#jeremy being able to live his life without being questioned about who he is makes me feel like I can get there someday

[amenti-aardwolf]

I'm so happy you caught so many things in that, haha

Glad you're enjoying it so far, bless

It's so fun to read! I'm hoping it turns out okay for them. Love your version of the boys so much. 💖💖💖

[sagevalleymusings]

Do Not Give Away Personal Information

Hopefully folks see this even though I'm a very small blog, but I have an important safety PSA for the zoomers on tumblr. Story time (Names and Locations have been changed for privacy).

Yesterday, I was waiting for the bus. There was a fashionable young man sitting on the bench with me. It wound up being kind of a long and boring wait, and so inevitably, this young man and I started making small talk. We found out we had a bit of a six degrees of separation connection - we were both doing events at the same venue, though on different days. We got into it a little bit more, and he explained that he got this venue spot through his dad, then gave me his dad's first name.

So that's personal information number one and number two: his dad's first name is Lincoln and he's associated with the Crowe Community Center.

We were chatting more, about the weather this time, and he mentioned how much more he liked the weather than in North Dakota. This stranger, unprompted, gave me three pieces of personal information. I would like to defend myself a little bit by saying that initially when I Googled "Lincoln Crowe Community Center" it was because I wondered if I knew who this was. After all, I was doing an event there too, so maybe our connection was a little closer than I thought. However, it became immediately apparent that this young man's zoomer inclination to not safeguard his information combined with his parents' boomer inclination to overshare meant that almost immediately I had a massive amount of personal information at my disposal. The "young man" I met isn't a man at all - he's a minor. His name is Gus Johnson and he goes to school and West Side High School, which is a little bit odd, considering he lives at 45 East Brewer Ave, on the other side of town. But turns out his dad Lincoln Johnson and mom Rebecca Johnson are fundamentalists - in fact, Lincoln was a minister at Living Promise, which is a tiny evangelical church he founded that was running out of someone's basement for a while. They were so fundamentalist in fact that they pulled their four kids (Gus, Jeremy, Abigail, and Saul) out of school, but couldn't manage it with schedules and finances for very long, and so sent them to West Side instead of East Side (probably because East Side was too liberal, but that's an extrapolation on my part). I found the social media pages of every single one of his immediate family, his parents' jobs, the city where he grew up, the high school his dad went to, his date of birth and year in school, along with several important life events, all within about 20 minutes. At some point I started to get morbidly curious, and just kept kicking over rocks, and then out scurried a bunch of driver's licenses and library cards as fast as they could. I want to emphasize again that I had a fifteen minute conversation with a random child at a bus stop, and that child revealed enough information that I was able to get his home address and the address of his school, and where his dad works, along with 6 separate social media accounts, without any tools beyond searching publicly available information. Most people are good people. I'm not going to do anything nefarious with this information, and probably won't even remember the details tomorrow. The problem is that the kind of person who would do something nefarious would have been even friendlier than I was, making up lies and asking prompting questions until the kid had given up even more private information than he did. Do. Not. Give. Strangers. Private. Information. And if you are going to say something personal and private, don't make it worse by saying more than one. Knowing his dad's name and home state wouldn't have pulled up the right Lincoln. Knowing his dad's name and association with the community center would have pulled up the right guy, but then I would have had to spend extra time confirming that it was him. And most of the time, people aren't going to take the extra step. Knowing his dad's name and association with the community center, and that he was from North Dakota, meant that the very first search result I got (a bio from the center) meant I knew in five seconds that I'd found the right Lincoln Johnson.

[cas-kingdom]

Dad

A/N: Thank you to my anons for helping me come up with some perfectly Geralt-like explanations of parenthood. <3

Despite the summary, Geralt doesn't outright call Akela his daughter in a couple of these, but the point of the story is to show how he can call her that without actually saying it, if that makes sense. Still fluffy and (dangerously) sweet! Also a nice little Yennefer-Geralt scene here.

While writing number 4, I listened to 'Scared' by Jeremy Zucker.

Title: Dad

Summary: Three times Geralt called you his daughter, and the one time you called him ‘Dad’.

Words: 4607

1)

“I knocked it off the cart.” You crossed your arms over your chest. “Why would I try to steal something I have money to pay for?”

The old man’s face turned sourer, if that was at all possible. “Oh, you have money?” He expectantly stretched his hand out, palm up as his fingers twitched. “Pay me, then!”

You rolled your eyes. “But I’m not buying them!”

“You tried to steal them!”

“I did not!”

“I saw you!”

“What you saw,” you spat out, leaning forward, face the picture of anger, “was me bumping against your cart and knocking a couple apples off—which I apologised for.”

A noise somewhere between frustration and rage spewed from the man’s mouth and he shot his arm forward like a snake striking to attack, grasping the front of your tunic and tugging you forward. “Listen here, girl—”

You clenched your fists and readied to bite back, but before you even had a chance, the man’s hands were ripped from you, and he was shoved away.

“Get your hands off her,” a stony voice ground out, voice brooking no argument. Geralt stood tall and menacing in front of the hunched old man, head tilted slightly to the side as he glared at him. He knew you were often capable of looking after yourself, proven clearly when you stepped beside him and a look of smugness appeared on your face, but he also knew that that would likely never change how much the anger flourished inside him when he saw someone lay their hands on his child in a way such as this.

The old man pointed a shaky finger at Geralt. “You stay out of this, Sir!”

You scoffed, and Geralt spared a glance down at you, briefly raising a brow. “What, exactly, am I supposed to be staying out of?”

“The little bitch tried to steal my produce!”

“I didn’t!”

“The little bitch,” Geralt said, holding out an arm to stop you from lunging, “is my daughter. And if you ever speak in that manner to her again, you won’t be able to speak another word.”

The man looked ready to respond with vigour, but at the last moment his eyes averted to the sword and the daggers at Geralt’s waist, and the cogs in his brain began to turn as his vision wandered up to the white hair and the amber eyes. He shut his mouth and stepped back, resigned.

“Forgive me,” he said. He appeared as though he was ready to run before he grabbed one of the apples you had knocked off his cart and pressed it into your hands, a forced and nervy smile showing on his lips. “Here, take this!”

Your eyes lit up and you smiled victoriously, taking a bite from it and turning to walk off as you called back a quick, “Thank you!”

Geralt sighed deeply and hummed, giving the man a final glare before following after you. “He was right. You are a little bitch,” he remarked.

You grinned and tossed the apple in the air, the sunlight glinting on the green fruit as though in triumph. You handed it to him and watched as he relented with a roll of his eyes and took a bite. “Waste not, want not!”

2)

“What’s it like?”

Geralt lifted his head to look at Yennefer. She was lying on her side opposite the fire, her head resting in her hand, and she seemed contemplative. Curious, in a way, which was odd for her, though what could he really say about that? It wasn’t as though he’d known her long.

“I’m sorry?” he asked.

Yennefer jerked her head in the direction he’d been staring in for the majority of the past ten minutes, where you were fast asleep, curled under blankets, head beside Jaskier’s, who was wandering in the land of dreams himself.

He looked at you a moment longer before turning back to the mage. A hint of his own confusion danced in his eyes, but she spoke before he could open his mouth to question what it was that she meant.

“Parenthood,” she clarified, her voice softening. “What’s it like?”

Geralt rose an eyebrow, briefly floundering for words at the, quite frankly, surprising question. For a woman who was all invulnerability and strength, it was something he hadn’t expected to come from her. Not to mention he didn’t often think about what she’d asked.

He glanced away and shook his head. “More trouble than it’s worth,” he told her with a short breath of a laugh.

The corners of Yennefer’s lips drew upwards. She fidgeted with a stone on the forest floor. “I’m serious.”

His other eyebrow shot up. “So am I,” he assured her. “She may seem sweet, but underneath it all is the monster I’m most afraid to go up against.” He offered her a rare smile, which she returned, and for the first time in a while both mage and witcher felt peaceful. It was blissfully quiet—the only sound being Jaskier’s snores and incoherent mumbles—and it was dark, giving the two the serenity they needed after the trials of the previous days.

“It’s… hard,” he said seriously, despite the fact he was admitting that he, the infamous Geralt of Rivia, found something difficult. “You learn new things every day.”

“What kind of things?”

“Everything. About yourself, about her, about the world in general… you make decisions you probably would never have thought about before. You have responsibilities you wouldn’t have believed would ever be associated with you.” He let his eyes wander over to your sleeping form. “You don’t know what the hell you’re doing most of the time. You can feel so… so lost at it, right until you start to realise the only thing that’s keeping you grounded is the same thing that gave you the title of father. It…” He paused, leaning forward to poke a stick into the dying fire. “It gives you something to live for, and at the time I found Y/N, that was what I needed most.”

Yennefer’s lips curled into a smile as she slowly sat up, tucking her legs underneath her. “It sounds tiring,” she said, glancing down for a moment, and Geralt nodded.

“It is. But the rewards outweigh the difficulties. It’s something you’d give up everything to keep.” He looked across at her, noticing her loosened shoulders, and realised for the first time that he took his title of father for granted. Yennefer’s mutations had made her sterile, and though he was the same, he’d still somehow found a way to get past that, even though he’d never once pondered on the possibilities of it before he’d found you. Yennefer hadn’t been so lucky, and as he looked at her, he found that that reflected perfectly in the eyes he now viewed as… sad.

“You’ll feel that someday,” he said without thinking, and when she glanced up, he nodded in your direction. “When you have your own.”

Yennefer gazed at him, violet eyes piercing the amber of his. They stared at each other for a moment, no words passing their lips but every meaningful word being said nonetheless, until Jaskier snorted in his sleep and the both of them ripped their eyes away, returning to their stone and their stick.

“Thank you, Witcher,” Yennefer spoke up a moment later, and Geralt nodded once.

“You’re welcome, Mage.”

3)

Geralt turned his head down to look at you. You were standing beside him, absently tugging on the neckline of the dress you’d bought from a market that very morning. You were clearly irritated, sighing in annoyance and muttering under your breath every so often.

When you noticed him looking, you shook your head, face every bit unhappy. “I don’t want to be here,” you ground out.

He rose an eyebrow. “Clearly.”

“Why are we here again?”

“Lord Lyon invited us.”

“And how do you—” You scratched at the back of your neck, the foreign material rubbing it raw—“know Lord Lyon?”

Geralt glanced down again and frowned, slapping your hands away from your red neck. “I saved his sister from a werewolf,” he said, instinctively tucking a few strands of hair that hadn’t made it into your plait behind your ear, “and he insisted my attendance at his feast tonight.”

You rose an eyebrow at that, finally relenting in your fiddling and letting your arms hang loosely. “Your attendance,” you picked out. “I could have stayed at the inn.” He ignored that, as you expected, and you sighed, shoulders slacking. “You never usually care for extra repayment,” you said. And it was true. He didn’t. He preferred to do his duty as a witcher and not stick around to see the aftermath of his hunt, except to accept his money. He didn’t care for physical shows of thanks. It was better that way, for you and for him. But he’d, for once, genuinely been concerned for the lord’s sister, so he’d accepted the invitation with the intention of only staying long enough to gain information on her wellbeing before leaving.

Geralt lifted his chin as he noticed a familiar man enrobed in silk and jewels walking towards you. He took in a deep breath, mentally preparing himself for the conversation ahead of undoubtedly mindless babble about his life and anything else the lord wished to ask him.

“And you never usually say no to free food,” he remarked quietly to you before forcing a tight smile at the open-armed, freely grinning man when he stopped in front of him.

“Geralt of Rivia!” he greeted, and you turned your head to meet him, only just refraining from raising your brows at the sight that met your eyes. You weren’t used to seeing royalty or regality of any sort, so you were never one to shy from your overly dramatic opinions of how these people dressed and carried themselves. You were quite certain all the clothes on your body wouldn’t amount to the price of a single ring on his finger, even though you’d had to beg Geralt for weeks to buy you the new leather boots on your feet now, just about hidden by your long dress.

Geralt had made an attempt to dress nicely, too. He’d washed and brushed his hair—and made several mock lunges (and one actual one) for you when you’d continued to tease him about it—and was wearing clothes that, though giving him an extremely regal look of his own, seemed unfamiliar to you. You much preferred him in his loose tunics and trousers, hair muddy and tangled in knots that he wouldn’t give a shit about until he needed to (which was barely ever, unless you were counting surprise and sudden invites to feasts such as this).

“Lord Lyon,” Geralt said with a small nod. “How is your sister?”

The lord reached forward to clap him on the shoulder, and this time, you did raise a brow, knowing your witcher’s dislike for such actions. Sure enough, Geralt’s smile grew tighter, and you could see the lines on his forehead become more pronounced. Perhaps in different circumstances—definitely in different circumstances—you would have laughed at his predicament, despite his clear discomfort, nevertheless this time you had to do with quickly turning your head to the side and stifling a grin.

“My sister fares well!” Lyon told him, not removing his hand. “She’s been asleep since you returned her safely to me, but the healers assure me she will make a full recovery. Thank you again for your unforgettable help, my friend!”

“Thank you for inviting me here tonight.”

Lyon stepped back, finally letting his hand drop to his side, and the corners of your lips twitched when Geralt subconsciously rolled his shoulder. “Well, this is the only other way I could think of repaying you when coin did not seem enough. A good meal!” It was at this moment, when you were shuffling from foot to foot in boredom, almost reverting back to your scratching and tugging, that Lyon noticed you, and he rose both eyebrows, glancing between you and Geralt. “And who might this be?”

“Y/N,” Geralt introduced, stopping you with a firm hand to your shoulder. You looked up at the lord, offering a smile. “I hope you don’t mind that I brought her.”

Lyon tilted his head slightly to the side in obvious interest, disregarding Geralt’s last sentence with a wave of his hand. “You mean she’s yours? Your daughter?”

You continued to stare at the man in front of you, unbothered. You were well used to being called his daughter—it was easier for him to agree when people asked if you were, and you sometimes wondered when exactly he’d given up on correcting people. If he’d ever corrected people in the first place.

“Your daughter?” Lyon repeated at Geralt’s lack of response.

“Yes.”

“I thought… well.” He looked a little sheepish, but Geralt was all too aware of what was coming. “I was always told that the trials witchers underwent made them—”

Geralt interrupted him before he could continue. “They did. I am.” He squeezed your shoulder. “She’s not mine by blood. But she is mine.”

Lyon stared a while, thinking to himself, before he abruptly smiled in acceptance. “Very good. Though I would never have taken you for the parent type.”

“My apologies,” Geralt said, inclining his head, “but you don’t know me well enough to make that assumption.”

A soft smile graced your lips and you glanced down to the ground, your heart swelling with love you could only ever feel for him.

“Quite right.” Lyon was clearly apologetic. He opened an arm out and motioned for the two of you to follow him. “Come, let us eat. You can tell us all exactly how you killed that werewolf!”

The hilariously dismayed look Geralt sent you after that made you snort.

4)

How had it come to this?

“Geralt?” you whispered, daring to edge closer. He looked so pale, even in the short rays of moonlight radiating down. His skin was pallid, white hair muddied and hanging in knots around his face. His eyes were shut, his lips were set in a straight line, and even as you shook his shoulder, he did not move.

He did not move.

Geralt always moved. He had long since trained himself to wake at the first sound or touch that did or didn’t come from you. And yet now, even as you doubled your attempts and shook him so hard you were sure he’d be disorientated were he awake… he remained still. Still and silent. Completely dead to the world.

Dead.

Your heart soared, not for the first time, and you sat back on your haunches for a moment, staring with eyes as wide as the yellow moon looming over head. It was almost as though your unconscious mind was waiting for him to wake up. Willing him to wake up. Because you knew good and fucking well that without him, the point of remaining in the living was completely lost on you.

Reluctantly, your mind swiftly hurled you back. Back into damn memories of the swings of his sword and his shouts of exertion and pain as he fought with the monster that had suddenly stormed where you’d been resting. You should have stayed behind the rocks as he’d ordered… you shouldn’t have listened to the clash of metal hitting sturdy skin and bone… and you certainly shouldn’t have jumped up from behind the rock and screamed his name, leading him to whirl around in panic and giving the beast time to throw him against a large boulder. You could still remember the sickening crack of his head hitting the solid stone. That would have been the perfect time to scream his name, but you’d found that no words had been able to escape your clenched throat. You’d felt like you were being strangled, and your heart had stopped beating for the longest second as you’d watched with absolute terror…

He’d been telling you a story. You’d been lying beside him, exhausted eyes staring up at the starry sky as his voice lulled you to sleep. You couldn’t even remember what the story had been about, all you’d been focused on was the comfort his voice offered, and for that reason you had not registered at all when he’d abruptly stopped speaking. He’d waited a moment, eyes narrowed, before quietly standing to his feet, picking up his sword as he went. All his senses had been alert, and were he an animal, his ears would have been pricked up and forwards, listening for any noise that sounded at all abnormal.

He’d taken calculated steps forward, hands tight around his sword’s hilt, boots making no sound as he stepped over fallen leaves and twigs. And then he’d stopped, standing completely still, save for his eyes, which roved the area in front of him. He’d turned his head the slightest bit and harshly whispered your name, but it had not been enough to rouse you, and you’d stayed sleeping until less than three seconds later when what you now believed to have been a kikimora burst from the cover of the trees, screaming raucously and lunging towards Geralt. You’d bolted upright and he’d yelled at you to hide yourself as his sword came clashing down on the thing, not waiting to see if you’d done as was asked before moving to attempt to lead the monster away.

That had been only three minutes ago. One and a half minutes ago, he’d been thrown against the boulder. One minute ago, he’d managed to use the last of his strength to pierce the beast’s hide with a cloying crunch, mixing with both his and the kikimora’s shrieks of agony. You had looked on with trembling hands as it fell to the side, completely unmoving, and watched, waited, for Geralt to stand to his feet.

When he hadn’t, you’d taken one trembling step forward, hands cold and in fists at your sides, before running the rest of the way, not caring in the least that there was a possibility the monster might still be alive. All you’d cared about was the possibility that Geralt might not be.

You stared at him now, hopefully waiting for his eyelids to flicker, or a finger to twitch… but there was no movement.

You shook him again, harder now, but it didn’t work, and with a desperation you had never felt before, and your breathing quicker than ever, you hurried closer towards him, grabbing the sides of his face and shaking him, slapping him, hitting him… anything that had a chance of waking him.

“Geralt!” you shouted, voice cracking. You slapped him again, pausing only when you felt something wet and sticky coat your right hand. When you pulled it back, the sight of red met your eyes.

You stared at it for a moment, hands shuddering, before the red and the blackness of everything else melded into one as tears filled your eyes. A tightening of your throat and a short intake of breath was all that was heard before gut-wrenching sobs tore through your chest and you fell forward, clutching your bloody hand to your chest and squeezing your eyes shut as your grief poured from you in an onslaught of irrepressible tears.

“Please, please, wake—wake up!” you choked out, your forehead resting against his chest, hands gripping his ragged tunic. “Please! I can’t—I can’t—Please! Geralt! You can’t die! You’re a witcher! Witchers don’t die! Wake up!”

But he didn’t.

You harshly breathed in with as much effort as you could muster, and the smell of blood overpowered your senses… yet, at the same time, there was still that hint of forest and greenery which made him Geralt. The scent that was often the only thing that could make you fall asleep. The scent that you only had to catch for a moment before you immediately calmed. The scent that, even now, amidst your hiccups and sobs, caused the briefest feeling of serenity to swirl through you before it vanished as the new, metallic aroma abruptly tickled at your nose.

Another sob racked your body when the scent disappeared and you shook your head. “Daddy…” It came out as a mewling whine, so broken and utterly devastating that it would have made even the heartless cry along with you, but there was no other sound… no other noise in the darkness of the forest around you except the guttural cries wrenching from your throat.

It was the feeling of being alone which scared you the most. The feeling of… being without the one person who’d ever made an ounce of sense to you. The one person you loved more than life itself and who probably loved you even more than that.

You would rather die alongside him than live in a world you knew he no longer walked in.

A moment passed, and you sat there, hunched over with your head on his chest and your tired hands slowly slacking in their hold on his tunic. Your eyes were red and swollen, cheeks wet and tracking the mud and blood which had inadvertently transferred from his clothing to your face, and you were shaking so much that when a slight tremor rippled beneath you, you took no notice of it whatsoever.

