#i've heard bits of what happens in them from tumblr but i have yet to read them myself

[ana-bananya]

The amount of dbd lore I have to catch up on is insane 😭

[enditen]

birds of a feather

summary: a bit of understandable anger toward your fiancé for— in your eyes— unwise decisions leads to hurt feelings and avoidance. thankfully, the two of you come back together in the most interesting of places.

word count: 4090ish.

rating: m

warnings: public sexual acts. talk of death ( rooster's, goose's and carole's ). angst. two adults being stubborn fools. talk about breasts. talk about ruining hawaiian shirts and dress whites. kind of playing around with naval deployments and what not.

pairing: bradley ( rooster ) bradshaw x female reader ( callsign vulture )

author's note: hi, first fic in this fandom that was simply supposed to be hot titty fucking with a title of a tit for a cock and then turned into 4k of angst then some titty fucking. some of you might recognize me from another fandom on here on tumblr to which if you do, hi y'all. also i feel like i missed tags and i'm sorry about that. assuming i write more for this because i've gotten over my nervousness i'll learn. and special thanks to @blurredcolour for being a little cheerleader

You’re beginning to wonder if there’s just something about Maverick that just turns everyone around him a bit stupid. You like to think that most of the team surrounding your fiancé aren’t idiots and yet there you were being proven completely wrong as you listened to Bradley explain what exactly had happened on the mission.



“That’s not what he meant when he said don’t think!” You remembered screaming into the phone, knowing fully well that while Mav was his own special brand of stupid- and deliriously lucky he wasn’t the same level of pure unadulterated idiocy Bradley was displaying.

“It worked out!” Was somehow his raspy defense and it had taken all your self control to not hang up the phone right then and there, the sheer unmitigated aggravation seeping through your pores As it stood, what you did end up doing was letting out the world’s most put upon sigh as you rolled your eyes.



“You’re just lucky Mav didn’t have to bury another bird.” At Rooster’s sharp inhale you started to speak again. “I didn’t mean it— I’m just—”



“No. I get it, Vulture,” he spat out your callsign, a definite sign that he’s pissed and you had struck a nerve you honestly shouldn’t have right in that moment before you heard something in the background. “You don’t have to come get me, I’ll get home fine.”



The silence after he hung up feels almost as all consuming as the idea of him dying was.

It’s always been a thing that when one of you comes back from deployment or from a mission or from visiting friends who are stationed somewhere else that you pick one another up. Some of your friends call it silly, but for you and Rooster it works. You’ve always wanted to be together all the time but at the same time— when opportunities present themselves you’ve never been the type to ignore them. Hell, even if you wanted to, the other one would just argue against ignoring the opportunity. That’s why you found yourself here, waiting for Rooster to come back from what should have been a mission he didn’t come back from. What was almost a mission he didn’t come back from. You wonder if this is how his mom felt with his father and if the reason she never wanted him to become a pilot like this is to avoid anyone else having her fate. You see Rooster walking with Hangman and are about to lean out of the car to tell him to get his ass in the car before he sees you through your windshield. The look he gives you is one of aggravation and hurt that you’ve so rarely seen on his face that it practically pins you to your seat in the car. You've seen those brown eyes look at you with so much love and you've made jokes comparing them to warm chocolate more than once but in this moment— all they do is remind you of a hardened and unbreakable tree.



He shakes his head before turning to keep talking to Hangman, laughing at some probable dumb joke the man said and you swear your stomach drops through the floor of the car. You hadn’t thought he was serious about not wanting you to come get him and here he was getting into someone else’s car to go— home? Maybe, or maybe he was going to crash on Hangman’s couch or find— no. No, for all that Rooster was angry with the slip of your tongue he would never cheat on you. He loves you in a way that makes other people sick and makes Maverick and Penny tell you that yeah, you kind of remind them of his dad and Carole.



Still, he’s never been this angry at you and that terrifies you in ways that you can’t put into words. You’ve flown dangerous missions that didn’t terrify you as much as the look on Rooster’s face did right in that moment. After what feels like hours, but is only really ten minutes you pull out of the area you were parked in and head home. You don’t realize Hangman hasn’t left and that Rooster watches you leave from his side of the truck. 



“She couldn’t have done anything that bad, man.” Jake tries to reason as he puts the truck in reverse. 



“You don’t know her like I do," he scoffs, shaking his head and slipping on his aviators. "I forgot why she’s called Vulture. Just— Just drive.”

You suppose it's a mercy that you see Rooster the next morning, making coffee as if he didn't break your tradition with one glance through a car windshield. Suppose you should be thankful he's back home and in your kitchen and not back home in a casket, but you've never been one to allow yourself simple pleasures like that when you're hurt. When your heart's twisted into the version of itself that only releases anger and toxic fumes to push away everyone you hold dear.



That anger has your mouth moving before your brain can catch up and make you see sense. All you know is that the man you love hasn't said one word to you since that phone call and he's only making one cup of coffee and not two. Another tradition broken and you can only see red.



"Are you ignoring me?" You ask the moment he turns around, sipping his coffee without seemingly a care in the world.



Bradley isn't necessarily the more verbose out of the two of you, but he's never particularly short with you. Today is the exception, much like everything about the past two days.



"No." A pause as he sets down his coffee cup and you see a bit of coffee clinging to his upper lip and that stupid little mustache you've grown to love over the years. "Maybe."



"Maybe," you parrot, moving over to where he's standing and watching as he moves just far enough away to allow you to grab your own cup and your own specific pod to make your coffee. "You nearly die, I say something stupid and now you're acting like a moody teenager. Cute, Roo."



Roo. Not even Rooster and certainly not his name because he certainly doesn't deserve it in this moment. You watches as his eyes drift over your body, noting how you're wearing one of his favorite Hawaiian shirts with the top buttons unbuttoned, revealing skin that normally he'd have covered in kisses a thousand times over since he returned last night. Instead it's unmarred by his lips and teeth and you're as vicious as can be. Two can play that game. Two can be childish.



"I'm sorry, something stupid. No— no, you didn't say something stupid. You said something cruel. That's a big difference, babe. One is normal, the other is you reminding me that I could have left you alone just like my mom was. Like that didn't go through my head. Like Maverick didn't tell me that much while we were heading back. "



A laugh erupts from deep inside your chest as you turn to look at Rooster. "Did it really go through your head? Did you think I'm throwing away my life with Vulture because I need to save someone who ruined parts of my life? Or did your brain get scrambled from the G's?"



You watch as eyes that you love start to fill with something resembling tears as his hand clenches the coffee cup. He loves you, he knows that to be a simple fact. He loves you. His father loved him and his mother. Mav loves him and loved his father and his mother. And you love him. In this moment though, that last one feels like a joke, feels like a dagger twisting in his chest. Maybe you don't love him if this is what you want to spew at him. You're a woman who should have had a callsign of Viper but only gets Vulture because you can handle things other people couldn't. You take care of things other people wouldn't or couldn't. He supposes you taking on all of those things is what makes you the way you are.



"It's what my dad would have done," he forces the words out and tries to not cry because you know what that means to him. You know know better than anyone. "I was his wingman."



"And what about my wingman, Bradley?" Your question comes out softer than you mean it to even as you slam your coffee pod into the machine. Somehow tears start to tease the edge of your eye line. "You were just going to leave me without mine. You really are your father's son. Guess I should be happy we don't have a little you running around. That's a little too on the nose."



The slam of the coffee cup startles you more than anything you've thought was possible in that moment and yet without missing a beat you turn to face Rooster once again in time for you to see angry tears falling from his eyes. "I'm not doing this. You're— I didn't leave you. You're not having to bury me and you're not having to be by my side as I bury the closest thing I have to a father now. That is what should matter. Not what I did. What I know you would have done for some people. What you'd have done for Phoenix alone. I'm here in our kitchen wearing my engagement ring and you're just wearing my shirt and not sobbing into it because it's the closest thing that smells like me. Let it go." He takes a moment to take a shaky breath and starts to move toward you. "I made a mistake but I don't regret it. Let. It. Go."



If you were younger, if you were the same girl Rooster met all those years ago you'd have taken your ring off and slammed it on the counter right next to his coffee cup in a fit of anger. You're older now, same as Bradley and you stop yourself even as your hand inches toward your ring finger. Bradley's always been taller than you unless you're in heels and it forces you to look up at him. "You forget who you're wanting to marry, Bradshaw. I'm— I'm not letting this go. Just— you know what, sleep on the couch, do whatever. I don't care— you're not sleeping in our bed. Especially if you want to act like I meant to say what I said in the first place. You want to ignore me? Fine. Then do that."



You see Bradley's jaw tense, and watch the way it moves as you normally would enjoy before he speaks. "Wasn't planning on sleeping there for a while anyway. Enjoy your coffee, Y/N."

Ever since you had started dating, you and Bradley had talked every single day. No matter the fight, no matter what happened between you two you would never let something like this drag on for so long. Life was short after all and you two were both vividly aware of that.



This time though, this time it drags on for two weeks and you have a half right mind to stand in front of Bradley until he talks until you realize from how even Phoenix looks at you while at the Hard Deck that it wouldn't help. It truthfully might make things worse. So you let him stew and he lets you stew. You miss him and you like to think he misses you but you're both very stubborn people who know how to hold grudges with the best of them.



It's strange, ignoring someone you love in your own house but sometimes you'd like to argue that you and Bradley are strange people. Normal most of the time but with those small little scars inside and out that make you do strange things. Strange things like make sure your dress whites are ready to go the day of what you think is a ceremony— honestly you hadn't paid attention for once to the notice. That's what you do with someone you love and someone you care about— not someone you're still so angry with that it hurts to talk to them.



You arrive separately to questioning looks from most of the Dagger Squad and Maverick but you both shrug and smile them off even as you stay apart most of the night. What you both don't realize is that the other is sneaking glances when one of you looks away. Your eyes take in the man who you think— you hope— is still going to be your future husband and bemoan the fact that he can't wear this uniform everywhere. There's something special about seeing him all dressed in white and looking every bit a dashing naval aviator.



His eyes? Oh, his eyes take in the woman he knows he's still going to marry if one of you would just break already. They take in you in white which you hate wearing because it shows off everything and stains and all those silly things you say. They take in how your jacket contains your chest but how the buttons strain just a little and how he knows that you're probably wearing a lace bra that he loves underneath it. He knows how that bra feels against his hands when he cups your breasts and squeezes them in his hands. Your chest is a work of art sometimes— all the time really and he hasn't touched in over two weeks.



Jake is the one who notices how Bradley's eyes haven't left you for a few minutes and notices how he's shifting in place— fidgeting in a way he's never seen him.



"She's been staring at you too," the blonde chuckles. "This is— This is every bad high school dance and military ball I've ever been to rolled into one. Go over to her, Rooster. Stop pining, man."



Bradley wants to defend himself but he turns to look at you again only to catch your eyes and how they slide down his body before stopping at his crotch and— he finds most logic and sense goes out the window. Like two magnets drawn to one another you both find yourselves by each other's sides, with hands grazing each other's hips.



"I—" He starts before you shake your head.



"I was being cruel. You've— We both know I get like that and I was terrified, Bradley. I saw our lives flashing before my eyes the second I found. It was gone in an instant. That doesn't excuse—" Your words are cut off with a soft kiss that you're both endlessly thankful no one sees.



"Babe. Trust me, I know I was an idiot and that same vision you had? Yeah, you weren't the only one. I swear I heard my mom and my dad yelling at me." His words are soft as he nuzzles his nose against yours, laughing softly when you scrunch up your nose because of his mustache. "I'm sorry."



You sniffle a little, partially to prevent a sneeze from his mustache hair and to cover up the fact that you're a little emotional. "I'm sorry too." You take a moment to look up meet his eyes only to see how his eyes are trained on your breasts. "Lieutenant Bradshaw, are you staring at my boobs in public? At a function?"



You watch as a light dusting of color reaches his cheeks before he bites his lips. "And if I am?"



A breath leaves your mouth slowly as you move the hand that's been on his hip toward the front of his dress pants, giggling softly at the slight hardness you feel. "I'd say you should stop unless you want me to take care of this in the bathroom."



His eyes dart around the room checking to see if anyone will notice you're both gone for a bit before he laughs. "Meet you there in five?"



You practically give yourself minor whiplash as you nod quickly. "Can I keep the bra on?"



His groan almost gives the two of you and your plans away.

The great thing, you think, about this bra, is that it makes it so easy to have Bradley stick his cock in between your breasts without taking it off. You know by the end he'll want it off, want to squeeze your breasts as he slides his cock in between them but in the beginning he's fine with this.



"I missed my girls," he groans as you press your arms against the side of your chest, pushing your breasts together even more. "Should— Should've gotten over myself and fucked you in my shirt that morning."



"You would have gotten come on your favorite Hawaiian shirt, Bradley," you try to reason with him even as your voice takes on an airy sort of quality the quicker your fingers move in between your legs. You should have taken off your pants but you realize it's a little too late for that now.



"We're probably getting come on our dress whites, babe." It's a joke but one that's likely very true from the way you can see his cock pulse and from the way your fingers— even through the articles of clothing you're wearing sound so obscene as they squelch and slide between your folds. "Would've made it better. Fuck, swear this bra does something to your tits."



"It's a bra? A dressy one? That's the point?" You can't help but giggle as he moves faster, his cock gilding against the soft skin of your breasts. "You getting close baby?"



"Lil bit," he grunts out, his hand moving to try and grasp at one of your nipples. "You wanna free them? Let your nipples join in on the fun?"



"You just wanna smear them with precome, Bradshaw, you're not slick." It's not a no, and your hands move to start undoing your bra even as you look up and see Bradley with the dumbest smirk you've ever seen him have. "Why are you—"



"You're slick though," he pulls his cock out from between your breasts and bends down to kiss you as your bra releases your breasts. "Bad—"



"Bad dirty dad joke," you cut him off with a fond shake of your head. "At least wait until we have a little birdy before you stoop that low."



A shrug is the only answer you get as he lines his cock up with your breasts and waits for you to press them together before saying a single phrase. "Sorry. It's in my blood."



You look up at him through your eyelashes and sigh, ignoring how your heart twists a little at the faked twinkle in those brown eyes of his. Instead you bend your head down just a little to lick a small kitten lick at the head of his cock. "Doomed to those jokes for the rest of my life as Mrs. Bradshaw. What have I done?"



A shudder ripples through him at your lick and he has to force himself to not come right then and there all over your perfectly made up face. He wants to though, wants to see you debauched like you should have been the second he came home and was alive and in your arms. He should have painted your face white. Should have made it so there was a stain on his favorite shirt that he'd wear proudly because it'd tell everyone how needy you two were for each other. It'd remind everyone that he's taken by the most vicious, intelligent, and vivacious woman he's ever met. It'd remind him that you missed him that much that you couldn't bear to be apart from some part of him for too long.



He didn't though and he can't right now but tonight when you're home and laying across your shared bed maybe he can do it then and watch as your lips try and lick bits off your face. The image he paints in his mind is something else and it has him clenching the fabric of your jacket before his own hands move to play with the tops of your breasts. The action earns a low whine from you, wanting more of his large hands on you, his thumbs playing with your nipples as he kisses you. You two have to make this quick though and it shows in how Bradley's thrusts increase in speed and how he motions for you to do something— anything— with your boobs and your hands until you finally catch onto his meaning.



"You are so boob drunk, Bradley," you mutter as your hand wraps around the part of his cock not between your breasts. With every thrust up you manage a lick or two just to tease him until you see his thrusts getting messier and less controlled.



A breathless low chuckle leaves him. "Nah, just you drunk. Fuck, babe, Y/N. I'm— let him go. Gonna—"



"Cum on them. Just cum on them. I'll wipe it off."



You look up with all the confidence in the world to see him with blown out pupils and a wet lips from where he's bitten them to keep quiet. "You su—" You cut him off with an almost violent nod that has the head of his cock brushing your chin as he does. "Okay okay."



What happens next is a flurry of limbs and grunts and low whines from you and Bradley as you chase your respective highs. Bradley comes first, hips stuttering, painting your chest with his cum, pearly white and just uncontrolled enough that some lands on your lips and chin and another bit lands on your dress shirt, narrowly avoiding your jacket. Your name falls from his lips easily as you look up at him, your fingers curling just so inside of you as he reaches out to cup your cheek his brown eyes so full of love, arousal and adoration that you come with a silent cry, your body threatening to fall forward from the sheer intensity but his strong hands are there to stop you.



You both lean back— him against the wall and you on your knees- catching your breath before he moves to grab paper towels, wetting them just enough for you to clean his release off of you. He embarrassingly lets out something close to a childish whine as he watches you lick the traces of come off your lips until you raise an eyebrow at him and his hardening cock.



"When we get home." You both manage to say at the same time before letting out matching peals of laughter. After a moment where you both can't keep a straight face Bradley starts to tuck himself inside his dress pants and you start to button your shirt back up before he pulls you up with an ease that marvels you even to this day. You feel the warmth of his large hand through your shirt as he straightens it out, making sure it's regulation ready. He winces at the slight stain of his come near your shoulder before remembering you still have to get your jacket on. His hands make quick work of the buttons and he notes with pride the only sliver of come one can see is easily explained away as water.



You can't help but bite your lip at Bradley when you see him looking down at you, inspecting his handiwork. Almost as if he realizes you're staring he meets your eyes and smiles this stupid half smile that makes his mustache look far cuter than it has any right to be and has his eyes dancing with mirth.



