for most of her shifts, much to the jealousy of her coworkers. She didn’t care. She knew she was damn good at her job, and paid her dues for the past few years. It was what she deserved. Part of her was sad knowing it was her last summer at the park, but the idea of law school was much more exciting than telling guests that they had to put shoes on all summer.

She and Nicky continued their fling. It was some of the best sex Jaida had ever had. Jaida could feel herself developing feelings for Nicky, but rather than address them, she just ignored them. They’d go away on their own right?

She woke up at noon. Because there weren’t many leads in Sales, she worked six days a week, and it was her first day off in twelve days. She deserved to sleep in. Her phone buzzed. It was Nicky texting the groupchat.

Heyy ladies, I’m off today. Does anyone want to play in the park today?

This was her shot. Even though she and Nicky spent a lot of time together, they didn’t ever get the chance to just talk. Even after they hooked up, Nicky usually left pretty soon after, always having a reason to not hang out after.

First day off in 12. I’m down.

Nicky texted back quickly. See you at 2.

Jaida peered into her closet, and suddenly, she hated every single article of clothing that she owned. After rifling through shirts, and trying on different outfit combinations, she eventually settled on a cropped black tank top and army green shorts. 

Out of all of her coworkers, Jaida lived the furthest away. The half hour drive gave Jaida time to think. She knew that she felt differently about Nicky than she did with any of the previous flings. Even though she had her flings, none of them ended in a relationship. When she thought about Nicky, images flashed in her head of dinner dates, picking pumpkins, and curling up on the couch watching a movie. She had to do it. She had to bring Nicky to the Ferris wheel. If they went up together, they could talk it out. 

When Jaida arrived, it was only 1:40. The Landing, where the stores were, was in the front of the park, just off the entrance. She decided that she could harass her coworkers. Before entering Isle Mercantile, she saw Gigi walking with a cart full of beach towels.

“Gigi!” she called.

“Jaida! Hi! I saw you’re hanging with Nicky.” Gigi raised an eyebrow. “What exactly is going on with you?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. I really don’t.”

Gigi pushed her cart into a shady corner under the roof. “Here. Come over here. Step into my office.”

Jaida rolled her eyes and sighed. “It’s just so hard. I like her, and obviously she likes me enough to fuck me, but I don’t know that she likes me enough to date me.”

Her phone buzzed. Jackie.

Girl. I saw you were coming into the park with Nicky. Are you going to talk it out?

She decided she could reply later and continued. “It’s so embarrassing but I’ve never had a girlfriend. I don’t know how to have this conversation. I doubt she likes me.”

“If you guys have manage to hook up as many times as you have, I feel like you’ve got something there.”

“Thanks, Gigi. Hey, what’s been up with you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You just seem a lot less happy. Are you okay?”

Gigi nodded a little too quickly. “I’m fine! Anyway, Jaida if I don’t stock these towels, Brita’s gonna be pissed!”

Her phone buzzed again. It was Nicky.

I’m here. Meet at the food trucks!

After walking to the trucks, Jaida spotted Nicky at a table. The sunlight was hitting the blonde in just the right spots, making the her look even more beautiful than normal.

Jaida decided to sneak up behind Nicky. “Boo, bitch.”

She jumped, nearly falling out of her chair. “You bitch!”

“Let’s go ride the Jinn. I haven’t done it yet this year.”

While in line, she decided to text Jackie back.

I really want to, but I don’t know what to say, or how to bring it up. All I know that this feels different. This isn’t the same as all the others for the past three years. I can’t describe it. I really, really like Nicky. I want to take the next step, but I don’t know if she does.

As she hit “send” she returned her phone to her pocket, right as Nicky picked hers up.

Jaida knew what she did. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. How could she be so stupid?

“So, that didn’t go to Jackie. Jaida…” Nicky began. “Is this true?”

Jaida was hoping to bring Nicky up in the Ferris wheel. Even though things never fell in her favor, it was a comforting place. The line they were in was a 30 minute wait. They had nothing but time to talk it out. Even though it wasn’t ideal, Jaida nodded. “It is.”

Nicky sighed. “Jaida, I like you, I really do.”

This is exactly how every other girl began when they wanted to cut things off.

“And it’s not you it’s me?” Jaida predicted.

“It’s a cliché, I know. But I have so much going on right now, that I really can’t date anyone, not just you. Jaida, I really do like you. A lot. In other circumstances, we would already be dating, but right now I can’t give you what you want. I understand if you don’t want to keep doing… what we’re doing. I will respect your decision either way.”

“No worries!” Jaida said happily, even though she felt like she was going to cry. “I’m totally fine with what we have.”

“Are you sure?”

“I promise.”

For the fourth year in a row, Jaida felt her heart break. She was left wondering if things were better had she taken Nicky for a ride in the Ferris wheel.

—–

After her shift, Gigi sat at her desk sketching a dress. She felt her phone buzz. 

can you come over

Yea. Everything all good?

no

I’ll be there in ten

Gigi made the ten minute drive in five. Crystal answered the door. Her eyes were red, it was easy to tell that she’d been crying the past few hours. Her hair was disheveled, and she was wearing an oversized sweat shirt. “Come in.”

Wordlessly, Crystal led Gigi into her bedroom. All of her walls were hand painted beautifully, each wall with a different color scheme. Her room was slightly messy, but still somehow organized. A picture of Harry Styles hung above the bed. An easel was in the corner with an abstract painting. The closet door was propped open, exposing Crystal’s brightly colored clothing.

 “Talk to me,” Gigi said said as she and Crystal sat on her bed. 

Crystal started crying as she sat down. “It’s Ryan.”

“What happened?“

“We started talking about me going off to college in a couple months. Usually when we talk about it, he won’t talk about it. Well, I needed answers… and I got them. He told me that if I didn’t stay home, he would break up with me.”

“Oh, Crystal.”

Gigi was pissed. She knew how hard Crystal worked to get into the graphic design program. The school they were to attend in the fall wasn’t easy to get into. It had a 50 percent acceptance rate. Crystal was too talented to let that go to waste. The audacity of that boy to ask her to throw that all away. She wanted to tell Crystal everything she was thinking, but instead, she held Crystal and stroked her hair.

“We’ve been together since we were fifteen. I don’t know how to live without him, you know?”

“Mmm.”

“I just love him so much, I don’t think I can leave him. I think I’m going to withdraw my application from Ferris.”

“Crystal, no. You can’t. You worked your ass off to get into that school. You know you did.”

“I know. But I love him.” Crystal rubbed her eyes, causing her sleeve to roll down, revealing a deep bruise.

Gigi gasped. “Did he do that to you?”

“He didn’t do it on purpose! He said I was being unreasonable, and he was right. He just needs to calm me down sometimes, you know?”

“No, Crystal. I don’t know. That’s not okay, under any circumstance. I don’t care if you cheated on him. That does not give him the right to ever put his hands on you.”

“I’m so stupid. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have even applied to that school in the first place.”

“Absolutely none of this is your fault. Please don’t ever say that it is.”

Crystal sighed. “I think I need to stay here.”

“I think you’re wrong. But, what I do think is that Ryan’s bad for you.”

“How fucking dare you.” Crystal’s voice was harsher than Gigi had ever heard it. “You don’t know him like I do. He’s known me a hell of a lot longer than you have.”

“Crystal…” Gigi felt tears forming.

“No. Don’t start. You don’t understand what all we’ve been through. How could you? You could never understand because you’ve been alone your entire life. You can’t let people in. Even me. You’ve been weird as shit every single day since the party, and won’t tell me why. All you do is shut people out when they’re trying to help you. Me, Jan, Jaida, Jackie… We’ve all tried to ask you what was wrong, because clearly something’s wrong. You don’t let people in, or you get fucking pissy. Why? It’s not our faults that your dad fucking left. Stop taking it out on us.”

Gigi sat completely stunned.

Crystal realized what she had said. “Gigi… I didn’t mean… I’m so sorry. I–”

“I think it’s time for me to go. Find your own ride to work, or walk your ass there. I don’t care. Don’t text me. Don’t fucking talk to me.”