At an exhausted yet almost incoherent groan, you blinked, opening your eyes despite it doing nothing against the blackness of you face pressed to him. You tried to silence your cries as much as you could, holding your breath, not quite willing to believe it but hoping more than you’d ever hoped before all the same.

“Fuck…”

And you bolted upright, your eyes blinking against the blurriness. You wiped at them, your heart thumping, blood pulsing through your distraught and exhausted body, and looked on with shock as Geralt—yes, Geralt!—slowly raised his arm and brought his hand to the back of his head. His eyes squeezed tightly shut as his brows furrowed in obvious pain.

“My fucking head,” he rasped out, and you let loose a noise of relief, suddenly and without warning bursting into tears once again. You launched forward, wrapping your arms around his neck and burying your face in his chest. He groaned and finally opened his eyes to peer down at the mop of hair in his line of vision.

He gulped down the sickly feeling in his gut as best he could, trying to make sense of his surroundings, and after a moment the memories returned to him, causing him to shut his eyes once more at the force of it. He returned his attention to you, lowering his hand to place it on the back of your head.

When your sobs grew, his frown deepened and he tried to lift his own head, swallowing back bile when the throbbing ache increased. He felt nauseatingly terrible and instead dropped his head back to the hard rock below him. “Hey…” he whispered. His voice was hoarse and he didn’t really trust the words coming from his mouth. “It’s alright.”

You shook your head. “N-no! It is-isn’t! I thought you were dead!”

He sighed unsteadily and moved his trembling fingers through your hair, trying his best to block out the discomfort (which was a nice word for agony). “I’m not dead,” he told you, and you finally lifted your head, showing him the extent of your hysteria. You looked as though you’d been bawling for years, and he shook his head softly, raising his other arm to wrap around you and pull you back towards him. His head was pounding, he knew he was bleeding in more places than one, but to be perfectly honest, he was simply happy to be alive, and to be holding his child in his arms, however much he would be covered in tears and snot by the time he finally gathered the strength to push himself up.

“I thought you were,” you croaked out, and he rubbed his thumb across your temple. You reached up, grasping his hand, and he narrowed his eyes, blinking at the sight of blood coating your own.

“Is th-that yours?” he asked, the words feeling funny on his tongue as he stumbled over them. You sniffed and glanced to where he had turned your hand over in his.

“No,” you said, “it’s yours.” At that open revelation and reminder, you lifted your eyes, haphazardly wiping your hair from your face and blinking against the tears that still didn’t seem to be stopping. “It’s from your head. Does it hurt?”

Geralt’s face contorted into one of pain yet again as he reached his hand to his head, bringing it back and intaking a sharp breath once he saw the blood. “Damn,” he grumbled. “Yes, it hurts. Like hell.”

You unconsciously bit at the inside of your cheeks and watched him as he lowered his arm and shut his eyes. Your heart continued to pound and every so often your ragged breaths were interrupted by a hiccup. “I’m sorry,” you muttered after a short while.

He blearily opened his eyes to look at you. “Why?”

“I called your name,” you told him, “and you turned around.”

He nodded faintly in remembrance. “Why?” he repeated.

“I don’t know.” You swallowed thickly, tears fogging your vision again. “I was stupid. I just… got so scared, and I didn’t—I didn’t want you to… to…”

At your rising distress, he pulled you down to his chest again, ensuring your ear was conveniently placed over the left side of his chest. His heart was slow—perhaps a little faster than normal yet still slow all the same—but in the silence of the forest he knew you would be able to hear it and let it soothe you.

It worked, and the two of you stayed there for a while. Geralt fixed his attention on his own breathing, trying to match yours as he felt your pulse through his hands. He wondered briefly how far the nearest village was and if he could risk asking for medical help. Perhaps he could reach Triss in Novigrad, and both he and you would have a safe place to recuperate.

His muddled mind was interrupted when he turned his head and noticed the kikimora for the first time, lying in a rotten clump on the ground a couple feet from him. He swallowed the knot in his throat and shut his eyes, remembering all too clearly what had happened and, more importantly, how close it had been to getting you. Unconsciously, his hands tightened around you, and he slowly breathed out, calming himself before he let his emotions reign over him. You didn’t need to see that.

“It’s alright,” he said softly, more to himself, but it assured your all the same.

“Next time, I want to fight with you. I don’t want to watch. I’ve been trained for these moments.”

“We’ll talk about it later.”

“I thought you were going to leave me.”

“Leave you?” He shook his head. “No, no, never…”

He shut his eyes. He knew that the day he left you would be the day the stars burned out and the world became shrouded in darkness. To leave you would be to leave his heart, and that was the one thing that, no matter how battered and bruised, he would hold onto and keep safe with every fibre of his being.

It was his duty, after all.

As your father.

Witcher Masterpost

[courageous-she]

Needing You- Charlie Gillespie

Charlie x female reader

Summary: You’re having a rough day and go to your best friend for some comfort

Word Count: 3037

Author’s Note: I haven’t really written in a while but became a SIMP for this boy after watching JATP. Here’s something I thought up while I should have been working at work. Also the formatting may have gotten a little wonky so sorry for that. Um anyway, hope you enjoy!

**

You: Hey, are you home? Charlie: Yeah, why, what’s up? You: Can we hang out? I don’t really want to be alone rn Charlie: Sure thing! I can come over? You: Actually, can I come over? I don’t feel like being in my apartment rn Charlie: Of course, doors unlocked <3

You locked your phone, resting it on your chest and letting out a long sigh. Life had just been hitting too hard lately, so you texted Charlie hoping he’d be able to distract you and take your mind off of things. You simply needed some quality time with your best friend and to not think about everything going on in your life right now. Luckily, Charlie was always down to hang out and was always flexible on what the two of you would do.

You lifted your head just enough from your starfish position on your bed to glance over your outfit. You’d changed into your comfy clothes when you got home a few hours ago. These would be fine, Charlie has seen you in worse clothes, and probably in an overall worse state than this. Shrugging, you stood from your bed and grabbed your keys, making your way over to the bus stop at the end of your street. 

Quietly opening the door to Charlie and Owen’s apartment, you carefully left your shoes at the door. You looked up and noticed Owen and Jeremy sitting on the couch in the small apartment living room. “Hey, Y/N” Owen and Jeremy said at the same time, both giving a quick nod of the head. You waved back, making your way down the hallway to Charlie’s room. It wasn’t odd for you to come over to the boy’s apartment, so Owen and Jeremy didn’t question it. Owen was more used to your frequent visits than Jeremy because Owen actually lived there, but both boys knew how close you and Charlie are so it would be odd if you didn’t show up at some point during the week.

Charlie’s door was open a crack, a low light creeping out into the hallway. You pushed the door open just enough to slide your body through, and closed it when you were all the way inside. 

“Hey” Charlie said softly, sitting up slightly in his bed and closing his laptop. Instead of responding, you pulled the covers back on his bed and slid under. Charlie watched you, slightly confused, but lifted his arm for you when you began to crawl under it resting your head on his chest. His arm around you hugged you closer, while his other hand came around to rest on top of yours that was resting on his stomach. 

“Y/N? Is everything okay?” he asked, voice soft. You shook your head ‘no’ on his chest. “Do you want to talk about it?” Again, you shook your head. Charlie’s chest rose up before he let out a long sigh. It wasn’t often you got like this, but when you did it always broke Charlie a little inside. “What can I do to help?” “Is it okay if we just lay here for a while?” you finally said.

“Yeah, ‘course it is. Want me to put on a movie for background noise or somethin’?” Charlie asked, leaning over slightly to grab his tv remote. You simply nodded a ‘yes’ against his chest, knowing he would just choose a movie for the two of you. 

Charlie ended up choosing “Onward”, a Disney movie was bound to put a smile on your face, he thought. The two of you silently watched the movie, staying in relatively the same position. As the movie was coming to a close, tears began to make their way down your face, landing on Charlie’s shirt. He looked down when he began to feel the wet spot on his chest. Moving so he could see your face better, Charlie smirked at your current state.

“Are you crying?” Charlie asked, the goofy smirk not leaving his face. You lifted your head from his chest, glancing between his smirking expression and the puddle on his chest. 

“What? He never got to meet his dad! After all that!!” you said, pouting out your bottom lip so you didn’t start sobbing. Charlie chuckled before sitting back and pulling you back into him.

“Haven’t you seen this before? You knew this was coming” he replied while turning his attention back to the screen.

“Just because I’ve seen it already doesn’t make it any less sad, Char.” But he could tell by the tone in your voice that you weren’t talking about the movie anymore. He grabbed the remote, stopping the end credits. You started to sit up, wiping the remnants of tears from your face.

“Are you ready to talk about it?” he asked, voice soft and understanding. You hugged your knees to your chest, resting your head on your knees facing your friend sitting next to you.

“Everything is just so overwhelming right now. It’s like nothing can go my way and just keeps piling on top of me. I feel like I’m drowning and I’m so over it.” There was a comfortable silence between the two of you for a moment “I hate feeling like this” you whispered. Charlie put his hand on your back, rubbing small circles.

“Hey, hey, look at me” he said. Your eyes remained fixed on a random spot of his bed. “Y/N, please” he whispered. You shifted your gaze so that your eyes met his. “I know that things might be really tough right now, but I know you, and I know how hard you work, and I know that you will get through this. You have the weekend to forget about things and relax for a bit too, I’m here to get your mind off of the stress.”

You smiled at his reassuring words; he always knew what to say. You moved so that you could rest your head on his shoulder. “Thanks, Char, don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“I don’t know, probably die or something” he said casually. You punched his shoulder jokingly and laughing at the boy next to you. “You hungry? We can order some food” 

“I didn’t bring my wallet with me” you said, remembering that you’d only grabbed your keys on your way out. 

“Don’t worry about that, it was on me anyway.” Charlie said, scrolling through UberEats on his phone for something to order. “What are you feeling?”

“Char, I’m not letting you pay! At least let me Venmo you?” you asked, already beginning to feel guilty at the fact that he offered to pay.

“Y/N” he said, putting his phone down and turning to face you, “You’re not paying,” he placed both hands on your cheeks, squishing them slightly, “Do not. Worry. About it.”

“But Charlie,” you replied, turning your body to face him straight on, “I. Feel. Bad” you mimicked his position, placing both hands on his cheeks and squishing them. And there the two of you were, hands on each other’s cheeks, squishing them. That was until you heard Charlie’s bedroom door slowly creak open.

“Hey guys, Jer and I were just wondering if you wanted to order food?” Owen asked, walking in while looking down at his phone. When he looked up and noticed the way you two were positioned, he stopped dead in his tracks. “Uh, I’m sorry, did I walk in on something?” he asked concerned, but slightly amused. 

“Perfect timing Owen!” Charlie said, taking his hands off your cheeks and grabbing his phone again, “Y/N and I were just having the same conversation”

“I was thinking maybe Chinese?” Owen asked, resuming his scrolling on his phone. You and Charlie looked at each other, an unsure look on your face.

“Eh, not really feelin’ it” Charlie replied, going back to his phone for food inspiration.

“I was kind of craving pasta from that Italian place down the street” you said.

“Pomodoro?” Charlie asked, and immediately he looked at Owen and they gave each other the same look. “Yes!” They both said at the same time.

“I’ll go ask Jer what he wants, text me your orders.” Owen replied, leaving the room. But before Owen asked Jeremy what he wanted to eat, he explained in detail what he saw when he walked in on you and Charlie. The two boys grinned at each other, knowing how the two of you felt about the other, and knowing that neither of you would say anything to the other.

**

When the food arrived, the four of you sat in the small living room eating, joking, and watching a variety of YouTube videos. You loved hanging out with the guys, it was always entertaining and you definitely got a workout from how much you laughed. 

After everyone had finished eating, the four of you decided to put on a movie. You sat next to Charlie on the smaller couch, leaning into his side, while Owen laid out on the bigger couch and Jeremy had a spot on the floor with some pillows. 

You’re not sure how long into the movie you made it, but eventually you fell asleep on Charlie’s shoulder. He hadn’t noticed you fell asleep until Owen brought it up.

“Hey man, she out?” he asked, leaning up on the couch. Jeremy looked over too, noticing your sleeping figure resting against Charlie. Charlie glanced down at you, brushing your hair away from your face.

“Yeah, she must’a fell asleep” he said, eyes resting on you a little longer before turning to look at Owen. Owen smirked and looked at Jeremy, who matched his smirk before the two boys looked back at Charlie. “What’s the look for?” he asked confused.

“Oh, come on, Charlie!” Jeremy said, “You are head over heels for her!” he whisper shouted.

“And you have been since day one” Owen added. 

“I- I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Charlie whisper shouted back. The boys couldn’t see but underneath the blanket, Charlie was pulling you closer to him. He felt like he had to protect you despite there really being nothing to protect you from.

“Don’t avoid it Charlie, it’s so obvious” Owen retorted.

“The only question is, when are you finally going to tell her?” Jeremy asked.

As Charlie was forming his response, his felt you shift next to him. All three boys shifted their gaze to you, hoping you hadn’t heard what they were talking about. You shifted so that your face was resting in the crook of Charlie’s neck. He shivered at the feeling of your breath on his skin.

“Char?” you asked, too sleepy to open your eyes. Charlie squeezed your side to let you know he was there.

“What’s up? You alright?” he asked.

“ ‘m fine. What time is it?”

“Uh, it’s about 12:30” 

“Shit!” you said, quickly sitting up from your comfortable position and rubbing the sleep out of your eyes, “The last bus leaves in 30 minutes, I gotta go!” You started to stand up from the couch, but Charlie grabbed your hips, sitting you back down on the couch.

“Chill, Y/N! I’m not letting you get on a bus in the middle of the night! You can sleep in my bed, I’ll take the couch tonight” Charlie said, trying to calm you down. Jeremy coughed from the other side of the room, giving Charlie a look. Jeremy was crashing on the couch considering that he didn’t actually live there and had planned to spend the night. Charlie shot back a ‘not now’ look, returning his focus on you.

“I can’t take your bed. I’ll take the couch” you said, not wanting to put your friend out any more than you had tonight.

“Well, actually, I-I’m supposed to be sleeping on the couch” Jeremy finally spoke up. Charlie shot him a look, causing Jeremy to shrug and shy back out of the conversation.

“Then I’ll take the floor, but I’m not taking your bed” You said, bundling the blanket that was piled next to you. 

“Y/N, you are not sleeping on the damn floor. Either you sleep in my bed or we’re both sleeping on the floor. End of story” Charlie said, a little more stern this time.

“Well with that logic, why don’t we both just sleep in the bed?” you asked, shrugging. Charlie’s eyes went wide. Owen and Jeremy’s heads quickly turned their attention to you, smirks threatening to appear on their faces. 

“I-I mean, if-if you’re cool with that, yeah we could do that” Charlie stuttered, rubbing the back of his neck. He hadn’t expected you to offer to share a bed with him, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to pass this opportunity up.

“I wouldn’t offer if I wasn’t cool with it, but now that we’ve settled that, I’m tired. Goodnight boys!” you said, standing up and waving.

“ ‘night!” Owen and Jeremy replied, waving as you made your way back to Charlie’s room. What you didn’t see was the two boys silently cheering Charlie on as he slowly stood and made his way to his room. 

You were already tucked away when he made it, closing the door softly behind him. He made his way through the dark and found his way to bed. He slipped in next to you, laying awkwardly on his back, not exactly knowing how to sleep next to you. He turned his head to look at you. Your back was facing him, breathing slow. He figured that you’d already fallen asleep given how tired you were, so he got comfortable and eventually fell asleep.

**

Charlie woke with a start when he heard you start to cry out in your sleep. He couldn’t make out what you were saying but he knew that you were having a nightmare. He immediately pulled your back close to his chest, arms wrapping around you. His cheek was pressed against yours as he whispered in your ear. “Hey, hey, you’re alright, I’m here, you’re okay” You woke up, heart racing, and hands grasping Charlie’s arms that wrapped around your middle. He loosened them enough for you to turn around and face him. 

“What would I do without you?” you asked, cuddling closer into his chest, eyes closing in comfort. Charlie took a deep breath, he felt like now was the time to tell you. Tell you how he really felt, how much he wanted to never be without you.

“Y/N?” he whispered?

“Yeah, Char?”

“Can I tell you something?” He was trying to keep his nerves down, knowing you’d be able to feel him shaking.

“Of course, you can tell me anything.” You replied, shifting to lean slightly over him. He mimicked your position, the two of you leaning to face the other. “I like you. Um, like more than a friend kind of like you. And I don’t want this to ruin what we have so if you don’t feel the same way that’s- that’s cool we can forget I said this.” Charlie rambled. You were taken aback by the sudden out poor of emotional truth. Charlie was beginning to accept that you didn’t feel the same way until you made a move. You leaned in and kissed Charlie, all of the bottled-up feelings coming to the surface. 

“I like you too, Char,” you whispered, hand cupping the side of his face, “God, I’ve liked you since the day we met” you laughed, remembering your first encounter on set with Charlie. Charlie sighed from relief from next to you.

“I was so scared you didn’t feel the same…”

“How could I not, Charlie? I literally couldn’t survive without you.” You spoke. A smile crept its way onto Charlie’s face before he leaned in for another kiss, deeper and more passionate than the first. The two of you spent much of the rest of the night like that, moving between sleep and giggly sleepy kisses. The next morning, the two of you slept in a little later than normal, and laid in bed cuddled up watching TikToks, sneaking kisses in between. It was a kind of bliss you didn’t think you’d ever experience. Both of your heads turned when a short knock was made against the door.

“Are you guys dead in there?” Owen asked through the door. The two of you chuckled from the bed.

“We’re fine Owen!” Charlie shouted.

“Are you sure? It’s like noon-thirty and I haven’t heard anything from either of you?” Owen shouted back. You laughed at the boys, moving to get out of the bed and answer the door. Charlie pouted at the lack of you next to him. You opened the door to see a concerned looking Owen. 

“Good morning, Owen” you smiled.

“Did I interrupt something?” he asked, noticing Charlie’s lack of shirt and a messy bed.

“No, you didn’t. We were just getting up to grab some breakfast” you replied.

“Oh, well I was going to ask if you guys wanted some waffles? Jeremy and I just made some” he said, still looking between you and Charlie, attempting to put the pieces together on what happened when the two of you went to bed last night.

“I’d love some waffles! Let me just grab my sweatshirt and I’ll be right there!” 

Owen nodded, leaving the room. You turned to look for your sweatshirt somewhere on the floor. Feeling two arms wrap around your waist, you giggled, placing your arms over Charlie’s.

“You know you don’t have to go out there.” He said, lips hovering just over your ear.

“No, I don’t have to.” You said, “But we need to eat.”

“There’s something right here I could eat.” Charlie replied. You spun around quickly in his arms, slapping him lightly on the upper arm.

“Charlie!” You couldn’t believe how quickly he responded with that!

“What!? It’s true!” he winked at you.

“Well too bad because that is currently not on the menu. I want waffles!” you said before breaking free of his grasp, grabbing your sweatshirt and skipping out of the room to the kitchen. Charlie was left standing in his room, mouth agape, but laughing at how you handled that. What would he do without you?

[gb-patch]

Ask Answers: May 15th Part 1

It’s been longer than usual since our last answer session, so I’m answering a ton of questions today! It’s so big I split it into two parts. Thank you for the patience on getting a response to these.

Thanks for reaching out to us with your questions and kind words ^^!

Sorry if this has been asked before or isn't something you can say but is there anyway for Cove to confess in step 4? I wanted him to confess in step 3 and followed all the steps to make him do it but ended up texting my family instead of Cove at the end.

Yeah, Cove can confess in Step 4!

Hello! I heard that Cove is on the spectrum, albeit undiagnosed. As someone who is ND, this makes me UNBELIEVABLY happy. I literally was brought to tears! Thank you for that!

Out of curiosity, will Cove be diagnosed in Step 4? I have a strong feeling y’all won’t make it a HUGE deal/make it out to be negative, so I’m not worried about that whatsoever! I’m just curious just he’ll off handedly mention it? Or will it just not be touched upon at all (which is ok!)?

