#idk what they’re dynamic i just know they’re together

[tenwhiteandalusians]

so no one was going to tell me if i got literally one episode further tenax drops that he’s the one who saved scorpus from his mom’s pimp AND that he’s intimately familiar with scorpus’ dick when he was younger. guys. guys.

[floofysmallbob]

does anyone have any good fics where vi works for Silco and jinx was in Stillwater?

[hsslilly-blog]

shirt with a heart and child of divorce written on top but then there’s a picture of huntclaire. you wouldnt get it. i do

[swordmaid]

this dialogue path im so 😭😭🤭🤭

[blueish-bird]

burnout is sapping my hyperfixation of creative energy, but not to worry! I’m still thinking about Aki and Angel an incredibly abnormal amount

[beauzos]

I will say the one regretful thing about The Endless Ocean is I somehow once again managed to not include George at all in it. He haunts the narrative of it sure but he doesn’t even have a line in it KDNDN like he has more lines in ACOH (one)

I swear I’ve thought about that guy a lot and really like him. I never planned on having him in this MUCH but I thought he’d have a brief scene. Bryce, George, and Barb are three of my favorite villager-adjacent OCs which is why they were there but Bryce was the only one who got a decent Amt of time to be shown off

Somehow I always do that, it’s so funny. I always intend to use them more than I do. I think the way the fic is written is completely fine, it’s just funny realizing I managed to sidestep including him as a major character AGAIN. You’re just never gonna see this kid at this rate

Barb was also supposed to be in ACOH and this more but wasn’t, though this time she had lines lol. I guess it’s tough when all these characters have been dead for like twenty years.

[tubes-and-dice]

I fucking love the dynamics between the ‘people’ and the ‘avatars’ in NSBU.

G13 is using Usha, because he’s a hacker and a manipulator, and she’s exactly the kind of person who can be easily scammed. Haunting. Spine-chilling. Cool as fuck, truly unbelievable storytelling, and it’s developed so organically!

On the other hand, Vic is mentoring Wendell in a way, and we got to see them really sync up this episode, working together to advance the narrative and protect their people. Wendell totally gets the kind of person that Vic is, and I think that helps him take Vic’s advice as the more experienced person- but also know that he’s not always going to be right.

Paula and Jack are sort of… misaligned. She keeps trying to find guidance from him, but they’re almost too similar? Jack so far that we’ve seen is very hands-off, and doesn’t seem all that worried about Paula- or his own family. Whereas Paula of course cares deeply about Jack’s family already, because she’s much more involved and familial minded than what we’ve seen of Jack.

Liv and Kingskin are, I think, the most compatible duo. Liv has settled nicely into her role in some ways, the control and power it grants her suits her well, and it feels like Kingskin likes her because of that? But at the same time her compassion for others is making such a notable difference in the way that she’s able to interact with people in Kingskin’s circles that it feels like he could learn as much from her as she’s learning from him. They feel like the most balanced pair, with the most mutual respect.

Dang doesn’t match Stocks’ vibe at all. He’s trying to do the cool action movie things, he’s playing into the role really well at times- but who Dang is, really, doesn’t sync up. His morals and priorities are very different from Stocks’- for good and bad alike. There’s very little connection between the two, it feels like- to me it reads as Dang just trying to fill the shoes of this Bond-like character, more than anything. Sometimes he’s really able to pull it off, and sometimes it just… doesn’t work. Stocks isn’t helping him. He’s on his own- which it seems is perhaps a norm for Dang.

Then of course, Russell. Russell and Jennifer are not a team at all- what Russell is learning from this experience, he’s learning from simply being Jennifer, not from communicating with her. He’s a man who we know is used to being attractive, used to being complimented and unused to being told off for the way that he behaves. I love the way that Ally’s taken his character as Jennifer- because he isn’t Jennifer. He’s Russell. He doesn’t want to wear a skin-tight bodysuit, he wants to get a baggy shirt to hide this form that he’s not used to, and work with the new skills that he has.

Idk I just think it’s super super cool that all of the players are working within the mechanic so differently, and I think every single manifestation of this dynamic makes so much sense for the characters that it’s just astounding. This last episode was such a good show of these dynamics and the impact they actually have on the plot.

[gasolinerainbowpuddles]

Lonely Together ║ ⓞⓝⓔ๏ⓞⓕⓕⓢ

LONELY TOGETHER | PAIRING(s): Joel Miller x fem!reader

| RATING: explicit material | 18+ | WORD COUNT:  1.8k | CONTENT: disgusting brainrot from the Jackson era Joel pic being released, unhinged delulu take on him being sad and lonely and fixing it with sex as a coping mechanism, just general filth idk what to tell you, he's got a mouth on him, degradation kink?, use of derogatory terms but in a sexy way, my result of "sad horny" on the what kind of horny are you? quiz making a lot of sense in this fic

| SYNOPSIS: Joel is lonely. You're lonely. You decide to be lonely together.

It had started out naturally. Joel Miller’s house was remarkably quiet these days, some fracture in his relationship with his step-daughter Ellie being the catalyst for her departure, and he walked around most of the time looking like a kicked puppy. You were no better and with much less of a valid reason to be such a sad sack. You shared one thing in common above all else: loneliness. You’d both honed in on it, recognizing it in another person but not really knowing what to do with it for yourself let alone somebody else.

That is, until, the root of the loneliness made itself clear. You were desperate to be wanted, and Joel was desperate to be needed. A symbiotic give and take that restored some sense of equilibrium to the world when you gave into the urges and gave into each other.

And maybe you wouldn’t normally be so whiny and so pathetic. Maybe Joel wouldn’t normally speak so harshly and demanding. But you drew it out of each other, a safe place to be the worst versions of yourselves and chase what the mind and body needed to make things feel better if just for a little while.

There was no shame in how you meshed together. No second thoughts or chastisement for any notion of your ego being left completely checked and abandoned at the door or his flying off at the mouth with some manic call to ownership. It’s part of what made this dynamic work so well.

You refused to let yourself feel guilt or embarrassment over how he made you feel and act, and he didn’t kick himself for this rough, insistent version of himself that you brought out. It’s what led to a nearly constant need for each other, saying and being things that never left the walls of his home where you normally met up and often stayed the night.

“I know you’re not muffling those pretty little sounds,” he grunts and jerks your head up from where it’d been buried in the pillows as he slammed into you from behind. “Those are my sounds. They belong to me, and I wanna hear ‘em.”

You choke out some pathetic moan and let him puppet your head with his hand clutched around a fistful of your hair. The impact of his drives intensifies as he seeks out more of his sounds. Between the air being punched from your lungs and the mouth of your cervix being punched by his cockhead, you aren’t entirely sure what sounds you’re making, let alone if they’re enough to feed his demand for them.

“Yeah, there you go,” he husks and grips his free hand around the crease of your thigh to pull you closer to him. 

There were times when he was particularly possessive and desperate, and your body subconsciously pulled away from the intensity of his focus, only to have him drag you back even closer to his whims. You always let him. He never gave you more than you could take, and, when he did, it always ended up being just a touch further than what you understood you could manage. He was always forcing you to learn about yourself like that. You resented and pursued it all the same.

“You know better than to make me chase this sweet little cunt,” he snaps. 

You mewl out some kind of apology, but you both know this is just another part of the dynamic that feeds you both.

He pushes your shoulders down into the mattress, head sideways so he can still hear what he does to you, and jerks your hips back. You’re practically limp as a ragdoll, having gone at this now for the better half of an hour, growing exhausted from being taken to the edge so many times just to have him draw back at the last minute.

He pounds into you, and the wet smack of your smeared arousal sounds with each snap of his hip against you. Your slick is everywhere –  your pussy drooling and begging and crying for release – a sort of debauched canvas he’s made out of you in all the ways he’s bent you and folded you and angled you for his liking. He locks your wrists behind the small of your back and uses the leverage to somehow pound impossibly harder.

You feel like you’re about to push through the mattress in a few thrusts if he keeps up this pace, a mind boggling stamina for someone in his 50s. It felt like at times his need to be needed outweighed your need to feel wanted, but you would never complain about the frenzied fervor it invoked in him.

Just as you’ve accepted your fate of being plowed through the mattress, he’s yanking you flush against his chest and driving you down onto his cock. Your hands fly for an anchoring point, and Joel obliges by wrapping an arm under yours and crossing it against your chest and neck until he’s cradling your throat in his palm. Your hands claw onto his forearm like a port in a storm, and you hold on for dear life.