“Gigi, wait!” Crystal called. But it was too late.

–

On the drive home, Gigi felt her chest tighten and knew a panic attack was starting. Knowing she wouldn’t be able to drive, she pulled into a parking lot. All she could think of were Crystal’s words which cut her like a knife. Gigi knew that Crystal wasn’t a cruel person, and that it was all in the heat of the moment, but it didn’t matter. Gigi didn’t even know where the words came from, why out of nowhere Crystal would bring up Gigi’s behavior in that conversation, and she really didn’t know why she brought her dad into it. 

Her phone lit up.

gigi, i am so fucking sorry. idk where that came from. i don’t mean it. i hope you know that. that was fucked for me to say. so fucked. i understand if you don’t want to reply and need your space, but know that I am so fucking sorry, and ill never forgive myself for what i said. i can tell what i said really hurt you, and i understand if you dont want to talk, but just know if you ever do, i’m always here to listen

Gigi started typing.

Yeah, that WAS fucked. That fucking hurt me more than I could say. When I said my dad wasn’t a good person, I meant it. When I had my first girlfriend, I came out to my parents. My dad wanted to throw my ass out, and my mom wouldn’t let him, and said that it if I wasn’t out of the house, he was going to leave. My mom would never throw me out, so now he’s gone. It fucked with me. You wonder why I can’t people let me in? That’s why. I’m fucked up, and you’re right. I do need my space. Leave me alone.

She reread her response, and decided she didn’t owe Crystal an explanation, and deleted every word of the text.

—

Crystal was laying on her bed looking up at the ceiling, which was painted like a galaxy. How could she be that cruel? Her words were volatile. Crystal didn’t know the whole story. Even if she did, it wasn’t right to bring it up, especially not like that.

She had to make it right. She sat on her phone, trying to formulate the perfect apology text. A text felt so impersonal, but Gigi hated talking on the phone, and hated Facetiming. Crystal knew that a text would be the best thing she could do. After rereading her text a few times, she hit Send.

Gigi was typing something. Something long. Crystal anxiously waited for her reply, but the three dots disappeared. Instead, she was left with Read.

The pain Crystal felt was stronger than anything before. It was worse than anytime Ryan laid his hands on her. It was worse than the time he cheated on her. It was worse than anything, and she had no idea how she was going to make it right.

[surveys4ever]

29.

Who’s your favorite comedian? Bo Burnham.

Aren’t you sick of all the *Are We Alike?* surveys? I don’t think I take those.

Do you think there’s anything you did better, when you were younger? I was a lot better at living in the moment.

Would you take the advice you give others? Definitely. I wouldn't tell anyone else to do something I wouldn’t do myself.

What did you have for lunch yesterday? I honestly don’t remember.

What’s one thing that you would change about yourself physically? Ooooh yes.

What song has made you cry? I honestly don’t cry when listening to music very often.

How would you define success? Completing a goal you set for yourself.

Who was the craziest teacher you’ve ever had? One of my math teachers used to always call on me as a joke because he knew I was shit at math and when I said I didn't know, he would respond, “of cooourse you don’t, because you’re stupid”. He would also legitimately S C R E A M at his classes when too many people got the answers wrong in a row and kicked a filing cabinet so hard once when he was angry that he broke a toe. Good ol’ christian education.

Do you think the Earth will face an apocalypse one day? I mean...everything comes to an end I guess. I don’t understand the obsession with the apocalypse though.

What’s the last thing you got paid to do? Work.

What’s the one thing you could eat everyday? Cream cheese rangoon and I would be a happy, happy girl.

What do you hate about yourself? I hate living in this stupid brain that gets anxious over literally e v e r y t h i n g.

What’s your favorite alcoholic drink? I don’t like alcohol.

Are you hyper today? Nah, pretty melancholy.

Do you have a Neopets account? I never deleted mine so I assume its still there.

What’s your life philosophy? Be the person you needed when you were young.

What was the last thing you talked to your friends about? Beebs just got out of the shower and told me he was getting a coffee and asked if I needed anything.

If you are interested in going out with someone, what do you do? Well I’m married so if I wanna go somewhere, I just ask. But beforehand, my approach was to just quietly love them from far away and never speak to them. Worked great.

Do you ever go to the beach? Sadly there isn’t one around here.

Would you rather have a cup of coffee, tea, or hot chocolate? Hot chocolate!

How’s your hair looking right now? It’s in a bun but it’s pretty okay.

What’s something your mother always says? Rude things, lol.

What’s something your dad always says? Bigoted things, lol.

What’s your favorite thing to wear? Comfy things.

Have you ever had a near-death experience? One time we were driving on the highway after a freak snow storm in the middle of May and we were listening to Michael Jackson, just jammin, and the next thing I knew, we were staring at the car behind us and then we flew ass first into the ditch. Apparently we’d hit a patch of ice and just lost control of our car. We easily could have died but thankfully nobody hit us.

What do you order at Starbucks? Strawberry açaí refresher + lemonade + light ice + no berries.

What kind of exercise do you enjoy? Swimming and sex.

What’s the worst injury you’ve ever had, and what was it from? I ran into a dumpster and sliced my head open.

Do you still have any of your childhood toys? If so, what? Probably at my mom’s house.

Did you have a Precious Moments colouring book? Oh I’m sure.

Don’t you miss being 13? Ehhhh. I don’t miss being a kid and having to live by other people’s rules.

How’d you react to receiving your very first pimple? I thought it was cool. I only had 5 pimples by the time I turned 18...now I get them all the time. Tell me how that's fair.

What’s your favorite day of the week? Friday.

What room of your house do you spend the most time in? Either the living room or the bedroom.

Do you have MSN, Yahoo, or Skype? I used to!

What is your biggest turn-on? It’s nothing I can put into words, it’s just a feeling you get when you’re with someone and you know they’re special.

If you could be anywhere in the world right now, where would you be? Just somewhere on vacation, idk where.

Do you ever have any problems just *moving on*? Depends on the topic.

Do you collect anything? Just lots of vintage items--the Sears Merry Mushroom collection, creepy baby angel wall art, fabric, vintage Coach bags (the nice leather ones, not the ones covered in ugly C’s), anything that feels 70′s, etc. I also collect makeup!

If you saw a shooting star, what would you wish on it? Happiness.

Do you like rollercoasters? Absolutely not.

What’s the most romantic thing you’ve ever done for someone else? One Christmas I got Beebs a leather bracelet with the coordinates of our first kiss, our first home, and where we got married engraved on it. At least, that’s his answer.

How do you celebrate Halloween? I dress up and take pictures for instagram lol.

Who is your favorite villain? Bill Cipher is pretty creepy.

Do you have a favorite coloring book artist? I didn’t know that was a genre of artist.

How many pairs of shoes do you own? Over 25, under 50.

Have you ever wanted to model? I didn’t but uh, here we are.

When you want to unwind, how do you relax? Cuddle up with Beebs.

How do you react when someone you know’s having a freak out? Well I ask them what they need from me and then I do that.

Have you ever seen someone have a seizure? A cat once.

Do you have a phobia? Butterflies.

Who is your hero? Beebs.

If you were to commit a crime, what would it be? Stealing puppies.

Have you ever used drugs? I smoked weed once and had a psychotic break so uh, not doin’ that again.

How would you define what you want out of life? I just want to be happy.

What’s your favorite car? I want a Tesla, honestly. 

[alarawriting]

Writeober #4: Loud

The children were playing. It was toy hour, so they had out Legos, and dolls, and wooden trains, all that sort of thing. Quiet, by the standards of an orphanage. A couple of Eights were reading, an activity they preferred to playing with toys. Children’s babble filled the air, but not the shrieks they made when they played outside.

And then Jayden started screaming, almost painfully loudly. “I want my mommy! I want my mommy!”

Laurie ran to him and gathered him into her arms. “Oh, Jayden, I know,” she said, rocking him. “I know, honey, I know. But she’s not here.”

Jayden was a Four who had just been surrendered a few weeks ago. “Where is she? I want to see her! I want my mommy!” He thrashed in Laurie’s arms, but the limiter prevented him from exerting any more strength than a normal four-year-old child.