Either way is ok, I’m just curious!

I’m happy it made you happy! Admittedly, Cove simply being someone with autism that grew up not being diagnosed was something I included for myself. I didn’t really think anyone would notice or ask about it, aha. But players did start to have questions about his traits, so I started to talk about it outside of the game. It’s great to see it get such a positive response and now I do feel like having it be a non-topic may have been the wrong choice and bringing it up would’ve been good in terms of having positive representation for that. I don’t know if I’ll find a way to mention it in Step 4 now, with how far along the game is, but I am at least thinking about it when originally it wasn’t something I really even considered.

Hey!  Just wanted to say thank you for Our Life.  It's been a bright spot and a needed escape in what's otherwise been a crummy year.  I know you just did a Q&A post but I figured I'd ask anyway.  Was just curious about Step 4.  Will it be similar to the other Steps in that it consists of several different moments or will it just be one long sequence?

Step 4 is shorter than the prior Steps because it’s just an epilogue rather than a full arc of a story. It’ll consist of scenes that all happen in a set row one after the other. There won’t be a collection of Moments to choose from. But it’ll still be very sweet and fun.

¡hola!, you see, first I want to say that I love Our Life! (°◡°♡) and I have 2 important questions, would Cove cry watching titanic? and what is the saddest part according to him? (sorry for my english) 

Titanic would make him cry. He’d probably think the parts showing people who aren’t able to make it to the life boats/are choosing to stay and go down with the ship were the saddest.

Hello, I wanted to ask how much you earn with creating games? Like is it possible to make a living? Thank you >< <3 

How much I earn varies a lot month to month based on Steam sales, Patreon backers, and how many projects are in full production at the time. It’s also hard to say how much I make historically, since that also changes dramatically year by year. But I do earn enough to work on these games full time! I really appreciate all the support that allows me to do that.

Hey!! I was wondering for the 18+ Our Life moment, will there be an emphasis on safety/comfort for all involved? I feel like there  would be just going off of what the rest of the game is like, but I wanted to ask 

Yes! Cove is a nervous boy himself and also super cautious about doing anything the MC doesn’t like, so clear consent from both is absolutely needed for anything to happen. It’s a conversational sexy times Moment with stops/starts so the two can talk about how they’re feeling, rather than a heat of the moment just going for it kind of thing.

Hey!! I was wondering how long the wedding dlc would be? Will it be broken up into moments, or just one big event? 

It’s one long series of scenes all in a row rather than a collection of Moments to pick from. It’s the shortest and the least expensive of all the DLCs. It’s not super crucial to get and those who aren’t into big weddings can totally skip it without worry.

HELLO AMAZING DEVS 👋 i am hopelessly in love with the worst guy ever (jeremy king) and because of this i have a really stupid question: does he really hate people who are nice to him? TvT he’s too cute to be mean to istg it’s a miracle JB held the urge to be consistently nice to him bc just look at his FACE he is so cute! thank you for jeremy’s route it’s so lovely (and awful bc he’s scum 11/10) it gave me so much laughs LMAO i hope you guys have a good day!! 

Haha, thank you. He doesn’t hate them but he’s certainly not pleased with them. Jeremy is either uncomfortable with or annoyed by people being sweet on him, depending on how they approach it. He’s far more comfortable with jerkiness. It lets him relax and he can be himself without it being a problem, since he’s also a jerk. He feels a level of guilt being such a little punk to kind people, not enough to be a better person but still.

Has Cove dated or been interested in someone other than MC? 

Nope! He stays single over the course of the game if he’s not with the MC.

Is Step 4 more mature? Or it's gonna be set in similar atmosphere as Step 3? 

Step 4 is a similar atmosphere as Step 3. Though, it’s actually kind of less mature-topic heavy than Step 3 since it’s just a ‘hey, let’s check in on the gang to see what they’re up to’ style epilogue rather than a story arc with serious issues.

will there be new music for now and forever?? or will the old our life music be reused? 

It’s gonna be a brand new soundtrack. We’ll be opening up a job position for that soon.

Hi, is it okay if we use the assets in Our Life (like the sprites) for fanworks or fan content content, like edits? 

Sure! Just as long as you don’t use the assets made by those artists to make money.

Quick clarification on Step 3 choices: I hope I didn't come off rude (because I LOVE the game, really!!), I was just curious because the intro threw me off at times. For example, you could choose how you felt about Elizabeth in Step 2 (Dinner), but during the Step 3 intro, it says that you got closer to Liz and I didn't get a choice in it. 

For the example, it can’t be helped that you’re closer to Liz in Step 3 than you were in Step 2 because she’s inherently closer to the MC regardless of whether you liked her or not in Step 2. Her feelings are out of your control and the game isn’t so dramatic that you can push her affection away and not let her bond with you, haha. But ‘being closer’ can still be relative. For some people maybe that means you’re best buds now and for others it might just mean you’re not fighting all the time any more. If there’s other parts you want to mention, feel free to let us know.

Did the illustrator for Our Life change? 

We have many OL artists! The main artists who set the game’s style haven’t changed, but there’s multiple other artists who help finish assets.

So Miranda's type is confident and outgoing, huh? So...does that mean Terri's her type?? 👀 

Haha, sorry for the late reply on this. As you might’ve seen in our post yesterday- yeah that is her type.

Hey! First, I just want to say I've really enjoyed how detailed OL got with gender identity and sexuality and how respectful the topics were handled! It's been so wonderful to play since the experiences could be close to my own (I'd be lying if I said I didn't tear up at parts). Second, I was wondering, would future games explore the topic of polyamory? I'd love to see more visual novels allow room for that and I saw you've explored the topic before.

Keep up the amazing work! ♡

Thank you! We do want to include polyamory in at least some of our future projects. Floret Bond, which might be what you’re referring to when mentioning how we’ve explored the topic before, is on hold unfortunately. So right now I’m not sure when something might release or what will be the first game of ours to come out with poly relationships (we might do something else before FB is done). We’ll have see how things ends up coming together.

Hey um. I feel like im not allowed to ask this on the private discord cuz people will yell at me but why is there so much focus on OL2 and not finishing OL1 stuff? I like the new people but i kind of want to finish cove's story and get derek and baxter stuff first. didn't people pay for it? 

I’m sorry, I don’t understand entirely what’s making that situation a concern. There’s a channel in the discord for critique where no one is allowed to comment back. People can voice things they’re worried about without any way for others to push back on it. And the two teams working on the OL games are different. We try to post pretty often about how we’re hiring brand new people to start on Our Life: Now & Forever. The OL1 team is all still working on OL1 like normal. There’s only more updates on the Patreon for OL2 because the expansions to the first game are mostly script-based at this point while OL2 is just starting to get all its art, which means there’s a lot more to show off as previews.

Also, there was a Kickstarter for the first Our Life, if that’s what you mean by people paying for it. But one of the stretch goals was to start Our Life 2 early, before fully completing Our Life 1, so that the new game could be out sooner. It wouldn’t make sense to stop doing OL2 work because that would be going against what backers were promised. Maybe you didn’t get the full story before and hopefully this clears it up!

Hello! I know it's up to every player but.. What is your recommendation for playing order? Did you ever had any timeline  events planned? 

I didn’t make the events with a planned timeline. The events got made simply as I had ideas for them and then I just kind of organized them from left to right on the screen in an order to space out more dramatic ones between more lighthearted ones. Any order the player wants to go with is totally valid!

Hi! It's Step 4 a paid dlc or update? And how long it's planned to be? Ps. Love the game! 

The Step 4 epilogue is free! The Cove Wedding DLC does cost money, though. Those are planned to be shorter than the usual Steps/DLCs.

Will we have options for what sort of job the MC might have by the time step 4 takes place? 

Yeah, you can. It’s not super exact or detailed, but there are options about it.

Is there a pandemic in Our Life world, or is it just in a better timeline with no pestilence? 

Our Life is pandemic-free! That didn’t exist when we began working on the project and it’s not something we’d like to feature in this story now that it has unfortunately come along, aha.

Hi, you said that you can play tic-tac-toe or hangman with Cove in Boating if you're sick/scared but I keep getting tic-tac-toe. Am I doing something wrong?

After being sick/scared you have to continue to be upset/unwell. If you calm down and decide to just chill you’ll end up playing tic-tac-toe.

Hi, GB Patch! Since Lee was initially commissioned to only appear in two Steps does this mean she won't appear in the Wedding DLC? I really like her character so it'll be a little weird to not have our cousin at our wedding, aha.

She is gonna be in Step 4/the wedding DLC after all! We’re still working with her creator to make sure it fits with what they wanted.

Is Sunset Bird based on a real place? Asking for a friend, not trying to move there or anything. 👀

It’s based on small beach towns in So-Cal, but not one specific town you could go see in real life, I’m afraid. It’d be nice if it was real, though.

—– —– —– —–

We released a new FAQ! It answers common questions and we’ll keep adding more to it. Please check there before sending an ask. FAQ   Also, if you prefer to just see the main posts without all the asks/reblogs, feel free to follow our side account instead: GB Patch Updates Blog

[dream-a-little-bigger-x]

Don’t Go Breaking My Heart | Charlie Gillespie

Requested by anonymous: Hi! Could you possibly do a Charlie x reader fic where they are filming season 2 & there is a new character (fashion expert/can see ghost/a little bit of enemies with Luke at first) but off screen they are very close (always hanging out/on ig posts & stories/dance partners/they sing karaoke/adventure) & the whole cast likes to tease them about it but they deny any feelings however they are about to film a very important scene that involves their characters & might change everything between them.

Pairing: Charlie Gillespie x reader

Warnings: fluff

Words: 2,789

Season 2. Finally Season 2. Everyone had been hoping, wishing, praying for a season 2 of Julie and The Phantoms, and after months of waiting, Netflix finally picked it up for a second season. After those months, the actors had just to wait a little while longer while the crew wrote up the first drafts of scripts and made it perfectly save for the actors to do their work. Once all of that’s ready and they’re good to go, the cast finally reunite again in Vancouver. They even meet some new cast members. Like you. You had auditioned for the role of Daniela Ramos, Julie’s cousin and Victoria’s daughter, and got it pretty much straight away. Daniela is a fashion student at a High School in Melrose Hill and Julie asks her for some help with costumes for her next gig with her band. To Julie’s surprise, Daniela can actually see the boys, even when they’re not playing, which causes for a lot of trouble in the band and family, especially between Julie and Luke. This is your first big role on the small screen and you’re the most excited you’ve ever been. You met the other cast members at the summer bootcamp before the filming process would start, and though almost everything had to be done with a face mask covering half of everyone’s face, it still was a lot of fun getting to meet everyone and spend the most fun summer ever. Every day, you grew closer and closer to everyone on set, and soon became best friends with Madi, Jadah, Savannah and Tori, doing plenty of sleepovers. Besides the girls, you also grew closer to Charlie, Owen and Jeremy, but mostly Charlie. For some reason, the two of you just clicked instantly. You have the same humor, the same taste of adventure, the same passions and dreams. You, Charlie and Owen even rented a place together to live in for the time being in Vancouver. You got even closer during filming, especially since you and Charlie have a lot of scenes together. “Oh my God, Luke, you’re so annoying!” you yell at him when the two of you are in the garage, taping a scene. It had taken you about ten takes and you still couldn’t help but giggle at the shocked face he pulled every time. “If I’m so annoying, Dani, why do you keep coming back?!” The angry face he pulls resembles that of an angry kitten, which just makes you crack up again. “God dammit, Y/N!” Charlie laughs now too as Kenny yells “Cut!” “Sorry! Sorry, guys! I promise I’m a real actor!” You hold your hands up in defense, then cough to get ready for another take. This time around, you could finally manage to get through it without laughing. “Yes!” Charlie exclaims when Kenny yells “Cut!” again. He holds his hand up for a high five, which you giddily give him. “Do you need any more takes, Kenny?” he asks the man himself. “Nope, you’re good! You can go on your break now!” he pats Charlie’s shoulder. “Nice job, guys!” “Thanks, Kenny,” you say, the smile growing on your face. “I need food, Gillespie,” you tell your best friend, linking your arm with his. “Let’s go get food!” The two of you head down to catering and sit down at a table with a plate full of food. “What are we doing tonight?” he then asks before taking a bite of food. You swallow your bite of food and take a sip from your drink. “Don’t you have a night shoot tonight?” you ask, remembering him saying something about a late call. “No, that’s tomorrow, after our dance rehearsal,” he replies after swallowing the food. “Oh! Okay!” You start thinking of things to do, “We could go to karaoke? Bring the others maybe?” He raises his eyebrows, looking at you questionably. “I’ve always loved karaoke,” you shrug with a giggle. “Yeah, okay!” Charlie nods his head agreeingly. “Karaoke it is!” The two of you smile up at each other, teeth showing, both of you glowing. “What are you love birds discussing?” Owen asks when he joins them, his voice muffled from the mask covering his face. He pulls it down to under his chin as he and Jeremy join the two at the table. “We’re thinking about going to karaoke tonight with the whole team!” you tell them, completely ignoring the ‘love birds’. “Ooh, fun!” Owen exclaims with a smile that nearly reaches his ears. “Yeah, we’ll leave after shooting the last scene tonight,” Charlie suggests, looking at you for confirmation. You nod your head agreeingly. That night, you and the rest of the cast head to the nearest karaoke place you know. You’ve linked arms with Savannah and Tori, giggling through the night, trying to keep your balance on your heeled boots. Meanwhile, without you realizing, Charlie has been keeping his eyes on you the whole way there. He finds it adorable how your giggle floats through the night air and your hips bump against the other girls’. He couldn’t lie, you had easily become the light in his life. “So, what song shall we begin with?” you ask the gang as you settle into the booth. “Pick the first one on the list,” Jeremy replies when no one else does. You nod your head curtly and press play on the first song, which is Living on a Prayer by Bon Jovi. You can already tell after that first song; tonight is going to be a fun night. You sing a couple of songs with the girls, there are many group numbers, and you even sing one with your roommates. After singing with Owen and Charlie, the latter points at you. “We’re going to sing together now!” he exclaims excitedly before turning around and picking a song for you to sing. When he’s picked one, he grabs your hand to pull you closer towards him. You blink a couple of times, unable to process what’s happening right now. The opening notes to Don’t Go Breaking My Heart by Elton John and Kiki Dee chime through the booth. You glance over at Savannah and Tori, who offer you an encouraging smile. Then you look at Jadah and Madison, but they’re too busy giggling and whispering, and it makes you wonder if that’s about you and Charlie. Your eyes dart over to the boys – Jeremy, Owen and Sacha – who just offer you suggestive smiles and eyebrow-wiggles. Charlie’s voice captures your attention again, and you turn to him. “I couldn’t if I tried,” you sing back to him. The encouraging smile on Charlie’s face calms you down a little up to the point where it almost seems like the two of you are the only people in the room. You have no clue what is happening or why it’s happening. All you know is that you’ve wanted it to happen sooner. Though you wouldn’t ever admit that to anyone. It’s the way he looks at you and the way he makes you feel like you’re the only person on this planet that matters. It’s been the way he’d looked at you since that first day of meeting him. “I won't go breaking your heart,” you sing the very last line to him ever so softly, not even looking at the screen anymore, but instead, looking into his eyes. “Don't go breaking my heart,��� he sings back. The song ends and you both lower your microphones, staring into each other’s eyes. If it wasn’t for the rest of the cast breaking out into cheers and applause, you would’ve kissed him then and there. But it startles you, and you step away from him upon realizing how close you are and how that must look to the others. “So, when’s the wedding?” Madison asks teasingly, which makes the others laugh, and you blush. After that night at karaoke, the two of you had silently agreed to forget anything ever happened. Savannah said you were in denial, but you believed you weren’t. You told her it was just the atmosphere in the air that night, the both of you had consumed a little bit of alcohol and it might’ve just been that. No one stopped teasing you though. On every possible occasion, they’d ask you if you’d kissed him yet, or when your next date it, or started singing Don’t Go Breaking My Heart randomly. You just shook it off every time, finding it amusing how consumed the cast was with this ‘relationship’ you had with Charlie. There was nothing more going on than just a really, really tight friendship. Until the dance scene happened. Your character, Dani, was supposed to go to a school dance with her crush, but she was nervous because she had never slow danced with anyone before. When she tells Luke, he insisted on teaching her, saying he’d gone to plenty of school dances back in ’94 and ’95 before he died. You and Charlie know this choreography by heart, you’ve been doing it for weeks on end at bootcamp and during rehearsals. It had always just been fun and games, the two of you being immaculate dancers and bouncing off of each other so well because of your tight friendship. “I could teach you?” Charlie says as Luke, stepping closer to you. You raise your eyebrows at him. “I’ve gone to numerous dances in my days, Dani…” One corner of his mouth curls up into a teasing smirk. “Unless you want to embarrass yourself in front of… Jake.” He emphasizes the name of your fictional crush, to which you react with wide eyes and a blush spreading on your cheeks. “Come on, Dani!” He reaches out for your hand, which you place hesitantly in his. Dani being able to see ghosts, is also able to make them corporeal. The lights on set dim a little, except for one spot on the pair in the middle of the studio, and then the music starts playing through the speakers. Charlie starts singing the song they’d learned at bootcamp, one the cast wrote together during the quarantine. The atmosphere in the studio has suddenly become really intense. You can feel the butterflies erupting in your stomach as the man in front of you sings to you, mere inches away from each other as he leads you in this beautiful dance Paul Becker and Tori Caro choreographed for you. Just like at the karaoke booth, it feels like the two of you are the only people on set. Just you and him. You and Charlie. You and your best friend. There’s no denying you have feeling for him anymore. You knew you did, you just told yourself it wasn’t a good idea and suppressed those feelings, pushing them down. It worked for a while. Until now. “Cut!” Kenny yells after your scene. You step away from Charlie, glancing down at the floor as you try your hardest to hide your flustered face. “That was perfect, guys! It really looks like the two of you were in love!” he claps his hands in excitement, then tells them to do it again. After four takes of the dance, Kenny tells you to go and take a break. Without saying another word to Charlie, you rush off set and towards your trailer where you sit down on a chair, trying to calm your breathing. Charlie might not like you the way you like him. Admitting to these feelings might just ruin everything the two of you have. With this in mind, you grab your phone and text Savannah, asking her to come over to your trailer. Maybe she could help you. “Are you okay?” she asks when she enters and finds you staring at the ceiling. “No…” you reply and take a deep breath, “I think I’m in love with my best friend?” “Oh, sweetie…” Savannah sighs, and pulls you up to take you in a hug, “I know…” You pull her away again to face her properly. “What do you mean ‘you know’?” “Everybody knows,” she starts, “The two of you have been inseparable since the day you met, and everyone can see the way you look at each other. Plus, your duet the other night was a little intense for it to be a platonic one.” She chuckles, and you can’t help but chuckle too. She then grabs her phone from her back pocket, opening Instagram. “You know fans have caught on too, right?” She shows you the comments on some of Charlie’s pictures on his account. One picture is of the two of you, napping in Julie’s bed on set, cuddled up. He even posted pictures from your hikes on your days off. All of them are bombarded with comments from fans saying, ‘I ship it!’ or ‘Y/S/N’. Sav then opens her dm’s which are flooded with fans asking if you and Charlie are dating yet, and how the two of them are so in love with each other. “Charlie isn’t in love with me?” you deny, not believing one bit about it. “He is, though…” This does not come from Savannah’s mouth. Your eyes widen when you recognize the voice, and peek behind Savannah to find your best friend standing at your open trailer door. “Sav, can you give us a minute?” he asks the younger girl. “More than a minute,” she chirps, offering you a wink before leaving the trailer. Charlie steps in completely and moves until he’s in front of you. He takes your hands in his, and chuckles at your overwhelmed and confused expression. “Are you okay?” he asks, that beautiful smile of his persistent on his face. “Y—yeah? No? I’m not sure?” you sigh, trying to get your thoughts in order. “Charlie, wha—?” “Can I talk? I’ve been going over this conversation in my mind a billion times, and if I don’t say it now, I think I’m going to forget what I’m supposed to say…” You nod your head in response. “Y/N, I’ve been in love with you since the very first time I saw you walking in at bootcamp. You looked adorable with your little nervous smile and your polite hellos to everybody. I knew from that moment on that I wanted to get to know you better, and that I wanted to become more than just friends…I didn’t think you’d feel the same way, so I told myself that it was okay if we’d just stay friends. Especially since your character kind of hates mine and you bring Dani to life so convincingly, that I was almost sure you hated me too,” you chuckle at that, “But I can’t hide it anymore, Y/N. I am so embarrassingly in love with you that I could’ve kissed you after that scene we just did and that I could kiss you right now even though I’m—” before he can finish his sentence, you lean up and crash your lips onto his, your hands flying into his hair. He’s a little startled at first, but quickly melts into the kiss and presses you closer to him. “I am so embarrassingly in love with you too, Charlie,” you whisper when you pull away, pressing your forehead against his. “They’re going to be so relieved,” you tell him with a chuckle. He frowns his eyebrows at you. “Who?” he asks. You take his hand in yours and lead him towards the door of your trailer, pushing it open and making it bump against whoever was closest to the door. All of your cast mates scramble, trying to act natural while Owen rubs his forehead since he was the one that got a door in his face. “Ah, them!” Charlie chuckles. “Thanks for the door in my face, guys,” Owen says disgruntled. “That’s on you, buddy,” you tell him with a grin. “Don’t you guys have a scene to shoot or something?” Their eyes widen at the realization and, after yelling at the two how happy they are for them, rush to set in a hurry. “So, where were we?” Charlie turns back to you when everyone’s gone. “Don’t you have a scene with them?” “Shit!” he grumbles and jumps off the small steps in front of the trailer. He starts running towards set but turns around almost immediately to you and kisses your lips quickly, but sweetly, and then runs off. You watch him with an amused smile on your face. There was nothing to be afraid about after all and nothing changed between you two. You were still the best of friends, just friends that kiss and are in love with each other. But both of you happy.