He grips your throat, just enough for you to respond how he wants: a tiny shiver and a throaty moan.

“Yeah, that’s right,” he grunts. He’s slamming you down onto his cock now, almost deranged in how he seeks out any and every way to make you come completely undone. “My little fuckhole. Say it.”

“I’m–I’m your little fuckhole,” you choke out around the squeeze of his hand.

“You better mean it, baby. Any hole is mine, ain’t that right?”

As if to prove his point, he slips his thumb into the rim of your ass with ease, all the smeared lubrication of your unfulfilled orgasms making a slippery entrance for him to finger. You gasp and clench around him, around his thumb and his cock, all excitement and nerves and anticipation for where he would take this.

You cry out when he plunges his thumb deeper, maybe a reminder that you hadn’t answered him, and you were expected to always answer him.

“Anything! All of them!” you yelp. The sting of his thumb now steadily pumping in and out of you made you feel all the more dizzy and keen for release.

Apparently pleased with your corroboration, he slips his thumb out and grips onto your hip once more to resume his devastating drives. He presses your head back against his shoulder until your ear is next to his breathy mouth.

“Bet you’d let me wreck you there, too, wouldn’t you? Rip you open on my cock ‘til you were gashed and gaped, huh?” He sounds unhinged and so close to spilling inside you that you can’t help but moan and clench.

He breathes a laugh, all he can manage at this pace, and bites onto your earlobe before letting whatever crazed thought that passes through his pussydrunk brain spill from his lips. “Would wreck that hole, baby. Would have you sent up to the clinic just to see what they could do for it. Tryna hide your face all embarrassed when you gotta tell ‘em it’s all wrecked like that because you’re such a nasty fuckin’ whore for my fat cock. Let me use whatever hole I want just because I can, ain’t that right?”

You don’t question why his frenzied promise of fucking your ass so hard you’d need to go to the clinic makes your orgasm come blazing from out of nowhere up the back of your spine. He’s not far behind, a few more thrusts before he’s groaning and filling you with more wet and slip. You collapse together onto the bed and lay limp and panting for what seems like forever as he softens inside you.

You come back to earth when Joel gently nudges you and nuzzles your neck and ear. “You okay?”

It always struck something strange in your chest when he got tender like that, sounding genuinely worried he’d gone too far or been too rough. But, just like always, it was exactly what you needed. What you both needed.

“I’m okay. Felt so good,” you tell him in earnest. He pulls you closer to him and drinks in your praise. He needed this as much as he needed to bury himself inside of you. “Always make me feel so good, Joel.”

He hums a little gravelly acknowledgement and presses a line of soft kisses to your neck. You smile and wiggle your head for him to kiss more of you. It felt unreal in these moments afterward, each time building something strangely sacred and dangerously close to attachment. To companionship. To raw, genuine feelings. To love.

But that hadn’t ever been the point of this, and it felt terrifying to acknowledge. It was easy to say you came to him because he made you feel wanted. It was easy to say he broke you down and built you back up because you gave him that control.

It was decidedly complicated to say you maybe had found more in each other than intended, and neither of you needed complicated. So you deflect. You change the subject. You skirt around the elephant in the room.

“So,” you start and turn over to face him. He hisses as his softening cock slides out of you. You feel his cum dribble out of your cunt, and you want so badly to press your hand down there to keep every bit of him inside you longer.  

He props himself up on his elbow to focus his attention on whatever it is you’re about to say, his fingertip drawing idle lines across your jaw and lips.

“You wanna fuck my ass for the first time, and I’m gonna get reamed so bad I’m gonna need to seek medical attention?” you tease.

He laughs a little at your delivery and at himself for getting so unhinged that he’d babbled about it in the first place. “Nah, baby, just got caught up in the moment. Would never wanna wreck it that bad ‘cause then I wouldn’t be able to fuck it again.”

You snort and grab at his chin. “Wow, not because I would have a wrecked asshole for the rest of my life? You just want it intact enough to fuck as many times as you want?”

He shoots you a lopsided grin that makes your stomach flip. “Ain’t that the point of all this? Me fuckin’ you how I want? You gettin’ what you need?”

It sounds false on his lips to the point that even he makes a microexpression of acknowledgement that it might’ve started that way but had morphed into something more – something complicated. But, at least for today, you were going to keep it easy.

“Yeah, I guess so,” you agree with an impish smile. You drag Joel down into a sloppy, lazy kiss.

[felixknow]

Ok idk if ur comfortable with this if no it’s okay. So I see a lot of reactions of threesomes and who would be with who and how it would work out between the boys. but what instead of a threesome it was a cuckhold situation. What boy would be paired with who how would the vibes work out and is it a one time thing something to happen frequently like once a month? Kind of similar but somewhat different

(Any minors who I catch interacting with this post will be bLOCKED!!!!)

I have soooooo many thoughts on this. There are so many possible pairs and they have so many dynamics……

Felix cuckolding Chan long-term, because when Felix pouts and cries about how beautiful he thinks Chan’s girl is, and how Felix really liked her and really wanted her first, Chan feels like what’s the harm in letting Felix be with her one time… Curse his giving nature, especially to Felix who he feels so indebted to… They try to have a threesome, but it turns into Felix going to town on Chan’s girl and Chan sitting back, watching Felix spew the dirtiest shit, greedily fucking his girl while she’s fucked so dumb she doesn’t even notice Chan isn’t touching her. And when Felix asks again, saying “think of her pleasure,” Chan can’t say no… eventually Felix stops asking, but he never stops taking.

Chan cuckolding Jeongin long-term, because “you need to let your eldest hyung show you how to properly please a woman.” It starts because Chan likes Innie’s girl, and she’s giving him eyes right back. “It’s not that I don’t think you can learn on your own, but the internet is a perverted place and you need someone you trust to teach you well.” Jeongin willingly sits to the side and watches Chan touch his girl, lick her, finger her, fuck her, all while trying to tell himself he’s just taking notes, he’s learning right now. “There’s so much more I have to teach you,” Chan says after, patting Jeongin on the shoulder. “We’ll have another session soon.”

Han cuckolding Lee Know once, because his girlfriend is awfully fond of teasing Jisung and riling him up. “You’re such a tsundere sometimes,” she tells Lee Know. “It’s so fun to get Han all worked-up and hyper. I bet he’d just fuck the shit out of someone, yanno? He’s so animated and wild…” She says it so many times, brings it up so often, sometimes with Han around, and eventually Lee Know snaps. “If you want to see Han fuck someone so bad, why don’t you have sex with him then? Get him all riled up and let him fuck you.” Lee Know is halfway between wanting to rip Han off of and get in and join you as Han pounds you from behind so frantically that the entire bed shakes. Jealousy and anger win out and he sits and watches, waiting until you’re satisfied with Jisung’s feral sex. Never. Again. 

Hyunjin cuckolding Changbin once, because he gets tired of hearing his roommate’s girlfriend’s moans every couple of days. He barges in one night while they’re in the middle of it. Hyunjin sees Changbin from the back, balls deep in his girl who he has pinned under him. “Can you two please shut the fuck up?” he asks, standing in the open doorway. Changbin pauses, looks over his shoulder at Hyunjin with a glare and says “If you want to join so bad, just say so.” Hyunjin huffs and goes to the bed, throwing his shirt off on the way. He’s calling Changbin’s bluff for the most part, but when his girl looks up at him with stars in her eyes and her mouth hanging open, he thinks “fuck it, one time won’t hurt.” It ends with Changbin at the edge of the bed, watching his girlfriend bounce on Hyunjin’s (admittedly larger) cock. He’s furious at himself for his big mouth-- he didn’t really mean for Hyunjin to join. He didn’t think he’d really do it!!! It’s sure as shit never happening again.

Seungmin cuckolding Felix once or twice, because Felix asks him to. There’s something hot to him about the three of them-- the boys and Felix’s girl-- on a voice call together, but Seungmin and his girl are secretly in the same room and touching each other, trying to see if they can cum before Felix notices what they’re up to. It’s a fun game to him, and he gets some sex after too, so what’s the harm…

Jeongin cuckolding Hyunjin once, because they’re all together and drinking and Hyunjin’s girl says that his fingers are sooooo nice and sooo long, and Jeongin points out that his fingers are longer and probably better. The boys argue of course, like the brothers they basically are. It ends with Hyunjin’s girl in Jeongin’s lap in the back of Hyunjin’s car, fucking herself on his fingers and begging him not to stop while Hyunjin drives them home, his grip so tight on the steering wheel it feels like he could crush it.