"Come on Lieutenant Bradshaw, they're gonna notice if we stay here," he tries to school his face into something resembling a serious look before he chuckles softly.



"Aye aye, Lieutenant Bradshaw." A pause. "You can't call me by your last name yet, you know."



He shrugs, unlocking the door as he wraps his arm around your waist. "I almost died. I can do it if I want. Besides, saw your thighs tense up."



You tamp down on the urge to slap his arm playfully as your own arm moves to snake around his waist. "You're lucky I love you."



"Yeah,' he stops right before you reach the door to reenter the hall and presses you just lightly against the wall. "I love you too."

[ablobwhowrites]

Can u write a Yandere!Fnaf 1 x Reader fanfiction? It can be like 20 to 30 chapters or maybe less if that makes you comfortable.

so I don't think I could run a series that long on tumblr but I can probably try but for now, here's some shit post and a small bit of headcanons with m/n and gn y/n

*glamrock Freddy trying to drive*

Gregory: "what happens if you press the breaks and gas at the same time?"

Minimum wage m/n: "the car takes a screenshot"

Glamrock Freddy on the verge of crying: "your making me nervous!"

Y/n's live reaction to seeing Monty running straight at them

Sundrop: "your my favorite friend m/n, I don't imagine what I would do without you!"

M/n: "I would be home, unconscious on my floor after this hell of a shift, I know that for truth"

Employeer: "come on, working in our underground pizzeria isn't so bad"

Minimum wage y/n: "balloras little gremlins of fucking side animatronics tried to drag me into there area the moment my shift was over"

Y/n: "so Vanessa, heard we got a some dj animatronic, hope it's one bolted to the floor at lea-" *sees dj music man that's currently not operating yet* "...i wish I could quit that job but this is the only thing that gives me free food"

Vanessa: "don't you steal the food?"

Y/n: "not everyone has the time to buy food after work Vanessa"

moon: "m/n I see those bags under your eyes, you haven't been sleeping have you?"

M/n: "I'm fine, I'm running in 18 hours of red bull, monster and something I found in my car before I walked into work....i can't feel my body"

M/n to the mapbots the first time he saw them.

Some supermarket worker: "Mr/mx y/n (or) m/n, can you please come to the front? A special guest is waiting for you"

Monty: "I got lost..."

Y/n (or) m/n: "I didn't even bring you here!"

Hey guys so I know I've been gone off a bit but shit dude, it's like the AO3 writers curse with me, a lot of stuff is going on and well all I wanted to say is that I'm extremely grateful for everyone of my followers and mutuals for being with me on my journey from new to old follower, I hope that everyone of you have a wonderful Christmas or any culture you celebrate on this day or tomorrow and I'll try to be more frequent with my uploads but for now, I love each and everyone of you guys who's been with me through my Tumblr journey and I hope you have a wonderful day and a wonderful christmas.

[mysterious-ocarina]

No Control

marauder!Sirius Black x fem!reader

(A/N 1, im american so i’ll prolly get alot of british slang wrong, or just call stuff by what americans say) ( A/N 2, this is kinda an au where Sirius doesn't move in with James and is stuck with the Black family. I had a lot of trouble figuring out what family to put the reader in that would fit my plot and I just ended up putting you in the nott family. I guess if you really wanna think about it (pls don't think too hard about it), your brother is the father of theo nott?) (A/N 3, check this out if anyone wants an explanation of why i've been gone from tumblr for so long)

Warnings: definitely angsty but with some sprinkles of fluff, lots of mentions of abuse (nothing graphic is shown, it's just described to have happened a lot in the past), this is an arranged marriage trope but not enemies to lovers trope, lots of misogyny (lately i've been feeling angry at the world and it's views of women so here is me trying to comfort myself. Sirius black is a woman lover fr). let me know if there is anything else i need to tag cuz this is my most serious fic yet

Main Masterlist HP Masterlist Requests AO3

(5.6k words)

Sirius Black. A name that's known by the majority of the Hogwarts population. And a face that is known (maybe a little too personally) by many wizards and witches at Hogwarts. But not to you.

You've only ever heard about the notorious Sirius black and the gang of hooligans called the Marauders. You've never got to meet any of them personally. You occasionally would see some of them around, but never Sirius. As a Slytherin, you often ran into his brother, Regulus, but you've never really talked to him either, only ever exchanging pleasantries. 

It was actually kind of surprising that you've never talked to the Blacks before. You both came from pure blood, supremacist families and both you and Sirius were known to be a bit rebellious against your families (or just rebellious in general).

But none of that matters, when your parents force you to come home for the holidays and basically shatter your resolve. 

At Hogwarts, away from the prying eyes of your family, you were most like yourself. Rebellious, outgoing, funny, and even kind. But under the roof of your family's expensive manor, you were nothing more than a quiet, obedient little girl, who's value was determined by whichever man was in charge of her. The perfect, pureblood daughter.

Just as your mother was and is, you are basically a slave to your own blood, specifically your brother and father. And as soon as you're married (arranged to a pure blood. no doubt, without your consent) you'll have to be an obedient little wife for your husband. 

The perfect, doting, obedient, docile, pureblood wife. It was all a load of rubbish, you thought, but you would keep the facade up in order to keep the abuse at bay. You learned pretty early on that speaking up for yourself and speaking out of turn was not going to be tolerated.

You were silently eating dinner with your family. Your father and brother were quietly speaking about matters that even if you and your mother cared, neither of you would be allowed an opinion on.

“Honey, we’ll be having important guests for tomorrow's dinner. So make sure you look your absolute best,” your mother spoke to you. She gave you a sympathetic smile knowing the “show” you both would have to put on in front of guests.

“Okay. Am I allowed to know who these guests are?” you swallowed down your food. You were filled with nerves, thinking about what kind of important guests you were going to have.

Your mother bent down closer to your ear, “I’m not supposed to be telling you this-” she shot a quick look to your father to make sure he wasn’t listening, “but it’s the Black family. I’m not sure why they are coming. All I know is that it’s important business with one of their sons.”

You put your fork down on your plate, placing your hands down on your lap in front of you. You let your thoughts wander and only grew more worried. What kind of important business did one of the Black brothers have with your family? To help a little with your nerves, your mother placed a comforting hand on yours before going back to her meal.

The rest of your night was uneventful after that, until you went to bed. You stayed awake for longer than you should have, your mind way too loud to allow you to sleep. You ran through a list in your mind about the millions of different “important business” that the Black family could have with yours. But none of it made sense why they would eat dinner with us. Usually important business was settled in your father’s study, as it was improper for the ladies to be present.

Eventually, you were able to fall asleep and then the next day would start. You woke up late, which was extremely unappreciated by your brother, who was expecting his morning coffee like usual. You were promptly punished, not only by being woken up by him screaming at you, but also with a beating.

You spent the rest of the day trying to find an appropriate outfit for the dinner that would cover the red marks and newly forming bruises on your arms. Your mother lessened the pain of the marks a little during the day but there wasn’t much else that you could do.

Sometimes when you both sat and drank tea, you would often dream together about running away from all of this. The blood supremacy, controlling men, and just downright evil families. But those thoughts and dreams were quickly quelled when the sound of the men's voices could be heard, calling for the maids- I mean women.

Both you and your mom knew, these were only dreams. It was impossible for purebloods to leave the life that they were born into.

You and your mother waited in the foyer, waiting for the guests to arrive. Your dress was rubbing against the lashes on your skin, making you scratch your arms in irritation but soon stopped when your mothers hand landed on yours.

“You’ll only make it hurt worse. Plus, you know you can show any discomfort in front of the guests,” she said softly. She was trying her best to sound comforting but it only served to remind you of the show you both are forced to put on and the lives you’re stuck living.

A knock was heard and muscle memory forced wide, fake smiles onto both of your faces. Your mother opened the door and welcomed the Black family, “Good evening Mr. and Mrs. Black. I hope you had safe travels here.”

As soon as they crossed the threshold, you were in front of them offering to take their coats. They handed them to you as Mrs. Black spoke, “Thank you for having us, Mrs. Nott.”

“My daughter will show you to the dining room while I finish up making dinner,” your mother informed before quickly making her way towards the kitchen.

After you finished hanging up Mr. and Mrs. Black’s coats, you finally had the chance to look at the two Black brothers. Being in his house, you immediately recognized Regulus, who gave you a tight smile. You then looked over to who you assumed was Sirius.

He certainly was as attractive as the girls at Hogwarts always seemed to make him seem. But he wouldn’t make eye contact with you. He was looking toward the ground, still keeping his posture ramrod straight. He had the same look and body language as someone who had just been beaten for disobedience. A look you were familiar with.

Before anyone could get angry with you, you spoke up, respectfully, “If you would follow me, please.”

With your head down, you brought the family to the dining room. Your father and brother both stood up to shake hands with the Blacks. You stood behind your seat, waiting for the men to sit down first. Your father and Mr. Black sat down and engaged in conversation. You watched Regulus take the chair next to his father and looked to see where Sirius was. You were surprised to find him right next to you.

You backed up, unsure why he was standing there. Of course, you would give up your seat if he asked you to. But all he did was pull the chair out and motion for you to sit down. You sat down and thanked him as he pushed the chair in, “Thank you, young master Black.”

In the corner of your eye, you saw your father give a nod at your use of the title. Salazar, you sounded like a damned house elf. But that was the proper way you were to address him.

Sirius scrunched his nose at the title but gave you an understanding smile, “You’re welcome.”

He surprised you once more by taking the seat directly next to yours. You kept your mouth shut, knowing it was best to keep your curious thoughts to yourself, but you did shoot him a kind smile.

Dinner started without a hitch, conversation mostly being between Mr. Black and your father, your mother and Mrs. Black conversing a little bit with each other too. You, your brother, and both Black brothers mostly stayed silent and ate the meal.

Throughout the entire dinner, when nobody was looking, you had been rubbing at your irritated arm in discomfort. You don’t know how long Sirius had noticed but he grabbed your hand under the table just as you were going to bring it back up again. He continued to eat his meal with his other hand, looking like he wasn’t holding your hand under the table at the moment.

At your confused glance, he leaned closer to your ear, whispering, “I know what you’re doing. It’s just going to make it hurt more, the more you keep messing with it. Just squeeze my hand instead.”

He went back to eating, glancing around to find that no one noticed him whispering to you. You squeezed his hand a bit hard as you went back to eating too. Instead of wincing or doing anything to show discomfort, all he did was rub his thumb soothingly on yours.

The butterflies Sirius stirred up in you was enough to distract you from your irritating arm for the rest of the dinner.

“Now,” your father started, rubbing his napkin on his mouth and setting it down on the table, (the universal sign for “stop eating and listen to me”). “Mr. Black and I have recently come to an agreement.”

Sirius squeezed your hand in comfort as his father spoke up, “Seeing as Ms. Nott is the same age as my Sirius, we have arranged for the two of you to be married. It will be after the both of you graduate from Hogwarts.”

Those words echoed in your head as you looked up to the two fathers in shock. Your silverware clattered as it fell from your hand onto your plate. You must have been breaking the bones in Sirius’ hand, holding it as tight as you were.

Despite the fact that you knew it was a bad idea, your adrenaline forced you to speak up, “You can’t do that, father. You can’t just force me to marry someone that I just met.”

The tears in your eyes didn’t fall, years of “training” keeping them from falling.

Your brother gave you a harsh glare at your disrespect. Suddenly your father stood up, slamming his hands on the table. Staring straight at you, his commanding voice not loud but still thundering all the same, “I can, and I will. Do not forget your place in this family and this world. You will do as I say until you are married. Then you will be your husband’s to command.”

In a haste, you let go of Sirius’ hand, placing your hands on the table to stand up. Sirius, thinking quickly, kept you from getting up by grabbing your legs under the table. That didn’t stop your mouth from speaking harshly, “I am nobody’s to command or control.”

Before you could say anything more, your father reached across the table and slapped you across the face. You held your cheek in shock. He’s hit you before but never in front of guests. The entire table sat in shocked silence.

You looked down at your lap, willing your tears not to fall. You noticed Sirius’ hands clenched in his lap, he looked like he was shaking in anger, but his face had a practiced neutral expression. Regulus’ eyes were wide as he looked at you but had no other reaction at the scene that just transpired. The both of them knew not to speak up.

Your brother had a satisfied smirk on his face. You could just hear the thoughts in his head right now. Thank Salazar, someone put her in her place, his face screamed.

Your father sat down and looked towards Mr. Black, “I’m sorry for my daughter’s behavior. I hope you can forgive me for her impudence.”

Mr. Black simply waved his hand in dismissal, “It’s alright. I understand how women are.”

Picking up his whiskey glass, your father sighed, “It’s a shame we can’t put off the marriage to fix her. Maybe your son will be able to crack her.”

Mr. Black took a swig of his whiskey too, “We can only hope. If not, I can think of a curse that surely helped to fix up my Sirius.”

Sirius tensed up next to you. Your father had never used the Cruciatus Curse on you, but it was clear what Mr. Black was referring to and your father seemed to quite enjoy the idea. The two men simply laughed as if that curse wasn’t named an Unforgivable Curse. They laughed, as if your pain was nothing more than entertainment to them.

The dinner went back to normal for the two men and your brother, not noticing the tension felt between the rest of the group. This time, you grabbed Sirius’ hand under the table and rubbed it soothingly. He let out a shaky breath and squeezed your hand.

Losing your appetite, you spent the rest of the meal sitting in silence, holding hands with Sirius. Your thoughts ran completely wild. You were going to be married to him, for the rest of your life, and you had only spoken once. You didn’t even speak. He whispered to you and you listened. Thinking more about it, there are worse boys that you could have been forced to marry.

At Hogwarts, Sirius was known for being rebellious and against his family's traits and values. Salazar, the boy was sorted into Gryffindor, the opposite of his entire family. But what if that was just in the public eye. You didn’t know anything about Sirius except for what you’ve heard from others. For all you knew, the moment you and he were alone, he would revert back to his family’s pureblood values and abuse you just as most pureblood husbands did to their wives.

No, you quickly thought, stop it. You tried to think about the entire situation with a rational head. Throughout the entire dinner, he did nothing harsh towards you. He offered comfort when your arm was bothering you. He kept you from standing when you argued with your father (who knows how much worse the situation could have escalated if you actually, physically stood up to him). He did his best to offer you comfort without your families knowing it.

He’s not an abuser, you rationalized with yourself. You felt the way he tensed up at the mention of the Cruciatus Curse. He would not be like your father or your brother.

After dinner, you were sent straight up to your room. Before you were separated, Sirius softly spoke to you, “Don’t worry, darling.”

His smile reassured you by a fraction, as you got ready for bed. Maybe all of it won’t be so bad.

You didn’t see Sirius, or his family, at all the rest of the holidays. The next time you did see him was on the train back to Hogwarts. You were simply looking for an empty carriage to settle in, when you noticed Sirius coming towards you.

He grabbed your suitcase and brought it to what you presumed was the carriage he was going to be in. You simply followed him, shrinking under the glare that some of his fangirls were throwing your way.

Once the door was shut and you were alone, he finally spoke up, “So, how are you?”

You sat in the seat opposite of him. You were unsure how to proceed, so you took the safe option and responded, “I’m fine, master Black.”

He opened his mouth in shock, before quickly wiping the look from his face, he basically pleaded, “Please don’t call me that.”

“But-” you went to protest, but he cut you off.

“At least, don’t call me that when we aren’t near our families,” he dismissed what you were going to say. All you could do was stare at him. It really did seem he wasn’t like his family.

Growing embarrassed under your stare, he shyly spoke back up, “I hope you know that you can act like you normally do when you’re around me.”

You looked away from him, face flushing, “This is how I normally act.”

He leveled you with a look, “We both know that’s not true. I don’t know you well but I’m sure you have a number of choice words to call me.”

Seeing the amused smirk on his face, your facade broke. You slightly smirked right back at him, “I don’t have any words to call you… Our fathers on the other hand…”

Sirius’ smirk turned into an almost awestruck smile. Before he could say anything back at you, a gaggle of boys had burst into the carriage.

“Pads, you’ll never guess who sent me a letter during break,” James Potter excitedly said. He went to sit across from his friend only to just now notice you. You gave him a sweet smile.

“Who’s this?” James asked, sitting next to Sirius and throwing his arm around him.

Peter Pettigrew and Remus Lupin followed James into the carriage, taking their seats. Everyone gave you curious but welcoming looks.

Sirius gave you a look, which you nodded to.

“Put up a silencing charm. I’ve got a story to tell you,” Sirius replied, causing the boys to perk up.

The next hour or so was spent with Sirius explaining your arranged marriage to his group of friends. You were relatively silent, not yet comfortable talking to his friends. He left out the parts where you were abused and berated but didn’t spare the details of his own abuse. It seemed he was comfortable sharing what he goes through to his friends. And evidently you too, since you were there listening too.

This was how you found out that he knew about the betrothal before you did. Apparently, he found out just moments before going to the dinner. He tried to refuse his father (the same way you had, you noticed) and received a beating for his insubordination. That would explain the look he had when you first saw him.

You cringed a little, hearing that he was hit but he gave you a reassuring smile. His friends were also really kind and sympathetic to the entire situation. No wonder he seemed comfortable sharing his familial trauma with them, they were extremely supportive.

“Can they really do that?” James questioned, from next to Sirius.