Taglist: @hannahhistorian92​ @marinettepotterandplagg​ @thequirkybookaholic​ @parkeret​​ @lukeys-giggle​ @gingerxarmy​ @lovesanimals​

[stitchislovely]

I’m glad the tumblr fandom is finally seeing how toxic the Twitter fandom but it’s seriously so sad how much reaching they’re doing. Jeremy is getting his name dragged through the mud by entitled fans who are so obessed with the idea of him being a bad person that they twist every single thing he says or posts. What’s worse is that so many of these people have support because their following can’t be bothered to fact check and will take every cancel party as gospel. To be clear, an actor who is homophobic would not repeatedly audition and stay on shows with LGBTQ+ casts and characters. He shouldn’t be accused of queerbaiting when the writers are the ones making the final decisions, nor when he repeatedly states that he doesn’t like to comment on things because his words are often twisted to fit whatever narrative the fans have themselves. He shouldn’t be demonized for promoting his music instead of being an activist all day, everyday. Having a platform does not mean they have the knowledge to speak about things they either know nothing about or very little of. Him saying he should’ve waited to promote his song was most likely because launches are strategic, and he was too excited to wait for a plan. Even if he knew about it, genuine question are we supposed to put our lives on hold for every bad thing that happens? I wake up to 20 horrible headlines a day and if I let myself dwell on each of them I’d never be able to do anything in my life. If I donated or every campaign I’d be broke. If I signed every campaign(which I do try to) I’d also have to spend time researching it beforehand. There’s a thing called compassion fatigue and the harsh reality is that we can’t care about everything at once without sacrificing our own happiness. What’s he gonna do, tweet DT to stop the execution? That was the only thing could stop it and I’m confident in saying Jeremy doesn’t have that power. Also what’s up with the double standard, the rest of the cast said nothing but he’s the bad guy? He jokes with Owen about him “sounding horrible” and Owen laughs but fans get to decide to be offended on his behalf? He doesn’t play into the Luke/Reggie ship because it’s not canon and because being shipped with Charlie is funny to him means he’s homophobic? His wife and him “kind of look similar” (literally just because they’re white) and now it’s incest? He gets called ugly, untalented, amongst so many other things but he’s the bad guy? Why is bullying acceptable when it’s at the expense of him? Also fans can joke about Charlie’s height, Owen being dumb(he’s not), So many other things but he can’t joke with his friends. The difference is he knows them personally and the fans only know them on the surface level. I lost my point but these Twitter kids are pathetic and cruel and it’s weird that they’re proud of it.

[monstersandmaw]

Male vampire x male character (nsfw) Part Four

Edit which I’m including in all my works after plagiarism and theft has taken place: I do not give my consent for my works to be used, copied, published, or posted anywhere. They are copyrighted and belong to me.

Sorry for taking 84yrs to post this. I thought I had shared it. Sorry. Hope you enjoy all the same.

Wordcount: 10,904 (story total: 23,704)

Heads up in this part for continued, but easing, tense familial relations, some angst/heartache (not heartbreak though), and some (consensual) blood drinking.

Part One (sfw), Part Two (nsfw), Part Three (nsfw)

Alec let out a shaky breath and crossed to the sofa, sinking down onto it as his legs finally gave out. “Vampires,” he said, hardly daring to believe the word he was uttering.

“Yes.”

“And you’re one?”

“… Yes.”

“And my family…?”

Sebastien’s voice was tight on the other end of the line as he said, “Hunts my kind. Well, those of us who aren’t registered with the ‘Guild of Hunters’ —” his tone turned acrid as he spat the words out, though he kept his voice low and quiet.

“What does that even mean? I don’t know what any of this means… And did you know about my family? I mean, before? When you started dating me?”

Sebastien took another deep breath. “Yes. I knew. And it was a long time before I fully convinced myself that you did not.”

If Sebastien had thought it was some kind of trap, that would explain his reticence at the beginning for sure.

“And were you planning on telling me any of this?” Alec snarled. God, his chest hurt so much. The deception was like Jeremy cheating on him all over again, only this time the betrayal was coming from two fronts at once: from his love life and from his family. Not that he’d had all that solid a relationship with the latter to start with. Perhaps this explained why.

“I hadn’t planned on becoming your boyfriend at all,” Sebastien snapped.

“So, what, I was just a quick diversion? A casual fuck you kept coming back for because I’m such a fucking chump? Is that it?”

“No,” Sebastien sighed. “Not at all. I fell for you. Like the horrid cliche I am, the vampire fell for the hunter, and by then I had no idea how to tell you. I’ve not been with a human before, so this is all very new to me.”

Alec ran his fingers through his dark hair to buy himself a moment. “You… You haven’t?”

“No.”

“How… How old are you?”

“Do you really want the answer to that?”

“Yes!” His phone was slippery in his fingers now from the sweat on his palm but he couldn’t bring it away from his ear long enough to put it on speaker. He needed answers.

With another cavernous sigh, Sebastien said hurriedly, “Very well. I was born in 1897 and turned on the battlefields of the Great War — World War I, that is. I was dying, and a vampire named Felicity who had been working as a field nurse turned me. My first run-in with your family was not long after I moved from France to America. They were working with the American Hunters’ Guild on a case which had nothing to do with me.” He let out a shaky breath and said, “I got in the way and I nearly died. Those were the days before the treaty, of course, and before I moved to England.”

Despite his still-spinning mind, Alec managed to croak, “What treaty?”

“Those of us who get our blood from sanctioned blood banks and do not live-feed are exempt from being hunted like animals.” He spoke like he was quoting from a law code; cold and clinical; detached.

God, the way he said it made Alec’s skin crawl. It was as if he were being permitted to exist on the grounds of good behaviour and, he supposed, that was exactly the case. Even so, Alec couldn’t help the next words that just fell out of his mouth. “So you weren’t planning on feeding from me?”

“Of course not,” Sebastien retorted but then appeared to rein himself in with yet another steadying inhale. “No. It’s been decades since I’ve fed from a human directly. I didn’t plan on starting with you.”

Alec slumped back into the sofa cushions and stared up at the ceiling of his tiny apartment. “Fuck.”

After a long silence, Sebastien’s gentle tenor sounded in his ear. “Are you alright?”

“No,” he said. “I’ve never been close to my family - my dad was always an arsehole, but… I can’t believe Theo’s involved in all this. He was such a sweet kid, and we were really close until…” he swallowed thickly around the rising lump in his throat.

“Until?” Sebastien prompted when he stalled again.

“I can’t believe this is all real,” he muttered. “Until he turned sixteen and started to ‘work out’ with dad. I was at uni by then, getting my fine art degree, but whenever I came home he was just… different. Harder. Sharper. More focused. Guess it makes sense now… Well, as much as… you know…” he gestured vaguely to the empty apartment with his hands, “… as much as all this can make sense. Fucking… vampires…”

After a heartbeat, Sebastien added softly, “Quite literally.”

Despite himself, Alec snorted. “So… where does this leave us?”

Now it was Sebastien’s turn to feel clearly uncomfortable. Eventually he said, “Alec, I don’t think it’s wise for me to see you currently. Not with your family being what they are.”

His heart twisted, even though he’d been half expecting it. “You still think they’d… what, stake you, or whatever it is that vampire hunters actually do to you lot?”

“There are many ways to kill a vampire,” he said flatly. “And your family knows all of them, probably more. You need to work this out with them first as well. Talk to your brother. He seems the more reasonable…”

“I can’t believe Ellie’s in on it as well. And my mother? Fuck…”

“Talk to them.”

“Will I still see you at work at least?”

The awkward silence told him all he needed to know, even before Sebastien said, “I just sent in my letter of resignation.”

“That was quick,” he hissed, stomach dropping. “You only just left.”

“Supernatural speed,” he replied bitterly. “Comes in useful for typing papers and getting out of awkward situations…”

That sparked another question in him. “Supernatural powers, huh? Can you turn into a bat too?”

“No.”

Then he thought of Sebastien’s Halloween outfit. “Wolf?”

He thought he detected a faint smirk in Sebastien’s response. “No, sadly. No shape-shifting for me. Felicity is not of any extraordinary bloodline, and thus, neither am I.”

“Right,” he grunted. “Of course. Is she… is she still around?”

“Felicity? Yes. We meet every now and again. She and her wife spend most of their time in Venice these days.”

“Her wife? She a vampire too?”

Sebastien swallowed audibly. “Yes.”

“Did Felicity turn her too? Would that make her wife your sister?”

“No.”

He frowned. “Did she know her as a human though?”

“Yes.”

After a moment of spinning thoughts, Alec asked, “Did… you turn her?”

“One doesn’t tend to turn one’s own intended. Between a sire and their turned, there can grow… tension. Not always, but it can be enough to ruin a relationship that was seemingly solid before. Something about exchanging blood changes the soul… or so we think, anyway. It was an honour to be asked to sire her.”

“Right.” Alec felt slightly sick. “Will I at least see you before you leave?”

“I think it best if we don’t. Not while your family is still… ‘investigating’ me.”

“Are you really in danger from them?”

“Quite possibly. My name is on the treaty, but…”

Something twanged painfully again in his chest, swiftly followed by the fizzle of fear through his veins. “But what?”

“But vampires and hunters are not supposed to sleep together, Alec…”

“Don’t bang the enemy? How very Romeo and Juliet,” he snorted. “Fuck. Why does every good relationship I have turn to shit?” he asked, not of Sebastien but of the universe itself. “What did I do?”

“Alec —”

“—Don’t. Don’t make it worse by apologising or something. It’s fine. We were only together a month. I’ll get over it. You’ll move on. Heck, you’ll fucking live forever, right? What’s a month to you anyway? Nothing, right?”

The bitterness in his own voice nearly choked him, and without thinking, or even saying goodbye, he just hung up and let his phone lie in his limp fingers on the sofa cushions. It lit up and rang a moment later, but he didn’t answer it. Six more times Sebastien tried before finally giving up.

Kay was an absolute blessing in the next few days.

He didn’t tell her immediately about the whole vampire thing, but after he’d calmed down enough to be able to look at Theo without immediately busting a vein in his forehead, he hashed the basics out with him, and then told her everything. Alec told her about his newly-discovered, secret family occupation which, apparently, stretched back centuries. He told her about the fact that his eldest sister and younger brother were monster hunters in their spare time, and he told her the real reason Sebastien why had vanished overnight without a trace — yes, Alec had gone to his apartment building, only to be politely informed by the doorman that Dr. Dulac was no longer in residence and did not leave so much as a forwarding address.

That, above almost everything else, shattered Alec’s hopes of seeing him again. Like thistledown in the wind, Sebastien had simply flitted away somewhere else.

She took it about as well as he had to start with, but when she saw the seriousness in his eyes, and when, three weekends later, she came to his apartment for a definitely-not-awkward dinner with Theo, she saw video footage that Theo and his father had captured from various hunts of supernatural creatures beyond only beautiful vampires. Then she believed him. Ghouls, ghosts, reanimated corpses, demons… you name it and Theo could tell you about it.

Alec spent Christmas with Kay’s family, and Theo met him for New Year drinks in the city, joined by Ellie. It wasn’t anything like the family dynamic he’d always longed for, but the new degree of openness between them went some way to mending his still bruised heart. Slowly. Gradually. Piece by tentative, honest piece. He never joined in, but Theo started to tell him a bit about what they did. It still sounded barbaric to him, but at least it was true.

He had no word from Sebastien, and the number he had saved in his phone had been disconnected.

With the arrival of spring, Alec found himself more than usually dissatisfied with his job. He was a good teacher, and he enjoyed seeing his students’ talents evolve and grow, but the ever-increasing admin ground him down, and the politics of the faculty and the university as a whole wore on him.

“Have you seen this?” Kay asked one afternoon as they shared a takeaway coffee beneath the drifting cherry blossoms. Petals spiralled down like pastel pink and white wedding confetti, and he watched with an absent smile as a terrier snapped and sprung around on his hind legs trying to catch them while his owner stood and talked with her friend nearby. “Oi!” Kay asked, digging him in the ribs.

“Hmm?”

“Have you seen this?” she asked, shoving her phone under his nose.

He blinked, refocusing his eyes, and read the article’s headline aloud. “Council offers artists the chance to win a sponsored exhibition in the town hall with this unique competition.” He blinked. “So?”

“So?” she gawped. “You can’t be serious?”

“Send me the link. I’ll forward it to my students. They might like that.” That earned him a smack upside the head, and he scowled. “What was that for?”

“Alec, you might be the dumbest smart guy I know,” she said. “I showed it to you so that you could enter it, you giant idiot.”

He blinked. “Me?”

“I saw those charcoals you did the other week of the cathedral! They were amazing!! And the abstracts too… I still want one, by the way.”

“It’s already wrapped up for your birthday,” he groused. “You really think I should do it?”

She rolled her eyes and drained the last of her coffee without gracing him with an answer. Of course she thought he should.

“When’s the deadline?”

“Next Thursday,” she said without looking at him.

Alec licked his lips and swallowed. “Will you help me pick some images to submit?”

Her answering grin was feral.

In all honesty, Alec forgot about having even entered the competition until the letter dropped through his door six weeks later announcing that, to his utter astonishment, he had been selected as the winner. Tears blurred his eyes and he sat down heavily at the tiny kitchen table. He’d never entered any of his own art into anything like this in his whole life, and the first time he does, he gets a whole fucking public exhibition out of it?

“Maybe this year won’t be so bad after all,” he murmured. “New year, new start…” His chest still ached when he thought about Sebastien, and he hoped he was doing alright, wherever he was.

Theo had been searching for him, probably by way of apology for lying to his big brother for all these years, but he’d turned up very little. Sebastien had gone to Venice first, it seemed, presumably to spend time with Felicity and her wife, but had disappeared completely after that, with only rumours flickering here and there that he was in Paris, St. Petersburg, Prague, and then potentially Florence. Maybe.

“Venice seems like a pretty sunny place for a pair of vampires to live,” Alec commented, but Theo shrugged.

“They don’t burn up immediately in sunlight, or your professor would never have been able to take a day-job at the university. They’re sensitive to it, some more than others, but it takes a full day of constant sunlight beating down for them to burn properly.” The callousness of his brother’s response shook him, even after all these months, and Theo must have seen it on his face because he sighed. “I’m sorry,” he said, and then added, “You really loved him, didn’t you?”

Alec shrugged. Yes, he wanted to say. I thought so. “I only knew him for a month or so,” was what he said carefully instead. “And even then… turned out I didn’t know him anyway.”

Theo, who had been lounging on Alec’s sofa with his legs spread and his head tipped back into the cushions while Alec made supper, asked quietly, “Did he seem… normal to you?”

“Normal?” Alec asked, not sure he’d heard his brother correctly.

“Yeah… like… did you ever suspect he wasn’t… you know…?”

“Human?”

Theo grunted and nodded his head. “Yeah. I guess.”

“No. Obviously not. Never crossed my mind. Why would it have?”

Theo scowled and turned his eyes to regard him. Alec knew that Theo looked like a younger version of himself, if maybe in better shape, and he wondered if he’d have the same steely look in his eyes if he’d been deemed ‘man enough’ to become a hunter, or whatever bullshit criteria their arsehole father had used to select which members of his family were to become soldiers and which would live normal lives.

“What?” Alec demanded.

“But you slept with him, right?”

“I’m not talking about that with you,” he said, briefly brandishing the wooden spoon at him.

Theo pulled a face. “I’m not asking about your sex life. Gross. No, I mean…”

In that moment, Alec spotted a flash of something in his brother’s blue eyes that softened him to the kid. He turned off the gas and went over to where Theo was now sitting hunched over with his elbows on his knees, running his hands through his hair. When he looked up at Alec’s approach, his face showed open vulnerability in a way he’d not seen since they were young children and Theo had got himself into trouble at school.

“What’s going on?” Alec asked, seating himself next to his little brother.

Theo bobbed his knee like a deprived caffeine addict and bit his lip. With glassy eyes, he croaked, “I keep asking myself if we did the right thing…”

“What do you mean?”

The bravado of Theo’s early twenties melted away to become a worried, frightened, guilty little boy again and he said, “I mean… if what we do is right…”

“You mean… hunting?”

“Yeah,” he croaked.

“What set this off?”

His brother quirked him a humourless smirk and said, “You always did know when something was bothering me.”

Alec remained quiet, just watching him.

“We teamed up with some hunters from Edinburgh for a ‘vamp gone rogue’ case and we finally found her yesterday. She… She’d been turning people; trying to amass some kind of small army to take over from another vampire further up north. She was insane… like, completely, sociopathically insane, but… the people she turned… they were just…” he blinked, and Alec saw with a jolt that his eyes were full of unshed tears. “They were still just people.”

He feared he already knew where this was going. Still, he asked, “What happened?”

“Father wanted to put them down. They were terrified, chained up… still on the point of lashing out…”

Bile rose in his throat. “Oh god…”

“One of the hunters said she knew of a vampire who could help rehabilitate them; help them adjust to their new lives. One of them didn’t want to live as a vampire though, so father just…”

Theo didn’t need to finish that for Alec to know that father had ended the newly-turned vampire’s life in a heartbeat. “And the rest?”

“The other three went with the hunter. I don’t know what happened, but… I trust her. It’s just… father taught me and Ellie that vampires are mindless killers when they feed… that you can’t get close to them, that all they want at the end of the day is blood no matter what they tell you… ��but…” he looked up at Alec. “You’ve been fucking miserable since the whole Sebastien shit-fest. I know you’ve been trying to hide it, and you’ve got the exhibition coming up next weekend, and that’s great, but… I know you’ve stopped putting yourself out there. And we did that. We fucked it all up for you. I just…” he ran his hands through his hair and sent it into wild disarray. “I just wonder if you could really have been happy with him after all.”

Alec pulled his brother close and hugged him. “I’m not going to lie,” he murmured into his brother’s dark hair. “I’m furious with father for keeping everything from me, and for making you and mum and Ellie lie to me and Angie about it as well, but… if I hadn’t seen Sebastien’s eyes go red — yeah, I thought it was just a reflection or something — and if I hadn’t seen the way he sleeps literally like the dead… I’m not sure I would have believed you anyway. I don’t forgive him for it either, but…” he sighed deeply. “I forgive you, Theo. And Ellie.”