“Sweetie, I’m so sorry. But this is your home now, and any day now, a new mommy or daddy might come through that door and see you and say ‘What a beautiful, wonderful little boy! We want him for our own little boy!’ and take you to a new home with them, and they’ll be your mommy or daddy.”

“I don’t want a new mommy! I’ll kick the new mommy!” Jayden howled. “I want my mommy!”

“I know, sweetie,” Laurie said, sadly. It was all she could say. It was all she could say to any of them.

Several others started crying for their own mommies and daddies. Basil, who’d been in the back working on the finances, came out to help, and the other childcare workers moved around the playroom, soothing children. In her mind, Laurie damned to hell the men and women who’d abandoned these children. How could they do that? How could anyone do that to a child?

But humans weren’t designed to have children who never aged, who lived 40-50 years and grew more knowledgeable but never substantially more mature. Laurie loved the Calvin children desperately, and wanted to save all of them, and if she had been queen of the world she would have made their continued manufacture illegal and had everyone involved in creating and marketing them arrested. There shouldn’t be any more Calvin children coming into the world; it was far too terrible a place for them.

At that, it was better than it had been when Laurie was younger. In her freshman year at college, her roommate Kathy had recruited her in a panic to help her save her little brother, an Eight. Like most families who bought them, Kathy’s had gotten a Calvin child when they’d had no children of their own, but then Kathy’s dad had undergone an experimental fertility treatment, and for him, it had worked. Turned out down the road to cause prostate and testicular cancer, but he’d managed to get his wife pregnant with a healthy baby.

Kathy’s brother had fallen in love with the new baby, playing with her and cooing at her and taking care of her, even learning to change diapers and feed her a bottle. So her parents had kept him, for the help he gave them with her. By the time Kathy was old enough that they didn’t need him to watch her anymore, she’d been so attached to him they hadn’t been able to get rid of him. He’d been Kathy’s older brother that she looked up to, and then her peer that she played with, and then the little brother she protected.

In those days the Calvin Corporation had only leased Calvin Children; you couldn’t buy them. It was intended as a measure to protect the children from abuse, but it almost guaranteed that if parents had their own child, or grew tired of a child who never aged, or were tight on money and needed to cut costs, they would stop leasing, returning the Calvin child to the corporation… where their memories would be wiped, and they’d either be sent on to a new home, or destroyed if they couldn’t be leased. So Kathy’s parents had waited until she was out of the house, at college, and then returned her brother to the corporation. If her brother hadn’t been a model with an internal cell phone antenna, and been able to call Kathy for help, she’d have lost him forever.

As it was, Kathy and Laurie and Basil had had to drive five hundred miles and jump through flaming hoops to get little David back before the mindwipe. As college students without money, they didn’t have the funds to lease him; Kathy pretended to be her mom, got the contract re-activated, and then Basil jailbroke David, replacing his internal antenna with a new one that wouldn’t report his whereabouts to the Calvin Corporation, allowing them to effectively “steal” him. And even then, he’d had to dye his hair, alter his skin tone, and wear glasses he didn’t need and put a thick sole insert in one of his shoes to throw off his gait so recognition software couldn’t find him.

It hadn’t been until ten years later that Kathy, Laurie, Basil and their friends had won the court case that made it possible to purchase Calvin children outright, and with depreciation, and Kathy working at a law firm, and Basil’s IT job, they’d had the funds to buy him, so he’d be safe. He lived with Kathy and Kathy’s girlfriend Imani, and took care of his niece and nephew when Kathy and Imani were at work. They were currently three and five. David was an Eight. Eventually they’d catch up to him and go past him, again, but Kathy owned him outright and loved him tremendously. He was a happy Eight.

The world was full of Calvin children who were not happy.

Parents leased-to-own their children because that was the model Calvin Corporation was currently pushing, with the court order that required them to make full ownership not only available but affordable to their customers. And then, either they had a biological child – most men in the developed world weren’t fertile, but there were plenty of men from all around the world who still had sperm and were selling it, and many men would eventually give in and agree to let their wives buy some so she could have a bio-child at least – or they simply grew tired of a child that never aged. Calvin Children ranged in age from Threes to Tens, but whatever they were, they would be that forever… or at least until their internal battery ran down and their bodies wore out.

(Once, Laurie had gone to visit a brand new care home, for Calvin Children dying of old age. She had never been back. As heartbreaking as it was to deal with children who’d been abandoned by their parents, it was so, so much worse to see those children dealing with their own growing exhaustion and slow decline into death.)

And now, there was a new model of Calvin Child, who could grow older. Their brains were modular, and could be removed from their bodies and put into a new body a year older, every year, updating their firmware in the process to grow more mature – which was costly, but many people were willing to pay. Even if they needed to skip some years, they wanted a child who could grow to adulthood, to take over the family business or help work on a farm or go to college and make something of themselves. No one knew what would happen to the legal framework that allowed people to own Calvin Children once they were “adults”; the fact that Calvin children were chattel didn’t usually conflict with people’s understanding of what adults were allowed to do to their own children. You weren’t allowed to abuse a Calvin child any more than a “real” child, and in general parents of “real” children were allowed to do anything to them that wasn’t abusive.

The only thing you were allowed to do with a Calvin child that you couldn’t do with an organic child was abandon them. People who couldn’t or wouldn’t take care of their Calvin child anymore could return them to the corporation, who would still mind-wipe them and resell them, or, if the thought of their child forgetting everything about them didn’t sit well and they didn’t want to take the risk that the corporation would decide their child was too worn out to resell as used and destroy it, they surrendered them at homes like the one Laurie and Basil ran, where Calvin children would be cared for until an adoptive parent could be found.

Before the new models came out, it wasn’t hard to find adoptive parents. Laurie and Basil charged a pittance for an adoptee, not even enough to cover their costs, mostly because people took better care of things they’d paid for than things that were free. Plenty of people who wanted a Calvin child were happy to give a home to a used one for far less than they’d have paid for a new child, or a used one from Calvin Corp directly. But now that the new models were out… everyone who wanted a Calvin child wanted the kind who could grow up. Laurie had, in desperation, waived the fee, to get someone, anyone in the door to love these children, but no one who could pass the background check had done so in a month.

It burned that she felt like she was lying to Jayden, that maybe there wouldn’t be a new parent for him, that there almost certainly wouldn’t be one in a little while like she was saying. But Jayden was a Four. He wouldn’t understand or appreciate brutal honesty; he needed hope to keep him going. Laurie wasn’t going to lie to him and pretend the mother he remembered, the one he’d spent six years with since his original purchase, would ever come back. But she would try to make him happy, or at least content, to bide his time here until a parent came for him… even if one never did.

Jayden’s sobs wound down. Older children, Eights and Nines and Tens, programmed with an incredibly powerful drive to care for and protect younger children, had reached out to the little ones that Jayden’s outburst had set off, and soothed them, despite their own hearts breaking because their own parents had abandoned them, and they were old enough to know their own parents were never coming back.

“How come she left me here?” Jayden asked, no longer crying, but the streaks of tears still all over his face. They cried, they ate, they pooped, they slept; in all regards but one, Calvin children were virtually indistinguishable from organic children. But it was that one regard – the fact that they’d never grow up – that caused all the problems. “Was I bad?”

“Oh, no, Jayden. You’re a wonderful little boy. It was nothing you did, okay? Nothing you did or could ever do. Your mommy just ran out of money and she couldn’t take care of you anymore.” This was a lie. Jayden’s mother had just been sick of having a four-year-old child for six years. Laurie would never tell any of the children something like that, though.

“I miss her.”

“I know you do. And I know that even if you get a new mommy or daddy to love you and take care of you, you’ll never forget your first mommy, and you’ll always miss her. But there will be a new mommy or daddy someday, and they will love you even more than your first mommy did.” Laurie made prospective parents watch videos of children having meltdowns like Jayden just did, sobbing and begging for their parents to come back, and then impressed on them that this was a lifelong commitment. You were signing on to take care of a Calvin child until you died or they did. Parents who expressed horror or pity or empathic pain for the abandoned children were much more likely to go home with a new member of the family than parents who seemed to shrug it off. Laurie wanted these children to find new homes, but she wanted them to be forever homes, with parents who would never abandon them again.