You sighed and crossed your arms, “Unfortunately, yes. There isn’t anything that we can do to avoid it.”

Remus looked up thoughtfully, “Is it possible for you guys to run away from your families?”

You thought about it, “Hypothetically, we could run away from our families and the blood supremacy world, but it would be extremely difficult.”

Sirius spoke up, “Trust me, I’ve debated it my entire life. If we ran away from our families, no doubt we would be financially cut off from them.”

You added, “Not only would we have to somehow have enough money for a place to live, but we would also need to find a job, to keep the place to live. And trust me, families like ours have a lot of power in the wizard world. One word from them, and no one would want or be able to hire us.”

Peter muttered, “That’s horrible.”

Sirius sighed and slouched in his seat, “You’re telling me.”

“Thinking about it, Sirius, you need to put your womanizing ways away. A married man shouldn’t be parading around with any woman that gives him attention,” you added with a teasing smirk.

“You make me sound like a cheap whore,” Sirius replied with a pout.

“You’re not?” James was quick to rebuttal, causing you to laugh at the offended face Sirius gave the both of you.  It didn’t take long for the entire group of you to dissolve into laughs and giggles.

Sirius smiled at you, teasingly, “Well how about you? I’m sure your long line of lovesick fools will end up sobbing at the news.”

You glared playfully at him, “I don’t know any lovesick fools. I actually swore off dating a long time ago so this doesn’t affect my love life at all.”

Remus looked at you in bewilderment, “Went from swearing off dating straight to marriage.”

“Quite the jump,” you simply offered in reply. “At least I’m stuck with Sirius and not some blood supremacist twat like my brother.”

“That is true,” Remus reasoned. “You could have been forced with someone who actually believes the rubbish their parents feed them.”

You felt comforted by Remus' words, confirming that Sirius wasn’t like both of your families.

The rest of the train ride was spent getting to know each other. It wasn’t hard to become friends with Sirius and his buddies. The longer you spent with them, the more comfortable you became with the idea of becoming Sirius’ wife. Don’t get me wrong. You still didn’t want to be forced to marry someone that you didn’t know or love, but you were comfortable knowing that he felt the exact same way.

Who knows? Maybe you could fall in love with Sirius the same way a plethora of other girls had.

The rest of your seventh year at Hogwarts went alright. It didn’t take long for rumors to spread that you and Sirius were to be married but for the most part, the gossip didn’t bother either of you that much. It’s not like the rumors were false, so what was the point in denying anything.

The only downside was the threats that a multitude of Sirius fangirls made in your direction. Nothing too serious has happened to you yet, but you knew soon enough that it would be too much for the wrong girl. Turns out, that time would come soon enough. 

You were eating breakfast in the Great Hall, Regulus sitting across from you. Since he was to be your brother-in-law, the both of you became friends. You would also find out that he wasn’t like his parents either. He just wasn’t as outward of this fact as Sirius was. Watching what Sirius has put up with, he knew that he wasn’t brave enough to rebel and deal with the consequences.

Earlier in the week, a parcel came by owl for you. In it was a Black family heirloom, a wedding ring. You were told that you had to wear it from now on, even though you guys were still only engaged and not married. Of course, you didn’t argue, though.

You sat staring at the ring. On one hand, you hate what it symbolized. It was your own sick image of slave shackles that tied you down. On the other hand, “It really is quite pretty. If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought Sirius picked it out just for me.”

Regulus looked up at you as you spoke. He was confused for a moment until he noticed you glancing at the ring on your ring finger. He swallowed his toast and took a sip of his black coffee, “Well… I mean, it is charmed.”

You gave him a confused look, which only made him look back at you even more confused. His eyebrows raised, “You don’t know?”

“Know what?” you questioned. You looked at the ring and tried to think of what kind of charm it could have been.

Regulus smirked back at you, “Well, Mrs. Black-” you glared at him, only making him smile harder at you, “-When the ring was first made for our grandmother's grandmother, or some other old bat, it was put under some kind of spell. 

“It was always meant to be an heirloom and it was charmed to always look the way that the husband, the male with Black blood, wanted it to look. Hypothetically, it was supposed to be a symbol of great love because the husband should know what kind of ring their wife would like to wear. But with our family being the kind of family it is, it was mostly only ever worn as a symbol of possession.

“Rarely, did the husbands care enough about their wives to know what kind of ring they would like to wear,” Regulus finished his story. He was giving you an unreadable smile.

You stared back at him, your expression almost as unreadable as his, scoffing at him, “Well most jewelry is going to be pretty.”

“Yeah, but doesn’t that look like the perfect ring for you,” he smoothly replied.

You simply ignored him, finishing your breakfast. You did your best to ignore the fluttering feeling in your chest at the thought that Sirius knew what your perfect ring would look like.

The ring on your finger only served as a reminder to all the girls at Hogwarts that you were to be Sirius’ wife, a fact that was not very well received by the female population. Before you had the ring, the most that would be thrown your way was dirty looks and glares, something you could easily handle. But as more and more people noticed the ring on your finger over the next week, the more serious it became.

You started to receive so much hate mail, that you started to only ever open up letters if they had the official Nott or Black seal. Most of the letters only said foul things to you. Not many people were aware of the arranged part of the marriage, mostly only pureblood Slytherins and Black’s friends knew about that, so a lot of the letters consisted of them berating you and wondering how you got the notorious Sirius Black to fall in love with you (A love potion being the most common guess. Because why would the perfect Sirius Black want to be with a nobody girl like you).

People really are dense these days. How could people possibly jump to any sort of conclusions when no one has ever seen you guys kiss… or even hold hands for that matter. The both of you were friends by now, of course. But that’s it. You guys didn’t just magically fall in love now that you are betrothed.

Well… one of you wasn’t in love. Over the course of getting to know Sirius more for the past few months, feelings did start to stir within you. But you always tried to squash them down as soon as you felt them. Which only made you hurt more.

You were going to get married… without your consent… to a guy that you’ve started to truly care for… despite the fact that he could never care for you the same way. It was all kind of sad, when you really thought about it.

You thought about how you were probably, inadvertently, just a symbol of his slavery to his family and their beliefs. Just as he was inadvertently a symbol of your slavery to your family and their beliefs.

But you were able to look past that. So maybe he would be able to look past it too and see the silver-lining to this whole thing.

Breaking out of your thoughts, you muttered a quicked Incendio at the pile of hate mail in front of you, burning it to ash. Slipping your wand back into your robes, you continued to eat your dinner in relative peace.

If only it could’ve stayed in peace. Two girls, a Ravenclaw and a Hufflepuff that you didn’t even recognize, sat down on both of your sides. Your confusion was apparent, only widening the smirk on the two girls' faces.

Understanding what was going on, you rolled your eyes, “Do you guys need something?”

“What’s your secret?” the Ravenclaw girl inquired.

You simply continued to eat your food, unaffected by their intimidation. Dryly, you responded, “Whatever could you mean?”

The girls looked at you in disgust, before the Hufflepuff spoke up, “We want to know how you got someone as amazing as Sirius Black to fall for you. I can’t think of anything good about you.”

With another roll of your eyes (if you had a galleon for everytime you rolled your eyes because of these kinds of girls, you would be rich) you cooly replied, “Have you tried, having a personality? I’ve heard it does wonders in making people like you.”

Both girls huffed at your attitude before standing up. The Ravenclaw haughtily informed you, “You better watch your back, Nott. Wouldn’t want anyone to damage Sirius’ goods.”

Using her wand, the Hufflepuff spilled sticky juice all over you, leaving you floundering in shock. You sat for a second seething in anger, only growing more furious as the gross liquid seeped more into your clothes.

By now, most of the great hall was already watching what had happened but at the glare you threw at everyone, people were quick to go back to minding their business.

You got up quickly, making your way out of the Great Hall. You heard footsteps behind you and someone calling your name but you were too blind with rage to bother turning around to find out what they wanted. You had had enough of the girls in this school looking down at you for something that wasn’t any of their business.

You were almost to the girls washroom, when Sirius grabbed ahold of your arm. You quickly whipped around, seething, “What the hell do you want, Black?”

He faltered, unsure how to handle what was happening, “I saw what happened. Are you okay?”

You glared harshly at him, “Do I look okay to you?”

Gobsmacked, he hesitantly replied, “Well, what can I do?”

“Oh gee, Black,” you spit at him. “Maybe you could fix your fanclub who seems to think that I’m Satan incarnate herself.”

Your anger in the moment kept you from thinking rationally, you mocked, “Oh perfect Sirius Black. He’s so hot and amazing. How could a slag like you end up with a man like him?”

Sirius stood, shocked at your outburst but kept silent and let you continue to tear at him, “I’ve heard it all, Black. Your little group of fangirls are so deep into their delusions that they can’t even see that we aren’t in love. The only thing that they are capable of seeing is that I’ll be your wife, consensual or not.

“Those girls don’t even realize the pain it brings me that I’m forced to do this. Those girls don’t see the pain my family has put me in, time and time again. Those girls don’t see the pain they cause me with their vitriolic jealousy,” You finished your rant off, poking at his chest with each sentence. Breathing deeply after explaining how this all made you feel, you watched as he processed everything you said.

He seemed unsure of how to continue, until anger and what looked like insecurity started to cover his face. He moved your hand away (very lightly, you noticed) and started to step towards you as he raised his voice back at you, “Well what do you expect me to do about literally anything about this situation. I’m sorry that having to marry me is the worst thing that ever happened to you.”

“Sirius,” you sighed, regretfully.

But he was quick to continue before you could, “No, you got to tear me out, so now it’s my turn. Trust me, this hurts me too. I know how horrible our families and their rubbish traditions are. You are just as familiar with the abuse as I am, meaning that you know just as well as I do, that there isn’t anything that either of us can do against this.”

He took a step back and a deep, calming breath. He looked at you with an expression that was unreadable, “I wish there was something, anything, that I could do to help us feel less trapped but there’s nothing to do.”

You took a step closer to him, “Nothing about you, is the worst thing to ever happen to me. Really, if anything, you’re the best thing to happen to me. It’s because of you, that I feel less alone.”

At your admission, Sirius let out a breath of relief, as if you just lifted the world off of his shoulders. Was he really that worried about being a burden to you? You spoke up again, “I’m sorry for yelling at you. None of this is your fault and I shouldn’t have let my anger out on you.”

Sirius sighed, muttering the scourgify charm. The sticky juice was instantly cleaned off you and you already felt a little bit better.

Sirius grabbed your hand, holding it in both of his, “It’s alright. I understand what you’re going through. But we can get through this together.”

“You’re right,” you responded with a soft cry. You fell into his chest and softly cried out your frustrations. Sirius stood there, soothing you as best as he could, unwilling to let you out of his embrace.

“How about tonight, you meet me in the astronomy tower? We can do whatever, it doesn’t matter what. We can just hang out and forget about our families for once,” Sirius offered. He still had his arms around you in comfort.

Once your sniffles subsided, you hugged him just a little bit tighter, “That sounds amazing, Sirius.”

(A/N, I was thinking of doing a part 2 if you guys are interested. I was thinking it would be after the marriage but you guys still dance around the feelings you have for eachother. maybe you guys find a way to run away together too. i dont really know, yall let me know what you think)

[atzaurora]

Hello it's me again! I got an idea. For either Enhypen or Ateez. As a form of full angst or hurt/comfort where the reader is the youngest member in the group, but they are distant towards the members, due to how they/she is afraid of getting close to them and getting hurt. And how they get more hate than any other member. I love enhypen but if you can chose. Or ignore this idea/request have a nice day 🫶

─ ⊹ ⊱ ☆ ⊰ ⊹ ─

아프다-𝒉𝒖𝒓𝒕

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sᥴᥲrᥱძ 𝗍᥆ һᥙr𝗍

𝒎𝒆𝒎𝒃𝒆𝒓: ot7 Enhypen

𝒑𝒂𝒊𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒈: reader x ot7!enhypen

𝒕𝒚𝒑𝒆: imagine (angst)

𝒓𝒆𝒍𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒔𝒉𝒊𝒑: group members

.ᐟ.ᐟ𝒘𝒂𝒓𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒔.ᐟ.ᐟ: none

𝒔𝒖𝒎𝒎𝒂𝒓𝒚: read request at the top :)

𝒘/𝒄: 1.592

𝒂/𝒏: sorry it took me this long to write! I've been very busy lately and had to focus on other things than my tumblr unfortunately :/ anyways I decided to write this request with Enhypen since it was your preference so I hope you like how this turned out!

here's my 𝒎𝒂𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒍𝒊𝒔𝒕!

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It was late at night. All of the duties done for the day, leaving you 'alone' in the dorm. But you weren't actually alone. You had 7 other people around you. You loved them but you weren't sure how much. How much you could let them fully into your heart, into your life, into the person you were. And it wasn't even their fault. They had done nothing wrong. Ever. Yet you were scared. Not of them in particular but of the things they were capable of. Any person was capable of those things and they had been used on you before. So here you were, in a job you loved, with people you loved and still you were scared.

"Hey..." a head appeared in the doorframe of your room. "Do you want to play some games with us?" the voice echoed through the room. "I-... I gotta work on something, sorry. Maybe next time, Jay." You could see the smile fade from his face, just like every other time. He was probably not even expecting any other response from you by now. "That's alright. Feel free to join us if you change your mind." You weren't going to. He flashed you a small smile before closing the door again. You let out a sigh, laying your head down on the table, blocking out the room around you. You wanted to have fun with them, play video games with them, do all of the things they did together but some part of you just wouldn't let yourself.

You began actually working, even though it had just been a stupid excuse to not be close to them in any way. You wrote down plans, schedules, to-do lists, all kinds of stuff to distract yourself from the distance. You heard a knock again, this time it sounded different. Softer and more careful, it wasn't Jay again, you could tell. "Yes?" you answered, letting his presence fill the room, the scent picking in your nostrils, a different type of warmth filling the room, even though it wasn't cold in here. "Hi." Sunoo greeted you, his voice sounding gentle, as if he was being afraid he might break something of you, if he would sound a bit more harsh. "I came to check in on you. You weren't at dinner and I- I thought you might not be doing so well. You're barely hanging out with us." Your gaze softened, knowing he cared for you. They all did and you cared for them too. Sunoo wasn't much older, only almost 3 years separating the two of you, yet he was still behaving very motherly in a way. A good way, comforting and a safe feeling. "I know, I'm sorry, I just...have a lot of stuff to do." You lied. All you did was lie. No time here, too much on your plate there, never finding free time to spend with them. And they knew. They had to know by now, those were lies.

Sunoo stepped closer. Too close? You didn't know, didn't know what you could accept, what wouldn't cross the line for you, what wouldn't hurt you. Because that's what all of this was about. You did not want to get hurt. In any way. Both mentally and physically, it had happened too often, too much, to be right, too much to be accepted once again. He closed the door behind him, walking over to sit on the edge of your bed. "Are you okay? Do you want to talk about anything?" He smiled at you. It hurt to see him be this nice, while you couldn't even go play stupid video games with them, even though they had invited you. "Yeah, no, I'm- I'm fine." Another lie. "Are you sure? You know you can tell me if anything is bothering you. I'll listen." He looked at you, a little concerned, empathic maybe? You couldn't really tell. "Well...I mean there has been this thing with the fans lately and-" Oh great. You slipped. Spilled, too much already eventually? His face tightened. "What 'thing'?" He questioned. "Nevermind...forget it, it's not that deep anyways." You shrugged it off.

"No, no, please, Y/N, tell me. What's wrong? Did they do something to you?" You saw Sunoo shift on the bed, was he getting angry? Please don't let him be angry. "Well I've been getting a lot of...uh...'hate' might be too strong. Bad- bad comments? Yeah, bad comments about my behaviour." You started to fidget with the pen in your hands awkwardly. "Hate. Y/N, use the word as it is. What did they say?" Sunoo looked a little more worried now. "Is it bad?" "I mean no, not really, I'm overreacting, it's nothing. They just think I'm a lot more distant than the others. 'She doesn't fit in with them' they said. 'Black sheep of Enhypen'." You tried laughing it off a little. It did sound a bit ridiculous coming from your voice now. "No. It's not okay of them to say something like that. They're wrong. I mean, you are a little...distant but still they shouldn't comment on that." Sunoo complained. "See, even you think I'm distant. They're right and you know it." You felt a little hurt. Something you never wanted to feel. Not ever again. "That's not what I'm saying... it's just- Why, Y/N? Why?" You frowned at him "Why what?" "Why won't you be around us? What is it that you are so scared of?" He looked into your eyes, almost as if he was trying to read it off of them. Trying to figure out your thoughts by looking into them. You stuttered. You yourself weren't even exactly sure what your 'problem' was. You knew what you were feeling but you didn't know how to phrase it to make sense. "I'm scared, Sunoo. I'm the youngest in the group, almost a year younger than Ni-ki already. almost 3 years younger than you, it's difficult. I don't know if I fit in that much and then the fans...all eyes are on me. I'm just scared. I don't want to get hurt. By you, by them, by anyone." Never. Not again. You promised yourself you wouldn't let it get to you. But now that you were keeping a distance from them hurt you even more.