“And mum?”

“I’m still working on that.”

Theo went slack beneath him and snaked his arms around his brother’s waist for a moment. “Thanks,” he mumbled into Alec’s shirt.

“You’re still coming to the exhibition?” Alec asked as he pulled back and went back to the stove, giving Theo a moment of privacy to pull himself together.

In truth, Alec was a little shaken too. Their relationship had been slowly patched over the intervening months, but it still wasn’t particularly close, and the matter of Sebastien had been a permanent, proverbial elephant in the room. That Theo was questioning their father’s teaching came as an immense relief to Alec though. He poured them each a glass of wine, and the two spent the rest of the evening in a quieter kind of closeness than they’d yet shared.

When the evening of the exhibition drew round, Alec was quite frankly, a bit of a mess.

“C’mon,” Theo grinned, patting the lapels of his jacket down for him and grinning up at him. “Where’s that Twayblade hunter courage, huh?”

“Must have skipped me and all gone to you,” he quipped back. “Fuck. I’m so nervous. Why am I so nervous?”

“No fucking clue,” Theo chuckled. “You’re awesome and they’re gonna fucking love you.”

“Language,” Alec said instinctively and Theo’s laughter redoubled.

“You’re a big fucking hypocrite, you know that?” Theo laughed just as Kay sidled up with three glasses of champagne awkwardly held between her hands.

“Help a girl out here, would you, boys?” she asked, proffering the glasses to them.

Alec resisted the urge to down it in one — he’d probably only choke on the bubbles anyway — and filled his lungs instead with a big gulp of air. He tried to send all his nerves into the air and then blow it out of his body in one heaving sigh to leave him calmer, but it just gave him a head rush, so he sipped the wine and turned to look around the gallery from the corner where he’d been lurking.

“What if no one shows up?” he blurted, earning him a scowl from Theo and a pout-and-eyebrow-raise combo from Kay.

He needn't have worried in the end. The marketing team had done their work, and within an hour the place was heaving and all but three of his pieces had been reserved. Scratch that. Two.

The fact that almost all of his students had turned up as well to cheer him on and trade high fives, and scrounge free alcohol and food from the canape trays, warmed him in ways he didn’t know were possible.

Overwhelmed and a little bit tearful, he stepped out of the town hall’s main exhibition space and into the small corridor that led to a fire exit and a grotty back car park beyond, letting the flush die down from his cheeks. This was what he’d really wanted right from the moment he’d graduated all those years ago; to be an artist in his own right, with people buying his work at exhibitions… It almost made him giddy to think that he had a chance to do this full time now. It seemed that Sebastien had been right when he’d said he could really make something of himself.

Ah, there was the crash in his mood that he’d been waiting for. Nothing good lasts forever, right?

Would Sebastien have been proud of him if he knew about this? Would he have been there that night, by his side? Would they even have lasted that long anyway, even without his family’s interference?

The noise in the room was gradually dying down when he gathered enough courage to step back into the echoing hall. The pale wooden floors gleamed in the low light, the white of the temporary exhibition walls almost glowing, in stark contrast to the black and grey of his charcoals. He’d chosen mostly charcoals for the show, with a few acrylic abstracts for flavour, and apparently people loved them. Every single one had a red ‘sold’ dot beneath the label now, he noted as he cast his eyes around the room.

Then his gaze snagged on someone standing with their back to him, hands clasped loosely behind them, a long, silver-blond ponytail hanging down their back. And Alec’ vision slipped sideways.

Sebastien.

It had to be him.

No one else stood with posture like that. No one else was so tall and lean and elegant and god-damned graceful, even when just standing still. And no one else stood quite as still as that.

He let out a ragged breath and swayed slightly, glancing around. There was no sign of Theo or Kay just then, and only one or two couples meandered admiringly around the room. And there, fixated by one piece in particular, stood Sebastien.

Inhaling for courage, Alec approached and came to an unsteady halt a few feet away from him. He didn’t look real, somehow. His beauty had always been striking, but now in the low light he seemed like a mirage, with his warm olive skin and contrastingly pale hair, that cut-glass jawline and —

— He turned and met Alec’s gaze with dark brown eyes alight and glassy.

“You’re here,” Alec breathed, at a loss for anything else.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Sebastien said, and the sound of his voice sent a wild tingling through Alec’s whole nervous system. The man — vampire — looked uncharacteristically shy, uncertain, as he half turned to face him.

“Gotta say,” Alec said, scratching the back of his head, “I wasn’t expecting to see you again.”

“Should I leave?”

He chewed his lower lip for a second and Sebastien’s eyes tracked the movement before he blinked and looked back at the charcoal in front of him. It was of the Lady Chapel of the cathedral; one of the most tranquil places Alec had ever been. A shaft of light lanced down from a Gothic window high on the right, scattering fractured shards of light onto the stone floor, and behind it, just barely visible as a grey, misty outline, sat the small altar.

“You’re religious?” Alec asked.

“Mm,” Sebastien nodded. “Surprising, I know, given my ‘condition’, but there you have it.”

All the smalltalk then suddenly boiled up into thick irritation inside Alec and he scowled. “Where have you been? And why now? Why come back now? What do you want?”

He must have raised his voice fractionally because the couple admiring the seascape to their left shot them slightly scandalised looks, as if he’d started swearing in a sanctuary, and he bit back the wave of anger, halting it in its tracks.

“Shall we step outside for a moment?” Sebastien asked and Alec nodded tersely.

Passing Kay and Theo who were sitting in the chairs near the drinks table, Alec cast his eyes at them and watched Theo tense visibly. Kay laid her hand on his thigh and shook her head, at which Theo nodded and sat back, eyes hard, mouth set, but at least he didn’t appear to be on the point of leaping out and staking Sebastien on the spot.

Alec mouthed a silent ‘thank you’ at them both, and followed Sebastien out on to the street.

“You’ve patched things up with your family then?” Sebastien began, standing perfectly still beside the brick wall of the Victorian building while Alec paced.

“Mostly just with Theo, but yeah. Why are you here?” he asked again.

“Honestly? I missed you. Couldn't get you out of my head. I went all over Europe, and even to Asia briefly, and nothing I did distracted me from you, from leaving you. I had to come back.”

“You could have called,” he said, instantly regretting the way it came out like a petulant teenager’s sulking.

“And what would that have achieved?” Sebastien asked evenly. “I was hundreds of miles away.”

“You could have come back sooner? Talked to me in person?”

Sebastien sighed. “I was afraid that your family would come after me. I needed to disappear.”

“Theo convinced father to let you go. As you said yourself, your name was on the treaty, and you didn’t hurt me or hypnotise me, or whatever… did you?”

“No,” he said, pale brows pinching with evident distaste.

“Could you have?”

Sebastien levelled him with a dark look. “Yes, but… that’s not something I enjoy doing. It’s a survival mechanism — to make people forget what they’ve seen — it’s not something to be used lightly.”

“Ok, but you could have, and you didn’t, so that was another reason to let you go,” he said. God he wanted to kiss him. The realisation hit him like a gut punch and he turned away. Alec ached inside and out for those lips, those hands, those eyes… “Fuck,” he whispered, barely audible. “Are you staying?”

“Do you want me to stay?”

Alec rounded on him, frustration pouring out of him again. “Don’t answer my question with one of your own. Are you staying or not?”

Sebastien remained eerily calm, but a heartbeat later Alec saw that it wasn’t serenity in his eyes but sadness. “If you want me to, I’ll stay. I want to try again, Alec. I want… I want to be with you. I’ve never felt for anyone what I feel for you.”

“Feel? As in… present tense?”

“Yes. It hasn’t faded. Not with all the days and distance between us.”

“God, you sound like a shitty romance novel hero…” he scoffed. “I almost believe it.”

Sebastien spread his hands and said, “I am who — and what — I am. You know me, Alec, in a way that no one else ever has. I was utterly myself with you, except for the fact that I kept my nature from you. I hope you can at least understand why, if not forgive me. Everything else was genuine. I have never done that — been that open, that vulnerable — with anyone.”

“Even knowing what my family are?”

“Even then.”

Alec looked up at him and saw his own reflection in those dark, rich brown eyes. “Show me.”

Sebastien’s angelic face soured into a confused frown. “Show you what?”

“Your eyes. Your fangs. Show me what you are.”

“Now?”

He looked around. The street was empty on either side, with the only people around gathered outside a bar further up the street.

When he turned back to say yes to Sebastien, he found blood red eyes glowing in the man’s face. “Holy fuck,” he hissed. Every already-chiselled line on Sebastien’s face had sharpened somehow, his cheeks hollowing a little, perhaps to account for the additional hardware he now sported in his mouth, and his eyes seemed a touch more sunken. And they glowed as if lit from within.

Heartbeat thrumming out a wild tattoo, he stepped closer and Sebastien went utterly still. His chest ceased to rise and fall, and he didn’t even blink as Alec raised his fingers to his left cheek. “Show me.”

Sebastien swallowed and parted his lips. Angling his jaw a little to one side, he showed Alec the elongated canines, three quarters of an inch long. “Careful,” he murmured as Alec made to touch them. “Vampire venom is potent, even in small doses.”

“Does it really do what the hunters say it does?”

Sebastien’s red eyes glittered almost playfully. “I don’t know,” he smiled, seeming to relax a fraction. “What do they say it does?”

“Drives your victims wild, acts like a date rape drug, makes humans lose their will and their inhibitions…”

At that, a hardness returned to his features and his lip twitched in a lopsided snarl, like a wolf backed into a corner. “That’s certainly one take on it,” he said. “It creates a rush of euphoria. It’s supposed to make feeding a pleasant experience for all concerned. Endorphins in the blood make the taste sweeter, and the human feels no pain or fear.”

“Right. Gotta say I like that one better,” Alec said with a shaky smile. “But I’m not gonna risk it right here… And fuck me, your eyes are incredible.”

“They’re still red, hmm?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

Closing his eyes and tilting his face upwards a little more towards the cloudy night sky, he inhaled deeply. His features softened again, and Alec watched, fascinated, as the slight bumps behind his closed upper lip slid away into nothing, presumably as his canines retracted into his gums. When he opened his eyes, they were their usual, endlessly dark brown once more.

“Better?” Sebastien asked, oddly self-conscious.

“No,” he said. “Just different.”

Something prickled on the back of his neck and he turned to find a woman silhouetted against the light of street lamp halfway up the road. “Friend of yours?” he asked, tense.

“Felicity. She came with me.”

“Why? Surely you don’t need a wingman… or, you know, woman.”

With a tiny smile, Sebastien said, “You make me more vulnerable than you realise, in more ways than one. And we weren’t sure if your family would be here.”

“Or whether they’d want to flambé you…”

“Precisely.” He inclined his head and the woman did the same, turning and vanishing even as Alec blinked.

“Can you do that too?” he asked, still gawping after her.

When he turned back, he found that Sebastien had stepped in close to him - close enough that his faint, woody cologne wafted gently around them and he felt his knees wobble slightly. He’d missed this. Oh god, he’d missed this. “Mmhmm,” Sebastien hummed. “I can.”

“Kiss me,” Alec whispered. “Please…”

Sebastien didn’t need telling twice. He took Alec’s face in both his hands and crushed a passionate kiss to his lips so hard that Alec’s mind went perfectly blank for a few beautiful seconds. When he came to, he grabbed Sebastien’s narrow hips and tugged him close, making the vampire grunt as their bodies connected.

This time, he took Sebastien’s ponytail in one hand and began to pull on it gently. Sebastien yielded at the pressure and tipped his face back, exposing the entire column of his throat to Alec without resistance. The gesture left Alec stunned and breathless. In his research with Theo over the past months, he had learned that for a vampire to expose their throat to another implied absolute trust. Overwhelmed, he pressed his lips to the bare skin and felt Sebastien gasp, grabbing at his shoulders suddenly to keep himself upright.

Over and over, the vampire shuddered tangibly beneath his touch and gasped sharply again, panting. As he shifted his hips against him, Alec felt Sebastien’s growing hardness, and at the same time, Sebastien drew back, eyes screwed shut. “Stop,” he laughed. “Not here.”

“I want you,” Alec moaned, one hand on Sebastien’s chest. “Fuck, I’ve missed you so much.”

“I want you too,” Sebastien smiled, opening his eyes. They glowed scarlet again. “And because of that, this —” he said, gesturing to his red eyes, “— isn’t going to go away quickly this time.”

“This too?” Alec said, boldly cupping the obvious bulge in Sebastien’s smart black trousers gently with his hand and making the vampire groan.

“Yeah, that too.”

“Your place or mine?” Alec asked with a dizzy grin.

“You decide. I’m booked into a hotel one street over for the next two days,” he said. “If that affects your decision in any way.”

“Yours,” he said. “I… I’ll just…” he looked over his shoulder and caught sight of the exhibition banner dangling by the door. “I should…”

Sebastien nodded slowly. “I’ll be here.”

“You’d better be,” he snarled as he adjusted himself and prayed no one would notice. He took a few steadying breaths on the threshold of the town hall and then disappeared inside.

Kay raised her eyebrows at him when he reappeared.

“Not a word,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Your hair’s a mess,” she said conversationally. “Is it windy outside?”

“Fuck off,” he grimaced and she laughed. “Where’s Theo?”

“He left out the back way,” she said. “But he told me to tell you to enjoy yourself tonight, and that he’ll stand by whatever makes you happy.”

Unexpected tears prickled his eyes and he tugged her into a hug that was probably meant for his brother.

“You can thank us later,” she said, shoving him off her. “Go be with your Prince of Darkness…”

“I’m not sure how much he’d like you calling him that,” he said as he stepped back. “I’ll have to wrap things up here first…”

It seemed to take forever, but he finally found the events coordinator and after an interminable conversation full of congratulations, agreed to stop by the next day to take down the exhibition and sort the sales out. His heart was thudding when he stepped back outside, but he let out a huge sigh when he saw Sebastien leaning against the brick building, face tilted towards the moon that was just peeking out from behind a bank of cloud.

“It’s like one of your charcoals,” Sebastien said without tearing his eyes from the sky.

Alec crossed to him and smiled when Sebastien met his gaze, red meeting blue. Alec slid his fingers into Sebastien’s where his hand hung quietly by his side.

“Ready?” the vampire asked.

Alec nodded, and let Sebastien lead him back to his hotel.

They barely made it into the lift before Alec was kissing him, backing him into the mirrored sides of the lift with a thud before the doors had even closed. He stopped suddenly, drew back and laughed, and Sebastien — who looked like he’d just got whiplash — asked, “What?”

“Vampires do have reflections after all…”

Sebastien rolled his eyes and gave an indecorous snort-laugh. The sound was rich and warm and it filled Alec’s whole consciousness for a moment. “It’s only the antique ones with genuine silver backing that don’t show our reflections. Technology has evolved, thank goodness. Now, if you don’t mind, you were kissing me senseless…”

“Sorry,” he laughed, grabbing Sebastien’s white shirt collar and tugging him down again. They nearly didn’t get out of the lift at Sebastien’s floor, but as the doors began to close again, Sebastien slid his foot into the path of the doors and dragged Alec out.

Clothes landed in a steady line on the carpet between the door of his hotel room and Sebastien’s bed, ending with them both in only their boxer-briefs on the pristine white surface of the bed. Alec was tipped back onto the duvet and lay there staring up at Sebastien who was now no longer hiding his nature from him at all. Red eyes blazed in his face and as he opened his mouth to breath heavily, the tips of his fangs were just visible. There was no denying that he was a vampire.

“Was it like this before?” Alec asked hoarsely. “I mean… did I just not see it?”

“I had to work very hard to rein all this in,” he said, kneeling on the bed and crawling a little way up it. His own boxer briefs strained at the crotch where his erection tented the fabric, and Alec’s own black ones were stained with a little spot of wetness where his cock twitched with eager interest. “I only let it slip once or twice, but you were distracted at the time.”

Alec smirked and then moaned as Sebastien’s palm skimmed up over his groin and over his stomach. He’d always been a bit self-conscious about the softer parts of him, but Sebastien worshipped him like he was some kind of immortal god, lavishing attention on him over and over until he was shaking and gasping and sweating. “Please!” he begged after what felt like hours. “Oh god, please…”

Sebastien slid off the bed and deftly removed his own underwear before encouraging Alec to lift his hips for him and drawing his boxer-briefs down too. Before Alec could think or process what was happening, Sebastien was between his legs again and had swallowed the entire length of his cock to the back of his throat in one.

“Oh fuck,” he hissed, mind whiting out.

Sparks of pleasure shot up his spine as Sebastien worked him alternately with his mouth and his hand.

He teased him, licking the slit at the tip where pre-come beaded profusely now, teasing the delicate folds of skin until Alec thought he was going to shatter apart with want. Just before it got too much to bear, Sebastien would take him back into the wet heat of his mouth and work the underside of his cock with his tongue, swallowing occasionally and making Alec’s head spin all over again.

His balls tightened and he spread his legs wider, instinctively opening himself to Sebastien.

The vampire moaned against his cock and Alec whimpered. Pulling off him, an obscenely inviting thread of saliva and pre-come connecting them briefly, Sebastien sat up and reached for the top drawer of the bedside table. “Vampires neither catch nor transmit diseases,” he said, “But if you still wish to use protection —”

“— I haven’t been with anyone since you,” he rasped. “And I’m clean anyway…”

“As you wish,” Sebastien smiled, withdrawing an almost-new bottle of lube and sitting back down between his legs. Alec eyed it and Sebastien laughed shyly. “I opened it last night…” he admitted and Alec grinned.

That smirk shattered into an open-mouthed groan as Sebastien’s finger slid inside him and he began to prepare him. There was nothing perfunctory about it either. Sebastien took his time to work him open, his fingers fucking into him slowly, almost reverently, until he crooked them and Alec yelled as white-hot pleasure shot through him.

“Still so sensitive,” Sebastien crooned and Alec just shivered in response. His thighs were quivering too now from the effort of not bucking upwards into the empty air, his cock drooling freely over his slightly soft stomach with each futile twitch. He knew he was a wanton mess, and he couldn’t quite find it within himself to care. It seem to drive Sebastien wild anyway.

When Sebastien added a third finger, still stroking up and down his thigh with his other hand, Alec broke.

“Please, please, please,” he whimpered, out of breath and desperate. He cracked his eyes open and looked down at Sebastien to find that his red eyes had been almost eclipsed by his blown pupils. He gave a weak buck of his hips to try and encourage Sebastien to get on with it, but the vampire seemed utterly transfixed by him. He worked his fingers over Alec’s prostate gently but with absolute precision, and it was going to make Alec lose his mind altogether.

“Pleasepleaseplease, I need you, please…” he wailed as Sebastien’s mercifully short and blunt fingernail caught him just so and sent another jolt through him.

Finally the vampire moved, but as he withdrew completely, the loss almost shattered him. “Shh,” he smiled, stroking a soothing circle at Alec’s hipbone. “I’m still here…”

Alec whimpered like a wounded animal but his foggy brain accepted that the loss was only temporary, and he watched as Sebastien took his own flushed cock in his hands and slicked lube up the length of it in a couple of efficient strokes, head bowing under the attention it was receiving at last. He’d focused solely, completely, on Alec’s pleasure for all that time, and the realisation sent a fresh wave of lust rolling through Alec’s entire body.

He spread his legs, but Sebastien caught Alec under his left thigh and raised his leg easily, exposing Alec completely. Before Alec could process anything, his tip was nudging at Alec’s entrance, and then he had sunk all the way in to the hilt.

Sebastien froze then, bowed forwards over Alec like a supplicant, canines openly bared, eyes screwed shut, not even breathing.

“Sebastien… please…” Alec grunted. He’d never felt as full and whole as he had with Sebastien inside him, and yet this wasn’t enough. He’d ached for this. For months, he’d ached for it, and still it wasn’t enough. “Bast, please…”

Finally, the vampire opened his searing red eyes and began to move.

Slowly at first, he picked up his pace until Alec’s back was arching and his fingers clawed great furrows in the sheet beneath him. With each thrust, Alec saw stars at let out little fractured, broken gasps. Sebastien was quiet, almost silent, while Alec himself was unable to stop the sounds from tumbling out of him. He moaned and whimpered, gasped and cursed and begged until Sebastien yanked him further down the bed and lifted his hips a little way off the mattress entirely.