Laurie stood up. “Now, I think it’s snacktime, kids. Who wants a snack?”

“Me! Me! I want a snack!” children who’d been crying five minutes earlier chorused.  

“All right! Everyone take your seats!”

Children were resilient. Even Calvin children. If she couldn’t give them their own mothers, Laurie would be the best mother figure to them she could be. She’d adopt them herself, but there were so many children who needed help, and a mother with too many children was no different from a child care worker in the attention and love she could give each one. Better to be the mother figure of the orphanage and take care of all of them as best she could.

[maryellencarter]

Queer asks copied from @corelliaxdreaming :

1. Is your family accepting? -- Hah. No. My bio-family is not accepting at allllll, so I went and got myself an internet family instead.

2. What is your sexuality? -- Weird. The strongest part of my identity is Aromantic. I seem to be pretty much allosexual, maybe bisexual; most of the people I find myself attracted to are men within a fairly specific category (physically fit to muscular, at least as competent as me, kind, and often a bit dorky; I also have a weakness for clever hands and sexy voices), but the women I'm attracted to cover a much broader range of appearances and personalities. I fall pretty much in the category of the one Tumblr post that said something like "Being bisexual means you're attracted to three specific fictional men and all women", even though the attraction to men... feels... more attraction-y? I'm still really struggling to figure that difference out.

3. What is your gender identity? -- Sort of genderfluid, sort of genderqueer, sort of maybe agnostically agender? I used to ID really strongly as a trans man, and then after a year or so of being accepted, I found myself turning female. I bounced back and forth for a lot of years but seem to have settled down at a point where it doesn't especially matter to me most of the time. Which is a lot more comfortable than hurtling around to different points on the gender spectrum without warning.

4. Favorite color? -- Blue. Royal blue, mostly. That really deep sky blue you get sometimes during the fall. A bunch of really bright colors.

5. When did you find out your sexuality? -- Oh, it's been a process. For a long time I identified as asexual. It took me years to figure out I was actually romance-repulsed, and more years to figure out I had any attraction to women. I'm still sort of confused by that part. Like I mostly just want to look at them being pretty, but I also definitely want to look at their boobs? Maybe touch some boobs? I'm honestly not sure.

6. What do you wish you could tell your past self? -- Oh lord. Sexuality and gender wise? I'm not sure young me could have been hurried along the process of self discovery. I'd really like to tell her she was being abused and gaslighted and that she needed to take her great-aunt's offer of a free ride and major in geology *before* she broke her health, and maybe also tell her she needed a CPAP machine, but she might just think I was a temptation of the Devil. Also I'm not sure if the CPAP machine was an option before Obamacare. Or the psych meds she needed, either.

7. Have you changed labels since realizing you were queer? -- Oh yeah, all over the place. Asexual, trans, genderqueer, biromantic (for about a week), aromantic allosexual bisexual maybe pansexual... some people apparently even count PCOS as an intersex condition, since I have a lot more beard and chest hair than is normal for perisex women, to the point that I always have to explain to a new doctor that I'm not in fact on testosterone, my body just does that. I've never quite felt right claiming the intersex label, but I've tried on a lot of others. I think my header may still say "queer on every conceivable axis".

8. How was your day? -- Um. I got stuck wandering Cracked.com for most of it. Then I drove up to check out my pulmonologist's office, which doesn't *say* they're closed for the pandemic, so I guess I'll go up again on Thursday and poke them about whether my appointment still exists. Then I went and wandered around a very large very dead mall on that side of town, hatched a bunch of pokeymans, then came home and ate some split pea soup.

9. Do you have any queer friends irl? -- I don't have *any* friends irl, and it's kicking my ass. I have like one or two coworkers I could hypothetically hang out with outside of work if we weren't so all-fired busy. But if we're talking "friends I have seen irl at some point", I'm pretty sure they're all queer. They might also be limited to @tigerkat24 and one other person who doesn't use Tumblr, I'm not sure.

10. What's your favorite hobby? -- Probably knitting. It's soft and squishy and brightly colored, and it can be as brainless or as complex as I could possibly want.

11. Who's the best queer icon in your opinion? -- I honestly don't have an opinion. I've always been too far outside the community to figure out whomst the options were.

12. Which pride flags do you like the most design / color wise? -- Pansexual. I'd probably have a lot more pride merch if I IDed as pan, but it just never feels like it fits quite right.

13. Do you wish you could change any pride flags? -- YES. The aro flag is the exact same colors as the agender flag, just in a different arrangement, and it pisses me off because you can't distinguish aro merch from agender merch unless it's specifically flag shaped / has the stripe arrangement. I liked the yellow/orange/green/black aro flag, I found it much more cheerful, but apparently it was too similar to something Rastafarian. But you can't find alloaro flag merch at *all*, even though it has the green and yellow, which I like.

14. Are you openly out? -- Can't really help it, since I legally changed my name to a distinctively masculine one back in the day, and I do not remotely pass as male. So anybody who both sees or hears me and knows my legal name, knows there's *something* queerish going on. (I go by a gender neutral name these days, but haven't yet been arsed to change it legally because it's an entire hassle and a half.)

15. Are you comfortable with yourself? -- Mneh. I'm not *un*comfortable with my gender and sexuality, particularly. Sometimes I wish I could pass as male, sometimes I wish I could have cute cleavage. Sometimes I tie myself in knots with my feelings about women.

16. Do you experience dysphoria? -- I used to, very strongly. It hasn't been very aggressive lately.

17. Bottom, top, or verse? -- *shrugs* I guess I'd be a switch or "verse" because I'm down for whatever.

18. Are you femme, butch, or neither? -- I swing wildly between wishing to present Extremely Butch in a lumberjack style, which is impractical in the Southwest, or wishing to present Extremely Femme but being unable to do so, and tying myself in knots over the inability. (I can't wear femmey shoes due to my stupid feet, I can't have pierced ears as they get infected and the one pair of nice lightweight handcrafted earrings I paid $50 for is gone with the rest of my shit, I'm too lorge to find any nice dresses or be able to like try on prom dresses and stuff, I have a tendency to break jewelry as I'm extremely rough on my possessions... etc.) In practice my gender presentation is Fat Slob. :P

19. Do you bind? -- Not technically, but I do wear cheap sports bras which tend to flatten rather than lift or shape.

20. Do you shave? -- Only by necessity. I shave my face when I remember, because my beard looks extremely douchey and rather like pubes. Occasionally I shave my cleavage if I'm trying to present femmey. I pretty much never shave anything else unless the hair is getting Smelly.

21. If you could date anyone you wanted, who would it be? -- Um. Good question. The thing is, I am fairly strongly romance-repulsed, but I do want and enjoy queerplatonic relationships, so I would draw a distinction here between "dating" someone and being "in a relationship" with them.

22. Are you in a relationship? -- Yes, in fact.

23. Describe your partner. -- @camshaft22 . Um. She's very much the Hobbie to my Wes. She's very snarky and dies a lot and I love her very much.

24. Have you ever dated anyone of the same gender? -- Given that we're both genderfluid, I would say I'm in a relationship with someone of the same gender, yes.

25. Dated anyone of another gender? -- I've never dated or been in a relationship with anyone else, so I guess the answer is no.

26. Tell me a random fact about yourself! -- I always use this one, but I once lived in four different states (mostly non-contiguous) within a calendar month.

27. Do you own any pride flags / merch? -- No. I used to have a whole-ass collection that I added to every Pride, and then I lost all my damn shit and haven't had the heart to start looking again. Well, I have a rainbow necklace Kat sent me which is pretty nice. Can't wear it till my damn sunburn heals, though. :P

28. Have you ever been to a pride parade? -- Yes, when I lived in Bisbee. They have quite an excellent Pride which draws people from as far off as Denver.

29. Any advice to someone who isn't out or is exploring themselves? -- Take your time. It's okay if things change. You don't have to solve yourself all at once. It's more important to find people who will accept whoever you turn out to be.