You could feel Sunoo's eyes widen, becoming more softer. Without a word he stood up from the bed, slowly approaching you. And then he hugged you. Without saying anything, he just stood there in front of you, arms wrapped around your back, holding your body close. "Y/N, I'm sorry. We should've known sooner." You could feel his grip tighten on you, not wanting to let go just yet. "We won't hurt you, we have no intentions of doing so, I promise. But I understand that you feel that way." He let go of you, looking at your face once again. "If it's okay, I'll talk to the others. I can explain it to them, you won't have to do it yourself." You nod your head "Yes, that would be good. Thank you. I'm sorry I haven't told you how I felt sooner." You give him a soft smile. "Don't apologise, you did it now and that's alright."

*35 minutes later*

You heard footsteps in front of your door, whispering voices before someone shushed them. You were lying on your bed, reading, when you heard a knock yet again. "Can we come in, Y/N?" A deep yet gentle voice asked. You could already tell it was Ni-ki but based on the many footsteps and the 'we' in his sentence, it was clear that whole Enhypen was outside your door right now. "Sure." You reply, sitting up straight in bed, your attention now on the opening door.

You were right, all 7 of them came stumbling in to your room. "Hey..." Jake was the first to speak up. He looked a little unsure of what to do. "We- I- Are you- are you alright?" He stumbled over his words. You knew he was trying to help in a way but didn't quite know where to start. "Yes...well sort of, but a lot better after talking to Sunoo." I nodded gratefully in his direction, small smiles painting onto their faces. "Yeah, he told us about...you know... everything you talked about." Heeseung says, an understanding look on his face. "We're sorry, we had no idea why you never did anything with us. But we understand and hope that maybe from now on you'll feel more comfortable." Jungwon's words were pure, you knew that he really meant what he said. "Yes, definitely, I really like you all. I just never...I don't even know, I was just so afraid." You lower your face a little, at this point you didn't even know why you felt like this. "It's alright, don't- don't explain, don't apologise. Please." Ni-ki says. You nod "Alright, I won't." You chuckle a little. "Good." Ni-ki and the others also have to laugh a little. It's nice like this. The mood soon shifts into a more relaxed mood. "Oh, and by the way, Y/N", Sunghoon turns towards you, "We'll have a little word with the company, telling them to release a statement, about the fan behaviour towards you." You smile at him. "Thank you. That would be really great."

And after a long time, you do join them in the living room. You do play video games with them. You do chat with them and you do laugh together. What were you so scared of?

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

[kai-tus]

we're so far behind lmao

Autism+ As well as being plural, we have AuDHD, maladaptive daydreaming, and sone vague mixture of personality disorders.

Infinite We've heard enough about Autism Speaks to hate it. Looking into it more would only upset us. It's painful knowing just how many allistics don't know why the puzzle piece is bad. Before we learned of it, we saw a particular youtube short where a spray paint artist made a painting dedicated to autistics. It included the puzzle piece. Our mom once made puzzle piece earrings. It's the little pains.

AuDHD Ah yes, our specialty. No, not really, we're actually quite terrible with handling the ADHD. Doing anything in life that isn't related to our interests is hard enough. And then you got people like our parents saying that they're both a part of the same spectrum. No. No they aren't. Not in the slightest.

Music Music is our current therapy. It helps us control our daydreaming. It helps us process our emotions. And sometimes we just simply want auditory stimulation. Music is just very awesome.

Verbose Infodumping. We don't do it often, since we actually get more scatterbrained the more we wanna say. But we absolutely love talking about queer shit. It's just so interesting how diverse one's experiences with one's identity can possibly be. The possibilities are infinite! Just today, actually: We found an aroallo Tumblr community that didn't allow ace or ace-spec people in, so we asked about that and explained our complicated experience with attraction and asked if we were still allowed in. It basically ended with us pointing out that the community uses the green and yellow aroallo flag, which was SPECIFICALLY intended to include ace-spec people, so there literally wasn't a hell of a lot they could say lmfao. The misinformation is WILD with some identities. Oh crap, I'm infodumping right now LMAO.

Individuals Before we learned more about autism, our only knowledge of it came from our brother, who was diagnosed at 3 because he has much more overt traits than we ever had (nevermind the fact that we hated eating anything green for a while when we were littler, even green jello). But this led us to internalize it and push us into a little bit of denial over it. Not a lot, since a week of intense research was able to clear that up (a week is LONG TIME for us, considering the fact that whenever something like this happens, we spend hours researching it, sometimes even entirely abandoning chores and homework until it's over). But we did eventually learn that autism is unique to every individual. Now, our brother and us have more 'typical' traits of autism, but our closest friend has moreso 'atypical' autism. His traits don't really line up a hell of a lot with ours, but we still kinda get each other more than any allistic ever will.

Neuroscope I've never heard this word before now, but it does have a point. Many times have we wandered into a new Discord server, truly enjoyed being there, and then eventually found out that most of the people there are heavily neurodivergent. NOT a coincidence.

Non-speaking We are not non-speaking (even tho we REALLY wanna be but the current state of our life doesn't really permit it yet), but our brother is. Our family keeps trying to encourage him to say words, and every time they do it's like we can literally feel one of our brain cells die. We dislike that they keep trying to get him to talk. He and us once had a perfectly normal conversation completely without words at all. And he can communicate without words. But their motivation is that they wanna understand him to understand how to best help him. I can kinda understand that, but not fully. We don't need to hear him tell us what he needs for us to know what he needs, because we understand him better. Of course, when we try to tell them what he needs, they don't listen. Classic allistic.

Community We've found a lot of solace in neurodivergent spaces ever since we figured out that we're NOT "just lazy". We're still trying to figure out how to function, but it's still very nice to have support and know that we aren't alone :]

TL;DR: Ableist family tries not to be ableist but FAILS miserably; Brain stuff is wacky and complicated; M u s i c; We know way too many pride flags LMAO

[thefactsofthematter]

hello newsies tumblr! i’m back to post a scene i found in a random wip folder, from a fic that will probably never exist in full lol

please enjoy some sad canon era javid <3

-

"...and I know we don't pray the same way, you and I, but your folks said you might not mind it if I sat with you and did this. Only one God, ain't there, so I figures we can ask Him for all the help we can get, every which way. Ain’t no harm in extra prayers."

That's Jack's voice.

David is awake, sort of, but too tired to open his eyes. His body is itchy, but he's too tired to scratch himself. His throat burns, so he doesn't dare try and speak.

He just lays there.

"This was my Ma's." He's placing something in David's hand. A string of beads, it feels like. "I should take the time to sit and pray it more often. She carried it everywhere. Only thing I've got left of her, really."

He wraps the beads around David's palm.

"You start at the bottom, see," Jack continues, as if he knows David's listening, "and you say a prayer for every bead. And you gotta have an intention, right— mine for today is that I'm asking God to get you better, 'cause you're starting to scare everyone, Dave, what with how you just keep getting sicker and the fever won't break. We can't go losing you anytime soon, so you've gotta get yourself better as soon as you can."

He's very sick, David realizes. That's why he can't move.

He's a bit scared.

But it's hard to stay scared for long with Jack Kelly holding your hand, so he starts to feel calm again.

"In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti," Jack murmurs.

David hadn’t realized Jack knew Latin. Wonders where he learned it, since he would've left school before the grades they started teaching it. He only went to school until he was eight— he told David that.

"Credo in Deum, Patrem omnipotentem, Creatorem caeli et terrae..."

Jack continues on in words that David's tired brain can't make sense of, but it's rhythmic and soothing. There's a cadence to it like Jack doesn't actually know what he's saying, has just memorized the sounds, probably at church— it's like how David felt about some Hebrew prayers when he was little, just echoing back what he heard others speak.

From bead to bead, Jack mumbles quiet prayers, and David finds himself, somewhere in his fever-addled brain, feeling quite charmed and grateful that Jack would show him this private, vulnerable side of himself. His faith is deeply personal to him, David knows— it's there in the way he never puts on his arrogant show towards the nuns, the way he's quick to take his cap off even on the steps of the church, the way he scrubs the littlest newsies into their very best shape on Saturday nights and drags them to mass on Sunday mornings. David loves to watch him in those short moments before he eats his dinner each day, lips moving silently as he gives thanks.

It's a softer side of Jack Kelly that often stays well-hidden, but makes itself very endearing when it peeks through.

"I think I might be praying for a miracle," Jack sighs, after a long time of quiet whispering, counting along the beads. His voice is a bit shaky now. "But they happens, you know. They said so in the good book. I know it's the very same God lookin' after you and I, and I know He loves you and won't take you away from us here on Earth, not just yet. Ain't your time."

And he takes the beads from David's palm, replacing them with his own hand. He intertwines their fingers and squeezes.

David tries to squeeze back. It's weak, pitiful, but enough for Jack to gasp.

"I knew it," he whispers. "Oh, I knew it, I knew it, Dave. You're there, ain't you? You're listening."

And David wishes he could give him anything more, but he can feel sleep creeping up on him again, so he lets it come. Not much else he can do, but it's nice to hear some hope in Jack's voice.

[dreamycloud]

💘 fake relationship / mutual pining / dared to kiss with any Lokius variants of your choosing :D

@mobius-m-mobius, it's finally HERE!!!!! I've been SO excited to tackle this prompt, and I'm happy to report that this story is doneeeee. I did in fact use a Lokius variant, but not one seen in my Losing Dogs fic. This one is about a Loki who never had to sacrifice himself to save the multiverse, and a Mobius ignorant of how close he had come to losing Loki for good 😭 And there's also unlimited pie involved. So there's that.

FYl, if you missed any of the kiss prompts l've answered, you can find them on tumblr or all together on AO3 here. This is the last kiss prompt that was sent to me, so if anyone has anything else they'd like to see, feel free to ask. It just may take me a while since l'll be divided with other projects.

Loki rubbed his thumb back and forth on the lip of his coffee mug, staring into his distorted reflection. Like a crystal ball, the pitch-black liquid revealed the lines of exhaustion on his face. Lines that weren’t going anywhere unless he acted.

“Still having nightmares?” Mobius asked, spearing a baby tomato with his fork.

Loki nodded, watching his reflection lead nose first in the motion. “Something inside me knows that the mission could have gone sideways.”

“But it didn’t,” Mobius said easily, the way someone who did sleep at night would speak.

The power of friendship, a concept foreign to Loki before the TVA, ended up being the key to saving the multiverse. He had time slipped far enough back in time to forge an easy friendship with O.B., who wasn’t troubled at all with some strange man invading his work space and begging him to take on a special project. Loki lived on smuggled food and slept under O.B.’s desk in the Repairs and Advancement Department until O.B drafted up a workable design for the expansion of the Temporal Loom. Then, flashing forward in time, he knew exactly where O.B. Had squirreled the plans away so that they wouldn’t have been disturbed in the interim. Loki pulled the plans, O.B. vaguely recalled them, and the rest of the TVA family stepped up to turn those blueprints into reality.

The new Sustainability Department was in charge of building and installing further extensions as the tree grew. Good thing the TVA had kidnapped millions of employees, because they needed everyone involved in this massive undertaking. Verity got the new department up and running in record time.

And yet, Loki still felt unsettled. “Yes, but it could have gone terribly wrong, Mobius,” he insisted. “What if the plans hadn’t worked? You know as well as I do what needed to happen next.”

Mobius stiffened. His knuckles bloomed white as he gripped his fork. “I wouldn’t have let you,” he whispered.

The heart fluttering inside Loki’s chest skipped. “I know,” he said softly. It was all too easy to imagine Mobius fisting his hands in Loki’s jacket, vise-gripping him into stillness while the world ended. He demanded a Loki Who Remained, and he would have been the biggest fool alive to keep Loki from sacrificing himself to save the multiverse—not that Loki didn’t appreciate the gesture.

The problem was, his dreams reminded him of the alternative future he narrowly avoided, where Loki watched his friends die on the gangway over and over. He saw himself draped in a green cowl, bare-handedly pouring his magic into dying branches and making them live again. A horned crown of black rock and gold cracks. An eternity alone.

He couldn’t take anything for granted. Loki needed to reach for what he desired, starting—and ending—with Mobius. So he had a plan. A bit of mischief. “Let’s talk about something else,” he said, leaning his elbows on the table. “Like the big party at the end of the month-cycle? Verity’s idea, if I recall?”

Mobius blew out his breath. “Yeah, okay. It’s a good idea. We all deserve a party after the reorg.”

Loki schooled his expression into bright-eyed innocence. “Then you heard about the contest?”

Mobius gave him a searching look and shoveled another forkful of salad into his mouth.

With an hour lunch break, they had fallen into the habit of eating slowly, feet tangled under the table, watching the TVA wind itself up. Mobius was on a weight loss campaign, and with no small amount of displeasure, Loki watched that primordial pouch of belly shrink over the top of Mobius’ belt. But he had to pick his battles, and he had a more important one to engage.

“The cutest couple contest,” Loki supplied as Mobius chewed his salad. He batted his lashes and watched the way Mobius’ throat bobbed in response. “The prize is unlimited automat pies for an entire year-cycle.”

Mobius swallowed. “Some lucky bastards will enjoy that.”

“We’re the lucky bastards,” Loki said with a wide grin. He fanned out his hands. “You and I. We’re going to win.”

Mobius blinked. A frown tugged at the corners of his mouth. “You want us to pretend to be couple so we win the prize?”

“There’s my clever agent,” Loki said, holding the grin.

Mobius rocked his head side to side, irritated. “Come on, Loki. No one is gonna buy that.”

“Why not?” Loki nudged his foot against Mobius’ under the table. “It’s easier than you think. We’re always together. All we have to do is turn up the heat. All that pie is as good as ours.”

“You don’t even like pie.”

“But you do,” Loki said, so quietly Mobius must have strained to hear him. That was the point. Loki would gladly stuff his cheeks with key lime, cherry, and guava just to see Mobius glow with simple joy. He wanted to sit across from Mobius for a whole year-cycle, watching him eat pie. He couldn’t think of anything more pleasurable. He wanted to give this to Mobius, because his gut was telling him that it was a miracle he was even sitting here, right, now, with the opportunity.

Mobius set down his fork, appetite oddly lost. He looked confused, annoyed, but also hopeful. There was twinkle in his eye. He licked his lips and seemed to settle into the idea. “It would be nice not to have to watch our tokens.”

Loki nodded, encouraging.

“We wouldn’t have to put off pie if we wanted it. Hell, I could eat pie for every meal of the day,” Mobius said, flashing a boyish smile.

Loki’s own smile twitched. He didn’t think he could stomach eating that much pie, but Norns, he’d do it. He would subject his stomach to torture for this man. “Then we’re in agreement.”

Mobius gave a cautious nod.

“Good,” Loki said, unable to hide his devious grin, “because I already submitted our names.”

“Loki!”

#

Loki had always been a master at brooding, but Mobius thought the god was laying it on thick now. Plagued with nightmares that left him pale and skittish, talking about what ifs as if the depressing scenarios could still happen—Mobius wished he could understand why Loki was so worried when their problems were behind them.

Thanks to Loki’s time slipping, saving the multiverse had been a cake walk. Mobius offered encouragement and an extra pair of hands as they unearthed the hidden blueprints and the extension parts from deep storage. Everyone suited up, crowded the gangway, and completed the installation under Loki’s direction. Judge Gamble, promoted to Director of the TVA, bestowed the gleaming medals herself for a job well done. So to Mobius, the future was what mattered, and it was looking awfully bright.

Why then, did Mobius catch Loki looking at him like he was about to disappear?

Falling into the beam of Loki’s gaze left him breathless and flushed. The god’s eyes seemed to grasp at him, looking for something in Mobius to glom onto like an anchor in a stormy sea. He would give anything to stop Loki’s nightmares. That was what best friends did.

That was what friends who craved more did too.

Mobius harbored a crush on Loki for so long it felt like an extra appendage on his soul. The last thing he wanted to do was ruin their friendship by asking for more, and here was Loki, hitting the accelerator to launch them into new, dangerous territory.

Fake dating. Free pie. What could go wrong? Assuming of course, that Mobius was only in it for the pie. Which he wasn’t. He was very much interested in the fake dating being real. But Loki probably wasn’t.

“What Loki is,” Mobius muttered, making his way to the Archives, “is bored. The God of Mischief needs an enrichment activity.”

If the god chose Mobius as the enrichment activity, then damn it, who was he to say no? He didn’t have that kind of strength.

The Archives got more use after entire departments had been reorganized for the tracking and eradication of dangerous Kang variants in the multiverse. With such a wide and rotating audience, it seemed like the perfect spot to demonstrate their fake coupleness.

As Mobius walked between tables, he recounted the ground rules: touching above the belt was okay, and touching thighs and knees were fine when they were seated, and pet names could be laid on thick, no matter how cringeworthy. Mobius had plenty of those.

“Hey, sugar booger,” Mobius called, loudly, with an impish grin. A few heads turned, brows quirked, and Mobius grinned wider. Then he softened when he realized his god had dozed off, gently snoring on a stack of files.

Loki’s hands curled loosely on the surface of the desk. Each exhale made the papers flutter.

Mobius would have normally taken a seat across from the sleeping god, but they were supposed to be a couple now so he sat right next to Loki, thighs brushing as he pushed in his chair, and unearthed a file from under Loki’s elbow.

He read for a bit, content to listen to the unprince-like snores coming from Loki. Loki hadn’t been sleeping well, the ghost of his old self, and Mobius wasn’t about to risk disturbing such a rare moment of rest. But they had an audience, so what could he do to further their cause?