I’ve gotta stop. This shit craaaaazy.

[cretaceos]

landoscar is so “you know how to ball, i know aristotle” cause oscar is always getting the historical/nerdy questions right while lando struggles with them.

oscar knows important achievements he did and surprisingly he knows lando’s too (like he knew his first podium).

oscar passed his driving test first time, while lando didn’t because he got theory test wrong. oscar just knows cities they go and lando didn’t know what grand prix were in asia, and also lando looks at him everytime they’re ending a video ‘cause he just doesn’t seem to know the next race. (this is so cute btw)

oscar knows which drivers have won in melbourne before, he knows aussie people on the sport, he knows years where these people won, he knows when mclaren won in australia.

on the other hand, lando knows about games, e-sports, and he likes golf, football, tennis. they even played padel together but lando said oscar is bad at it (which again, there is serious allegations proofing that). he likes motogp, knows how to play guitar and drums, even tried motorcycle racing before going karting.

lando said him and history is a no, and oscar said he thinks golf is boring, lando ranked horror movies very low, oscar said consuming true crime content is a green flag. somehow they end up having this opposite sides.

idk i just love this dynamics so much. :(

[just-absolutely-super]

As many people have pointed out already in chapter 106, the Forgers—a fake family—act more authentic than the Desmonds—the actual family.

But really…the Desmonds aren’t a “real” family, not to me. Not in a way that matters...

SxF is really good at showing relationship dynamics and how blood doesn’t always make a family. This is so true now that you read chapter 106 and compare the Desmonds and their interactions to the Forgers and how they act with one another.

With the Desmonds, there is no warmth shown in how they interact. I'd say there's barely any love either (we know Melinda does care for Damian despite the conflicting thoughts, but it seems she's not allowed to show it). Damian tries to form connections but no one in the family is receptive of it. The parents have a hands-off parenting style. The older brother keeps to himself and doesn’t open himself up. Damian literally finds more affection in his dog and butler than his actual family and that’s so heartbreaking!

The Desmonds may be a family in all sense and purposes, but they don't present in a way that all families are meant to.

On the other side are the Forgers. Loid and Yor married for convenience. Anya is adopted. They’re only together because of Anya due to her mind reading abilities. It’s all a sham for WISE’s mission and to lower suspicion from the secret police.

But despite the intentions behind forming this persona of a perfect family unit…you can tell that there is a genuity to their relationship with one another. You see love, care, emotion, respect, and protectiveness. The family may be fake but the feelings they exhibit are so real despite the motives not exactly being pure. Loid, Yor, and Anya experiencing life together led to them forming bonds that they cherish. They Forgers managed to create a warm place they can comfortably call home.

idk I just find it so fascinating to see how a family brought together for convenience and ulterior motives can develop true familial bonds compared to an “official” and “real” family. I want to write a thesis paper about it lmao

I do wonder what the future holds for the Desmonds. In Damian's case, I hope he and Anya can grow more together so she can show him what a real loving family is. If Donovan really is as evil as the narrative is making him out to be, my hope is that he can be taken out of the picture so the rest of the family can heal from their respective traumas, then grow back together on what little familial love is left over. But we'll just have to wait and see when it comes to that...

[p1utofairy]

PAC: “i get so weak in the knees, i can hardly speak. i lose all control and something takes over me…” 💌⏳🦢🍸

• how does your crush currently feel about you?

disclaimer ✩: 18+ mature themes. here's something to kick off fall 🍂 take what resonates, leave what doesn’t. enjoy!

pile 1 📩 —

heyyy pile 1! let's jump right into your reading 🤗 i'm already hearing that you think about your crush A LOT like you can't get them off your mind even if you tried and they feel the exact same way. you two mirror each other so if you feel intensely about them, they're also feeling intensely about you even if they don't convey that outwardly (i.e. their facial expressions/body language) i feel like they’re not used to having a huge crush on someone, it usually just kinda…happens for them??? like they don't usually have to put a lot of work in to make someone fall for them (bc i'm visually seeing that they're pretty damn attractive) but that's not gonna cut it with you — they just can't get by on their looks. you're big on taking your time to get to know someone and building up that level of trust and respect. you carry yourself very well pile 1 and that's really what made them do a double take when they first saw you. you're 1 of 1 — they've never seen anyone like you before. i'm hearing that some of you may look exotic or people tell you that you resemble a specific celebrity a lot? idk but just know you get the blood rushing through their veins lol they can't help but feel excited when they're around you, yet they barely know you which is the crazy part. they feel like they know you but they don't…and that's what so intriguing to them. stranger by jhené aiko is coming to mind, “i know ya face, i know ya name but i don't know you? isn't that crazy? isn't that crazy?” you may judge them at first and already think the worst like “oh i bet they’re a player!” but don’t jump to conclusions! give it a chance. they may actually surprise you and treat you like royalty, cause i feel a lot of adoration coming from their end…even though they know little to nothing about you. i want you around by snoh aalegra is playing in my head, “it's somethin' 'bout the way you stare into my eyes. i know that i don't make things clear. i fall for you every time i try to resist you.” they’re gonna fall hard for you pile 1. they’re definitely going to want to get serious and make this official which will shock you both, because of how fast things will just come together naturally. AHHH I LOVE IT.

other channeled messages:

whoa by snoh aalegra, kiss me thru the phone by soulja boy ft. sammie, tattoos, glasses, scorpio placements/scorpio moon, wifey, bright smile, almond shaped eyes, petite figure, girl of my dreams, kissin’ on my tattoos by august alsina, u are my high by dj snake & future, prominent air sign placements

pile 2 ⚖️ —

hiiiii pile 2 💓 right away i’m hearing that your crush feels like you’re unattainable? you might be really popular or a naturally social person that everyone clings to, and they find this a bit intimidating. they don’t know how to approach you – they've been trying to figure out how to get your attention but little do they know that they already have it. y'all might have a dynamic like summer and seth from ‘the O.C.’ and/or stiles and lydia from ‘teen wolf’ aw when they find out you like them back it'll most likely catch them off guard like “who?! ME?!” lol they’re so cute. you’re very dreamy to them, they'll damn near start drooling when you’re in close proximity to them…i’m also hearing that they love the way you dress. you show just enough to let their imagination wander lol idk if they wanted me to say that cause i can see their cheeks getting red and them getting all flustered 🤣 let me just say that they respect you so much! they’ll feel so lucky to finally get to know you on a personal level because they’ve been inquiring about you for awhile now. you’ll be everything that they dreamed of plus more & vice versa. there’s definitely a best friend dynamic at the root of this connection, you both will be able to be yourselves unapologetically when you're together. i feel sooo much warmth and comfort. idk why belly and jeremiah from ‘the summer i turned pretty’ just popped up in my head lol but yeah they will love holding you gently and staring into your eyes longingly 😩 SO ADORBS.

other channeled messages:

the cool girl & the gamer boy, no idea by don toliver, just talk to her dude, victor from corpse bride, timothée chalamet, bilingual, hit different by sza ft. ty dolla $ign, my forever boy, good days by sza, skateboarding

pile 3 ⚓️ —

pile 333 💫 what's up!!! i channeled a song for y'all already, come over by aaliyah is coming in strongly. “i know you're asleep but you're on my mind and i'm wide awake and i wanna stop by.” ooo there’s a very sensual vibe between you and your crush, a lot of sexual attraction and tension i'm picking up. you two would make a great looking couple — a lot of people will be looking at you two when you're interacting with each other. it's like “can those two get a room already and just fuck” LMAOOO some will be hating but others will just be admiring like damn i wish i had that. i feel like your crush makes you act really shy lol you try to muster up the courage to look them in the eye and be bold but you fold every time lol i’m hearing them say “don’t be shy baby” 😩 your crush knows what they're doingggggg omg they just love to tease you. a couple that's coming to mind is joey and pacey from ‘dawson's creek’ you may not have paid them much mind initially but one day something clicked and you were like damn…i really like them. it might take a little minute for y'all to officially get together but once you two do…WHEW. i told y'all the sexual tension is through the roof — i’m hearing this is that 90’s r&b type of love. a lot of slow burn and building up to the real thing. they think so much about what it'll be like to finally be able to hold you, kiss you and treat you properly. you evoke a lot of inspiration, motivation and passion in them pile 3 <3

other channeled messages:

halfcrazy by musiq soulchild, take a picture it'll last longer, lavender haze by taylor swift, muse by partynexydoor, capricorn placements/capricorn venus, you're like my own personal brand of heroin - edward cullen (lol)

[melrosing]

What do you think of the Sansa bullied Arya take if you don’t mind me asking (just don’t answer if you don’t want to haha)

per my usual practice on Controversial Topics im putting this under a cut

At the real risk of that lot showing up in my notes again, I think this ‘Sansa bullies Arya’ pins their pre AGOT dynamic squarely on Sansa herself, rather than the way they are both being raised by the adults around them to behave towards one another. Sure, Sansa is mean to Arya sometimes during their childhood! We don’t have a lot of examples besides the oft-mentioned ‘horseface’ insults, but I think it’s fair to assume that more often than not, Sansa was looking down on Arya. Meanwhile, Arya herself feels inadequate and like she just can’t do anything right. She resents Sansa, but also worries that Sansa’s opinion of her may be true.