30. Pineapple on pizza? -- I've honestly never tried it. Part of me feels like I should, in order to develop an opinion, and part of me feels like I'm just as happy being outside of that particular debate.

[spnreactionblogging]

CARRY ON

spoilers below but I’m very late to the game

here we go!!! there's Some Woman in the thumbnail for this episode and I'm like oh boy did you fuckers turn castiel into a girl to make it Not Gay, I will riot. we're off to a dread-inducing start I'm honestly not even sure I want to watch this? I have not heard anything good but since my options are either keep SPN blacklisted forever but ultimately get spoiled anyway, or use my dwindling remaining time to see it for myself without being told what happens, may as well be on my own terms I am hearing that misha and possibly j2 were not happy with this, whatever this is (?????) yikes I don't understand how you even have another episode after the last one. that seems like a traditional ending. you either beat a dead horse or go ultra meta and it sounds like they dropped the ball, big time but let's see jack's sweet and deserved better. there's a clock but it's NOT heat of the moment playing, damn oh the dog. we love you miracle dog sam's still jogging where's eileen!!!! I like seeing sam cooking I actually enjoy watching them do domestic stuff dean sneaking food to the dog 😭 can this be the whole episode, just them doing chores I meant to catch which book sam was reading I can't tell but it looks like it's old this is extra bonus sad for knowing that they couldn't even like, have a wrap party or anything. extra isolated. :( SPECIAL GUEST STAR JIM BEAVER!!! "Are you sure you're ready for this?" "Oh, I don't have a choice." dean hasn't been this relatable to me in years, this is how I feel watching this lmao akron pie fest dean dies of complications from diabetes god I miss bakeries or restaurants or anything I do love Sad Sam Face "I"'m thinking about Cas, you know? Jack. If they could be here." thank you Sam that pain isn't going away for me either "stop being an eeyore" Sam's the Eeyore of the series, Dean, okay, and same lmao jared fucking slammed that pie into jensen's face and they just filmed it. you can see the actual glee on his face brady??? like sam's old classmate? wasn't that his name? or no some kid. is this just a regular-ass monster of the week. do sam and dean just get killed by like. regular people? are there no monsters anymore. I would actually love that. humanity is truly the worst monster of all. didn't we learn that in season 1 :') in "the benders" are these guys sam and dean? are they just murdering monster families like they did in the holiday episode? what is happening. are those dean's shoes. I could probably recognize how they walk if I really paid attention i guess not. probably. "singer and kripke, FBI" ha fucking clowns lmao poor sam they still have dad's journal, huh. THE LORE evil mimes. vamp-mimes. I guess they kill these dudes? we gonna unmask them or what there we go this guy looks like joseph gordon-levitt oh we love torture on this show this is definitely "dean who's NOT the ultimate killer" amirite "if those kids are dead he's gonna use a spoon" how very walter sullivan of you also I feel like sam would not do this anymore but hey who am I, someone who likes consistent characterization? lol we're back to creepy barns instead of wet pipe factories dean has a fucking shuriken lmao I honestly for real need a machete for the overgrown weeds I don't hate this so far? I'm tired of the constant torture but I guess this feels like early seasons, kind of. idk. lmao sam with the concussions. classic tie them to a chair. it's what we do. i will be disappointed if they are not tied to a chair jenny? cue studio killers. I do not remember whatever episiode this is but it looks very early based on sam's hair oh thanks sam. couldn't get out of this episode without beheading a woman too one of the suggestions for me typing "woman" was a high-heeled shoe emoji. thanks, predictive text...?????? true feminist oh damn he could very well get tetanus from that. that's how trinity dies, man. should've gotten your booster shot, dean. vaccines save lives this is like the plot of signs why don't you guys wear bulletproof shit. your plot armor was holding you together until now. GUYS THIS IS HOW HUNTERS GO OKAY don't ever un-impale someone, guys like "dean we are in a major city, there are ambulances" call fucking 911, someone could be there already "I've always looked up to you" because you're taller than me lmaoooo idefk what to say about this like. we all know this is how hunters die. you fucking leered at jessica is what you did, dean if sam makes it out of this I'll accept it. if sam lives I can be okay. if this is the only way sam gets free of this, I'm okay. CALL 911 AND CALL JACK "always keep fighting" aw :( they're both very good at crying, I will give them that we never think it's gonna be the day. at least you got pie. OH THE WINCHESTER FAMILY MUSIC don't do this to me dean got a way better death than castiel. this actually reminds me a liiiiittle bit of the end of season 2? with how dean holds sam's body. the writing here is overwrought though. jared and jensen do the best they can with the script they're given but like you guys just FOUGHT GOD. they're a bit too up their own ass with this. you can tell that dabb thinks he's very clever. sam... gets a dog again? at least. i guess. the pacing is bad. I don't hate this on principle but it is not executed well. I am having like no emotional response to this except maybe relief for sam in a horrid way. like, you're free! at what cost. it's like the opposite of season 5? sam survives instead of dean. and... sam marries a dog. where do they get all this fucking lumber!!! did sam chop that all himself dude if he woke up to "heat of the moment" i'd lose my shit in the best way. gabriel wins. "gotta keep you on your toes." what had to change in this because of the pandemic? at least sam has a dog to be in scenes with him. the two guns as big and little brothers is an interesting choice of a shot. god the fucking phones. "DHS" "CIA" "dean's 'other other' phone" "state patrol" what's the paperwork on his desk? (512) is an Austin area code I have this on amazon prime and the saddest thing thus far is X-Ray: Jared Padalecki as Sam Winchester, with no other actors at all. meta ways, pandemic related. "this is agent bon jovi" donna's alive??? sam just quit, babe. just quit. or take a day off at least, jesus. didn't you just drive back from ohio are you even gonna go back to the bunker DEAN IN HEAVEN!!! how'd you get here. "well at least I made it to heaven" lmao he said the same thing oh hey bobby!! I love jack god i've missed jim beaver you guys moved on to dream bubbles!!!!! RUFUS how very homestuck + narnia of you, starring sam winchester as susan pevensie so jack just like melded all of these metaphysical spaces, I'm cool with that "so the question is what are you gonna do now, dean?" get a better beer so I can drink and drive with my car that's in heaven, I'm already dead so who cares what I hit TELL ME WHERE IS BALTHAZAR FOR I MUCH DESIRE TO SPEAK WITH HIM break everyone out of the empty I do get the impression this was supposed to be a big cast reunion and the pandemic clobbered that :( oh it's the original license plate on the impala sure do love that cas and jack "helped" to give dean everything he's ever wanted. the only time "carry on my wayward son" has been diegetic I guess sam and the dog had a child I like jared in glasses are we doing a bunch of elderly makeup yeah there he is did they just spray grey temp dye on his hair or what is sam gonna drive into toluca lake!!! buddy please don't just run the engine in a garage, he took off his glasses and that makes me nervous jake gyllenhaal looking dude which cover is this must be nice to have healthcare I so appreciate that sam's wife has zero personality and is merely in the background, of no importance whatsoever compared to his kid named dean are the two impalas gonna meet in heaven????? vancouver is beautiful, or wherever this is at jared looks so cozy in that coat you can tell j2 really do love each other for real the majesty of that forest/that river got me choked up a bit, it's such a lonely thing. like. I can see what they were going for? like dean just... getting sick, falling off a ladder, getting in a car accident, etc etc would've been more potent, I think. the execution was not good. I'm not that unhappy though. it's all right. eh. it's fine. the heartfelt message from the cast (what's left of them....) and the crew was sweet. I want to know what they were intending to do? I feel like you can definitely feel the weight of COVID fucking this up which is genuinely upsetting. sam gets like 50 years of being free of dean I GUESS???? perhaps the only way to break the cycle.

at least there was no sexual assault in this episode. i have definitely watched way worse episodes of this show. it's like. twee. but I can't be mad at these guys especially with how much I know jared in particular has been struggling with the state of the world this year but jensen talked about it with rosenbaum on his show too. 2020 has been rough. like. at least they filmed it. whatever. I feel like I get what they were trying to do even if circumstances meant it wasn't really pulled off. it seems like they were supposed to have a big cast reunion and the pandemic took the wind completely out of their sails. this feels incredibly tacked on. 15x19 would've been a much better place to stop. I feel like I just read andrew dabb's notes. I get what they were trying to go for but they didn't pull it off. I thought it was gonna be a lot worse tbh in summary: EHHHHHHHHH

[tisfan]

(I can) Brew this all Day

Title (I Can) Brew this all Day Link https://archiveofourown.org/works/24408346/chapters/58881478 Square Filled C5: Bucky/Wanda Ship/Main Pairing Bucky/Wanda Rating Teen Major Tags/Triggers/Warnings none Summary Wanda works at a coffee shop. Clint does not understand why she’s crushing on a patron. Word Count 1559

for @buckybarnesbingo and @livewire28

“You’re a fright,” Steve complained as she walked in through the employee entrance at Brew This All Day coffee. “Did someone throw a bucket of water at you?”