From this new angle, it was so blindingly good that Alec went alternately taut and limp with ecstasy. “I’m close,” he gasped over the slap of Sebastien’s hips meeting his skin.

The vampire snarled then; an inhuman sound that sent the hairs prickling all down Alec’s body.

“Come for me,” Alec begged in a whisper, opening his eyes and watching as Sebastien chased his release with a ferocity he’d never shown before. He wasn’t careless with his strength, but he was certainly forceful. Had Alec wanted to grunt ‘stop’, he knew the vampire would halt, but that was the furthest thing from his mind as he watched the flawless perfection of this man above him. “God you’re so beautiful,” he whispered. “Come for me, Bast…”

And at the sound of his name, uttered in little more than an abbreviated wheeze, Sebastien went still, hips spasming as his spine arched back like a bow at full draw, mouth open, head thrown back, fangs bared, eyes rammed shut, a sheen of sweat covering his perfect, bronze chest, his silver hair falling around him like a veil.

The sight of him like that wrenched Alec’s orgasm from him with such sudden force that he almost blacked out, and he clenched around Sebastien’s still-twitching cock as he spilled all over himself. Vaguely, he felt Sebastien trying to withdraw, but he grunted, “Don't… not yet… please… I… unngghh…” Unable to finish the sentence as the last shock waves fluttered through him, Alec went limp against the bed, breathing hard, his blood roaring in his ears.

He wasn’t sure how much time passed before Sebastien did finally move, but eventually he slid his softening cock out of him and Alec grunted at the cool slide of the vampire’s release down his thigh. He was too spent and exhausted to care about the mess though, and as Sebastien collapsed onto the bed beside him, he cracked one eye open.

Sebastien lay on his left side with his cheek pillowed on his bicep, facing Alec with his eyes closed, and he didn’t seem to be breathing. Tentatively, clumsily in the daze of his recent, mind-blowing orgasm, Alec reached out and touched the delicate skin on the inside of his arm. Sebastien jolted like he’d received an electric shock, and opened his eyes. They still burned bright red, but the rest of his face seemed a little softer somehow.

“You alright?” Alec asked.

Sebastien nodded.

“Been a while too, huh?” Alec grinned, flopping back down to stare at the ceiling where little points of light still sparkled across his vision every now and again.

“Not since that last night with you,” he said, words slurred with exhaustion. “Unless you count my rather pathetic climax alone last night, which I certainly don’t.”

“Not at all?”

He shook his head but didn’t speak again. The vampire lay perfectly still — perfectly undead — and perfectly vulnerable beside him without even a sheet to cover him. His cock now lay soft across the top of his right thigh, still drooling a little and making a mess on his olive skin. Not half as much mess as Alec was currently sporting over his torso, he mused with another smile.

With Sebastien showing no sign of stirring, Alec rolled carefully off the bed and headed on shaky legs to the shower. When he returned, Sebastien hadn’t moved, and he slid in beside him, drawing the sheets up around them and lying there to stare at him in the dimness of the unlit room, processing everything. Sebastien was back, and apparently wanted to stay. He could hardly believe how well that day had gone.

Waking the next morning with a cool, lean body pressed against him, Alec sighed, relieved that it hadn’t all been some kind of fever dream brought on by the stress of the exhibition.

The fact that the man next to him was an undead vampire who didn’t breathe in his sleep was a bit unnerving, and the way he had his cheek now resting on Alec’s collarbone and his nose pressed against his neck should also probably have been a bit of a warning, but Alec couldn’t bring himself to move, except to place a soft kiss on his forehead.

Suddenly, as if surfacing from boundless depths, Sebastien’s body heaved and he drew in a great, sucking, rasping inhale through his mouth. His lips brushed against Alec’s pulse and Sebastien began breathing heavily there for a moment.

“That will never not be weird,” Alec murmured.

“Apologies,” Sebastien muttered, trying to roll away. He paused, freezing, and then whispered, “I fell asleep…” as if that was something miraculous.

“Yeah, you passed out almost as soon as we both finished,” he snickered.

Sebastien turned his big, dark, doe eyes on Alec and said, “No, you don’t understand. Vampires don’t just shut down like that the way humans do. We only sleep somewhere we know is secure and safe…”

“Oh,” Alec said significantly as the realisation plunged through him. He tucked his arm under Sebastien’s head and tugged him closer so that their bodies were once again flush with one another. “I’m glad you felt safe…”

Sebastien sighed, trailing his fingertips across Alec’s chest in absent circles. His cock twitched too, and Alec shot him a look.

With a bashful smile, Sebastien said, “I can’t help that I find you attractive, Alec…”

“Wasn't complaining,” he grinned.

It was a long time before they rolled off each other that morning, with the sun well up and the sheets damp with sweat and tangled around their ankles. Vampires, it seemed, had a longer refractory period than humans, but Sebastien also came so big when he did that Alec wasn’t surprised. He gave everything to Alec when he came that Alec could quite happily lie there all day just staring at him as he came down afterwards.

The room was chilly, however, and when Sebastien seemed to have dozed off again around ten o’clock, he headed to clean up. Again.

As the steam billowed around him, he tipped his head back into the stream of searing water and nearly yelped as the shower door opened and let in a rush of cold air as Sebastien stepped into the stall as well. Cool hands found his waist and then strong fingers kneaded his arse appreciatively before Sebastien kissed and nibbled up his shoulder and traps to his neck. Instinctively, Alec tilted his head to one side and Sebastien moaned, pressing open-mouthed kisses there over and over as the hot water coursed around his lips.

The sensation must have been too much for him because he pulled back sharply with a hiss and Alec turned to face him, water still streaming down around them. Sebastien stood frozen, eyes red, staring at Alec’s neck. “I shouldn’t…” he began. “That was stupid of me… I…”

“What happens to the treaty if the human is willing?” Alec found himself asking. He’d thought about it a lot before drifting off the previous night. If Sebastien had wanted to drink from him, to feed on him, what would happen to the tenuous peace between hunters and vampires like him.

“Don’t,” Sebastien said through gritted teeth. His canines were elongated, Alec noted.

“What happens?”

“The only way it’s permitted is if the human agrees by written contract to become the vampire’s source.”

“‘Source’?” he asked. “That sounds like an official title.”

“It is,” Sebastien said, relaxing a fraction and putting his hands back on Alec’s hips. His cock stirred with interest and Sebastien smiled. He leaned back in, as if proving to both of them that he could do this, and kissed down Alec’s neck again from the junction of his jaw all the way to his collarbones. He ground his hips against Alec and they both began to harden again.

Alec’s hand went to Sebastien’s cock and he started to stroke him gently, knowing he was still sensitive from their last round. Sebastien let out a ragged exhale, the cool breath making Alec shiver slightly in the heat of the water.

“So…” Alec pressed gently, thumbing across the top of Sebastien’s flushed cock.

“Hmm?” he asked, a little stunned.

“What is a source?”

“A human becoming a vampire’s source means that the vampire drinks only from that human. It’s… an ancient - ah - custom,” he said, gripping Alec’s shoulders as Alec upped the speed and adjusted his grip to tighten just a little around his now fully hard cock. “Rarely used today, but still… nngh…”

“Mmm?” Alec grinned, loving that the vampire’s thoughts were unravelling under his touch. “Go on.”

“You’re a menace,” he laughed breathily, nipping playfully at his neck and then kissing him hard. Alec’s back suddenly hit the icy tiles behind him and he yelped, rearing into Sebastien who wasn’t all that much warmer, though the heat of the water was raising his body temperature from the ambient temperature of the room.

“So if…” Alec began, somewhat distracted as Sebastien’s kisses continued and the vampire raked his fingers through Alec’s wet hair, scraping luxuriantly across his scalp hard enough to make him break off and groan. “If… if I wanted to become your…”

“Don’t,” Sebastien whispered. “Not yet. Not so soon after… all this time.”

The subtext was clear. Let’s see if this is going to last before I risk my life with the hunters guild and your family, shall we?

“Fair enough. Nothing to say I can’t suck you off now though, right?”

“Nothing at all,” he whispered and then immediately cursed as Alec sank to his knees and did just that.

It was only as he was handing in his own letter of resignation that the truth really sank in for Alec. He’d gone from post-grad assistant in the department to a full lecturer, where he’d stayed for six years, and now he was moving a little way out of the city, and moving in with his boyfriend of a year. A vampire, nonetheless. His life had gone from miserable to wonderful in that relatively short time.

Sebastien met him at the edge of campus after he’d handed the letter personally to the head of department. Standing under the verdant cherry trees, Sebastien looked like a vision. He wore tight, dark jeans and a loose shirt, half untucked, with his long hair tied back in a loose plait, fly-aways wisping around his head like mist. Alec walked straight up to him as the vampire opened his arms, flung his own arms around Sebastien’s neck, and hugged him.

“All done?” Sebastien asked without pulling back.

He nodded and popped back down from his toes. They were both tall men, but Sebastien had a few inches on him still. With a slightly doe-eyed expression, Sebastien smiled and kissed him gently. “I love you,” he said softly between kisses.

“Come on, you big sap,” Alec said. “I’ve got to be out of my apartment at four.”

“Such a romantic,” Sebastien sighed melodramatically.

With Sebastien’s supernatural strength, loading up the little van they’d hired for his stuff didn’t take long, and after giving his keys back to the landlord and signing the final bits and bobs, they were on the road.

The old farmhouse had been a find of Sebastien’s, and it needed some work. “Well, what else am I going to do on long, impossibly sunny summer days while you’re running your own business from the little art studio at the bottom of the garden?” Sebastien had laughed when they’d first viewed it, the back of his hand pressed to his forehead in a terribly ‘put upon’ gesture. “I might as well spruce the place up.”

“It needs more than a light ‘sprucing up’,” Alec had said, brows raised at the rotten wooden beam and the tired 1950’s kitchen. “And don’t tell me you made your wealth flipping houses back in the day.”

“Would you rather I told you I robbed the Bank of England and they still haven’t noticed?” he replied archly before planting a kiss squarely on Alec’s scratchy, stubble-darkened cheek.

With a scowl, Alec had shot him a look. “I honestly don’t know whether that’s a lie or not…”

“It’s a lie,” Sebastien snorted. “I can’t believe you think I’m a criminal.”

“You’re a vampire,” he’d retorted. “You could probably have just walked in there and demanded a small fortune in gold ingots and they wouldn’t have objected…”

“Please. I do have some scruples. And besides, I only use my charms on poor, miserable artists to get into their pants…”

“And their hearts too, apparently,” he’d scoffed as they’d left the dilapidated house with Sebastien’s hand in Alec’s back pocket, fingers firmly cupped around his arse.

It took another six months for the work to be completed, and even with Sebastien’s not inconsiderable talents in the DIY and home improvement departments, they still had to call in a team of builders to fix the pointing in one wall and to sort out a few other structural issues. But by the end of the work, the farmhouse was quite frankly the most stunning place Alec could ever have dreamed of living. Exposed oak beams and a fireplace big enough to park a tractor in were only half of the best features of the place.

One clear, frosty evening in late October, the pair sat outside on the recently finished patio, a small cast iron fire-pit crackling away and sending sparks and heat twisting up into the night sky, a glass of wine each in one hand and their free hand clasped around the other’s.

“Bastien…?” Alec said, not taking his eyes from the mother-of-pearl points of light in the sky above.

“Mmm?”

“I’ve been thinking a lot lately about… about becoming your source.” He didn’t miss the sharp inhale from his partner, nor the way Sebastien went completely still in the wooden chair beside him. He also didn’t say anything. “I’d… I’d like to ask how often you’d need to feed from me, and… what the repercussions would be for me as the human…”

Still Sebastien didn’t speak for a long time, and Alec worried he’d spoilt the serenity of their evening with the sensitive question. Finally, the vampire cleared his throat and Alec realised with a jolt that he was near tears.

“Bast?”

At the sound of the pet-name, Sebastien blinked rapidly and two mirroring tears tracked down his cheeks in perfect synchrony. “I thought you’d forgotten all about it,” he said in a hoarse croak. “I didn’t want to bring it up again.”

“You should have done, silly,” Alec groused, and he was met with a watery smile that didn’t meet his eyes at all.

“Well, to answer your questions,” he said, trying to sound unaffected even if he clearly was. “Every three months is safe enough, so long as you take an iron supplement. If you don’t, you might feel a little more tired right afterwards. We generally take slightly less than a person would give at a blood donation, if that helps put it into context.”

Alec turned and frowned at him.

“What?”

“You’ve gone all clinical,” he said, shuffling a little and setting his wine glass down on the edge of the stone fire pit. “Do you not want this anymore?”

Sebastien swallowed thickly and looked away. In the ochre and copper flicker of the flames before them, his suddenly red eyes seemed to glow like coals. “More than you know…” he rasped.

“Then what’s the problem?”

He chewed the inside of his cheek for a moment before turning back to face Alec with glassy eyes. “I’m frightened.”

Alec’s scowl deepened and he rose from his chair to straddle and sink down into Sebastien’s lap. Settled in his new position, he kissed Bast’s lips and stroked his loose, white-blond hair out of his eyes. “Of what?”

“Losing control. It’s been… decades since… If I hurt you, Alec… it would break me.”

“How about we start small? Just a taste?”

Sebastien looked so young then in the firelight. He suddenly looked like the twenty year old man he had been when he’d been conscripted into the army and sent out to battle to die, only to be turned at the eleventh hour by a nurse in a field hospital who’d seen something special in him. Thank god she had, Alec mused.

Alec leaned back a little and brought his index finger slowly to Sebastien’s lips. The vampire swallowed, red gaze drifting down to watch its approach before looking back at Alec’s face, searching, questioning, doubting.

Alec nodded and slid his fingertip a few millimetres into Sebastien’s mouth. The vampire inhaled, closed his eyes, and then opened his mouth properly. Alec brought the pad of his fingertip to the underside of his right canine, and pressed.

After a moment, the pressure gave way and a prick of pain like a needle pierced his skin. A bead of blood welled there instantly and he withdrew to let it swell. Sebastien clearly smelled the blood because his pupils dilated and he sucked in a sharp breath.

“Easy,” Alec said. “It’s only a drop.” And with that, he turned his finger over and held it above the tip of Sebastien’s tongue.

Paralysed in a heartbeat of terror, Sebastien sat rigid, frozen, wide eyed, but Alec lowered his finger to meet the slight roughness of his tongue, and Sebastien’s eyes rolled. He moaned and let his tongue play across the tiny pinprick wound, fingers digging into Alec’s hips. The tiny wound had already stopped bleeding, but he sucked gently, drawing a little taste more. Then he released Alec and stared at him, a look of stunned awe on his beautiful face.

“How was that?” Alec asked, briefly thumbing a fond arc across Sebastien’s cheekbone before dropping his hand.

“Manageable,” Sebastien murmured.

“Ok, I have to ask, do I taste good?”

The tense spell that encapsulated both of them broke and Sebastien cracked a smile, fangs and all. “Yes,” he rasped.

“So… I can become your source?”

“If you wish it, yes. You can withdraw the honour at any time. I won’t hold you to it.”

“Good to know,” he said, only half laughing. A moment later, he said, “When… When do you want to start… you know… properly. Formally?”

Sebastien’s eyes had drifted to the rabbiting pulse in his neck.

“Now?” he asked. “It’s only been a few weeks since you went to the blood bank though…”

“That’s…” he said, hands finding Alec’s waist and holding him gently. “That probably works in my favour this time. Are you sure you want this?”

“To be ‘yours’ on your terms as well as mine? Of course,” he smiled, and watched as another tear rolled down his perfect olive cheek. He tilted his head to one side, feeling a little sheepish, and said in barely a whisper, “Whenever you like.”

“Really? Now?” Sebastien hissed, chest suddenly heaving. “Just like that?”

Alec laughed quietly. “It’s not as if we’ve just met. I know you, Bast. I trust you. I wouldn’t offer this to just any old vampire, you know?”

Unable to stop the smile from twisting his lips, Sebastien finally relented with a nod. “Alright. But not here. You’re going to want to be more comfortable.”

“But I’m already comfortable here,” he whined playfully, wiggling his hips in Sebastien’s lap, eliciting a deep, rumbling groan.

With a roll of his red eyes, Sebastien sighed. “Stubborn arse,” he grumbled without sting.

“You love my arse.”

“Yes, you’re right. I do,” he said.

Tenderly he ran his thumb down the line of Alec’s carotid and inhaled deeply. “I love you,” he whispered. And then he leaned close. He took his time kissing Alec’s neck until he was gasping and rocking his hips against Sebastien.

“Please…”

“Last chance,” Sebastien said against the skin of his throat.

Alec shook his head. “I want this. I’m yours.”

So the vampire sank his fangs into the artery. After the initial surprise and sting, Alec’s whole body lit up as the venom hit his bloodstream, and he bucked into Sebastien who held him still with what should have been frightening ease. There was no fear behind the gesture, only longing and love and sweet, aching, rolling, unending pleasure.

“Oh fuck,” Alec moaned, going limp in his arms as Sebastien began to feed, withdrawing his fangs to draw more deeply on him while he held him easily in his arms. The vampire moaned, lips locked against his skin so as not to spill anything. The motion of his throat suddenly fascinated Alec as he swallowed down his own life-force, but before he could raise his hand to touch fingertips to his Adam’s apple, pleasure exploded in his mind and he forgot everything.

When he came back to himself, he was inside, lying on their bed, with a small, soft dressing over his neck, and Sebastien sitting quietly on the bed beside him, staring down at him and holding his hand. As he blinked his eyes, he frowned. “What…?”

“It’s intense the first time,” Sebastien murmured fondly. “I did say you’d want to be somewhere more comfortable.”

“ S’perfect,” he slurred. “Fuck me…” he added, more curse than command.

“Maybe later, hmm?” Sebastien smiled. There was a flush to his cheeks that Alec had never seen before, and a brightness to his eyes.

“C’mere,” Alec said, patting the bed beside him. With Sebastien lying silently next to him, Alec rolled over and hooked one leg over Bast’s thigh. “Love you,” he mumbled, sinking into a deep and exhausted sleep, even as Sebastien’s hand came up to cradle his head.

The vampire smiled, kissing his forehead. “I love you too.”

___

Hope you've enjoyed this 23,700k story! Looking forward to your comments as always. Don’t forget to let me  know if you did enjoy it by leaving a like and/or reblogging it!

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[willowbird]

3! 4! 7! (for the prompts yo) .... oh. and. kandreil. (duh)

Be GAY do CRIME, on a violently orange yacht. Oh, and they kiss for the FIRST TIME 😘 For Kandreil!

This is my first Intentional Kandreil y'all (as opposed to like.. the three Accidental Kandreil I've done so far), I hope I don't fuck it up for you XD

----

"Kevin I swear if you peak I am going to go leak those photos of you from last Halloween."

Kevin snorted at Neil's empty threat, though he dutifully kept his eyes closed, letting Andrew tug him out of the car and lead him down what felt like a wooden walkway. A deck, maybe. Or a pier, Kevin thought as he registered the smell and sound of water, the squawking of gulls above and around them.

"Even if you did, no one would believe they were real."

"I'd leak them right to the Trojans." The laughter in Neil's voice warmed something right in the center of Kevin's chest. It wasn't so long ago that Neil was so... terrifyingly cold. He'd joined them as a rebellion against his father, the bogeyman of the east coast and loyal lapdog to the Ravens - who were the direct rivals to Kevin's much smaller, much wilder group of Foxes. But whereas the Ravens were a legit syndicate that dealt with such things like human trafficking and heavy drugs, the Foxes were a group of barely-organized criminals that mostly just liked to say 'fuck you' to the laws they didn't agree with.

The problem? The laws the Foxes didn't agree with tended to be the ones that directly benefitted the Ravens' front businesses. After all, the Ravens controlled several of the biggest corporations in the country, and they were regularly stepping all over average folks, ruining their lives.

Every member of the Foxes had, in some way, been hurt by the Ravens. They were all determined to get back at them in whatever ways possible. Sometimes that meant framing their executives for fraud. Sometimes that meant blowing up a few buildings. They were a multi-talented group.