Fine. But where has Sansa’s opinion of Arya come from? Is it her cold black heart? Fucking no, it’s come from Septa Mordane, Catelyn, and whoever else surrounds them growing up. The men don’t seem to really give much of a shit how Arya acts because it’s not their business and she’s just a kid anyhow, but the women pointedly give many shits. In our first scene with Arya, Septa Mordane scolds her for not being good at ���women’s work’, and there’s plenty to suggest that this is just another day in the life for Arya. Meanwhile, Sansa gets the carrot for excelling. Both Arya and Sansa are learning their own worth in this chapter, and the worth of one another. Sansa internalises the praise whilst learning that Arya is bad, and everything she mustn’t be. Arya internalises the criticisms whilst learning that Sansa is good, and everything she can never be.

They’ll be getting this from Catelyn as well. Catelyn clearly adores both her daughters, and will move heaven and earth to get them back in ACOK. But one good adjective for Catelyn is ‘dutiful’ - it’s in her house words, and it’s how she’s lived her life up to AGOT. Doing as she’s told, even when it pains her. She expects the same of her daughters, and finds those expectations satisfied in Sansa’s case, and apparently flouted in Arya’s. So again, from their own mother, Sansa internalises that Arya is bad, and that she, Sansa, is good. Arya internalises the same. If societal standards were reversed, perhaps it would be Arya lording over Sansa, but such as it is, it’s Sansa over Arya. 

Now, Sansa is a child. When children are told over and over that X is good and Y is bad, they generally don’t question it, at least until they're older and more experienced in the world. They will also parrot what they hear, often in graceless ways. Because they’re children. Sansa is told that Arya wilfully misbehaves because she’s bad, and so Sansa thinks: then I should look down on Arya. It sounds like Sansa mostly keeps her distance from her sister pre AGOT. Not always - they play together sometimes - but a lot of the time. She has internalised the teaching that Arya is an aberration, and as she herself knows the adults value obedience in girls, and she wants to please them so badly, the distance between her and Arya demonstrates to them just how good she is - she won’t descend to Arya’s behaviour. 

When Sansa does interact with Arya (pre Darry), we see her being a bit bossy - telling Arya what to do, etc. Sansa is replicating what she has seen the adults do with Arya, and is mimicking them to assert her own position as the good, obedient child. If Arya ever doesn’t want to do something, it can only be because she’s bad. 

[sidenote, it all really reminds me of these short stories me and my sister used to get read a lot as kids, called My Naughty Little Sister (lmao) by Dorothy Edwards. They're pretty old and I don’t think they ever got major circulation outside Britain, but for anyone unfamiliar, you can probably guess how these stories go. There’s an elder sister, good and obedient, who narrates short tales of her ‘naughty little sister’ doing terrible things like idk, making a terrible mess etc, and going ‘now I’m sure you [the child audience] wouldn’t do a thing like that!’ They’re supposed to be short morality tales for the children, and amuse the parent reading them aloud, who recognises the mischievous behaviour of the younger and is charmed by the haughtiness of the elder sister, who you can hear is narrating the incidents of her sister’s mischief with the disdain that she’s heard the adults do so, and is asserting her own good behaviour over said sister. And the whole fucking reason we were read these stories was because my younger sister was precisely the kind of kid who got up to all kinds of shit as a little kid (which now all of us find hilarious but DIDN’T AT THE TIME), and I was the elder sister like ‘my goodness how could she do such things as these!!’ (e.g. paint an entire bookcase with grout). It amused us both to see ourselves in the stories. You could say this was life imitating art, but I think this is simply an age old dynamic, familiar to many people with siblings: you would see how the adults spoke to another child in your family, and replicate their manner in an effort to come across as an adult. Except you weren’t an adult, so you weren’t always as graceful about it as they were. That is pre AGOT Sansa, to a T. And I’m sure that’s what GRRM, a child of three who had two sisters of his own, is replicating here.]

But I think there’s also a loneliness in being the ‘obedient child’. Doing as you’re told all the time can be boring, and living up to expectations is a lot of pressure. Sansa wants a companion in all that, but Arya has no interest in sharing in it. Arya is offering friendship, but from a place Sansa believes she can’t reach her sister - Sansa thinks she’d have to ‘descend to Arya’s level’ to accept it, and she can’t do that. You get a sense of Sansa thrilling in trying Arya’s ‘misbehaviours’ for herself when she quietly delights in behaving ‘as wicked as Arya’, but you see in this that she has to condemn such behaviours and herself for exhibiting them, all in the same breath. And in the end, I can easily imagine Sansa resents that Arya has more fun with their brothers than she ever does with Sansa herself: that the one sister she has is one she has nothing in common with. Sansa can’t find a like mind amongst her siblings, and so clings to Jeyne Poole, and the praise of the adults around her.

So with all that in mind, YES! Sansa is sometimes mean to Arya, and calls her horseface. That is because Sansa is a child, nobody is correcting her behaviour, and she understands that Arya is bad, and the way she behaves is frustrating to Sansa herself, so really what does it matter if she’s a little mean sometimes? She knows that she is good, because everyone says so. Even if she calls her sister a name now and then, she’s still the good child. 

AND THEN we get to Darry. And Sansa starts to see that society isn’t a song, and sometimes it doesn’t matter how good you are, horrible things can happen to you anyway. But she doesn’t want to believe that, because it would turn her world upside down, and her future would look a lot darker, too - Ned has not ended her engagement to Joffrey, and Sansa has to live for the foreseeable in KL. So when Arya doing the thing she ‘wasn’t supposed to’ (playing with Mycah) snowballs into a terrible miscarriage of justice where Sansa’s wolf is killed, Sansa rejects the notion that the songs could be wrong about beautiful princes, and shifts the blame onto Arya for that original 'misdemeanour'. The grief at losing Lady is terrible too (the wolves are meant to have a soul deep bond with the Stark children), and so the target of that grief likewise becomes Arya. What was previously a normal, childishly complicated sibling relationship gets twisted into something else.

This is where I think Sansa becomes different level of unpleasant towards her sister. She’s cruel about Arya’s loss of Mycah, tells Arya she wishes she were dead instead of Lady, etc etc. Arya is not giving as good as she gets here - she even tries to make amends with Sansa, but Sansa throws the offer in her face.

The reasons for Sansa’s behaviour are complicated, but not that complicated. She’s been raised to slot perfectly into this world, without ever being told what that world is really like. And when abruptly it turns out that what she’s being raised for is essentially the slaughter, she rejects it. She can’t see Joffrey as he truly is: she’s been told that princes are charming, that Kings are just, Queens are kind, and she herself will be a Queen. Sansa is going to be handed over to the Lannisters, and she’s going to live the song of her dreams, and the only thing between Sansa and the realisation of those is the thing that’s always been wrong: Bad Arya. Because again, if Arya isn't bad, then everything else is, and Sansa is in terrible danger.

No one is sitting Sansa down and explaining to her that Arya is not bad, just different from her, and that they should love one another - that there are dark forces here far stronger than them that could tear them apart, that the Lannisters are the greatest of them, and they have to fight together, not each other. Arya gets this talk, funnily enough, but not Sansa. Arya is asked to understand that Sansa is different from her, but Sansa is only ever taught to abhor that her sister as different from her. Where Arya is told to be wary of the court of King’s Landing, Ned leaves Sansa to continue her fantasies, and then, when he abruptly tries to put an end to them, he doesn’t bother to explain why. I’m not saying this is unforgivable on Ned’s part - he has a lot on his mind lol - but it’s quite obviously a major failing. Ned leaves Sansa in a fantasy world. It’s fucking Joffrey who has to step in and clarify for Sansa that actually, she’s been dreaming.