“It’s raining,” Wanda said, scowling. She knew her hair looked terrible, practically plastered to her head. She’d had an umbrella when she left for work, but it had gotten snatched up by the wind and by the time she chased it down, it didn’t seem to matter. She was already soaked through. 

Usually, she kept a spare dress in her work-locker for just such occasions, but she’d had to wear one last week when a customer did a “prank” and chucked an extra large frozen drink at her (with extra whip) so he could film it for his YouTube channel.

Steve had put him on the not-welcome-back list, but it probably didn’t matter. She was sure that the asshole had gotten fifty million hits or whatever and collected his cash from YouTube and he’d go around the rest of the city doing it to other baristas.

Whatever. She was going to have to work in a cold, wet dress and soaking shoes today and her hair was a mess.

“Your boy’s here,” Clint added. “I mean, I don’t get it. I can’t look at a customer without feeling contempt, so the idea of flirting with them really just-- they’re customers, therefore, idiots.”

“You’re an idiot,” Wanda said, trying suddenly not to throw up with nerves.

Not that it mattered. The cute guy who came to Brew This to study wasn’t going to ask her out any more than the hot guy who came in at odd hours of the night (Brew This All Day was one of the few coffee shops that was decent and open twenty-four hours a day) was going to ask out Steve, no matter how many longing looks Steve directed at that guy’s ass when he left the shop.

Customers might all be idiots, but they often didn’t even see servers unless they made a mistake. And even when that happened, servers weren’t… people. Not really.

Even the guys that flirted with her didn’t see her as a human being; someone to date and enjoy their company. They saw her as a conquest or a cheap, easy lay.

So it didn’t matter that she looked terrible, like a drowned rat, and that her clothes were going to wrinkle and be clammy and nasty all day.

He was just a decoration.

Someone with a perfect face and amazing shoulders and lovely hair.

A work of art.

And as untouchable as the same.

“Oh, my god,” Natasha said, uncoiling herself from behind the desk in the manager’s office. Technically, Nat was the shift lead, but Steve mostly had her doing the books because she was better at it than Steve was. She also set all the schedules, approved vacation time, and worked shifts when other people were sick.

Thus, not someone you wanted to be on the wrong side of.

“You look like you’re gonna puke,” Nat said. “Come here, change shirts with me.” Nat tugged off her scoop-necked black shirt with red accents, completely unphased by the way Clint stared and Steve turned around, the back of his neck going brick red. Nat had no body-shame, along with everything else.

Not that she had any reason to have it. She was quite attractive. 

Wanda took the proffered shirt, but went behind the door to change, giving Nat her damp dress in return. So, now she was in Nat’s too tight, too short top. And leggings.

Well, she might not look better, but at least she wasn’t soaked.

Nat rolled her eyes at Wanda’s shirt and grabbed one of the tees with the shop’s logo on it. Technically, employees got a 50% discount off all shop merch, but even at half off, Wanda couldn’t really afford a new shirt right now.

She wondered if Nat could, or if she was just going to count the peep show as part of her compensation.

“Get on the clock, witchy,” Clint said. “I want to get the hell out of here.”

“Remind me why I pay you again?” Steve mused, scratching his chin.

Wanda didn’t stick around to watch the rest of the argument; she’d heard that particular song-and-dance a dozen times before.

Steve was, actually, a good boss. He paid at least fifteen dollars an hour -- as soon as Seattle had instituted that as minimum wage, he was right there behind it. Also, he let them keep all their tips and didn’t cut himself in on it, even if he worked a shift behind the machines.

As advertised, the hot guy was at his usual table; she could see him almost the whole time she was working, except when she was directly pulling a shot. Probably for the best, since she needed to pay attention to the steamer and not to the daytime television god who drank caramel lattes with extra whip while he studied from a pile of books.

Wanda thought he was planning to be a social worker, or something. She had trouble talking to people outside of actual work interactions, even on the best of days, and when dazzled by the man’s eyes, she barely remembered to ask his name to put it on the cup.

Worst, he never said his name. He sometimes used initials (JB) but mostly he used a series of jokes. Manchurian Candidate, Winter Soldier, Special Snowflake. (She particularly liked that last one, which he used when there was an entire cadre of bro-ristas in the shop, the kind of guys who liked to lean on their privilege and tell Wanda that she had no idea how to make coffee. People talked about Karens in their Target, but she thought those friends of hers could use an afternoon with a coffee-house Chad and see which one was worse. Those guys had looked up to mock the person calling themselves Snowflake, taken one look at JB’s body-builder physique and shut the fuck up. It had been great.)

Fortunately, there wasn’t much of a line; just before lunch when her shift started tended to be dead, aside from the occasional harried looking mom, or the perpetual student.

She checked the house pot, found it relatively fresh. The pastry cabinet was well stocked. She counted out her drawer, signed in. Watched JB from the corner of her eye. He looked up as she came into the room, smiled, and then went back to scowling at his papers and books and computer.

She did a round of the floor, picked up a few stray napkins and straw papers, wiped down the tables. 

“Get you a refill?” she chirped, just like he was any other customer.

“Oh, would you?” JB asked, sounding like she’d offered a drowning man a lifeline.

“Sure, what are you drinking today?”

“Double-double,” JB said. “I’ve got an exam in--” he checked his watch, “three hours.”

“Sounds fun,” Wanda said. “I have a short shift today, I’m off in six hours.”

JB looked up at her, eyes going wide. “Are--”

“I mean, are-- if you-- just saying--”

“Are you asking me out on a post-exam date?” The only thing good about the entire situation is that he seemed just as flustered and embarrassed as she did. And he hadn’t immediately told her he was in a relationship. Or gay.

“I mean-- if you wanted to, then, you know. Yes?” Wanda waved her hands around, wondering if a convenient hole would ever open up in the ground and swallow her. No such luck.

“Yeah, then, sure,” JB said. “I, yeah. I’ll either want to celebrate. This is my last exam before I get my degree, fingers crossed--” Wanda dutifully crossed her fingers for him “-- or I’ll want to drown myself in beer if it goes badly. In either case, company would be nice.”

“Yeah,” Wanda said. “Okay. We’ll do that, then. You can pick me up here, the red line’s just up the road, go anywhere you want.”

“Sure thing,” JB said. He jotted something down on a paper napkin-- when he handed it to her, it was a phone number. “Text me in a bit, then I’ll have your number and you’ll have mine. Just-- just in case.”

Wanda nodded.

She took the napkin, went back and got his double-double, and then got caught up in an entire busload of tourists from Maryland, none of whom had been in a coffee shop that wasn’t Dunkin’ Donuts or Starbucks in their life, and by the time she texted him, he was already gone to his exam.

Just sitting down. Wish me luck.

Wanda debated her list of emojis for a bit, and then sent him a snowflake, a four leaf clover, thumbs up, and several coffee and tea cups. Waited a few minutes, then sent a wine glass, a plate, and an OK.

OK Wine

“Somebody’s happy,” Steve commented, looking at her beaming at her phone.

“I have a date,” Wanda said.

“With Snowflake?”

“Yeah?”

“Good for you. Guess I owe Nat twenty dollars.”