An attentive lover would find ways to caress and claim his boyfriend, even in sleep. Mobius snuck a glance over his file and saw that a lock of Loki’s hair had spilled onto his cheek. Mobius gently reached over and tucked the curl behind Loki’s ear.

Loki shifted, mumbling incoherently. His curled hands twitched and closed, as if he was trying to grab something.

Mobius’ insides melted. “Hey,” he murmured, running his fingers through Loki’s curls, “I’m here. I’m right here.”

Loki made a soft moaning sound. His brows notched in distress and a muscle jumped in his jaw. His fingers curled into fists. “No,” Loki hissed as a tear squeezed out of his eye. “Come back.”

Mobius dropped his file and put more pressure into his touch, sweeping through his curls and caressing the god’s scalp. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said, tensing when Loki tensed, sensing how deeply Loki was spiraling from dream to nightmare. “Loki, please. Wake up.”

Loki gasped, thrashing and knocking a file off the table. Tears spilled like rainwater down his cheeks.

“Loki,” Mobius whispered, shaking the god awake. “Hey, you’re having a nightmare. Get up. Open your eyes.”

With a shout, Loki whipped his head back. Green eyes wet with fear and unspeakable sorrow scanned the room and then fell heavily on Mobius. “Mobius?”

“Sweetheart, you’re okay,” Mobius said, shifting in his chair to face Loki. He slotted one knee between Loki’s thighs and pulled the god’s face closer to his. “Wanna tell me what the nightmare was?”

Loki panted, his hot breath washing over Mobius. “You weren’t you. You went by another name, your timeline name, and you didn’t trust me.”

“That doesn’t sound like me,” Mobius agreed, still framing Loki’s face. He swished a thumb through the glimmering tear tracks on the god’s face, disturbing the pattern.

“It was you but it wasn’t you,” Loki said, gibberish really, but Mobius just nodded encouragingly. “You had a life, Mobius. There was no room in it for me.”

Mobius rejected the notion with the shake of his head. Absurd. “That can’t be true. You carved out a Loki-sized hole in me, and there’s no filling it with anyone but you.”

Loki’s breath hitched. A fresh tear slid down his cheek.

He wasn’t sure what dormant instinct flared to life from seeing Loki in such misery, but he knew what to do, even though he had never done it before. He leaned forward and pressed a kiss against Loki’s glossy cheek. He tasted salt and felt silk under his lips. The god had perfect skin, but now he felt just how perfect and wanted to keep his lips there forever.

Loki made a soft sound, like a sigh. “Mobius—”

“Hush,” Mobius whispered, pressing kiss after kiss on his left cheek, and then tilting the god’s head so he could cover his right cheek with gentle kisses. He drifted lower, feeling the sharp jut of Loki’s chin with his mouth, tracing the line of his jaw and drinking up the god’s sour tears. His heart pounded. His hands shook as he held Loki still. Something was driving him, and he let go of the wheel.

Loki spoke his name like it was an incantation, hot and breathy. One hand grabbed Mobius’ tie, using it as an anchor. The other hand drifted ghostlike up and down the front of Mobius’ shirt, following the trail of buttons but making no move to open his shirt.

Mobius pulled Loki’s head down and pressed a firm kiss to his forehead. “No more nightmares, schmoopie. Let it go.”

Loki coughed. “Excuse me, but ‘schmoopie?’”

Mobius buried his nose in Loki’s hair and idly kissed the bump of Loki’s temple. “Got a problem with that?”

“It’s horrible.”

“It sounds like music when I say it,” Mobius said, leaning back with a smug smile. “Go on. Fight me. You wouldn’t do that to your boyfriend.”

Loki cracked his first smile since waking up. “I shudder to think of what other names you’re saving for me.”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Mobius murmured. His gaze flicked to the god’s lips. New territory. Once he was there, he couldn’t tear his eyes away. Since they were pretending, wouldn’t it be okay to kiss Loki on the lips? Shouldn’t they do it soon, get some practice, before they have to do on command to trick their friends?

Loki went still, his palm flattening against Mobius’ chest.

Mobius inched forward, licked his own lips, desire pooling in his belly like liquid fire. But then he heard someone clear their throat.

Casey stood on the other side of the desk with a file in his arms. His face was red, but he was grinning as his eyes darted between the two of them. “Um, sorry, but Verity wants you to have a look at the case file from Xandar. Uh. Here you go.” He threw the file on the table and darted away.

“Well,” Loki said, leaning far enough back that Mobius had to drop his hands from the god’s face. “He caught us kissing. This is good. He’ll tell everyone.”

Mobius flinched. Right. This was all a ruse. For the unlimited pie. By the time Loki looked at him, he had his own mask on, a foolish smile that was so far from his real feelings on the matter. “Hah. Right. Casey is quite the gossip.”

Loki sniffed and scrubbed the tear tracks off his face.

Mobius watched, heart aching, and hoped he wasn’t also wiping off the memory of all those kisses he gave the god. He was too afraid to ask.

“So. The file?”

Loki took a shaky breath. “Right. The file.”

They got to work.

#

Covered in filmy asteroid dust, filthy and worn down from the fight, the TVA unit closed in on the Kang variant. Loki grabbed hold of Mobius’ arm and swung him out of the way of a passing bullet from the Kang variant’s gun. He was too keyed up to get angry; expending his magic as a solid green shield was one thing to protect his partner, but he couldn’t seem to stop Mobius from getting right in the middle of the action.

“Stay behind me,” he said, grunting when he pulled one way and Mobius the other, resulting in them slamming into each other.

“The hell I will,” Mobius replied, frying a stray bullet with the tip of his Time Stick. He whooped and adjusted his grip, ready for more. “Someone has to watch your back.”

“That’s what I’m doing for you,” Loki said.

“Sure, honey pot.”

Loki rolled his eyes.

O.B. and Casey had come along on the mission, but neither made a move to catch the variant. And why should they have, when Sylvie put everyone to shame by beating the Kang variant to a pulp?

Sylvie shoved a booted foot into the variant’s back and crushed him into the ground so Verity could clamp a Time Collar around his neck. Once the collar’s red light hummed on, everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Mission successful.

Loki squeezed the meat of Mobius’ upper arm, all muscle and softness and warmth. He flung his hair out of his eyes and glared down at the man. “You could have gotten yourself killed.”

“Your worst nightmare, yeah, yeah,” Mobius said with a shrug. He didn’t fight the grip Loki had on him, now that the danger passed. “Keep in mind my eons of experience in the field. I used to be a hunter, pudding. I can hold my own. You, on the other hand, didn’t even land a hit on Kang. Where was your head?”

On you, Loki wanted to say, but that was too close to the truth for their charade of a relationship. He wasn’t sure why pretending to date enflamed his protective instincts, but it did, and he hadn’t yet mastered those chaotic feelings.

“Hey, lover boys,” Sylvie shouted with a shit-eating grin, “mission’s over. You can stop bickering and just kiss already.”

The breath punched out of Loki’s chest. Alarmed, he looked around at their friends.

There was an… expectation in the air. O.B. had been fiddling with his TemPad, and without taking his eyes off the screen, he laid on a sweet smile. Casey blushed. Sylvie crossed her arms, lifted her chin. And Verity, who was on the committee that would decide which couple got the unlimited pie, cocked an eyebrow their way.

Cutest couple. Right. Yes. That was… them. Him and Mobius. Time to prove it. With. A. Kiss. Loki felt all this muscles freeze up at once. He knew he had a wild look in his eyes. His chest worked like bellows, but there wasn’t enough air on the asteroid to feed him.

“Hey,” came Mobius’ whisper, a light in the dark. “Earth to Loki. C’mon, pookie. We got this. It’s just a kiss.”

He was not Loki, God of Seduction, no matter what history thought of him. He could count on his fingers the number of times he’d kissed someone. But Mobius knew that. Mobius knew everything about him. There was nothing to be ashamed of, right? Loki shot him a pleading look that said please, understand me. I want this. I want you.

Mobius seemed to read him fine. Of course he did. Affection made the analyst’s eyes glitter. “Let’s give ‘em the old razzle dazzle,” he said loudly and pulled Loki down to land on his mouth.

They could have kept the kiss simple, a perfunctory statement that would keep them in the running for pie but not cross any friendship-ruining lines. However, Mobius hadn’t gotten the memo. He stood on his toes to slot his mouth firmly against Loki’s. His lips were soft, kisses scratchy thanks to the mustache, but that didn’t stop the wave of goosebumps breaking out on Loki’s skin. The god instinctively looped his arms around Mobius’ neck; he hung on for dear life, fingers curling into the analyst’s jacket, a low rumble building in his throat.

Mobius flicked his tongue against the seam of Loki’s lips, turning that rumble into a moan. He was playing dirty.

Loki gasped, pulling back to catch his breath, and then dove between Mobius’ parted lips with his searching tongue.

Time crumbled away. His was dizzy with the sweet, clean scent of Mobius’ skin mixed with the musky asteroid dust, the heat of Mobius’ mouth, Mobius’ hands steady and gentle against his brittle bones. This was a game Loki had always been destined to lose.

“Is it getting hot on this asteroid or what?” Sylvie said with a snicker.

The kiss broke off as sharply as it started. Loki panted, cracking his eyes open to see Mobius looking up at him with flushed cheeks and a soft, wondrous grin. His mouth was red from their kissing. Loki wanted to catch the analyst’s bottom lip between his teeth, but he couldn’t feel his own legs.

“Well,” Mobius said, his voice deliciously hoarse, “you certainly asked for it, Sylvie.”

Sylvie scrunched her nose, but she looked rather pleased with herself. “I sure did.”

Loki reluctantly peeled his arms off Mobius. Taking stock of himself, he knew he looked rather shaken up, and he couldn’t throw on a mask to hide it. His body ached with fresh pleasure. He was terrified that his heart was in his eyes, so he looked down at the ground instead. Dust caked his shoes.

Verity snorted, but she didn’t sound annoyed. Like Sylvie, there was smugness in her voice as she hauled the Kang variant up off the ground. “Let’s get going. We have paperwork waiting for us.”

Oh joy. Loki drew in a shaky breath and snuck a glance at Mobius.

Norns, the analyst caught him looking and winked.

#

“Darling” was the pet name Loki settled into for Mobius. Just one pet name, but said so tenderly that it sent shivers down Mobius’ spine each time he heard that silky tag at the end of an unsuspecting sentence.

Sometimes it would come after an insult, a sharp little “could you be more careless with your life?” on a mission where Mobius threw himself into firing range, a flimsy human shield shoved between a Kang variant and one of his friends, but then Loki’s stinging bite would end in a soothing lick when he’d say “darling” in that shaky, sweet tone that put Mobius in knots. Other times, like today, it would be innocently murmured at the lunch table alongside a gesture of kindness that was becoming more and more common in their charade.

Casey, O.B., and Verity joined them for lunch, eyes on Loki as he approached the table with an orange lunchbox stolen from Mobius’ apartment.

“What the hell is that?” Mobius asked, only vaguely realizing it was his TVA standard-issue insulated lunchbox, one most employees never used because the cafeteria was more convenient than cooking.

“My lunch, darling,” Loki said, brushing his finger softly against Mobius’ cheek as he sank into the chair next to him.

Mobius used all his willpower not to trace the warm line on his tingling skin. He looked down at the sad little bowl of salad he’d plucked from the day-cycle’s offerings. With all the field missions, he needed to cut down on his sugar and carbs, which only increased his peevishness… but that was the price of healthy choices.

“You wouldn’t believe what happened to me on the way here,” Loki said as he slowly unzipped the lunchbox. His eyes glittered, his grin was stage-ready, as he launched into a story about a rude man he bumped into while waiting for the elevator. “He said I needed a haircut. A haircut? Can you believe it? Cutting off these curls would be a crime. The punishment? A swift pruning.”

“We don’t prune anymore,” Verity pointed out, sternly, but a smile snuck up on her.

“Perhaps that new rule should be reconsidered,” Loki said lightly, pulling out a container steamed over with hot food. He popped off the lid, revealing a bed of rice and a cut of perfectly-cooked salmon glistening with brown sauce. The smell was exquisite.

Mobius felt, rather than heard, his stomach growl. He stubbornly speared a few leaves and shoved them in his mouth.

“So I told him, ‘have you ever tried growing out your own hair? You might be surprised to find that a nice long braid would flatter your face shape,’” Loki said, cutting his salmon into slices. Without taking his eyes off his captive audience, he scooped up a few slices, a portion of rice, and set them on the lid of the container. Then he slid the lid over to Mobius.

Mobius blinked, hard. His stomach begged for that offered salmon. The delicious scent teased him like Loki often did—irresistible and unrelenting.

Loki said something else Mobius hadn’t caught, let out a gracious laugh, and nudged Mobius with his shoulder. “Go on, darling. Eat.”

“This is your lunch,” Mobius said stupidly.

“Clever man,” Loki said with a knife-like grin. “But I made too much. You’ll just have to help me finish it.”

Casey hid a chuckle behind his hand. O.B. watched with a sweet little smile. And Verity? Verity was very much amused.

Mobius didn’t know how and when the pampered God of Mischief learned to cook, but the salmon was perfect. More than perfect. Savory and tender and still hot from the oven rather than the smelly microwaves in the cafeteria. There was magic involved, but Mobius was too ravenous to care.

This became a habit in the weeks leading up to the party. Whenever they shared meals between missions, Loki would show up with that lunchbox hanging off his shoulder, and he would yap incessantly as he split his homemade (magic-made?) lunch with Mobius. Was this how the god chose to flirt? Was it a quiet thank you for saving the day with a kiss?

At the time, Mobius had been all flash, all show, while inside he’d been shaken to the core. That mission had been weeks ago, and they hadn’t kissed since, but Mobius replayed it often enough in his head.

Moving first to press their lips together had been easy because it came from a place of protection. Loki needed protection, both from himself and from others, and Mobius had been doing it so long, it was second nature to shield Loki from the consequences of his actions. What had been the consequence that time? A kiss Loki had never planned on giving.

If he died tomorrow, Mobius would call up the memory of Loki’s rumbling moan and talented tongue until the lights went out. One kiss was one kiss more than he ever expected to have with Loki.

Mobius was greedy, though. A glutton in more ways than one. He took what Loki offered. The hot meals, the “darlings,” the brief, gentle touches, the heated glances.

“Don’t mind if I do, jellybean,” Mobius said, digging into the trout Loki slid his way.

Loki grimaced at the nickname. “Darling, what is a jellybean?”

“You don’t know?” Casey asked, which, all things considered, was the funniest sort of irony.

Mobius laughed mid-chew and lost some of his trout. He was disgusting but Loki only looked at him fondly and wiped his chin with a napkin.

He was a goner.

#

The command center had been liberally decorated with orange and red streamers hanging in loops from the suspended monitors. The screens had been turned off to discourage work for a few hours, though Loki knew Verity had employees on rotation, watching the Loom to make sure the extensions would outlast the small reprieve. Serving staff orbited the room, offering hors d’oeuvres and wine as clear as water.

He sniffed the crusty bread topped with tomato balsamic glaze he’d plucked from a passing tray. No doubt this came from a branch rather than the TVA kitchens. Loki slid the whole thing in his mouth and chewed loudly while his gaze flicked over the crowded room. Where was Mobius?

“Don’t you look dapper?” Sylvie said, sipping from a glass of whisky. She must have smuggled the whisky with her, because he didn’t see an open bar.

“You clean up well yourself, sister,” Loki said.

She looked down at the black sheath dress and jingling gold bracelets on her wrists. With a shrug, she said, “Can’t let Verity down. Where’s your boyfriend?”

Boyfriend. What an uninspired term. How he loved it. Weeks of hard work went into making the TVA think he and Mobius were an item. He couldn’t wait to see the look on Mobius’ face when they won.

“Fussing with his tux, I imagine,” Loki said.

“Shouldn’t you be fussing with his tux?” Sylvie said, suspicion creeping into her voice.

If anyone thought the relationship was a sham, it would be another Loki. Still, he wasn’t worried. She wouldn’t rat them out this late in the game. “Not my choice,” Loki said smoothly, which was true. They’d picked out their tuxes together, but Mobius had hung back in his apartment, looking for a different pair of dress shoes or something silly.

He couldn’t remember the excuse, but he could tell Mobius was nervous. Truth be told, Loki was nervous too. The pressure was on and he didn’t know what tomorrow would look like. Would Mobius want to “break up” right away, or extend their pretend relationship for a few weeks, just to make it look more realistic when they parted ways?

Loki took a shuddery breath. He blinked away the extra water in his eyes. Where in the nine realms had that come from? He wasn’t going to cry.

Sylvie watched him over the lip of her whisky glass. Then a lethal grin stretched her lips. “There he is.”

Loki turned, nearly giving himself whiplash.

The analyst was beaming as he entered the room, immediately caught up with greetings from his fellow employees. His black tux was simple but tailored perfectly, showing off his broad shoulders and the mere hint of that sweet belly tucked behind a crisp, ivory button-down. Mobius had styled and gelled his silver hair, parted on the side, and his mustache looked neat and freshly trimmed.

Sylvie shot him a fond look. “Wipe that drool off your chin and get going.”

Loki almost did, scowling at her when he caught himself, and strode across the room. It felt easy, like sliding into a pair of silk house slippers, when he snaked an arm around Mobius’ waist and tucked into his side.

Mobius’ breath caught; he leaned into Loki, his own fingers splaying over the dip between Loki’s waist and hip. “Hey, sweetheart,” he said with a tense but genuine smile. “You look incredible.”