So as long as they’re together, Sansa is never able to come to terms with the fact that Arya was not the aberration, but rather, everything else was. In the absence of one another, they cannot reconcile over that fact. So yes, GRRM says they’ll have deep issues to sort through when they meet again, but those aren’t going to be the times that Sansa called her ‘horseface’ - they’re going to be about what happened since they left Winterfell, when their relationship was twisted by forces much darker than Septa Mordane. 

So no, I think the ‘Sansa is a bully’ diatribes are seriously tedious, because even if you want to insist that calling your sister ‘horseface’ a few times even qualifies, you can still accept such wrongs without deciding that that makes Sansa a fundamentally unkind person who cannot be reconciled with Arya and doesn’t deserve to be. It is on the page that the two of them miss each other. Like I genuinely cannot imagine going through everything Arya does in the story and then, upon reuniting with a sister I thought lost forever, deciding I’m actually still mad about the things she got wrong as a child that she herself has paid dearly for, both physically and emotionally. Like jesus fucking christ man. By all means let them talk about it!! But who do you think Arya is lmao

Tl;dr: Sansa is a kid in a society. She is not the arbiter of Arya’s place in society. She is not mean because she’s cruel, but because she has internalised the exact same things that Arya has, based on the example of the adults surrounding them. It just happens that those things were a carrot for Sansa and a stick for Arya. But then in the end, they weren’t a carrot for Sansa either.

tl;dr 2: clarifying once again - i am a jaime stan. i find the stark sister relationship interesting bc I have experience of a similar sisterly dynamic and find it interesting to see a version of that explored on the page. so if you think one has to be a sansa stan to observe all this then that kind of just demonstrates how dichotomous you've become on this issue lol like if I'm talking about takes I dislike re JB I don't generally feel the need to attribute them to JC fandom. let's all grow up x

tl;dr 3: no i don't hate sansa or arya, since i know these are both conclusions various people reach whenever i even mention these two. in fact i think they are both great girls! imagine

[fanfictionismyaddiction]

Toto Wolff with wife reader based on this link, https://www.facebook.com/share/r/PrTPjuowy5qGqvqK/

Do however you see fit. Maybe fluff and a little suggestive scenes 🫣. Idk. Thanks!! :))

word count: 740

Pairing: Toto Wolff x reader

Summery: Toto Wolff and his wife Y/n engage in a playful, humorous interview where they respond to WhatsApp messages with emojis and witty remarks, showcasing their fun dynamic as a couple.

______________________________________________________________

The scene opens to a cozy, familiar setting—Toto Wolff and Y/n seated side by side, holding small cards and markers. On the table between them are stacks of emoji cards, ready for use.

A voice from behind the camera, unseen but clearly in charge of the questions, speaks up. "Alright, Toto, Y/n, we're back because the fans loved your WhatsApp replies so much that they demanded a part two—this time, with both of you."

Toto gives a small smirk, raising an eyebrow at Y/n. "They clearly don’t know what they’ve gotten themselves into, asking us together."

Y/n laughs, picking up a marker. "I hope they’re ready."

The voice from behind the camera chuckles. "Let’s get started. First question. You both get a message that just says ‘👀’ from a team member. How do you reply?"

Y/n immediately picks up a card and draws a big question mark, holding it up for the camera. “Honestly, I’d be like, ‘What do you want?’” she says, giggling.

Toto thinks for a second, then shuffles through the emoji cards and pulls out one with a devil emoji. "I'd send this. Let them know I’m up to something, keep them wondering," he says with a smirk, looking over at Y/n.

Y/n rolls her eyes playfully. "You're always causing trouble."

"Next question," says the voice, amused. "Someone sends you a voice note, but you're both busy—what’s your reaction?"

Toto and Y/n both quickly reach for the cards, racing to flip through the emoji options. Y/n triumphantly pulls out the facepalm emoji, holding it up with a laugh. "I mean, seriously. Why a voice note when we’re clearly busy?"

Toto shakes his head, holding up a thumbs down emoji. "Voice notes are overrated. Texts are easier," he adds, leaning back with a chuckle.

The voice behind the camera moves on. "You get a call from Lewis during a race weekend, but you know it’s probably not important. What do you do?"

Y/n smirks, taking her time to write a response on the card. She holds it up, and it simply says, "Ignore." She grins mischievously. "Sorry, Lewis. We’re busy. He can wait."

Toto laughs out loud and nods. "Same for me. Straight to voicemail," he says confidently, scribbling "Later, mate" on his card before holding it up. "He always calls at the most interesting times."

The camera catches the couple sharing a knowing glance, and the voice behind the camera chuckles. "Okay, here’s a twist. Someone sends you the fire emoji ‘🔥.’ What’s your reply?"

Toto’s eyes light up with amusement. He quickly flips through the emoji stack and holds up the smirk emoji. "Oh, I’d send this. Let them wonder what I’m thinking."

Y/n laughs at his response but goes in a completely different direction. She finds the fire extinguisher emoji and waves it around. "I’d put out the flames immediately. Keep it cool."

Toto gives her a playful look, raising an eyebrow. "Really? Not even a little fire?"

Y/n winks at him. "Maybe for you."

The voice from behind the camera jumps in quickly, trying not to laugh. "Alright, how about this: you get a heart emoji from a driver or team member. How do you react?"

Toto picks up his card, scribbling something down before holding it up to the camera. It reads, "Wrong person?" He laughs, clearly amused at the idea. "I’d make them sweat."

Y/n shakes her head, holding up the raised eyebrow emoji. "I’d just send this. Like, ‘Why are you sending me hearts?’"

The interviewer laughs, enjoying their dynamic. "Okay, last question. You get a string of random emojis from a fan—what’s your go-to response?"

Y/n doesn’t hesitate, holding up a blank card. She doodles a little smiley face on it and shrugs. "I’d probably just send a smile back. Keep it simple."

Toto, however, takes a little longer to decide. He holds up a card that simply says, "I’d send this," and picks up the shrugemoji from the pile. "Sometimes, there’s no need to understand everything."

The voice behind the camera wraps up, laughing. "Well, thank you both for your hilarious and, at times, suspicious replies. Clearly, your WhatsApp games are on point—both together and individually."

Y/n leans into Toto with a grin. "Suspicious, huh?"

Toto laughs, pulling her closer. "Only sometimes."

The camera zooms out as they laugh together, their playful energy still in the air as the video ends with the Mercedes and WhatsApp logos once again.

[fadingdaggerr]

Hii!! I hope you've had a great day!!

So, I had this idea and I can't stop thinking about it, it's like rotating in my brain like a Rotisserie Chicken. IDK if you're still taking requests but I just had to send this.

Anyway, Melissa and reader are in someone else's house (R parents or idk some kind of sleepover with the teachers) and for some reason they can't sleep together in the same bed/room, like they're used to, which is concerning R because Melissa doesn't really sleep well alone.

But Mel tries to ease R saying she'll be just fine for one night, and very reluctantly R agrees.

Well, it turns out she can't. R and obviously a few others in the house wake up to Melissa's screaming in the middle of the night and R runs to her, shes is sobbing, shaking and clutching R for dearlife, just absolutely terrified and not even letting R move. R calm her down and take care of her, like with a lot of fluff and comfort.

I'm just obsessed with R taking care of Mel and being really sweet.

Yeah that's it. I love your stories, they are really really good. And I could only think of you when this thing came out of my brain.

+ I absolutely loved what you did in "Know I'm Alive", I was kicking my feet and internally screaming. (I sent that anon 👉👈) So thanks, I enjoyed it a lot, like a lot a lot, like, if I could I would eat that it.

You're really talented!! <3

by the sun, by the moon

pairing: melissa schemmenti x gn!reader

summary: request above! | 4.8k

includes: no pronoun use for r, fluff, hurt/comfort, family play fights/sibling banter, r’s family adores mel, probably ooc!mel oops

warnings: unhealthy relationship dynamic (short), attempted violence (short), mentions/insinuations of sex, one outdated traditional value, sleep difficulties/nightmares, anxiety/panic attack

note: please feel free to skip the section that discusses the unhealthy relationship dynamic/violence. it begins after the first section divide with the line “for her entire childhood…” those topics are only explicitly stated there and only referenced one other time. please do not feel as tho you need to read triggering material to understand the story, i tried to make it understandable without having to read potentially distressing content :)

Melissa’s head tips back when she hears you coming back downstairs, having been waiting for you since your mom called during The Real Housewives time. The way you’re watching your feet with furrowed brows makes her fully turn until she’s kneeling on the couch, leaning over the back to get closer to you.