“Why?”

“I bet that I’d ask Tony out before you’d get up the nerve to ask JB.”

“So, uh. You don’t happen to know his actual name, do you?”

Steve just laughed and walked away.

Awkward.

[artificialqueens]

Favorite Place, Chapter 3 (Crygi) - Lily Bee

AO3 LINK

Chapter Summary: Coffee and headache pills can cure any heartbreak, right?

A/N: i’m not even sure what to put in these notes anymore ahh but thank you for the love on this story its so fun to write! this chapter is mostly just a filler i promise we will get back to the actual book store part of this book store au soon !! in the meantime check out my tumblr & thank you so much jazz for editing as always ily

Gigi woke up the next morning with a throbbing headache.

Memories of the following night came flooding in: seeing her boyfriend with that other woman, running out, driving, the book store, Crystal. Fuck, Crystal. She was in Crystal’s apartment, on her couch. Her head began to ache more. She pushed herself up resting on her arms as she glanced around the room. No sight of Crystal.

Gigi fumbled around the couch trying to find her phone. She hadn’t looked at it since before she got to her boyfriend’s house, turning it off immediately after running off. There were thousands of missed messages from her friends.

“Where are you?!?!!” she read from Jan.

From Jackie: “We’re worried about you!!”

Heidi followed suit, sending a brief “^^” when Gigi didn’t respond.

They were all worried. It was unlike Gigi to not be on her phone, messaging them every detail of her life. Her head started to ache more just looking at the bright phone screen. She typed a bullshit response saying she would explain more later. Right now all she needed was some Tylenol and a coffee.

Gigi forced herself off the couch and towards the kitchen. Crystal’s kitchen was a mess—well, at least in Gigi’s standards. The counter top was covered in books, stationary supplies, and an assortment of papers filled with doodles and mindless writing. The fridge was dotted in magnets from places she had traveled and magnetic letters spelled out to say her name in the bright font. The cabinets had notes from what she assumed to be her friends spilled across them.

Luckily for Gigi, there was a coffee machine too. Gigi sludged over to the counter and peered at a note posted on the coffee machine.

Gigi,

I’m sorry to have run out, I’ll be back shortly. Please make yourself at home.

Crystal <3

Crystal seemed to have a lot of trust leaving Gigi alone in her apartment. But, there was coffee here for her so what was the worst she could do?

She had just started brewing herself a pot when the door swung open, letting air into the apartment.

“Good morning!” Crystal beamed. She bounced into the kitchen holding a small bag. She placed it on the kitchen counter and revealed two blueberry scones.

“I was nervous you would be hungry and I didn’t have much food here,” Crystal spoke as she took a seat.

“Thank you,” Gigi responded. “Do you happen to have any headache pills by chance?”

“Yes!” She got up and rushed around the corner, disappearing farther into the apartment. She reappeared with pills in hand, grabbing a glass from the cabinet and filling it up in the sink.

“Here,” she said, extending the items to Gigi.

Gigi took the glass and swallowed the pills gratefully. She didn’t really know what to even say to Crystal now—considering she’d only met her yesterday, cried in her bookstore, blabbed about her entire life, then slept in her house. Theoretically, that would be a good place to start. Instead, she asked something simpler: “So, do you work today?”

“I don’t, actually. I work most days, but I’m able to make my own schedule, and decided that I needed a day off.”

Gigi hoped that she didn’t take off just because of her. She would hate to be the reason Crystal wasn’t getting hours. “I feel like it would be fun to work at a bookstore,” Gigi confessed.

“It’s fun most of the time. I’ve worked at a bookstore most of my life and I’ve met some amazing people, but it has its disadvantages too.”

“Like what?” Gigi questioned.

“Well, I come home, exhausted and drained from a day of hearing customers tell me why independent bookstores are going extinct, how they’re just going to go home and order that book I couldn’t find for them off Amazon, and that no one reads books anymore anyway,” Crystal complained.

“Oh, I didn’t realize,” Gigi uttered. “That must get annoying to hear all the time.”

“It is, but I love my job. I just get to read all the time and express my love for literature to anyone willing to listen. I also drink a lot of coffee.” Crystal smiled. “I can’t help it! The whole place smells like warm chocolate coffee goodness and I get 50% off in the cafe! I rub the spines of books like I’m in a movie and not on the clock and I read the backs of books when I should be shelving.”

Gigi listened to her every word, admiring the way she was so passionate about her job. She spoke with so much confidence and joy. Gigi only wished this was the way she came across to others.

“Okay, now that’s why it sounds like fun. I need to read more,” she admitted.

“You should! I can always recommend you books,” Crystal grinned.

“Thank you,” Gigi replied.

She took a seat at the counter next to Crystal as she began to drink her coffee and eat her scone. The pair started exchanging words, neither of them bringing up the events of the previous night. They just spoke as if they had been close friends for ages. Gigi talked about her friends and filled Crystal in on her own job.

Gigi worked as a fashion illustrator, she told Crystal. She worked with designers to create conceptual sketches and illustrations of their fashion products, including clothing, shoes and accessories. In addition, she produced advertising copy and images for promotional material for print. She always wanted to work in fashion and was fortunate enough to get a job that she loved, and that paid well, too.

“It’s insane,” Gigi explained about her job. “I work with some of the most amazing designers in New York, yet some of their designs are hideous!” She laughed at herself. “I swear I could do better than half of them.”

“I bet you could.” Crystal beamed. “Do you have designs? I would love to see them!”

“I do! Next time I’ll definitely have to show you.” Gigi blushed.

Next time, Crystal thought. There was going to be a next time; she was going to get to see Gigi again.

Crystal gladly listened to Gigi go on about her life. It was nice to see her so happy compared to yesterday. The pair managed to lose all track of time, their conversation lasting into the early afternoon. They sipped their coffee, and eventually raided Crystal’s pantry for more snacks.

“As much as I’m enjoying this, I really need to get my stuff from his house,” Gigi conceded. She was not in the mood to see him. She wished to never have to see him again, if she were being honest. She just hoped she could get in and get out easily.

“We could teepee his house,” Crystal suggested with a devilish smile. Gigi couldn’t help but laugh. It wasn’t such a bad idea.

“I couldn’t,” she managed to get out between laughs. “Lovely suggestion, though.”

“Of course,” Crystal beamed. “I’ll let you go, I got to finish my book anyway.”

“We should hang out again sometime.” Gigi admitted. “I’ve been happier today than I have been in a while.”

Crystal could only imagine how mentally drained Gigi must have been from her relationship.

“Yes, we definitely should!” Crystal affirmed. Neither of them moved from their spot in the kitchen, just sat in comfortable silence.

After a few minutes, Gigi finally stated, “Okay, I’m going.” She stood up and headed towards the front door. With a hand on the knob, she turned around to face Crystal and said, “Thank you for everything again… I’m not quite sure what I would have done without this.”

“Anytime! Don’t hesitate to reach if anything is wrong when you get there,” Crystal said. “Here, give me your phone. I’ll give you my number.” She extended her arm.

Gigi placed her phone in Crystal’s hand. “The password is 1111,” she admitted.

“Wow, how secure,” Crystal laughed. She went to the contacts app and put in her name in Gigi’s phone with about seven hearts after.

“Here,” she said, throwing the phone back. Gigi let out a little yelp as she tried to catch it mid-air.

“Thank you,” she breathed. With a small smile, she added, “You’ll definitely be hearing from me."  

[idga-buck]

use somebody || five

pairing: harry x plus-size!reader

word count: 1,800

warnings: mentions of sex, douchebaggery, and shitty attitudes toward women

summary: a night out has harry asking question he usually stays away from

challenge: @baezen​‘s the Other Guys Writing Challenge

previous // masterlist  // next

He didn’t know you. Not really. A one night stand, a handful of parties, one long yet entertaining car ride and most recently a clandestine tour of another man’s wine cellar that he’d definitely be thinking about later, but in reality you were still strangers to each other. He still didn’t want you to get the wrong idea. Now that he’s hustling down the winding walkway from Darius’ back patio to the street, he doesn’t waste time trying to figure out why he cares so much. 