Loki wanted to weep. This was too easy. Too warm and comfortable, the way they fit together. How was he going to give this up after tonight? “You’re not so bad yourself, darling,” he murmured.

The rest of the TVA drifted away like a fragile daydream. Loki was alone with Mobius, as alone as anyone could be at a big party, and he refused to let go. “Are you interested in any wine?” Loki said, struggling for words when all he wanted was to memorize the way Mobius looked tonight.

“Nah,” Mobius said with a nervous laugh. “Too fancy. When are they wheeling out the pizza? That’s more my speed.”

Loki tilted his head, brimming with affection for this man. He felt his own smile melt like butter, spreading his real feelings across his face for anyone to see.

Mobius looked right back, puzzled. His lips parted, and he was about to ask—

“Can I have everyone’s attention?” Verity asked, tapping her knife against her wine glass.

Loki blinked, stuffed his heart back under his skin, and led Mobius into the crowd circling Verity.

This was the first party the Time Variance Authority had in… immeasurable time. Verity acknowledged that, while also reminding everyone in attendance that the old TVA was gone for good, and together, they would protect the natural growth and expansion of time and all its wayward branches. A lovely speech, but Loki only listened with one ear. Mobius’ hand resting comfortably on his waist crackled like a fire under his skin. He felt drunk on that steady touch, more potent than the wine in his half-drained glass.

Caught up in the feeling of rightness, Loki lost the thread of Verity’s words. He could freeze time, right now, using his powers selfishly just to keep the moment a little longer.

“…the vote was unanimous,” Verity said, loudly, puncturing Loki’s thoughts. “The winner of the cutest couple contest is… our very own temporal heroes, Loki Laufeyson and Mobius M. Mobius!”

The crowd erupted with cheers and clinking glasses. The faces staring back at him weren’t surprised. As if the vote, which statistically should not have been unanimous, was agreed upon behind the scenes. If he and Mobius had been cheating, then the rest of the TVA had cheated as well. Funny, that.

Loki put on his most charismatic smile, all for the crowd, as he held Mobius close—his analyst was not allowed to break away, not for any reason—and then he finally snuck a glance at Mobius.

His heart cracked down the middle.

Mobius was not, in fact, smiling. Lines of worry claimed his forehead. His brows scrunched, like he was trying to hold back a storm of feeling.

Loki panicked and snapped his fingers. The room ticked to a stop.

Mobius pulled out of Loki’s grip, startled by the sudden silence that came with paused time. “Loki,” he said, his voice echoing strangely, “what have you done?”

“We need to talk,” Loki said over the pounding on his heart.

Mobius studied the cheering, joyful faces beaming back at them. Then he slowly, painfully, returned his gaze to Loki. “Yeah, okay.”

“You don’t look like a man who is about to gorge himself on unlimited pie for a year-cycle,” Loki said gently.

Mobius huffed. “It’s not that I’m not grateful, Loki.”

Grateful? Loki flinched.

“You know how much I love pie. This really is a dream come true. For me, really, because you hate the automat pie.” Mobius said with a sad little chuckle. “I don’t know why you felt like you needed to give me this, but…”

“Because it was in my power to do so,” Loki said, gripping Mobius’ forearms tightly. “Because there are days when the only bright spot is you and pie and the effervescent glow you give off when you partake in that slice of artificial, chemical filth.”

Mobius swallowed thickly. “What are you saying?”

“Maybe I wanted to make you happy, but I want to make myself happy too. Sometimes,” he said, squeezing his eyes shut as his chaotic thoughts settled, “when I’m tangled in a nightmare, I can claw my way out of it because I remember the little moan you made from the first bite of guava pie, or the bit of whipped cream that stayed on your nose even after you wiped your face. Those memories ground me. They keep me from falling deeper when you’re not…” There. With me.

Mobius gingerly removed himself from Loki’s hold. He read Loki like a book he’d found splayed open on the floor.

Loki let himself be read. His fears and hope mingle sickeningly in his gut.

Then, of all things, Mobius laughed. It was a bright, hash sound, made terrible by the unnatural silence in the command room. It was a belly laugh. Tears pricked the corners of his eyes. His cheeks flushed.

Loki could have died right there.

“Wait, sweetheart,” Mobius said between laughs. He clumsily reached out and pawed at Loki’s sleeve. “Give me,” he wheezed, “a second.”

“I’m glad you find this all so funny,” Loki said stiffly.

“It is funny,” Mobius said after finding his breath. “It’s called irony, Loki. I thought you were faking it to win the contest, so I pretended like I was faking it too. But we both were pretty bad at pretending.” He wiped his face with shaking hands. “The only two people fooled were us.”

Loki made a choked noise. His heart was shattering and repairing itself all at once.

“We’ve been dating the whole time,” Mobius insisted with a great big beaming grin.

Loki let that sink in. Warmed his face in the light of Mobius’ happiness.

“Why’d you fake it? Why didn’t you just tell me what you wanted?” Mobius said, smile dimming but no less potent.

“I have you now as my friend,” Loki whispered, and a tear he couldn’t stop slid down his cheek. “I don’t want to lose you, ever. Not the way the nightmares show me, and not because I wanted more.”

“You won’t,” Mobius said softly. He closed the gap between them. “You’ll never get rid of me. Not now, and not in any universe.”

Loki whimpered and pressed his mouth to Mobius’. Misery and love in every kiss. He nipped at Mobius’ lips, leaving them red and soft, licking the pain away. Mobius welcomed the bites and licks, opened his mouth wider, fisted Loki’s curls and yanked them together so their noses smashed and they stepped on each others’ feet. It was messy and aggressive. Loki wanted to claw and dig his way into Mobius’ chest and stay there, protected by his bones and strong, throbbing heart.

“It’s okay, Loki,” Mobius said brokenly, between breaths, roughly stroking Loki’s jaw.

“‘Sweetheart,’” Loki corrected, kissing Mobius’ cheek.

“That’s the one you like?” Mobius asked with an amused huff.

“Sounds real when you say it,” Loki confessed.

Mobius groaned and dipped his tongue between Loki’s lips.

Time snapped back into ticking. Loki must have done it unconsciously. Suddenly the room was roaring and paper confetti was being thrown in their faces. Verity banged loudly on her wine glass and yelled, “Hey, you two! Stop the show before clothes start coming off.”

Clothes. Off. Now that was an idea. Loki and Mobius exchanged a heated glance.

Loki bowed to the crowd with a flourish and plucked the two special orange tokens Verity held out.

“Shall we get pie?” Loki asked, tossing a token to Mobius.

His analyst grinned back. “I thought you’d never ask.”

[lemotmo]

I love it when people who at least have an idea of how these things work get questions like this.

Q. Did you hear Ryan's podcast? I'm vibrating at this point 👀👀👀

A. Haha, I did listen to it, anon. It was a good reminder of why podcasts usually turn out to be the better interviews. If you're not aware, in 99% of print interviews the questions have been pre screened by the actors/show so they go into the interview already knowing pretty much everything they're going to say. It's why so many of them are repetitive. Podcasts tend to have a little more leeway. They usually only have to get topics pre-approved. So even though they know what topics are going to be discussed they don't usually know the specific questions. Now obviously those interviews come with greater risks because if your actor doesn't know how to edit themselves they could say something epically bad. Obviously this one was pre-recorded so he had a little bit of a safety cushion but it didn't appear to be heavily edited content wise. I love that he touched on the racist/bigoted thing. Even though this came prior to the entire Gerard nonsense, I'm glad he got a chance to tell those people how incredibly wrong they are where he is concerned. I hope he hasn't seen most of it, but given everything he has been tagged in I fear he has seen more than he should have ever had too.

He's in the position now that Oliver was last year. He's the one doing the promotional interviews, but he's just out of canned answers he can give, lol. There's nothing left for him to say except the 'thing' he can't yet say. So you can tell he's trying to make the same answers sound somewhat new and for the most part he was able to do that. It was though just one more thing that kind of made you go, yeah it's going where we think it's going. I just think the show is all out of later. They can't keep pushing the story to 'next season'. And I think that's why we're seeing so many winks and nods from ABC and the show. The comments they replied to yesterday were intentional. Yes, they deleted them but they knew the people who they were intended for would see them and remember them. It's time. Let's go.

Thanks Nonny!

Ah yes! Hard agree on everything here! I haven't seen/heard the whole podcast yet (I'm planning to listen tomorrow when I'm relaxing), but I've seen all of the videos, snippets and quotes about 911 and Eddie that were posted online.

Everything is aligning and people are noticing the change. There is this tentative surge of emotion of 'Oh wow, this is it. It's actually happening this time. No more clowning,' going around in fandom and even beyond the fandom. Love that for us.

So yeah, the time is right.

The time is now.

Let's go!

IMPORTANT! Please don't repost this ask and/or a link that leads straight to my Tumblr account on Twitter or any other social media. Thank you!

Heads up! For anyone who is giving me the shifty eyes for reposting Ali's updates instead of reblogging. Read this.

Remember, no hate in comments, reblogs or inboxes. Let's keep it civil and respectful. Thank you.

If you are interested in more of Ali’s posts, you can find all of her posts so far under the tag: anonymous blog I love.

[iamamythologicalcreature]

WIP Wednesday: Kitten Edition

Shush there's still fifteen minutes of Wednesday in my time zone...

Thank you to @whatevertheweather for the tag! (Can't wait to read more of your story!) And thank you to everyone who's continued to tag me in wipsday stuff even though my ability to reblog and such is somewhat limited right now. Means a lot to me. <3

Sooo as much as I'd like to share little art bits with you, this is going to be more of a life update. But with bonus kitten pics.

Here's what I'm up to these days:

In case you haven't heard, @carryonthroughtheages is happening! I'm very excited to be working on such a cool event. It's everything my snowbaz-lovin', history-nerd heart could wish for.

I am working on art! It's just that I can't post any snippets because it's concept art for @carryon-reverse-bang. So it's shhhh secret.

I'm moving. Like. Many thousands of miles away from my current location. It's going to keep me pretty busy for the next 2-3 months, but please keep tagging me in stuff if you have the room. When I can pop onto Tumblr, I love seeing what everyone is doing!

One other project that's very special to me.... KITTENS! (See below.)

All other projects are on hold for now, but not abandoned! (I'm very attached to them.)

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter

*Yes, the gray one is totally laying on top of the orange one and pinning him down in that first pic. Orange dude seems okay with it.

I got some new foster kittens! They're about 9 weeks old or so, and have had a pretty rough time of it. They're still pretty afraid of people, including me, but I'm making progress. They needed to be dewormed, but now that that's done, I expect they'll become more and more themselves quickly.

More info under the cut, plus the whole naming conundrum:

Because they're still recovering from a traumatic few weeks of being separated from other sibs and being bounced around before finally landing here with me, it's hard to know their personalities yet. But here's what I've observed thus far:

Gray girl was the most afraid, hissing at me at first, but has taken to being petting with a little more willingness than orange boy. (She even purred today!) She's also very fond of the plastic pink spring toy I gave her, and I caught her climbing the side of the enclosure at one point.

Orange boy is still sleeping a lot, and is less open to being handled, though he takes it stoically when I reach in and give him a gentle stroke or two. I can't tell what part of that behavior is recovery, and what's shyness, or something else. He's pretty chill with his sister, though, and watched with great interest while she played with her spring, earlier. I'm pretty sure he's playing with the dangly-bell-toy when I'm not looking. Cause. Ding-ding.

I’d love to wait to name them until I know more about their personalities, but unfortunately, I can’t. I need to get them into the fostering database, and thus, names are required. I have a couple ideas, but if you have any thoughts or suggestions, please do let me know!

That's all! You're up to date! Cheers.

Tags for future wipsdays and/or hello's to: @drowninginships, @ic3-que3n, @prettygoododds, @monbons, @thewholelemon,

@roomwithanopenfire, @facewithoutheart, @noblecorgi, @mooncello, @rimeswithpurple,

@you-remind-me-of-the-babe, @hushed-chorus, @bookish-bogwitch, @artsyunderstudy, @best--dress,

@youarenevertooold, @supercutedinosaurs, @cutestkilla, @imagineacoolusername, @tender-ministrations,

@bazzybelle, @theimpossibledemon, @emeryhall, @blackberrysummerblog

[whispering-ways]

•♡✿⁠ tulips and katsudon ✿♡•

✿ summary: you and izuku go on your first date after crushing on each other for quite some time

✿ pairing: midoriya izuku x reader

✿ tags: no warnings, just fluff! :)

✿ notes: hi everyone! this is the first fanfic i've not only posted to tumblr but also the first i've written in general, so any constructive criticism is appreciated <3 it's also on my AO3 (whisperingways)

You’re searching for your earrings when you hear a soft knock at your door. You turn your head toward the door before calling out, 'Just a minute! I’m just finishing up in here.' Upon opening the door, you see Izuku standing there with a bouquet of flowers, looking as cute as ever. He is practically red all over as he all but thrusts the bouquet into your hands.

'Th-Those are for you; I remember you mentioning that tulips were your favorite, a-and I know that your favorite color is pink, so I picked them up for you. I hope you like them!' Izuku says with a slight chuckle.

'Thank you so much! Come in real quick while I put these flowers in a vase,' you say, opening the door wider so that he can come in. He carefully brushes by you and stands near your door as you fill up the vase at your table. As you run the vase under the faucet, you become more excited for your first date with Izuku.

You’ve been classmates for three years now, and while you've been friends for a long time, it was only in the past year that you started to fall for him. It has been hard not to, honestly. He is one of the sweetest, kindest boys you've met, not to mention academically driven and passionately loving everything and everyone he cares about, including you. He has also filled out over the years. All those years of training have given him a lean build, but he still retains that same old boyish smile that you love.

What you didn’t know is how he adored you as well. Yes, he thought you were absolutely adorable and gorgeous, but he also loves your personality. He admires how hard you work towards improving your quirk, striving every day to be the best hero you can be. He appreciates how sweet you are, not just to him, but to everyone around you. You have this caring aura about you that makes you so likable. He thought someone like you would never like him back, so he was content being friends. So, to say he was surprised to find a little note from you asking him out would be an understatement.

And that leads us to this afternoon, the first date. You two decided to go to a nearby restaurant for lunch, a tiny mom-and-pop shop that you suggested solely for its signature dish: katsudon. You"d have to admit, things seemed a bit tense at first, but as the day went along, you two slowly fell into your usual comfort.

"Wow! This katsudon is amazing! I mean, I really hate to say it, but it might even be a little better than my mom"s, but only by a little bit," Izuku said.

"It definitely is really good. I"m glad I got the spicy one though. You know, that reminds me of when Katsuki made that super spicy ramen. Kaminari took a bite of it, and he seemed like he was going to explode or something. Poor guy just kept drinking more and more milk!" you said with the most harmonious laugh Izuku had ever heard.

You both kept reminiscing about memories from the dorms until it came time for the bill. Although you insisted on paying for your meal, Izuku paid for both of you, saying that his mother raised him to be more gentlemanly than that. As you walked back to the dorms, the conversation continued, and as you neared the dorms, it was clear that neither of you wanted the date to end just yet.

"So um... would you happen to be free for just a little while longer? It"s okay if you"re not, but I know there"s this art museum nearby that I heard might be a little interesting," Izuku asked, wringing his hands. "Admission is free and all, so don"t worry about fees, but would you like to come with me?"

"I"d absolutely love to, Izu!" you said, elated that the date didn"t have to end just yet. "Would you maybe like to hold hands while we walk there?" you asked nervously, wondering if it would be too much too soon.

Izuku lit up like a Christmas tree. "Yes! I-I mean, yeah, that"d be nice. We can definitely hold hands," he said excitedly, offering his hand to you. You placed your hand on top of his, and you could have sworn you turned beet red. His hand nearly engulfed yours, and you loved the coarse feeling of it wrapping around yours. He interlaced your fingers together, and you both started the walk to the museum.

The museum was about a 15-minute walk from the dorms, making the stroll in the cool spring breeze absolutely lovely. Once you reached the museum, the receptionist informed you that they have a traveling exhibit about past heroes and art created with their quirks, which piqued both your and Izuku"s interest. You both looked at all the artwork pieces in awe while Izuku stood beside you, analyzing every piece, never letting go of your hand in the process. On the walk back, all you could talk about were the beautiful pieces of artwork.

"I think my favorite piece had to be those stone sculptures done by the creation quirk artist. I mean, it"s gotta be really useful to create all the tools you need at your disposal and definitely a great way to store things. What about you? What did you like the most?" you asked, looking into Izuku"s eyes, which seemed so much brighter than you last remember.

"I loved that one installation by the strength quirk user! I"m no artist myself, but it"s very creative to use that sort of magnified strength to create a huge installation, not to mention the use of her engineering background. Using both the background and her quirk to create an interactive, domino-effect-esque installation that allows all ages to enjoy the art was absolutely ingenious in my opinion. Plus, the use of colors was really- oh God, I"m rambling, aren"t I? I"m so sorry," he exclaimed, looking down towards the ground.

"Don"t worry, you weren"t rambling at all. I think it"s cute, honestly," you replied, sending Izuku into a tizzy.

"W-Well, I"m, uhh, glad you like it. You"re pretty cute yourself," he said, beet red, squeezing your hand.