“Something wrong?” Melissa asks, reaching to grab your hand to pull you closer.

You shake your head, “no, no.” Warm hands rise to cradle the redhead’s face, “how would you feel about spending the night at my parents place Saturday? They’re hosting Jonah’s birthday, wanted our help to set up the night before.”

Her eyes widen, “just Saturday night?”

“Just Saturday,” you reaffirm, tucking a loose hair behind her ear. She cautiously nods, barely moving. “We don’t have to if you’re not comfortable with it, I’m not going to make you.”

“I know, I know,” she says through her breath, “we’ll stay the night.” The kiss you press to her forehead feels heavier than just a silent thank you.

—☽—

For her entire childhood and through her marriage, Melissa slept like a rock. She slept through Kristen Marie’s and Joe’s snoring, her college girlfriend’s sleep talking, her parents having a screaming match so loud the cops got called. Before starting teaching, she even had to train herself to wake up at the sound of her alarm, knowing that being late to the school was ten times worse than being late to JC Penney.

Two years after she finally left Joe, Melissa met Eric.

Tall, charming, nice-smelling Eric with his salt-and-pepper beard always tidy, a covered up Marine tattoo on his forearm. He’d bought her drink after his friend accidentally knocked hers off the counter of the bar, and two hookups later, she was agreeing to a real date. Three months later, she was his girlfriend and allowed him into her apartment. He got to know where the spare key was hidden after a year.

Eric was everything Joe was not. During arguments, Joe would shut down and leave, only returning when he smells like cheap liquor and some other woman’s perfume. Eric always stayed, told her his point of view, listened to hers, calmly told her when she was overreacting. He was smooth, never raised a hand towards her or threw things at the walls. Melissa always knew when she was in the wrong, but he never made her feel bad about it.

Eric was particular. He liked his shirts folded a certain way, beer only from a glass, and silence when he worked. If she was excited about anything, he only ever allowed her to speak about it until he’d lost interest, almost always by the time she paused to take a breath. When he properly introduced her to his friends, his hand on her knee would tighten when she spoke. Quickly, she learned that the tighter the grip, the less she should speak. Four hours at some sports bar and Melissa had only been able to say a total of six sentences. Eric liked Melissa quiet. Melissa became quiet.

He started to prod about meeting her family, and she shut him down. Again and again. The fourth time, he banged his fist against the table, the end of his fork creating a small dent. Green eyes fixated on the dent as he began to calmly explain that he had introduced her to his family, it was her turn. Mumbling those were your buddies got her stuck on her own couch that night, clutching the blanket Nana made her before she started college.

Two months later, she began to slowly bring back Eric’s clothing to his apartment on the off-chance they went there for a night. Grading her student’s assignments began to take longer and she triple-checked the scores to waste more time, suddenly too tired to have sex or even talk before going to sleep. Otherwise, she listened to his rules, spoke when spoken to, cooked when asked.

The morning he narrowly avoided calling her a moron to her face when she made the eggs over-medium instead over-easy, she officially made her choice. That night, at the Italian restaurant he brought her to, she called it off.

“Why?” Eric asked, eyes stone, unwavering from hers.

She took a deep breath, “you treat me like a pet. Speak when spoken to, move when told, I’m sick of it.” Her grip on the table cloth tightened, “tomorrow, I will put your stuff outside. You’ll pick it up when I tell you to, and then you will leave.”

He sits back in his chair, tongue poking at his bottom lip, “and if I don’t want to break up?”

“Too bad,” she shrugs. Standing from the table, Melissa leaves him with the check and the sad excuse of Italian cuisine on the table.

At work the next day, it takes all morning, lunch, and prep to fully debrief Barbara on everything that had been going on. It made sense to the kindergarten teacher why she had yet to meet this Eric fella, but after hearing this, she knew Melissa wasn’t proud of getting herself in this situation. A promise of a wine weekend and greasy food makes Melissa truly smile. Barbara hadn’t realized how fake every little grin had been until now, she missed her best friend.

That afternoon, Melissa came home to the loose brick that hid her spare key ajar. The blood in her veins runs cold. Opening the unlocked door, glass scratches across the wooden floor, crunching under her heels. Every picture frame, the television, the radio, the coffee table, the stovetop, the tea set from her grandfather, all smashed to pieces. Holes were in nearly every wall, the stair railing broken. The entire first floor was destroyed, only upstairs was left pristine, as if nothing had happened at all. Bat in hand, she checks every closet, under her bed, in the bathtub, everywhere. He was gone.

Leaning against the wall, she slides down and sobs. Melissa is forced to make a choice she didn’t want to make. Opening her phone, she calls Joe.

Joe, despite everything he had done, was at Melissa’s house within the hour. In one hand he held a bag from the hardware store, containing new locks and keys, the other hand had his very own bat, nails pounded through the wood. Like he said when they signed the papers, just because he wasn’t in love with her, doesn’t mean he didn’t care.

Three weeks later, after things had settled and locks were changed, Melissa felt more secure. Still every night, she woke at every sound, wind and the smoke detector quickly became her mortal enemies. Bundled in her soft pajamas and thick comforter one night, she finally fell into a hard, deep sleep forced from pure exhaustion.

Paperclips, a screwdriver, and a small sheet of flexible metal are all someone needs to pick a lock and shift the deadbolt. Eric surely knew that, always the smart man, yet never the brightest. Slowly, he moved up the stairs, bourbon fueling his motions as well as his heavy steps.

A particularly loud thunk wakes Melissa, hand flying under her pillow to the bat Joe had made her promise to keep there. Another thump made her jump out of bed and to the side of her dresser with an iron grip around Edith Houghton. When her door opened, she stayed pressed into the corner, hoping she stayed hidden just long enough for him to leave so she could grab her phone.

Liquor breeds stupidity, worsens it when it is already present, and Eric had left to check the bathroom. Quickly, Melissa called the police, shakily texting Joe as she whispered to the operator. At that point, she didn’t care who got there first. She just wanted to be free of him.

She moved to a new apartment before the month even ended. Barbara insisted on cameras, which Gerald installed. Joe insisted on a nailed up bat, which he made himself. Not a night has gone by since then where she didn’t have it within arms reach of the bed.

It took six years for her to sleep again.

—☽—

The light tracing of nonsensical patterns on her abdomen is what wakes Melissa, eyes cracking open to the bright sun peeking through the curtains. She wishes now, more than ever, that she had agreed to the blackout curtains, groaning into her pillow. With the knowledge she’s now awake, several soft kisses press against her shoulder, traveling to her neck. With a sleepy grin on her face, Melissa turns to face you.

“Morning,'' you mumble against her lips, hand traveling up to her hair to separate the knots that you created. “Sleep good?”

The only response you get is a little huff that almost sounds like yeah, her face burying in your neck to hide from the light. You lay there with her, finishing your detangling mission as Melissa’s nails trace up and down your arm. A final, sound kiss lands on the crown of her head before you shuffle out from underneath her, reaching for your previous discarded university shirt and sweatpants. The redhead watches through droopy eyes, scanning over you before your pajamas cover everything she adores.

“Gotta get up, beautiful,” you say through a yawn as you walk out the room, “we need to be leaving for one.” A tiny groan escapes her lips as she rises from the bed, though a small smile crosses her lips when she sees your sweatshirt thrown over the chair in the corner, just waiting for her.

Not even halfway down the stairs, there’s a clatter from the kitchen and a quiet exclamation of fuck. “You’re not even awake and you want me up,” Melissa says as she walks to the coffee maker. She’s met with a small slap on her ass in return, not even caring to be embarrassed of the girlish giggle she lets out.

Whose fault it is that you’re late leaving, who could tell? Between the forgoing packing and wrapping your cousin’s present last night for a taste of Melissa and her lack of pants this morning, it’s hard to say. Nothing that going a gentle twenty over on the highway can’t mend.

Driving up the dirt road, the dense trees thinned and your parent’s yellow house came into view. Your father’s questionably functional truck sits in the front of the garage, your mom and brother’s cars parked close together on the lawn. Seeing the way your hands tighten on the steering wheel, Melissa slides her hand from your elbow to the free hand on your thigh, playing with your rings to calm you. Being at your parents house was always overwhelming, fun, but overwhelming.