“She’s not my girlfriend,” he tried, kicking up his feet in a jog to catch up. The jingle of the chain clipped to his belt loop was louder out in the open and he self consciously tucked it into his pocket. He thought he heard you say you didn’t care, but you didn’t stop walking away from him either. “Would you look at me?” You spun quickly to face him and Harry nearly found himself putting the ass in asphalt as he tried not to plow through you. You’d caught him off guard and suddenly he wasn’t sure what to say. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.” Smooth.

After a few tense seconds, your hands dropped from your hips and dangled freely in a resigned posture. “I’m not hurt, Harry, you don’t owe me anything.” His immediate response was to argue, but he hardly knew what he disagreed with. “You’re a grown ass man, kiss whoever you want,” you shrugged. “Just because I’m not looking for a relationship doesn’t mean I wanna screw up someone else’s.”

“It isn’t a relationship,” he defended even though he believed you. You didn’t look upset. You didn’t look happy to see him either and he selfishly wanted that part back. Textbook people pleaser and he was kicking himself for it. “She calls me when she’s bored.”

“So you were bored?” You clarified and he didn’t like it. He didn’t kiss you because he was bored. He was bored, but he wanted to kiss you. That fact hadn’t changed since he met you. He might have forgotten for a moment, but the second he spotted you, it all came back to him. Not because he was bored. No.

“I didn’t say that,” he frowned awkwardly.

“You came out tonight… with a girl that only wants you when she’s bored.” Yeah, so? “Either you’re a gigolo or you were bored too.”

Harry was almost certain there was a wrong answer, but he wasn’t sure if there was a right one. You must have sensed his nervousness because the grace you offered in the form of a teasing smile felt like cool water splashed over his face, the fever instantly gone. Once he could breathe again, Harry grinned back and shoved his hands in his pockets, stepping up next to you as you resumed walking down the hill. “I’m not a gigolo.”

“Too bad,” you laughed and he knocked his hip into yours. You returned the gesture and he stumbled a bit off balance…. and now all he could think about were those hips, wider and clearly more powerful than his. He knew what it felt like to grip them tight. The term “for dear life” came to mind. But what else would they do to him if he was given the opportunity? He was more than a little eager to find out. 

“So…” he slurred, looking around the car lined street, significantly quieter than the house. “We’re not going back, right?”

“Right,” you laughed. Before he got the chance to suggest something stupid like going back to his place, you saved him from the embarrassment. “I’m starving,” you looked over your shoulder at him and Harry grinned back.

“I can always eat.”

He’d said it so confidently fine with spending more time with you, but he hadn’t expected to be standing in front of a fancy restaurant at 9:30 on a Thursday night. He certainly hadn’t padded his wallet for something like Taix when he left his apartment thinking he’d be dipping into a party and then out of that girl’s bed well before midnight. The only thing padding his wallet was a condom and unlike all of the cash folded behind it, it apparently would remain unused.

“No one just craves French cuisine,” he teased, hoping you’d agree and pull him away for a burger and fries.

“I do,” you quipped back, not even bothering to look at the menu. You were on a mission and as a waiter in a crisp white shirt and black bow tie approached, Harry guessed he was about to find out what it was. Short ribs and a beet salad. A weird craving. “I’ll never finish it all, so get something different and have some of mine.” It was a genuine offer, he could tell and he smiled back. A small, shy little quirk of the lips that made you frown and the smile fell away completely. He’d planned on offering to pay for your meal, but with the wine that was promised to be paired with the meal, it was going to be well over $50 for you alone. Beyond what he was able to swing that night.

“Uh, French onion soup looks good.”

“And for your entree?” The waiter probed. Shit. Harry looked back at the slick leather folder in his hands and realized he’d ordered from the Hors d’oeuvre menu. After hemming and hawing for too long, you politely asked the gentleman on your left to give you a few more minutes to decide and Harry was equally relieved and embarrassed.

“Ok... What’s the deal?”

“What do you mean?” Harry didn’t have to look across the table to know what you were getting at. 

“Get the Steak Frites, it’s good and you said you wanted fries,” you said simply, as if it was obvious. It was anything but. He tried to argue and you pushed back, but not rudely. It was a good place, you pulled him from his plans, he deserved something tasty to close out the night. All good and valid points. Harry didn’t have much by way of macho pride, but the miniscule amount he kept tucked away was a little sore anyways. 

“I can’t afford this place,” he admitted sharply before tucking his forehead into his hands, realizing that the surrounding tables had heard him. It wasn’t like it was shocking. He was wearing a leather vest and his shoes had distressed blue and white stars stitched above worn rubber soles that were more gray than white now. It wasn’t a fashion statement, it was just him. Clearly he didn’t belong there. He wished he could ignore that for you, for no other reason than wanting to see you again. The way the night was going, he wasn’t sure he’d get another chance. 

“You couldn’t afford to eat at the Roosevelt either, but you did,” you pointed out and he rolled his eyes.

“This is different,” he said through his teeth. He wasn’t mad, just uncertain. He couldn’t get his footing with you and it was frustrating. Yes he’d taken you up on your offer to linger at the expensive hotel after sex, but having dinner after a steamy make out felt different. He just hoped you wouldn’t ask him how since he had no clue. It just was.

You waited a moment, but when he didn’t have anything else to add, you nodded and waved the waiter back over to your table with a smile. You reached across the table and squeezed his forearm gently. Harry looked up from his shame and smiled back, still awkward but appreciative. Finally, you were leaving and he could stop making an ass of himself.

“Steak Frites,” you said and his eyes widened to the size of the dinner plates he couldn’t afford. You asked about cocktails and Harry knew his mouth hung open, having a conversation in code right in front of him about whiskeys he’d never even heard of. But you can’t make a real Old Fashioned out of Old Crow. Not in a place like this. Once the garçon was satisfied with the order, you turned to look across the table and held out your hand. “It’s on me, Harry. I was the one that wanted to come here, it’s only fair.” He took your hand and didn’t let go until he had to, dishes and drinks suddenly occupying the middle of the table and your attention.

Half way through the meal, which even Harry had to admit was the best he’d had in years, pride be damned, a stout gentleman in a heavy white coat emerged from the kitchen expressly to interrupt your meal. He planted a big kiss on each of your cheeks and Harry stumbled slightly while trying to stand with his hand outstretched. It was batted away and he received the same treatment, stiffening at the feel of a thick mustache against his cheeks. The conversation was short lived and that’s when Harry learned your secret to scoring tables at fancy French restaurants without reservations. You have to know the chef. Duh.

Once the conversation was just the two of you again, Harry felt more at ease, forgetting the venue and the price of the drink warming his rapidly filling belly. He didn’t feel out of place when it was just the two of you joking and sharing anecdotes like you had in the front seat of his car. It was surprising how easy it was. He was so pleased even the beets tasted better. Usually they were like chewy dirt discs to him, but off your fork, they were divine. Maybe it was the hand that fed him that was divine. Either way, the night ended too soon. The bill paid without him even pretending to reach for his wallet. The rip of Velcro against a faux Parisian backdrop would have been too much embarrassment and he was glad he hadn’t gotten the soup so his wallet could stay firmly tucked in his back pocket. You called a car like it was nothing and asked if he needed a ride after having walked from Darius’. He started to decline, but your face told him not to. He’d be a damn fool to deny himself a dark backseat with you pressed up against him, so he held the door for you and slid in until there was no room between you. Your head was a comforting weight on his shoulder and Harry had to remind himself that it wasn’t a movie. Or a real date. Or a date at all. What was this?

He didn’t get the answer before his apartment was pulling up on the right and he scowled at the balcony through the car window. Before he could reach his door, you leaned out the window, chin propped up on your folded hands to harass him once more, thank him for his company, and remind him to call you if he decided to run away from any other obnoxious parties. He told you to call him if you had any more cravings for expensive cuisine and were feeling generous. You laughed and waved before slipping back into your seat without another glance. The car drove off, taking you with it, and Harry stood on the sidewalk with his heart beating fast, wondering what the hell he’d gotten himself into.