You both kept talking about the exhibit until you reached the dorms, and Izuku walked you up to your room. "Thank you so much for this date, Izuku. It"s been nothing short of lovely, truly," you said, gently holding both his hands in one of yours, with a soft smile painting your face.

'Honestly, the pleasure was all mine. I never thought you’d actually ever want to go out on an actual date with me, so this has all been like a dream come true. In fact, I was going to ask... whether you’d be interested in possibly having another date sometime soon?' Izuku asked tentatively.

'Yes, I’d absolutely love that! Just text me the day and time you’d be free, and we can plan something out if that sounds good to you?'

'Perfect! Well, I guess this is goodbye then, huh? I’ll see you in class tomorrow?' he said, looking up at you with that boyish smile that you oh so adored. It’s clear that neither of you wants the date to end, but it's a school night, and you both prioritize having a full night’s rest.

'I guess so, Izu. I hope you have a nice evening, though. And again, thank you so much for making this day as lovely as you are!' you beamed. You thought about it momentarily and then gave him a quick peck on the cheek before wishing him goodbye and closing your door, leaving him a blushing mess.

You slid down, back against your door, giggling like a schoolgirl at the kiss. Something about it just made your heart absolutely burst with giddiness. You were already daydreaming about what your next date was going to be like. There was no way you were getting any sleep tonight.

[bellaxgiornata]

Falling For the Devil [Part seventy: "The Thoughts About the Future"]

Pairing: Matt Murdock x Fem!Reader

Summary: After a discussion with his mother, Matt invites you over for dinner at his place.

Or You both finally discuss the topic of moving in.

[Series of one-shots about Reader meeting, falling for, and dating Matt Murdock.]

Warnings: 18+ for this series; contains humor, fluff, romance, angst, smut (like...a lot of it later in the series), language, some violence

Word Count: 3.2k

a/n: This is a fluffy, sweet installment where you get a Matt POV in the beginning! You can find the entire list of installments for this series on tumblr here. I've almost transferred them all over from AO3 now!!

Matt let his mother lead the pair of them to a bench in front of the church, his cane tapping rhythmically along the pavement before himself. Both of them sat down beside each other, Matt drawing his cane between his legs and nervously twisting it as he did. 

It was an early Sunday morning at the end of March, the air still chilly around them where they sat quietly. The sidewalks were fairly empty though, which gave the pair of them a bit of privacy that Matt was grateful to have for this conversation. 

"So I know this isn't you coming for just another chat," Maggie eventually cut through the silence. "You're far too tense for that. What happened, Matthew?"

He let out a sigh, leaning further back into the bench. "Nothing happened," he told her, his hands still fidgeting with his cane. 

He could feel his mother's eyes on him, curiously studying him closely. That only caused him to move a hand, toying with the hem of his winter coat under the heavy weight of her scrutiny. He was nervous to open up to her like this; he certainly didn’t have conversations like this with her. 

"It's about her, isn't it?" Maggie asked after a moment. She said your name tentatively, her eyes still on Matt.

He smiled softly, nodding his head. "Yeah, it is," he admitted.

He could hear the way Maggie nodded beside him, turning along the bench to face him more fully. Her heart had sped up just a bit in her chest and he figured it was in anticipation at whatever he was going to say. 

"Well I don't have all day, Matthew," she urged. "Please tell me you haven't ruined things with her now that you finally got her back."

He shook his head, his focus falling onto his feet. "No, I haven't," he answered her awkwardly. "But that's…sort of why I'm here. I–I could use some advice," he admitted. "So that I don't ruin things."

Maggie hummed out a curious noise, settling more comfortably onto the bench beside him. Matt heard the way her mouth pulled into a smile, clearly pleased at the fact that he had come to her for help. 

"Well, what's going on that you would seek my advice for?" she asked.

Matt swallowed hard, his sightless gaze still focused along his feet. He stuffed his left hand into his coat pocket, the fingers of his right hand tapping anxiously along his cane. He wasn’t entirely sure where to begin, but he figured he might as well just get straight to the point.

"Her lease is up at the end of next month," he began slowly, aware of the eyebrow that rose onto Maggie's forehead. "And before…well, everything that had gone on between us that had led to us breaking up, she was supposed to be moving in with me next month. But we haven't talked about it yet. Though I want to talk about it with her–I am. Tonight. Over dinner. But I–" he paused, his eyes briefly closing, "–I want her to move in. I really, really want her to, but it feels like it's so soon after us getting back together. It–it seems like it may not be the best time. And I don't want her to move in just because her lease is up and she feels pressured, nor do I want to feel like that’s why she’s moving in. And I worry that such a big change might have a negative impact on the relationship after what just happened. I just–just don’t want to do the wrong thing here, or give her the wrong idea. I don’t want to mess this up."

"Maybe you should just speak plainly like this with her, Matthew," Maggie suggested. “She might be on the same page as you. Or she might be entirely ready to move in still. She seems like a level-headed woman and she quite obviously loves you very much. Just talk to her.”

Head turning towards his mother, his brows rose up onto his forehead. “That’s it? Just talk to her?” he asked in disbelief.

Maggie shrugged easily beside him. “Yes,” she answered. “Communication is important in a relationship. It seems like you both struggle with that, but it appears you’re also both working on it. From the things you’ve told me at least. So yes, Matthew,” she said, “just talk to her about it. Tell her your fears and how you feel, then listen to her. I’m sure you both can figure it out together. And I’m sure it’s been on her mind if her lease is up in a few weeks.”

A sigh fell out of Matt as his left hand slid out of his jacket pocket, his fingers combing nervously through his hair. How did she make it sound like such a simple thing when he’d all last week felt like talking to you was going to be so difficult?

“You love her,” Maggie pointed out, breaking the silence that had once again fallen. “Quite a bit.”

“Yes,” he admitted. “I do. And I’m terrified of ruining things. Normally when I’ve lost the people I care about,” he continued, his throat feeling like it was closing up at the emotions coursing through him, “I don’t get a second chance to fix things. To make it right. But she gave me that.”

“Then talk to her,” Maggie urged. “Speak from that beautiful heart that you have and I have faith that everything will work out as it should.”

Matt’s lips twitched upwards at the corner, slowly nodding his head as he focused back down towards his feet. His left hand ran across his mouth as he felt suddenly compelled to admit something else to his mother, something he’d yet to say aloud.

“I’ve been–been thinking about the future a lot more,” he said softly, his hand lowering to his lap. “It’s not something I usually had been doing ever since becoming Daredevil. I didn’t quite envision a future, there wasn’t anything I’d ever really wanted for myself,” he confessed, aware of his mother’s intense focus on him. “Not until her, that is. And now I can’t stop thinking about the future. All these things I’ve never thought about–I want them. With her.”

“Marriage?” Maggie asked, the smile obvious in her tone.

He nodded in response, a broad smile slowly making its way across his face. “Yes,” he told her. “I’ve heard Foggy and Karen tease me about it countless times at the office now. And I know you’ve occasionally made your comments when we’ve spoken but…” he trailed off, his face still alight with the love he had for you written across it. “Now I know that’s what I want. And I know right now is way too soon for that but–” he blew out a sharp breath, his stomach twisting into nervous knots just at the thought of someday asking you that question, “–she’s–she’s it for me. I want her. Forever.”

“Ahh, my son,” Maggie whispered, Matt catching the tremor in her voice before he felt her drawing him into a hug, “I’m so happy you finally found her then.”

Matt’s own arms wrapped around his mother, the two embracing for a long while on that bench in what was one of their rare moments of affection. He could tell Maggie was crying a bit as he held her, but he could also tell the tears weren’t from sadness.

“You both will be just fine,” Maggie whispered into his shoulder. 

And it was her reassurance that gave Matt the courage he needed to speak with you tonight about the topic of living together.

_______

“Okay, I have to ask, because somehow Katy and I got into a huge discussion about this at the office today,” you told Matt, pouring the red wine into the glasses on the kitchen counter, “and we both sort of agreed that you would be the one who could actually give us an answer.”

Matt paused from his place near the stove where he was plating the carbonara, his focus landing on you. “Is this about my butt?” he asked hesitantly.

“What? No,” you said with a laugh, shaking your head. “No, it’s not. I swear.”

He shot you a grin before he turned back to the plates before him and continued what he was doing. “Okay, so what’s the question?” he asked curiously.

“What spice–or seasoning–has the most flavor?” you questioned him. Setting the bottle of wine down, you turned to face him as your back rested against the countertop, one hand toying with that gold pendant necklace he’d gotten you for Christmas. “Like, per granule or…however I suppose you would quantify it. Because she claims salt is, but I say there’s a lot of other spices that are quite strong that I think are stronger than salt. Like saffron. Or…cinnamon.”

Matt chuckled lightly as he finished what he was doing before he removed the towel from his shoulder, turning to face you as he wiped his hands along it. “That is not what I thought you were going to ask at all,” he said.

Your head tilted to the side as you shot him a smile. “I told you it wasn’t about your butt,” you teased. “We do talk about things besides that, you know.”

“Like quantifying spices by the granule?” he teased back.

You rolled your eyes, shaking your head. “Okay, well can you help me out here? Who’s right?” you asked him.

Matt shrugged. “Neither of you. Because you’re right in the sense that there are alot of strong seasonings out there, but honestly? I couldn’t tell you that there is just a single one that is the strongest. But–” he said, raising a finger and pointing it towards you, “–I will say saffron is quite strong.”

“Hmm,” you hummed out, “fair point, I suppose.”

“Anymore questions before dinner?” he asked, a dark brow quirking playfully up onto his forehead.

Biting your lip, you eyed Matt before you as he stood in the middle of the kitchen dressed in his black tee-shirt and a pair of those nice jeans he sometimes wore. The shirt was pulling taut at his chest from his broad muscles and as your eyes traveled downwards, you caught sight of how perfectly his jeans fit his thighs. Matt’s head slowly canted to the side as you surveyed him. 

“Maybe one…” you said softly, voice trailing off as heat rose to your cheeks.

Somehow that dark brow of his rose even higher. “Which is?”

Swallowing hard, you asked, “Is there anything planned for after dinner?”

You watched the gradual pull of Matt’s mouth as a smug smirk appeared on his face. He set the towel down on the counter beside him, his focus never leaving you as he made his way over. He stopped just before you, his hands landing on your hips and gently drawing you into him. Your breath came in shallower when he leaned in closer to you, his mouth just beside your ear.

“Why don’t we see how you’re feeling after dinner first, hmm?” he whispered.

Hands reaching up, they landed along Matt’s firm chest as you tried to control your heart rate. “Maybe dinner can wait?” you suggested.

Matt chuckled lightly beside your ear and a moment later you felt him kiss your temple. And then he was pulling away, making his way towards the two plates he’d just assembled. 

“Sweetheart, let’s just focus on dinner first,” he said. “There was something I wanted to talk to you about anyway.”

“Oh,” you muttered, heart rate suddenly spiking for a different reason. “Okay, yeah, sure.”

Turning, you grabbed both of the wine glasses in your hands, trying to take quiet, calming breaths. You were nervous now, not entirely sure what it was Matt could want to talk to you about. Had you done something wrong? Pushed him with sex? Was he wanting to take things slower? Or…worse? As you followed Matt out of the kitchen towards his table, you did your best to keep your hands from shaking. It didn’t help that you knew Matt was aware of your abrupt nervousness. 

You set down a glass of wine beside Matt’s plate before pulling the chair out beside his and sitting down. Drawing your own glass to your lips, you quickly took a drink and tried to calm your nerves. Your eyes remained focused on the plate he’d set before you, too nervous to look at him beside you.

“I’ve made you uncomfortable,” he pointed out. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.”

“No, no,” you said quickly, your voice pitched higher than usual.

“Sweetheart,” Matt said gently, “I can hear your body right now.”

Eyes still on the plate, you set the glass of wine onto the table as you slowly nodded. “Okay, yeah, I guess I am feeling a little anxious,” you admitted. “It’s uh, usually not a good thing when someone in a relationship says they want to talk.”

Matt’s hand slid across the table, coming to rest lightly along your wrist. Exhaling a shaky breath, you glanced up at him beside you. He was shooting you a sweet smile, your eyes immediately dropping down to the dimple in his cheek.

“I’m not intending this to be a bad thing,” Matt assured you. “But we do need to talk about your lease expiring, don’t we?”

You blinked hard a few times as you registered what he’d said. He was right, your lease was up in just over a month. You’d wondered if Matt would ever bring it up because you’d already assumed you weren’t moving in just yet after what had happened.

“I suppose so, yes,” you answered slowly.

He nodded, his hand releasing your wrist as he turned a bit more towards you at the table. “I think maybe we should…wait a bit before you move in, if that–that’s still what you want to do after, well, everything,” he began timidly. “I just worry that you might feel rushed or pressured to take such a big step after what I did and I don’t–” his tongue darted out between his lips nervously, “–don’t want you to feel either of those things. Because I love you, sweetie. And I want you to know that’s what you want. I want it to feel right for you . But believe me, sweetheart,” he pressed, “I want you to. That’s never changed, I promise you. I still want you here with me, I still want you to use that key I gave you, but I just want to do this right. I want you to be comfortable with the decision.”

You sat there with your lips parted, entirely speechless. Staring at Matt, you found yourself overcome with the urge to lean over and kiss him–and maybe do more than that. Beside you, Matt sent you a nervous smile, his eyebrows rising up onto his forehead in your silence.

“Sweetheart? Some thoughts here?” he asked anxiously.

You shook your head quickly, laughing a little nervously. “Sorry,” you muttered, still trying to recover. “The uh, the first reaction I had to that was not an appropriate response.”

His brows quickly drew together, his nose lightly scrunching at your words. “And what would that have been?” he asked. 

“It uh,” you began, eyes darting down to the plate of untouched pasta before you as you cleared your throat, “involved me wanting to jump you for how considerate you are.”

“Jump me?” he asked, amusement in his tone.

Cheeks further flushing, you shrugged. “Yeah, that was just…very sweet. But I honestly appreciate all of that because, well, I’ll admit I’m a bit hesitant to move in so quickly after everything. I worry you might change your mind or decide to push me away again and that…scares me,” you admitted softly. 

“That’s understandable,” Matt replied. “And I want to prove to you that I’m not going anywhere. That you can trust me.”

“I already had spoken to my landlord,” you told him. “I’m lucky she likes me because we’d agreed on a month-by-month rent for a couple of months while I figured out what was going on with, well, us.”

Matt’s mouth quirked up at the corners as he sent you a warm smile. “And here I was thinking I needed to pull out the ‘I’m a really good lawyer and I can get you out of your lease’ card,” he joked.

“Ahh, I was one step ahead of you, Murdock,” you teased, your attention returning to him beside you. 

“That you were,” he replied with a grin.

“So is that why you made dinner tonight?” you asked him curiously. “Because you were wanting to talk to me about this?”

He nodded, though you caught a little glint of something in his eyes that had you curiously studying him. 

“Yes,” he admitted. “But also, I just really wanted an excuse to have you over and make you dinner. I know you’ve been having a stressful time with work lately.”

At the mention of work you slumped in your seat, your heart dropping to your stomach. “Yeah, I have. The fluff pieces for the past few months have been killing me. It’s like if I don’t actively chase stories, Ellison will just keep sending charity events my way to cover,” you vented, running a hand across your forehead. “I feel like my sleep is suffering for it lately.”

“So why don’t you relax and just enjoy dinner, sweetheart?” he suggested. “Don’t worry about work. And we can revisit the topic of you moving in in a few weeks. Let’s just enjoy our evening.”

A slow smile made its way across your lips before you nodded at Matt. “Okay. You’re right. Thanks for making dinner tonight, Matt,” you told him. “I appreciate it.”

He returned the smile, the warmth of it reaching his eyes. “Of course, sweetheart,” he said. “You’re always taking care of me and I like to try to return the favor.”

You playfully rolled your eyes as you picked up your fork. “You and always trying to reciprocate,” you muttered.

“Speaking of,” Matt said, his tone low and sultry beside you, “I might actually be feeling up for dessert after this. In the bedroom. To uh, make up for that lunch the other day.”

Heat flamed across your cheeks as you twirled some pasta onto your fork. “I told you that wasn’t a quid pro quo thing, Matt,” you said softly.

You heard him shifting in his seat and you turned towards him. He was grinning mischievously at you and shooting you a look that had your heart skipping in your chest.

“And I told you it was a ‘my girlfriend is incredibly sexy’ thing,” he whispered back, that grin still on his mouth. “And I quite enjoy showing my incredibly sexy girlfriend how much I love her.”

Your thighs pressed together under the table as you squirmed in your seat. Matt’s deep, rumbling chuckle filled the air.

“So, you think you’re up for dessert after dinner?” he teased.

Raising your fork to your mouth, you muttered, “You know I can’t resist dessert with you, Matt.”

A pleased hum came from beside you as you saw Matt finally pick up his own fork. You tried to focus on eating despite now being all too aware of what the two of you would shortly be up to.

“That’s my girl,” Matt murmured before focusing on his dinner.

And like hell if those three words weren’t ringing through your mind as you ate.

[reflectionsofthesea]

Hiii I’m back! It's been a pretty stressful and busy time at work, so I'm less online than usual, but still learning finnish daily! It's actually being my saving grace: getting to detach myself from work,routine and stress and just putting my head into something completely different that I enjoy doing. Putting a read more because I wrote a lot here:

I've been progressing with my exercise book, and learned how to express the need to do something 'i have to...' and also the imperative tense. Really useful stuff. I also finally finished trascribing all puhekieli 'basic rules' on my notebook!