Narrowly avoiding scraping the side, you pull in next to your brother’s car. Looking at each other, you and Melissa give each other a nod of we got this. She’d been over here before, she’d been to three family reunions and almost every birthday party, but never had you two stayed the night, always being some of first to leave to sleep in your own bed.

With a little grunt, you hop out of the car and jog to Melissa’s side to open her door. She gives you a half glare when you tap her hand away from helping carry the bags in, you never let her lift a finger, if you can help it.

“Well, look who decided to show up!”

Both you and Melissa jump at your mother’s yell from the porch, bangles clanking together as she widely waves to the both of you. Gravel crunches under her feet as she rushes over to the two of you, immediately pulling Melissa into a hug. Before you were banned from saying it, you used to joke that your parents preferred your girlfriend to their own child. The giant smile on Melissa’s face when she interacts with your family makes it worth it.

Tumbling upstairs, you bring your bags into your childhood bedroom with Melissa close behind. Even with every time she had been here, she loved being in your room. It was a time capsule of your life before college, all the posters of bands and movies still hanging on the walls, trinkets covering every space. She particularly loved the little collection of rocks on your bookshelf, clearly in order from favorite to least favorite.

The bed bobs as you both drop onto the mattress, groaning at the comfort after three hours in the car. You turn your face towards her, leaning to press a kiss to her shoulder, “I love you.”

Melissa leans in closer, “I love you, too.” She watches your eyes flick to her lips, beating you to the chase and pressing her lips to yours softly. It takes every ounce of effort to not moan at your tongue tracing her lip, her hand coming up to grip your shirt and keep you close. Stomping up the stairs makes you both jump apart, feeling like teenagers getting caught, not that the room was helping.

The door opens to show your dad, boots trekking in dirt that will inevitably get him in trouble with your mom. The hand not on the doorknob is over his eyes, “you two better be decent. Ma has lunch ready downstairs and clothing is probably mandatory.”

“Knock it off,” you mumble as you shuffle towards him so he can give your head a gentle noogie. Neither of you were big on hugs, only really being physically affectionate with your partners, but the love is always clear in every fistbump and hand on your shoulder.

You and Melissa trail behind your father as he goes to the kitchen, both fighting laughs after nearly getting caught by your dad. However, the second your mom peers over at the two of you, you both act like you had been silent the whole time, eyes flicking around in feigned innocence.

Lunch is a mismatch of all the foods your mom made for the birthday party the next day, making you all be her taste testers, even if she only really wants Melissa’s opinion as the other cook in the family. Pasta salad, potato salad, mac and cheese, shortcake, even some chicken with her new lemon pepper recipe. You and your brother fight over who gets first dibs on the pasta salad, ending with his wife taking the serving spoon from your hands and grabbing some for herself.

“Act your age,” Kennedy says to her husband, making you laugh, before she gives you a sharp glance, “that goes for you, too.” Melissa turns away to unsuccessfully hide her own laugh from you.

Lunch ends with your mom and your brother arguing over another serving of macaroni, “we need food for tomorrow! Fuck’s sake, Marcus.”

—☽—

Your father divides everyone into groups to set up the backyard. Your mother takes Melissa and Kennedy to help set up the tables and lights, forcing you and Marcus to help your father with the tent, bonfire pit, and yardgames.

Getting all the yardgames for the little cousins was the easy part, even if it took a while because the three of you had to play a game of cornhole before you could do anything else. None of you got a single one in after two turns, making you all set into defeat, the game was agreed between the three of you to be stupid now. With your father taking a break now, getting the tent together was a doomed venture with you and Marcus.

“If you don’t let me hold it up, it’s gonna keep falling.”

“Fuck off! No, it won’t,” Marcus says with confidence, trying to stand the tent all at once before securing it. Four had already fallen, and a job that should only take twenty minutes was taking nearly an hour.

“How is it gonna stay up if nothing’s holding it, huh? Thought you knew everything?” He flips you off and doesn’t answer, continuing putting the spike in the ground, though without the other end being held up, the weight pulls it down again. Giving up, you walk away and attempt to find your dad for something else to do. You stop in your tracks, just step from the patio.

Watching Melissa with your family always makes butterflies erupt in your chest. She used to be so nervous around them, uncharacteristically quiet and meek, but now she’s almost as carefree with them as she is with her own. The sunlight makes her hair shine, and it’s damn near impossible to look away. It seems you’re of similar mind, her head turning towards you, fighting a grin when she sees the dopey grin on your face.

You almost start to walk towards her, but a strong hand pulls you back. Your dad pushes the hatchet into your hands, “you’re on firewood duty.”

“Bu-”

“Nope, you’re not slinking off to your girl. Go chop the wood, Casanova,” he says as he walks back to help Marcus with the tent.

It’s hours before you even get a chance to see Melissa again, as if your parents were keeping you apart. Which they were, knowing that you’d ignore everything you had to do if it meant you got to just look at Melissa. By the time you got back inside, the button up you’d been wearing was abandoned on a lawn chair and you were out of breath. How much firewood does one bonfire even need?

Walking in the backdoor into the kitchen, Melissa is leaning against the counter, her eye on the mixer filled with what will be cheesecake going to your tanktop clad form as she chats with Kennedy. Creeping up beside her, you wrap an arm around her waist and press a lingering kiss to her cheek, mumbling a greeting into her skin before trudging upstairs to shower the sweat and dirt off.

—☽—

By the end of the night, everyone is half-awake and struggling to keep their eyes open as a TV movie drones on. Neither you or Melissa are paying attention, too wrapped up in one another in the arm chair. Legs dangling over the arm, Melissa is seated on your lap, head tucked into your shoulder as you mindlessly play with her hair. The hand on the back of your neck stops its soft ministrations, her breathing slowing as she fights falling asleep.

You speak quietly for only her to hear, “you ready for bed?” She just nods against you, and you tap her legs to prompt her to move. Her hands hold onto your arm to steady herself, wavering where she stands.

“Alright, we’re calling it. Night guys, we’ll see you in the morning,” you announce into the room as Melissa starts going towards the stairs, not trusting her ability to speak when she’s this tired. You get a quiet chorus of night before you walk to the stairs, but your mother’s voice stops your movements.

“Jellybean, could you do me a favor and take the trash out before you head upstairs?” she asks without taking her eyes off the TV.

You internally groan before nodding, turning to Melissa, “go up, baby. I’ll be right there.”

This catches your mother’s attention, immediately moving to face you, “you mean to say ‘goodnight,’ right?”

“What?”

Her eyebrows rise, “you’re saying goodnight, then going to your room. Right?” Melissa’s blood immediately runs cold, color draining from her face. If she was tired two minutes ago, she was wide awake now.

“No...” you say slowly, confused, “why would Mel not also be in there?” You peak over your shoulder to Melissa, giving her a look before your attention is back on your mother.

“So, you’re staying in the guest room? Or is Melissa?”

Your face screws up, “Neither of us? My room’s got a full, that’s fine for us.”

“No.”

“Hell you mean ‘no,’ Ma? Marcus and Kennedy are sharing a full, it’s not a huge deal,” you hear Melissa step down from the stairs, her shaky hand holding your elbow.

“Marcus and Kennedy are married, unlike you two. I know you live together, but my roof, my rules. You know that,” she says matter-of-factly. The other three people in the room pointedly avoid looking at you, not wanting to get on your mom’s bad side.

You argue back, “that’s fucking ridiculous, Ma. We are grown adults, in a relationship.” The arched brow on your mother’s face tells you that you shouldn’t be arguing, but she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know about the panic that is starting to eat away at Melissa’s veins at the sudden thought of sleeping without you, something she hasn’t done once in over three years now.

“No rings, two beds. Don’t think I won’t be checking.”

Not wanting to make more of a scene, Melissa tugs on your arm to gain your attention. Turning to her, you can see the silent plea in her eyes for you to give it up. Shoulders sagging, you let out a grumbled fine. Breaking away from her, you go to the kitchen and roughly pull the trash from the bin. It takes a great deal of effort to not slam the door as you stomp to the garage. When you come back in, you don’t bother saying anything to anyone, just wrapping an arm around Melissa to guide her upstairs.

When you get into your room, you shut the door and lean against it with a huff. The two of you silently change into your pajamas, moving slowly from exhaustion and an attempt to prolong your time together. Melissa turns away to fold her clothes on the bed, and you move to wrap your arms around her waist, propping your chin on her shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” you say, “I’ll stay in here tonight. Not like she can’t ground me anymore.”