The Trojans were a similar group of not-quite-but-still-criminals based on the west coast, and they'd combined forces a few times by now. They also were pros at anything that had to do with the internet. If Neil wanted to make something go viral, the Trojans were definitely the place to go to.

"Jeremy would never help you soil my good name."

"Jeremy would think it is hilarious, do not fool yourself, Day." Andrew's tone was dry and deceptively uninterested, but Kevin knew him well enough by now to hear the amusement hidden between the carefully articulated syllables.

Kevin rolled his eyes while still keeping them dutifully closed. He didn't bother to hide his smile though, knowing the other two would see it and not really caring that they would. It was kind of strange to think of, honestly - that he was here, comfortable being led around with his eyes closed, smiling without care. It was because of these two men, and that... that warmed something inside him. Made it glow. Made it blossom. Made it live.

"Okay, alright. Kevin, you may open your eyes." Neil's grin was audible in his voice, and it was the first thing that Kevin saw when he opened his eyes.

The second thing he saw, though, was the absolutely impossible-to-ignore explosion of orange directly behind him.

"What the actual fuck?" Kevin half-spluttered, but he was grinning, too. He could feel it. One did not look at a violently orange yacht and not grin. He laughed. "This is my surprise? You saw an orange yacht in the marina and had to show... me..." His voice drifted off, distracted and confused as he saw the name of the boat in sharp white script along the side.

The Brightest Day

"Neil?" Kevin blinked, and something giddy bubbled up right below his throat, catching and fizzing. He had to swallow it down, and it took effort to do so, especially as he saw the warm, pleased look on Neil's face, then turned to see a similar expression on Andrew's.

To see a similar expression on Andrew's face.

Kevin stared, because Andrew... Andrew wasn't one to emote. Even when it was just two of them, or the three of them. Even after all they'd been through. Kevin and Neil had learned to find the truths hidden behind his sturdy walls, to accept what Andrew was willing to give them when and however that may be.

And here was Andrew, in the open, looking at him with an almost-smile on his face and an expression in those natures-gold eyes that was unmistakably fond.

Kevin had to take a breath, and he wasn't at all surprised to feel it shake. Rough, strong fingers slipped between his own and Kevin looked over to see Neil's expression had shifted to understanding. If anyone would ever know what Kevin was feeling, how he was feeling it, at any given time, it was Neil. They were so similar in the way they processed the world, and how they appreciated the small gifts they were granted in a life that had been too dark and too unforgiving for far too long.

Andrew's smile was one of those gifts. Arguably, it was the grandest of all.

"Come on you idiots," Andrew sighed as he turned to walk up the short ramp already positioned to bring them onto the boat.

Without further word, and without unlacing their fingers from each other, Kevin and Neil followed Andrew up the ramp and onto the yacht. Something struck Kevin as inexplicably right about that. After all - no matter where any one of them went, the other two were sure to follow, hand in hand.

And when they needed to face a challenge they would face it hand in hand in hand.

"I don't understand," Kevin finally said as Andrew lead them across the deck. "The Foxes don't have the resource to --"

"It did not come out of the Foxes' coffers," Andrew cut him off. He nodded to the menace still holding Kevin's hand. "It came out of Neil's."

Kevin turned to Neil, staring at him in open shock. "You bought the Foxes a boat?"

Neil snorted. "No. I bought you a boat." He paused, then looked from Kevin to Andrew and something passed between them. Some kind of understanding, or agreement. Andrew stepped away from where he'd been about to lead them to the interior of the boat, instead joining the two of them. Once he had, Neil looked back at Kevin and said, "I bought us a boat."

It took a moment. Kevin wasn't stupid, but he also had never expected... This thing, this connection or relationship or whatever that was between the three of them - Kevin wasn't sure it would ever be defined and he had come to terms with that months ago. If they went on forever just being Kevin and Andrew and Neil, just as they were right now with no changes - he would be okay with that. As long as he always had these two men in his life, everything else, he decided, would work itself out.

"Us," Kevin said slowly, testing the word, making sure it really meant what he thought it meant.

"Yes," Andrew said. "Us."

And that... that was really all that needed to be said, wasn't it? At least he thought so, up until Neil tugged on his hand, bringing him a bit closer to the both of them, and said, "Kevin, can I kiss you?"

"Yes!" The word burst out before Kevin really made the decision to answer or even necessarily registered the question. A soft huff came from Andrew that might have been a laugh, but Kevin wasn't able to fully catch it when Neil was already pulling him down.

Neil smiled into the kiss. He kissed him slowly, with a graze of teeth and a hum of adventure. He kissed him like it was just the beginning. He kissed him like he knew it was a first kissed but by far would not be the last. Confident, pleased, satisfied.

Blood was pounding in Kevin's ears so hard he could taste the tremble of his own heart on the tip of his tongue, and when the kiss broke he gasped, already leaning in for more. This time, Neil was not the only one smiling.

By the time the kiss ended, they were no longer holding hands. Instead, Kevin had an arm wrapped around Neil's shoulders, keeping him tugged as close as possible, the other hand resting on the side of his neck. Neil was similarly wrapped around his waist and he was still smiling. Kevin rested his forehead against Neil's, then turned to look at Andrew to find the other man was watching them with heat and affection burning in his eyes.

"Andrew," Kevin said, and his voice rasped. He didn't say the words, but only because he was too high on Neil's fire to put the syllables together right now.

Andrew answered anyway, because he knew Kevin well enough to know exactly what question he was trying to ask.

"Yes," he said. And if Neil's kiss was fire and satisfaction, Andrew's was the ocean and determination. Andrew kissed him like he was going to carve his intentions on his bones. He kissed like he was going to take Kevin apart one sigh and tough at a time and Kevin melted into it, more than happy to yield to the power of that kiss. Anyone who lives near the sea would tell you the same - you don't fight the waves, you let them carry you - and that was exactly what Kevin did.

Neil's hand was stroking up and down his spine. Andrew's was cupped around the back of his neck. When the kiss broke, that hand squeezed firmly, then pulled him just a bit further down so Andrew could place one more kiss on his forehead before he turned to Neil.

Something perfect and delicate and yet, at the same time, positively indestructible filled Kevin up to the brim as he watched the way Andrew cupped Neil's face, the way Neil leaning into that touch, the way fire and ocean wave met in a promise while still in the circle of Kevin's arms. And finally, finally, Kevin had a word for it - for the feeling he got when he was with these two beautiful, thrilling, amazing men.

And it was, quite simply, home.

[ampintherain]

My Baby Love

*GIF NOT MY OWN- creds to theothersideoffantasy*

Owen Patrick Joyner x reader request!!!

Maybe the reader is part of the JATP cast and once at a gathering the cast starts teasing the reader about who she’d date among the boys. She gives her opinion on each boy but Owen gets upset when she says she wouldn’t date him because he’s a baby (even though she’s only 2 years older). She knows it’s stupid but it’s the only excuse she can find to fight her feelings. Everyone notices how oblivious they both are so at every occasion they keep mentioning how a great couple they’d make ? At the beginning Owen and the reader stay close but eventually the reader becomes more and more flustered and tries to distance herself to suppress her feelings. At the end they just have a heart to heart convo and kiss ? I need major fluff 😂

Requested By: @shimmeringfrenchie

I LOVED THIS REQUEST! I hope I can create the story you want💜

When I got the call to be in season 2 of Julie and the Phantoms, I never once imagined that it would end up like this- me falling for someone two years younger than me, I had never been attracted to someone younger than me before, I always went with older guys it was just something that I had always done so when I met Owen, I thought that he’d end up being like a little brother to me and that was what I had hoped. 

“Hey Y/n!” I heard Charlie call my name as I was leaving the lot, I turned around to see the brunette running towards me with Owen close by, my heart began to race as I saw the blue eyes belonging to the gorgeous boy, 

“H-hey” I stuttered, clearing my throat before regaining my confidence, “wassup?” I questioned, looking between the two boys, catching Owen staring at me, I smiled and tore my gaze away, focusing my attention back onto Charlie, 

“Well, Owen and I are having some of the cast over tonight for takeout and we were wondering if you wanted to come? Savannah really wants you there” the brunette asked, I nodded happily,

“Well, if Sav wants me there, I guess I have no choice” I joked, just as Savannah walked past us, tucking me into her side

“That is very true, I wouldn’t want to endure a night with the cast without my best friend being there!” Savannah smiled. I had developed a very close friendship with Savannah within a week of filming, the first day of bootcamp she had showed me around and always made sure I was alright, we later realised that we had very similar interests and decided to move in together for the filming of the season and the friendship stemmed from there, she was most definitely my best friend and the truest friend that I had ever had. 

“Fine, I’ll be there. What time?” I questioned, looking back over at the boys as Savannah squealed happily beside me,

“Does 7 sound good?” Owen asked, I looked up at him and my breath caught in my throat- he was single-handedly the most attractive person I had ever laid my eyes on and it was almost painful how much I liked him.

“Yep, sounds perfect. I’ll see you then” I smiled, waving the boys goodbye before walking off with Savannah, we wandered through the parking lot before reaching my car, we both hopped in and Savannah took a hold of the aux cord, playing her created playlist of all of Justin Bieber’s hits. 

The time to leave for Charlie and Owen’s place soon came round, I changed into a pair of leggings and an oversized hoodie before slipping on my Converse and heading to the door with Sav. “Should we walk or no?” I asked, Savannah shrugged her shoulders, soon going for the option of walking considering the boys didn’t live that far away from us and it was a nice evening in Vancouver, “so, you and Owen?” Savannah questioned after a short silence, my heart rate quickened at the mention of his name, I turned to her with a confused look etched across my face, 

“What?” I laughed, as we entered the boys’ apartment building and making our way up to their apartment, “I have no idea what you’re talking about” I rolled my eyes, knocking on the door lightly, the door swung open, revealing Owen smiling his award-winning smile, pushing his hair back from his face before stepping to the side, “hey O” I smile, 

“Hey Petal” he said, giving me my usual nickname before pulling me in for a hug, I wrapped my arms around his waist and gave him a tight squeeze, “Hey Sav” Owen continued, letting go of me and giving Savannah a quick hug, I walked further into the apartment seeing Madi, Charlie and Jeremy all sat in the den chatting away, 

“Hey Losers” I joked, sitting next to Madi, she pulled me in for a tight side hug, pulling away just as quickly before crossing her legs and settling further into the coach. Savannah swiftly joined the group alongside Owen, sitting beside me whilst Owen sat next to Jeremy.

We had been at the boys’ apartment for around an hour or two, just eating pizza and chatting, “oh guys!” Savannah spoke excitedly, shuffling in her seat comfortably, 

“oh what?!” Charlie mimicked Sav’s excitement causing her to glare at him

“We should play Honest” she suggested, looking over at everyone’s confused faces towards the game suggestion “Honest? You guys, it’s self explanatory, it’s like the best game. You ask someone a question and they have to answer honestly.” she shrugged, I turned to the girl sat beside me, raising a singular eyebrow, “Y/n/n, it’s the best game. Honestly. Come on, please guys” she whined, 

“I think it’ll be fun” Madison smiled enthusiastically, as always, bringing the mood up and tempting the group into the activity that Savannah had suggested, Charlie, Owen, Jeremy and I chorused a small ‘fine’ causing Savannah to squeal with excitement, reaching over my head to give Madi a high-five. 

“Okay okay, I’ll go first... Madi, what’s the worst thing about filming?” Sav questioned, Madi thought about it for a second or two, her eyebrows furrowed as she chewed lightly on her lip,

“I’d say the super early mornings and really really late nights, I’m definitely not used to this new sleep schedule... um... Jeremy, what’s your favourite thing about Carolynn?” Madison smiled, “I only ask because I love seeing your face when you talk about her... it’s so cute!” Jeremy blushed and looked down at the floor for a small moment,

“Okay, I have a lot of favourite things about Carolynn but, one of the things I love most about her is her heart, she has the kindest soul, she cares about everyone she knows so deeply and she is really willing to do anything for the people she loves, she puts other people’s needs before her own and I just think it’s the most beautiful thing” Jeremy gushed, causing the girls and I to ‘aw’ at him, he was totally loved up and it was something that I could only ever wish for, 

“I wish someone spoke about me like that” I said, Jeremy smiled at me before asking Savannah which show she preferred to film- Julie and the Phantoms or Knight Squad to which she answered Julie and the Phantoms, giving the reasons of being able to sing and dance and she also mentioned how she loved the closeness of the cast, saying that we were more like a family. 

“Okay... Y/n, who would you date out of the boys- y’know out of Owen, Booboo, and Charlie” Savannah questioned, refusing to mention Jeremy as we all know that he would never have been an option based on the pure fact that Carolynn was his soulmate, 

“Right... well,  I’d say, probably Charlie because as much as I love Boo, he’s more of an annoying brother and I’d just find it weird if we dated and Owen’s a little baby” I explained, 

“Oh some I’m only your option because of process of elimination, great. Thanks y/n/n” Charlie joked, I rolled my eyes at him and looked over at Owen, I watched as his eyes lowered and his mouth turned down, he quickly faked a yawn before standing up off the couch and stretching, yawning again,

“Right, well I’m gonna head to bed, I’ll see you guys tomorrow. Night” he said shortly, promptly leaving the den and making his way to his bedroom, he quickly stole another glance at me before shaking his head and entering his room. After that, the rest of us slowly started to disperse, Madi left first, then Jeremy and then Sav and I. 

I crawled into bed and stared up at my ceiling, I couldn’t fight off the feeling that I had really upset Owen, it must’ve been me, I mean he was fine all night- he was engaged, laughing, cracking his stupid jokes and then everything changed once I said that he was a baby... I didn’t really feel like that, I mean, I liked him. A lot, it’s just that I’ve never really gone for younger guys before, I always dated much older guys. But there was just something about him that I couldn’t quite put my finger on, something about him had me hooked and I couldn’t figure out whether it was a nuisance or something that I wanted to happen, all I knew is that however I was feeling, it was something beyond my control. 

I just didn’t know what to do. I wouldn’t say that I was a control freak but I definitely didn’t enjoy not being able to have any type of control of what was happening in my life, I always planned on dating and marrying someone a few years older than me as that is what my mum did, my grandma did, and my great grandma. I don’t have any understanding on why I wanted to do the same as them, maybe it was because of my desperate need to impress the women in my family. They’re all successful and they always used to build up this pressure on me to be the perfect woman, I had no room for mistakes. So my falling for Owen, was not in the plan, something out of my control and quite frankly, it was driving me insane. 

For the next few days, I tried to talk to Owen but no matter how hard I tried, it seemed that he was trying even harder to avoid me at all costs. “I don’t know why you would say that...” Charlie said as he sat beside me at the lunch hall, “it’s obvious you both like each other” I furrowed my eyebrows and looked at the boy, scoffing

“Yeah, right” I said, rolling my eyes and picking at my food, essentially just pushing it around the plate aimlessly, a silence fell over the two of us as I peered up to see Charlie staring at me with a look on his face as if it say ‘are you serious?’ 

“Y/n/n... you do like him. I don’t care what you have to say and how much you’re going to deny it. You like him” he shrugged just as Savannah sat across from us

“What are you guys talking about?” She asked breathlessly as she had just finished her dancing scene, I gave her an obvious look that she immediately picked up on “ohhh, Owen?” she questioned as I nodded slowly

“I was just telling our friend here, that she likes Owen and that it’s so obvious that she does” the Canadian explained blatantly, to which Savannah agreed, informing me that it was written all over my face whenever I saw Owen, or even whenever his name was briefly mentioned.

“You’re just caught up on the fact that you want to be like your mum and date older guys. The heart wants what is wants Sweetie, and your heart just so happens to want a 20 year old with lucious blonde hair.” Savannah joked, I rolled my eyes and stood up from the table, 

“I refuse to stay here any longer with you guys just talking absolutely nonsense” I replied, shortly. I looked at the two people I was previously sat with before gathering my food and quickly throwing it away as I walked past the bin. I walked out of the small lunch hall and made my way to my trailer.

“Uh.. hey y/n. Wait up” I heard a familiar voice call, Owen. I turned around and smiled up at him nervously. We hadn’t spoken in days, only having fictional conversations as our characters but after that? Strangers. “Can... can we talk?” he questioned, rubbing the back of his neck. I nodded, unable to form any kind of functioning sentence, I silently ushered him into my trailer, closing the door behind me. Owen sat on my small loveseat and patted the spot next to him which I reluctantly took.

“Uh... so what’s up?” I questioned, spluttering slightly, I placed my hands in my lap, closing them and fiddling with my thumbs- a habit I picked up in middle school, whenever I was asked a question by one of my teachers, I would twiddle my thumbs over each other in a circular motion, I wasn’t too sure whether it was something to do with my anxiety or it had links to my thinking process and to this day, I’m still unaware of what it roots to but I have never been able to wean myself off of it. 

“Did you mean what you said...” the blonde boy questioned me, “y’know, about how you wouldn’t date me because I’m a baby?” I glanced up at him quickly before diverting my attention to the plain wall in front of me. I inhaled sharply when I felt Owen’s slightly calloused hand make contact with my cheek, he held on to my face lightly as he brought my eyes to meet his own “because I’m not a baby Y/n, I’m just two years younger than you, it’s not like you were in high school when I was born. You were two. I’m not a baby” he reiterated, I nodded and sighed

“Yeah O, I know... I don’t know why I said it. I regretted it the second it left my mouth. Look, ever since I was younger, I was surrounded by women who all married men older than them and my mum always told me that that is how it should be, but it doesn’t feel like that with me... yeah I’ve dated olderguys but-” I cut myself off, worried that if I let all my emotions out to Owen, he wouldn’t reciprocate and I would officially ruin the entire friendship alongside the whole cast dynamic because there would be this awkward tension between Owen and I but just times by a million. 

“But what?” he pushed, his thumb running along my cheek causing me to instinctively close my eyes at the blissful feeling it was giving me, the simple touch melted away all of my anxieties “actually wait” he spoke, causing my eyes to shoot open, the anxieties to come rushing back in, I glanced up at him and furrowed my brows together “Y/n, I like you. A lot, I don’t think I’ve ever felt this way about anybody before. Hearing you call me a baby made me feel like you would never see me in that way, and it’s fine. Totally fine. If you don’t feel the same way but I just feel like I need to tell you everything I feel. Y/n, when I see you, everyone else just fades away. I physically can’t picture my life without you in it in any way, even if we just stay friends. I need you with me, you calm me down... so yeah” Owen said, the confidence in himself slowly fading as he continued to ramble, watching my face to see if I expressed any indication other than confusion, I slowly reached up and took a hold of his hand bringing it down in my lap and enclosing it with both of my hands.

“Owen, I like you too... that’s what I was going to say. I’ve dated a few older guys and they just never made me feel the way you do. Owen, you make me laugh so much, you make me feel protected and always cared for and I have never experienced that. Growing up, I had this pressure put on me by my mum, grandma and even my great grandmother, they all used to tell me that ‘dating older men is the way it should be’ and that’s all I thought of, I never thought that a younger guy would come along and sweep me off my feet but you did Owen Patrick Joyner, you really did and I can’t keep denying my feelings for you to everyone and especially to myself.” I breathed out, looking up at Owen with tears welling in my eyes just threatening to spill, Owen abruptly yet gently grabbed my face pulling me in close to him, his lips ghosted over my own as he let out a shaky breath

“You’re all I’ve ever wanted” he said before he pressed his lips to mine in a passionate kiss, I could feel butterflies erupt in my stomach at the feeling of his soft lips on mine, one of his hands moved from the side of my face to the base of my neck, pulling me in closer and deepening to kiss, my hands traced up his arms and draped themselves over his shoulders, toying with the ends of his hair. 

This. This felt right, this was how it was supposed to feel. Electrifying, loving and passionate. I never thought I’d fall for someone younger but here he was, Owen. My baby love. 