Some new stuff in my daily learning routine:

I started listening to podcasts and short stories! I was a bit intimidated at first, but now I've been enjoying doing it every day when I am cooking, cleaning the house or even when drawing/working. I'm listening to a beginner's podcast and can basically understand a good 80% of it, which is making me feel so proud and motivated hahaha. The crazy thing is that even if I don't understand a couple of new words, I can follow the conversation and the topic and I always know what the host is talking about, it's crazy. I'll definitely continue listening to podcasts and stories daily because I think it's helping A LOT and truly making me feel like I'm making huge progress and my brain is enlarging lol.

I started using LingQ! The importing videos/podcasts feature is super useful, and I imported some videos in finnish from youtubers I found and having LingQ generate subtitles in finnish for me and translation in english, so I can study them is so useful. That way I can exercise listening to more puhekieli and expand my vocabulary. It helps that the videos are super fun and entertaining themselves, so I genuinely want to know what's happening hahaha. (one was a Sims4 house building video, another one a travelling vlog)

I tried writing some 'stories' for the first time, this is also an advice I heard from a video, that helps with getting your brain used to constructing sentences and phrases. I already did this in a smaller way, writing very short sentences practicing different grammar rules to commit them to memory, but this exercise really makes you put more effort into building longer and slightly more articulated sentences, like phrases you'd say to someone when having a chat, or thinking out loud. I decided to pick some random themes and just write what I can about them! The pink underlined words/verbs/adverbs are things I had to look up because I didn't know how to say yet. I think this is a pretty fun and creative exercise to do though, and I can see how it can make your brain faster at producing sentences on the long run :) It will be fun to keep doing this when my vocabulary grows and I can say more stuff! (I saw a writing exercise idea on tumblr that was describing your Dnd characters and something about their personality/stories, and I really want to do that!)

Overall, I'm feeling really good and motivated. I remember feeling a bit stuck a month ago, and now that feeling is gone, and I feel like I improved a lot. I really think implementing new exercises like the written stories exercise and especially listening a lot has been so useful and important into me feeling like I'm growing more in this language. I'm really glad I fought my inner doubt and saboteur and just did it. I also gander at posts written in finnish here on tumblr and realized I understand a good 70/80% of what's written in there. Sometimes more or less, depending on how long the post is or how specific the words used are. But that's pretty crazy to me and really satisfying!

Also, if you need some inspiration for your language learning journey or some good tips (like the listening to podcasts and writing stories I'm currently doing), please watch this video! It really inspired me to keep going in my journey :)

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

Do you people ever go through comedycv.co.uk? Because going to that link and just clicking through has become one of my regular hobbies. You know how there always posts going around Tumblr about how it's sad that the old internet is lost? Well did you know there's some old internet that's very much still online, and it has summaries of comedians' careers, frozen in time at the exact point when they became too successful to need to keep updating it?

I enjoy clicking on random pages of comedians I've never heard of, to find out what was going on back then. But it's even more interesting to look at the pages for comedians I know about, and see what was the most recent accomplishment listed, at what point they stopped worrying about this website. In many cases, it's when they became famous enough for it to not matter. In the cases of younger comedians, it's when time moved on enough for this bit of the old internet to become irrelevant in the face of social media. But the website's still up. One of those things that it seems like should be gone, but everyone's forgotten it's there so no one's remembered to take it down. I love finding things like that. Though I do have an occasional track record of sharing those things on Tumblr and then someone involved in it comes across my Tumblr post and then it gets taken down as a result of me sharing it. Okay that only happened once but it was enough to freak me out, hopefully this one Tumblr post doesn't get an entire website taken down. Pretty sure I don't personally have the power to bring down an entire website.

I mean, obviously there have to be exceptions to people whose Comedy CV page stopped updating when they got too famous to need it, and people whose page stopped updating when the rise of social media made it irrelevant. And that would be the person whose Comedy CV page kept getting updated while he was with an agent who made him do things like that, and then dropped it the moment he was allowed to have one of those public entertainment careers where you get really angry about members of the public knowing you exist:

The quotes about his comedy, all of them praise and not a single bit of the Lee-esque ironic self-deprecation that I'd expect in a situation like this, continue for almost a whole other page. It's significantly longer than most of the other ones.

Not a single mention of Mock the Week, that's how old this one is:

"Alex Horne and his assistant Tim Key"

Here's a less fun thing about comedy advertising pages that are so old: defining women in a male-dominated environment by their competition with other women. That's something you still see today and it sucks, but it doesn't happen constantly anymore the way it used to. Like Danielle Ward being "one of the few female satirists", rather than just a very good comedian who performs satire. Not that I'm blaming Danielle Ward for this, I assume she didn't write that herself, and it's the way marketing was encouraged.

And Josie Long, on the other hand is, "unnaturally far from girlie adolescence". Don't worry, she's not shit like all those other female comedians (again, not Josie Long's fault, I can't imagine this was her idea). Her page must be really old, as it doesn't mention winning the Perrier Newcomer Award in 2006.

When I first started clicking through these, I saw Ahir Shah's name and thought, I bet that'll be weird, since even the older comedians - as in, the Chocolate Milk Gang-era ones - have much younger pictures of themselves on here. Ahir Shah is young (at least I hope he is, at least compared to some people, since he's my age), so a younger picture of him will be really young. I thought that before I opened his page for the first time, but I still wasn't remotely prepared for what I saw there:

On the subject of small children who were born in the same year as me, did you know that Daniel Sloss met Frankie Boyle once?

Long list of credits, even with no Thick of It yet. Not even Gash. God, imagine a world without Armando Iannucci's Gash. What a sad world.

Awww...

Sorry, why has Roisin Conaty never mentioned her Monopoly Woman character in anything I've seen?

Love that highly rough around the edges comedian Rhod Gilbert has a professionally written essay in his description, and a picture of himself in business attire.

Oh, sorry, Stewart, I thought you were all counterculture and don't do mainstream advertising? What are you doing here looking like a movie star and with not a single ironic self-deprecating quote?

A couple of years ago now, in a journey somewhat similar to the Comedy CV one, I went through all these old Edinburgh programs, and I learned that there are an amazingly large number of terrible pictures of Russell Howard that got used in official promo between about 2004 and about 2009 (there are not just in old programs, also in old articles about him, it's remarkably consistent). I don't know why, but for some reason Russell Howard did not give a single good picture of himself to any official sources during those years. This was one of those terrible pictures, used in the Edinburgh Fringe 2005 poster for his show Skylarking, which is something I know off the top of my head because I have spent too much time reading old Edinburgh programs. Again, no mention of Mock the Week, so this is older than his start on that. But newer than his 2005 show, so that dates it pretty specifically.

"Russell has twice toured as the special guest of Perrier Award Winner, Daniel Kitson." Amazingly grandiose way to refer to doing tour support.

On that subject, I'm going to stop pretending I didn't primarily use this to look up Chocolate Milk Gang members, and show you the main ones from that. Zaltzman has a page that's so long I had to cut a little bit of it off even by spreading it across two screenshots:

There's a quote praising him by Dominic Maxwell in there, then a humble Metro reviewer, who many years later would be with The Times and call Andy John Oliver's "left-behind sidekick". What a dick.

Andy's page has gone beyond just a curiosity to me, and has helped me a bit with some of my completism. You get things on these pages that, once they got bigger, seemed to small to ever mention again. So you might only know the comedian had done those things if you find stuff that was written when they were small enough for those little things to seem like a bigger deal. I've been trying to track down his episode of Live Floor Show ever since reading it on there, which I've never seen mentioned anywhere else. Andy Zaltzman's page is written like a genuine CV, which is helpful.

And at this point I should stop pretending this whole post has been anything besides an excuse to show you this picture of John Oliver when he had long-ish hair and the career of a baby:

John Oliver's episode of People Like Us is 2x05, from 2001, and that description calls it "the new series of People Like Us", so that tells you when that was written. This page was also helpful for the completest in me, when I did things like make a compilation of John Oliver's scenes from the early 00s when he appeared in one scene of one episode each of several different sitcoms:

I haven't even scratched the surface with this post of the amusing things on that Comedy CV site, everyone go look at the adorable old picture of Joe Lycett. I promise, mindlessly clicking through the links is a great way to spend an afternoon.

[mihai-florescu]

Hello there tumblr user Mihai-floresuco.

I would like to ask of thee which stories you’d recommend of fine? I do not like the unit but I would like to like them so perhaps a better understanding of the characters shall aid me in this quest, thank you in advance and have a truly lovely day.

Yours truly,

Secret mutual :3

I am going to assume you've read the war era reminis, you are familiar with ex fine, what and why things happened, and your question is regarding current fine. I will also hope you've read Daydream and Blackbird as they explain a lot about the moments right after the war, from Eichi and Wataru's perspectives. Plus Eichi calls Yuzuru sexy, never forget.

Now, let's see, from the beginning. Flower fes is the first story with fine as we know it (minus Eichi as he was in the hospital), it's about Tori and Yuzuru meeting Wataru for the first time (among other things. It's also a good look into the state of things in the beginning of the next year right after the war. There's a good bit with Valkyrie as well)

Then other early ! Era stories would be Circus (fine perform at a circus, the scene that stood out the most to me is that of Eichi and the lion) and Quarrel Fes (Eichi Keito showdown mostly, it's good for understanding Eichi better)

Then Milky Way (fine and valkyrie, personally i'm due a complete reread), Jingle Bells (the one where Tori's illusions of fine as a perfect savior unit that can do no wrong and that hasn't done wrong in the past start dissipating), EP:link......i assume that if you follow me you've read eplink, but if not, i will not spoil it. The last story before the change of eras and it deals partially with fine's future.

Then for other stories i recommend when you have time: Magnolia (the best bridal enstars story imo, focused on Tori working around the school to buy Eichi a brooch for a gift exchange event), Dance Floor (they go to the park and then do karaoke at the end...), Triumph of the Emperor (an old story where Tori takes lead to prepare for a future where Eichi wouldn't be in fine anymore. This is all before we or they knew we'll have !! Era where the units stay together), Summer Live (undead and fine. Very unfortunate a good story is overshadowed by orientalist cards)

From the !! Era... um. I think there are some good one off idol stories, like the one with the parfait i remember seeing a tl for, but i dont know the name of it (i suspect it's somewhere in tori or eichi's idol stories). The best fine story in !! imo is Tempest. I also recommend if you end up enjoying fine Fist of the shangri la idol. And Sanctuary.........i feel like you should only read it after you already like Eichi or you might not have the best time... If you want to read anything else go ahead, but I can't guide you (I was unsatisfied with Primavera, and haven't yet read Ghostic. I enjoyed the livetweets for Atlantis but you can't find a full tl of it anywhere yet afaik and I'm not gonna recommend the !! climax to someone who is just getting started with fine as a whole anyway)

I hope I haven't talked for too long... if you need ex fine recs too, i'd say Element first and foremost, Checkmate for Eichi & Tsumugi's early relationship, and Wonder Game. Oh and Altered Origins. It's still a fever dream of a story to me personally, i haven't fully wrapped my head around the fact that we are getting the remini animes and extra stories yet. I mean I have, but you know, it still feels a bit surreal.

If anyone feels like I forgot any important fine stories please add to the conversation. If you end up interested in Wataru and Eichi in particular I'd also recommend Diner Live, but it is not a fine story. I've heard Toyland is good for Tori (Yuzuru too?) but I haven't personally read it yet. If you want more Wataru and Tori interactions, Amusement Live has some good scenes, but it is not that much about them, the story's about Ra*bits and 2wink. A story i enjoyed of fine members shenanigans sans Wataru is Noble Game. We shall see when White Brim gets translated, I know it has some good bits with Tori&Eichi. Hm hm hm. That's all I can think of at the top of my head rn, but I think I've already said more than enough...

[grellestie]

I have heard the worst take and I need somewhere to talk about it and my Grelle Centered Tumblr is probably the best place for it. 

The take was;

“Grelle is a flat character.”

I should preface this by saying that flat characters aren’t bad one bit! They’re needed for a story to work, actually. I do like some flat characters and it’s fun to think about them. Grelle just isn’t one of them since she just isn’t.

I would have agreed with this take if we were just talking about the anime on a surface level but this is just… not correct? Thinking about it, it could be debated that the anime did make her a flat character but I’ll discuss it later.  

She is definitely more fleshed out and, while she doesn't have a lot of screen-time, a lot of her body language says enough. She heavily follows "show dont tell" which definitely leaves a lot of her to be confusing but it's kind of the point. The series is told with ciel as the protag and he's not exactly trying to understand why she is the way she is so the reader learns about her as he does.

But how do we prove she’s not a flat character? 

Here’s a list I found from Literary Devices and I’ll cover how she’s fundamentally not a flat character according to this list as well as another point I saw from a different website. 

The role of flat characters is to support the main character.

“The role of a flat character is to help the main character in pursuing his ambitions and goals.”

Grelle does not do this at all and actually makes the plot progress against Ciel’s favor. She actually tends to ruin the majority of his plans. Her killing of Madam and making it so Jack the Ripper was never caught by Ciel kickstarts the motivation of other characters to notice that Ciel isn’t what he seems. There’s also Book of Atlantic where Grelle attempts to ward off the kid and his pet demon. She doesn’t fit this role so she’s not a flat character here. 

They do not go through a substantial growth or transformation in the course of the narrative.

“… maintains the same characteristics and outlook throughout the narrative.”  

Grelle does not maintain the same characteristics and outlook throughout the manga. However, I've always been on the side that Grelle's development being entirely off-screen was a horrible idea but that’s a post for a later date. Back on topic, she has other personality traits that aren't stereotypical. She's shown to be diligent with her work yet she also has her moments of being reckless in certain moments (I.E. when she was on the Campania and attacked Sebastian believing she had time), and questioning authority which shows her perspective on said authority (I.E. During the Blue Memory arc when she confronted Othello about the council’s plan concerning the bizarre dolls), she's extremely honest while still lying (I.E. She speaks plainly yet there’s always some kind of double-meaning or… lie in what she says, I’d say she showed this enough in her debut), and she seemingly has low empathy which isn't exactly a personality trait but it's still notable since it is a part of her. There's also the showing of how she could be feeling guilty about Madam's death with the coat as well as that scene with Undertaker. And the inclusion of how reapers are created which can lead to conclusions that Grelle aint the happiest individual like she appears to be or that something happened. While you could argue that her growth shouldn’t count because it was due to criticism rather than something happening but I’d argue that it does count despite it being a little on the lazy end. 

It’s a little hard to figure it out considering that a lot of her personality is through implications but that doesn’t mean she has little personality. She’s as mysterious as death! 

They don’t draw attention away from the important characters.

“A flat character is not necessarily boring, weak, or poorly-written. All it means is that they are one-dimensional and not terribly interesting.”  

Implying Grelle Sutcliff, the first major antagonist of Kuroshitsuji is NOT interesting is a WILD take to me. She is the first other supernatural character we see besides Sebastian (Undertaker doesn't count because he wasn't seen as a reaper yet by the cast), she literally offs the main character's family member (in FRONT of him, no less). There's also Book of Atlantic with that being her big reprise and, while she wasn't a main force in that arc, she was still important with dealing with Undertaker and her non-inclusion would have changed certain parts of the story. While you may not personally find her interesting, she makes an extreme impact on the narrative and she has taken away Ciel’s spotlight for such a long time which would mean that she’s interesting to the audience overall and definitely draws attention away from the “important characters”. 

They have recognizable characteristics that make them appear stereotypical.

I have been going back and forth on this one for a while. Whether we like it or not, Grelle was a stereotype and a harmful one at that. She has seriously grown over the story to be a lot less horrible but I can’t exactly blame someone who reads her debut and thinks she doesn’t have much to offer. She doesn’t have too much personality outside of stereotypes and that’s what holds her back from not being a flat character in the anime. 

However, as I mentioned before, she has grown and she has more of a personality and some of them are not recognizable on your first read through the story. A surface level read of her isn’t exactly doing her character justice and that’s what the anime did. Flanderizing her (and other characters to their core). So, to say this, Anime Grelle and Manga/Canon Grelle are NOT comparable, they’re entirely different people therefore, Canon Grelle is not a stereotype of herself.

Thinking about this harder, there’s something I thought about. Flat characters, if you were to take them out of the story, would only affect the plot in a minor way and would be an easy fix if you were to rewrite it without them. I tried this with Grelle and a lot of things started to fall flat. First things first, Madam would be alive if we are to believe that Ciel would cover it up, the Red Butler arc would have to be completely rewritten in order to make up for Grelle's absence (which is extremely hard considering the route they took with it and how the bodies were found so close to each other). The reader’s first introduction to reapers would be WAY later in Book of Circus with William but then they wouldn't even really have the need to interact since they wouldn't recognize each other nor would Will really be the main concern here since he tends to stay in his own lane. Then, when the bizarre doll plot happens in Book of Atlantic, our introduction to Undertaker would be extremely unsatisfying. She does impact a LOT of things and taking her out would HEAVILY affect things.

TL;DR

Grelle isn't a flat character. Yes, there are bits to her that can be seen as flat but they aren't the focal point of her character (especially not anymore) therefore she isn't a flat character. She's just a character who needs to be read into rather than expecting answers.

Thanks for hearing me ramble and if you'd like to have a conversation, feel free to slid into my inbox or the replies!