Melissa turns in your arms, loosely wrapping her own around your shoulders, “it’s alright, I’ll be fine. I don’t want her mad at you for my sake.”

“Baby-”

“Don’t do that,” she says, though the sigh in her voice gives away her uncertainty, “I’ll be okay, amore.”

Your eyes scan over her face before you nod. Her arms pull you closer, noses brushing before she presses a sound kiss to your lips. Melissa’s arms shift and her hands cup your face, moving your head to press kisses to your cheeks, forehead, and chin, until the sour look on your face disappears.

Tugging her into you, you bury your head into her neck, pressing a long kiss there. From her neck you mumble, “I’ll be in the room right next door.”

“I’ll survive in the guest room, this is your bedroom,” she says, though she doesn’t fully mean it.

“What’s mine is yours. Plus, this one’s more comfortable, you’ll thank me later,” you hug her tighter, “so... I will be next door.”

“I told you, I’ll be fine,” she says. It’s more for her than you this time. Three years. Three years of falling asleep with you still awake beside her and waking up with you already looking at her.

You walk her back towards the bed, getting in with her, though not under the covers. With everyone, especially your mother, you don’t think it’ll hurt to stay until Melissa falls asleep. Her back presses to your front, hand holding yours to her chest, fast beating heart beneath. In a hushed voice, you speak about little things that don’t matter in hopes that it will calm her enough. Slowly her breath evens out, face burying into the pillow as it always does when you hold her like this.

Carefully, you detangle yourself from her and press a kiss to her hair, “I love you.” Stepping out of the room slowly, you leave the door cracked just a little and eye Melissa before turning. At the top of the stairs is your mother, brows raised.

“You better be going to your own bed,” she says quietly, though her tone is hard.

Rolling your eyes, you respond, “I am. Just had to make sure Melissa was asleep first.” You try to go into the room next door, but your mom’s face is silently asking for context, “she doesn’t sleep well. Different place, different sleeping arrangement, it’s difficult.”

You don’t particularly appreciate the dismissive way your mom just nods before walking towards the master bedroom, clearly thinking it was just an excuse, but it’s too late to fight about it. The sooner you sleep, the sooner you can wake up and crawl into bed with Melissa before she wakes. You watch the crack in the door and listen for Melissa until sleep comes over you.

—☽—

Something wakes you just past three in the morning, an ear splitting scream coming from next door. At first, you think it’s just your own anxiety, closing your eyes slowly. A second scream, this time of your name, and you’re springing out of bed, throwing the door open hard enough to bounce off the wall and slam shut. Four steps bring you to your childhood bedroom, rapidly swinging the door open to run in, not noticing the others joining you in the hall.

When you get into the room, moonlight illuminates Melissa where she’s sitting up with a hand gripping her shirt as she breathes in quick, panicked pants, eyes flying around the room until they land on you. Before she can even reach for you, you’re practically pouncing on the bed to get in front of her. Your hands go to her shoulders, her own gripping your forearms, her watery eyes darting around your face. Taking in deep breaths and letting them out slowly, you motion for Melissa to mimic you, trying to slow her rapid breath and heart.

Short gasps become slow, shaky breaths as panic begins to fade and tears form. A whimper of your name makes you pull her into you, her arms gripping your shirt and she cries into your neck. Between broken sobs, only the words window, knife, and everywhere and mention of a him come through, but you understood. This wasn’t the first time Eric’s actions haunted her at night, though it had been nearly two years since she’d woken up in a sweat.

Peeking over your shoulder, you see your parents and brother in the doorway. The look you give your mother is filled with anger and a raised brow that says I told you to listen. The clear fury makes your father pull her back towards their own room, pushing your brother to his. Some level of courtesy hits your mom, closing the door fully before she gets tugged away.

Attention back on Melissa, you alternate between playing with the ends of her hair and lightly dragging your nails over her back under her shirt. You tuck her hair behind her ear, tacky from tears, “you’re safe, Mel. Nothing and no one’s going to hurt you, I promise. I wouldn’t let them.”

Rocking side to side gently, you feel her breathing return to normal, body no longer shaking from tears. Trying not to jostle her, you turn your body to lay down with her, keeping her tucked into your neck with your arms around her. Pressing a kiss to her head, you slide an arm down to grab her hand, lacing your fingers together.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, just below your ear.

You squeeze her hand, “you never have to apologize for this. If anything, I’m the one that should be sorry. I should have stayed.”

She sniffled, “I’m a grown woman, I should be able to sleep alone.”

“And I should be able to stand up to my mother about sleeping in the same bed as my girlfriend, yet here we are,” you say jokingly, trying to lighten the mood.

Thankfully, she chuckles, the vibration on your skin making you smile, “so it’s all your fault.”

“I’ll gladly take the blame,” you mumble as you settle into the bed more, relaxing as you feel the redhead relax against you.

In a sudden move, Melissa props herself up over you, hair dangling in your face. Leaning down, she kisses your forehead, then each cheek, and finally your lips, long and loving. It’s a quiet thanks that she will never owe you.

“I love you,” she whispers.

“I love you more,” you whisper back.

It takes half an hour for sleep to creep back in, Melissa’s breathing growing slow where she rests on your chest, your heart beating under her ear. When she eventually falls back asleep against your chest, you stay awake and trace lines on her back. You’ll gladly stand guard if it means she sleeps peacefully, stay awake if it means she’s safe.

note: solaris write a fic under 3k like u planned challenge good lord man. also thank you thank you for the compliment, it’s an honor to be the first person u thought of to write this. i hope i did ur vision justice <3

as always, feedback appreciated <3

[dykesynthezoid]

I say this with 100% awareness that sometimes fandom likes to run with things based off of minimal subtext but I rlly truly don’t get. The majority of the arguments for why we wouldn’t get devil’s minion in the past? Lmao

Like the one (1) reason I can actually see us not getting it is just there not being enough screentime to go around. That’s not unthinkable to me at all; there’s a lot to potentially cover next season. But like, I literally can’t think of any other good reason for them to not do it.

And I think it’s worth saying that I wouldn’t be doing this kind of theorizing with any other show. It’s specifically bc this show likes to drop easter eggs and clues, likes to sew in little details, and also is not afraid of going all out, that I feel like I can take the things I pick up on seriously. Cause yeah, if this were another show, it might genuinely mean nothing, bc a lot of other shows just aren’t written with that enthusiasm or attention to detail or courage to Go Places.

And I also think it should be noted that like. While the show is certainly plenty different from the book(s), their modus operandi when it comes to adaptation is much more to add than to take away. They added old Daniel, added Loumand still being together, added a shit ton of extra small bits to Claudia’s arc. Their method of adaptation is not one of subtraction. They’re not taking away whole character beats and plot events. They’re adding, adding new situations, new settings, new contexts.

And that “adding” extends to character relationships as well. They built that danlou best friends/sexual tension out of the almost-nothing in the source material. Armand and Santiago (apparently) slept together. They’re not taking away interesting side dynamics that existed in the books, they’re literally adding more.

Like why wouldn’t they add past devils minion?? It only makes Armand and Daniel’s present relationship that much more complicated and insane, which is the exact thing this show loves to do.

Not to mention DM is only one chapter, by which I mean; if the argument against past devils minion is just screentime, like I personally think it is, we should also remember that. It’s only one chapter. It’s not that much additional material. And about a fourth of it is Daniel’s turning and the lead up to that, which we know would instead be in the modern day, not in flashback; and another several pages are Armand keeping Daniel trapped in a cellar, which 2x05 has already done. So like. It’s not that much material they’d have to cover to do past devils minion. Like, half an episode altogether at most, frankly, and they could easily spread that all out as they pleased. And this is after season 2 spent an entire episode just on the events during and immediately post 1973 interview. Which they did not have to do. It was a choice to add that material.

Idk sometimes ppl act like it’s soooo crazy for people to be theorizing DM happened in the past and I’m like I literally don’t think it is? And trust me I get that sometimes people get shipping goggles on, and it’s annoying when people make everything about a ship, etc, (but also that’s literally just how fandom is in general? idk what you expect), but. Idk man it doesn’t seem that wild to me in comparison to some of the places the show has been willing to go? And meanwhile like half of you keep insisting Raglan James is Marius. Some of you even thought Sam might be Santino. Theorizing about past DM does not seem that weird to me. Like I am literally just watching the show and Noticing Details and coming up with a possible outcome. It’s whatever