[cardentist]

I know this is Beyond late to the party, it’s been years since I first started simmering on it, but I was reminded of it a bit ago and I think it’s gonna chew a hole in my brain if I don’t find a way to do something with it

the broadway version of be more chill is an adaptation of an adaptation, the rework of the script and the music and the differences in performance choice gives it a Very different tone despite largely being the same story on paper. and this isn’t necessarily a bad thing ! I’d say it’s mostly a give and take, with some things working better and some things working worse between versions and your mileage with both mostly being down to taste.

I loved the passion that clearly went into it, I was interested in the new way the dynamics played off of each other, and I was drawn into the new additions to the score and how it explored and expanded upon a different side of jeremy. I was waiting for the new version to grow on me, to give me the same inspiration that the new jersey production gave me (or rather, a different flavor that I could treasure just as much), and it just. never happened.

I’ve sat on this for a Very long time, I want to like the broadway version, I was Happy to see it given another chance. but my problem isn’t with the music or even with it being Different, my problem is that I think they fundamentally changed the protagonist Without changing the story around him, which creates problems with how the story comes across and sits with you.

the new jersey version worked, for me, because jeremy was fundamentally a good person before the squip influenced him, and he never really stopped being that person. he’d hurt people and he made mistakes, but when you see him make up with christine and michael by the end you’re left with the impression that they’re already set on the path to a healthy relationship with each other. they have things to work on, conversations that need to be had, but you can Believe in the happy ending that it wants you to buy into.

and part of this is achieved by leaving things up to the imagination, by keeping jeremy Simple but implying more by presenting him as a real person. jeremy doesn’t Want to be popular he wants to be happy, but he trusts the authority figure that tells him that it knows what’s best for him more than he does. it’s this level of innocence that makes him genuinely likeable despite what he ends up doing.

the broadway version sought to explore jeremy in more depth, to explore the feelings of self hatred and isolation, the themes of depression and anxiety, in more explicit terms, they complicated jeremy heere. this isn’t in itself a bad thing, I really like “loser geek whatever” as a song, but it shifted the balance in what made the ending work. a moment that used to be jeremy asserting to the audience that he’s never Wanted to be important, that he never wanted popularity or fame, but that he’s giving in to the lead of something else because he’s been convinced that it’s what’ll make him happy is now a ballad that asserts that it’s what jeremy thinks he Deserves.

don’t get me wrong, this new version of jeremy isn’t an inherently bad person, he isn’t even necessarily a fundamentally Different person. they’re both steeped in self hatred and isolation, broadway jeremy Is new jersey jeremy at his core, but broadway jeremy has pointed that inward turmoil Outward. he thinks of himself as the problem, that there’s something wrong with him and always has been, but at the same time he’s actively trying to convince himself that he wants what the squip is offering him because he’s Owed it.

this isn’t a problem on its own, I really vibe with “loser geek or whatever,” it has some Very poignant lines that gel with what jeremy’s always been even with the shift happening with his mindset here, but it’s unfortunately not a change that exists in a vacuum.

I could pick apart the whole musical and lay out all of the differences, but the change that’s prevented me from being able to enjoy the broadway version is “the pitiful children,” on a musical level but most importantly on a story and characterization level.

jeremy’s change in mindset in the broadway version Very Unfortunately leans into the entitled nerd boy trope, which didn’t necessarily have to detract from it (in my opinion, the charm of be more chill in general is how its characters are all tropes presented as real people, who are likeable because of how Human they are. you slowly grow into them the more you realize this), but the pitiful children just shifts jeremy Too Far into that trope in a way that the story never really recovers from.

the original version was the squip’s villain song where he took jeremy pointing out flaws with his actions (letting people get hurt despite having been able to help them and meddling in jeremy’s life in a way that made his relationships Worse) and convinced him that the problem was other people’s free will. he did this not by appealing to jeremy’s own desires, but by presenting other people the way that the squip had been presenting jeremy to Himself this entire time.

jeremy is a character that hates himself, that was so eager to find a way to “get better” because he sees everything that’s happened to him as being tied to some inherent flaw with who he is. the squip took this and reinforced it, convinced jeremy that he’s completely worthless without him, all while presenting himself as a savior figure to jeremy that was going to “fix” him. the pitiful children is the squip insisting that all people are like that, that all people are fundamentally broken and unhappy but that they can be Saved. jeremy going along with the squip here is presented as being tied to both his own self hatred And his desire to help people. the squip took advantage of his Kindness and that colors our interpretation of him as a person.

the broadway version of this scene is, a shell. it’s a mistake. in some ways it’s built on that same basis, it exists On Top Of what it used to be, but it paints jeremy completely differently. it is, quite literally, jeremy putting christine’s agency under his own desires. Now instead of the squip playing at jeremy’s self hatred, it’s convincing jeremy that christine doesn’t want to date him because there’s something wrong with Her Specifically, and the rest of the school is just kind of tacked onto it. it’s jeremy choosing his own desire to date christine Over her freewill while pushing everyone else’s fate to the side (when he knows that they’re Also going to get zombiefied in the process).

it’s a weaker villain song in general, the storybeat of convincing someone that humanity is fundamentally flawed but can be “fixed” is far more chilling than convincing someone that the girl they like is fundamentally flawed because they won’t date them. but it also just changes jeremy’s relationship to christine in a way that can Never be addressed because Jeremy’s the only character that knows it happened and it’s never a conversation that they have together.

it’s even worse in the live version (as opposed to the cast recording) because jeremy is an Active role in the broadway version when he’d had a passive role in the original. in the new jersey version jenna approaches jeremy, opening up about her own unhappiness after he asks her how she feels, the squip tells him that he can help her and Then jeremy gives her a squip. jeremy Watches her immediately become more lively and happy, with her joining the song and dance to convince him that this is the right thing. in the broadway performance jeremy approaches Her, he offers her a squip of his own accord and he brushes her off after she opens up to him in response. it’s no longer a beat reinforcing that the squip is taking advantage of his kindness, but him Openly Dismissing someone else’s suffering while he’s focused on getting what he wants. he’s dancing and singing along with the squip.

both versions of jeremy were manipulated, both versions of jeremy were stripped of their agency, but only one of them had a true villain arc. but their endings are the same. broadway jeremy isn’t an unsalvageable person, he Can grow and get better and I do think that he’s in the right direction for it. but he and christine are Not ready for a relationship, he’s Not at an ending point for his character growth. he did choose her agency in the end, but the fact that it was ever a question for him makes the saccharine tone of the ending feel Wrong in a way that I’ve never been able to move on from. 

broadway jeremy was complicated in a way that made him less likeable as a person but the Ending wasn’t made to accommodate this. the big flashy showdown Worked in the original Because it never convinced us that jeremy wasn’t a kind person. he needed a wake up call and time to heal, broadway jeremy needs therapy. (granted, new jersey jeremy Also needs therapy for the Definite ptsd that he has, but that’s a separate issue).

the broadway version opens a conversation that it wasn’t interested in closing, they left their happy storybook ending for a story that Needed a serious confrontation that challenged their protagonist not just on the fact that they were Wrong but on the fundamental flaws with how they treated and thought of other people. it wasn’t necessarily jeremy’s Fault but he needed more solid character growth than what he was given and it’s a weaker story for it.

I think if the pitiful children had been left largely the same I might’ve been able to grow to like the broadway version and all of its differences, but it’s just the Weaker version as is and it Needed to push the changes harder than it did if it was really committed to this change in direction.

[trashyswitch]

Two Minds Think Alike

Vanny had just welcomed this stranger, William, into her head: a beige bunny with a shady past. As she tries to understand who they are and what their motives are, she discovers a fun little secret about her new bunny friend.

This fanfic was suggested by @trashylever on Tumblr. This is my first lee!Glitchtrap fanfic! So trashylever, and everyone else, I hope you enjoy!

Vanny was still trying to get used to there being more people in her head than just...herself. He kinda just introduced himself, said ‘I need a home’ and embedded himself into Vanny’s brain without a proper introduction. She didn’t even know who he was. And yet here he is: living in her head. If she’s gonna learn to live with him, she’s gonna have to get to know him.

Vanny closed her eyes and pushed herself deeper into her head. There, she saw the bunny being that had joined her head. Vanny decided to start off like all exchanges do: with names.

“So...Do you...have a name besides Glitchtrap?” Vanny asked. “Or something less mysterious than…’Malhare’?” Vanny asked, using quotations.

The being turned to her with a tired, bored face. “...Afton.” He replied.

Afton? Wait...Why did that name sound strangely familiar?

“Is that...a first name? Or a last name?” Vanny asked.

The bunny groaned and got up. “William. William Afton. Happy?” they spat at her.

Vanny raised her eyebrows. This person’s got quite the attitude. They sound pissed...over a need for a name. “Yes, thank you.” Vanny shot back.

The being looked at her before looking away.

“Are...Are you gonna ask me for a name? Or am I supposed to just give you a name?” Vanny asked.

The guy...William...looked at her from the corner of their eye and looked back down again. “You’re a teenage girl. That’s all I need to know.” the person said.

Vanny sighed and sat down on the ground. “Great...I’m expected to live with THIS-” She pointed to the bunny in front of her, “-For the rest of my life.” Vanny muttered out loud.

The bunny sighed. “Life isn’t fair, sunshine.” They muttered.

Vanny widened her eyes and turned to the bunny with a frown. “Excuse me?!” she walked right up to the bunny and pushed them down with her foot. “Just who do you think you are?!”

The bunny looked up at her with a frown. Then, they scoffed. “Try looking up my name. That’ll give you a pretty good idea.” they spat with a dangerous look in their eyes. Vanny growled and left her mind.

Vanny opened her eyes and hopped onto her phone. She typed the name ‘William Afftin’ into the search bar.

[A-f-t-o-n. AfTON.] the bunny corrected.

Vanny sighed and fixed the name. ‘William Afton’. She clicked the search button and watched as tons of links showed up right away. Tons of links about ‘child killer’, ‘The Man Behind The Slaughter’ and ‘Fazbear Entertainment’ came up. Vanny’s expression turned from annoyed to surprised in a single second. Child killer? Child killer?

She clicked one of the links. This brought up pictures of happy kids, and blurred images of their corpses beside the happy images. They were mostly aged 5 to age 10! Names of previously missing children filled her brain as she read them: Charlie...Cassidy...Fritz...Gabriel...Jeremy… And Susie.

[They were interesting kids. Somewhat ignored by the adults there. No one even noticed they went missing until they got home. Stupid people…] The bunny told her.

Vanny widened her eyes. Holy...How did he-

Vanny scrolled down and looked at the other pictures that came up. There were photos taken of...suits?

[Animatronics. Big robots with endoskeletons and programming designed for anything you want. In this instance, they were disguised as animals and made for kids entertainment. We were the talk of the town at the time! Freddy Fazbear and the Band. Kids loved it.] The bunny explained.

Freddy Fazbear- WAIT A SECOND! “That VR Video Game was based on real life?!” Vanny reacted.

[Yup. That game itself was Fazbear Entertainment’s way of saving their tarnished reputation of child-killing machines. Every entertainment spot the Fazbear company opened, ended up with at least one child or person killed from robot malfunctions.] The bunny explained.

Vanny frowned as she looked at the missing kids. “It wasn’t just robot malfunctions...It was murders too.” Vanny mentioned. “You were the cause of those murders! You killed up to 5 children!” Vanny reacted.

[Yup. Indeed I did.] The bunny replied.

Vanny huffed as she put her phone down and went into her head again. “Why?” She asked. “Did you know them personally? Why would you specifically choose to kill them?” She asked.

“Does it matter?” The bunny asked as they stood up. “I just did.” they replied.

Vanny looked at the bunny. “You’re not a bunny. I wanna see what you really look like.” Vanny told them.

William sighed and closed their eyes. “There’s plenty of images on the World Wide Web to give you a good picture.” they told her.

“I don’t want to use the internet. I wanna see you. The real you.” She told them. “That is, if your former self was programmed into your code.” Vanny mentioned.

William rolled his eyes. “I have no former self anymore. This is it. I’m a glitch shown as a bunny.” William explained.

“You know technology has advanced enough to change your appearance, right?” Vanny mentioned.

William gave her a dirty look. “Well maybe,” William walked closer to Vanny. “Someone didn’t put that into account when programming me into the fucking game!” William spat at her. Then, he leaned his head back a bit. “I’m afraid this is as close as you’re gonna get.” William turned around and walked away.

Vanny let out heavy breaths as she processed the words hidden under his overwhelmingly rude attitude. Despite not actually being responsible for how William’s brain and personality was handled, Vanny still felt hurt by his words. This man, who was once a physical being, is now stuck inside a girl’s head. Even worse: a teenage girl’s head.

Vanny closed her eyes and frowned as she looked at him. “Why…”

William hummed and tilted his head as he looked at pictures hidden in her head.

“Why choose me...of all people?” Vanessa asked.

William smiled a little at that question. He turned around and looked at her with purple, glowing eyes. “Because your curiosities can lead you down a really dark path if you let it.” William told her. “...And maybe I can help you with that.” William offered.

Vanny widened her eyes and stared at the bunny in both horror and awe.

William chuckled at her reaction. “The internet has offered you endless chances to satisfy your curiosities and yet…” William looked at their own hand. “You stop yourself.”

Vanny bit her lip and lifted her head up. “W-Well...that kind of job takes a lot of work to clean and cover up.” Vanny admitted. “And I don’t want the police finding out about my internet searches. They could see me as a suspect.” She added.

William chuckled at the last part. “There are always incognito modes.” William reminded her. “And as a guy who’s been there and done that, I will help you through all the steps. But only if you agree…” William offered.

Vanny’s awe-struck face shrunk down as she backed away. No...No she shouldn’t! She’s worked this hard trying to make a life for herself! She can’t ruin that now!

William hummed and waved their index finger. “Mmm...there’s that doubt. There’s the part of you that’s trying to return back to normal life.” William pointed out. “But that normalcy will not satisfy that instinct inside you. I’ve tried. Eventually, it found a crack and broke right through it. You’ll be better off starting early than spending your life trying to hide it. After all: Therapy always teaches you to let it out rather than shove it inside you.” William explained.

Vanny considered correcting him, but realised that he was still staying true to the facts. So, she let him talk more.

William walked closer to Vanny and gave her a charming, yet sadistic kind of smile. “You and I have something special in common: you and I both wanted to know things only the dark part of the web could provide you.” William said. “I’ve already answered all my curiosities. But you...You’re waiting to get your full answers. The world tells you to stay true to the law...yet your instincts tell you otherwise...” William explained. He started taking steps back.

“Besides: you gotta remember that everyone only has one life. It’s why I’ve been prolonging my life for as long as I have!” William explained. He spun himself around, sprinted up to Vanny and grabbed her shoulders. “Look at me! I’m in my triple digits now! I should be long dead! But I’m not! I’ve cheated death!” William declared with genuine excitement. “And now I have a chance to restart my killing spree...with a new body, and a loyal partner...something I lacked the first time.” William said eagerly.

Vanny smiled at the thought.

“So:” William held out his hand. “Will you be my new partner in crime?” William asked.

Vanny’s smile grew. It was a hard offer to resist. She’s been wanting to do this for so long. And now, she actually has the chance! Finally, after some thought, Vanny nodded and shook his hand. “I’d love to.” Vanny replied.

The two of them spent some time determining their action plans. With just a few google searches, William and Vanny were able to find a new Fazbear Mall that was opening up. And as luck would have it, they were hiring! So, Vanny pulled up her resume. With William’s previous business experience, he helped her sort out her slightly jumbled resume and cover letter. Before they knew it, the resume and the cover letter was sent to the business email. Now, all they had to do was wait.

While they waited, Vanny snuck back into her brain and looked at the bunny with curious eyes. “So...William Afton.” Vanny walked up and poked his shoulder. “What’s your little secret?” She asked.

William looked at her with confusion. “What do you mean ‘secret’?” William clarified.

“My deep secret is that I like really dark things. And I know you do too. But do you have another little secret you���d like to share?” Vanny asked.

William raised their eyebrows and smiled a little. “Like I’d ever share any secrets with you…”

Vanny frowned a bit. “Well, it’s only fair.” She told them. “Plus: we’re living with each other. I gotta know at least a few things about you.” She continued. “And specifically you...not just your history.”

William raised an eyebrow. The bunny had to admit she was stubborn. “Well...Okay.” William took a moment to think. “I was a father of three kids...all who I’ve outlived because… circumstances…” William admitted with a chuckle.

Vanny looked down with wide eyes. “Yyyyup...may or may not have found that within your history search.” Vanny admitted awkwardly.

William let out a laugh. “Wow! Okay.”

Vanny walked up to him. “Did you ever get tattoos when you were younger?” Vanny asked, grabbing his arm and looking at it.

William widened his eyes. “Uuuuuuhhh-” William pulled his arm out of her grip. “No. Even if I did, you’re not gonna see it on me now.” William mentioned.

Vanny looked down at the middle of his bunny tummy and gasped. “Look!” Vanny poked a visible light green little circle. “You have a bunny belly button!” she cooed.

William yelped and doubled over, wrapping both his arms around his belly. “HEY! No touching.” William warned.

Vanny raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms. “Why? You ticklish?” Vanny asked. “Is de bunny wabbit ticklish?” Vanny teased as she tried to poke his belly.

“No!” William yelled back, slapping her hands away. “And stop that! I am a grown man!” William yelled at her.

“Hmmm…” Vanny leaned over and stared at the bunny’s side while poking it a couple times. “Maybe a grown bunny…” She gave the belly a squeeze. William shrieked and slapped her arm away. “But a grown man?! There’s NO way!” Vanny teased, sticking her tongue out.

William growled. “Bite me!” he shouted with visible teeth.

Vanny stared at him with starry eyes. Even though William was trying to scare her into stopping, his bunny image didn’t help him at all. If anything, it just made things worse! Vanny giggled and snorted at his attempts to frighten her. Lastly: Vanny brought her index finger up to William’s nose and…

*Beep!*

William squeaked and held his nose in surprise and...almost fear. He made his eyes go cross-eyed as he tried to look at his nose, which only added to the cuteness. The moment Vanny let out an excited squeal however, William shot her a glare out of the corner of his eye.

“Don’t even THINK about pulling those stupid, childish-” William yelped as his backside was poked.

“OMG! Your back is ticklish too?!” Vanny reacted. William tried to turn around, but was caught by one of Vanny’s arms around his shoulders. With her free hand, Vanny started crawling her fingers slowly up his back. William’s eyes widened almost immediately as his lips formed a wobbly and crooked smile.

“Oooooh! I see it’s not just your spine…” Vanny started scratching the back ribs. “The sides of your back are ticklish too!” Vanny reacted.

William let out a muffled yelp and shook his head. “SSSTAHAP-!” He yelled at her.

“OH! I’m close! I’m cracking your wall down!” Vanny teased excitedly.

Then, Vanny moved one hand up to the rabbit ears. “I wonder…” She started tickling the inner ear just as a small test. The moment William moved his rabbit ear away and wheezed, Vanny IMMEDIATELY covered his ears with tickles! It was so hard to resist not going for it, when the perfect opportunity had come up!

Now Vanny was tickling his ears menacingly and listening to every laugh, squeak, titter and giggle that left his mouth. It had actually surprised William just how well the programming managed to replicate his laughter as well! Things have REALLY changed since he was younger.

“VAHAHANNYHYHY! THAHAHAT’S EHEHENOHOHOUGH!” William tried to tell her.

“Hell no it’s not! We have tons of time! I still have a response to wait for from the Fazbear company that YOU used to work for. So now I’m just quickly waiting! And while I wait…” Vanny started tickling the base of William’s bunny ears. “-I can see just how ticklish you really are!” Vanny declared.

“NOHOHOHO! UHUHUN- AAHAHAHA-! UHUHUNFAHAHAIR!” William yelled at her.

“Oh I KNOW it’s unfair. But wanna know something else that’s unfair?” Vanny asked rhetorically. “Refusing to tell me a secret of yours after you found out about mine!” Vanny replied to her own question. “Now THAT’S unfair! And just downright rude!” Vanny added.

William shook his head, flapping his ears around as she attacked the vulnerable base of his ears. “NAHAHAHAHEHEHEHEHEHE! COHOME OHOHOHON VAHAHAHAHANNY!”

Vanny smirked. “Whaddaya mean ‘come on’? Are you challenging me?” Vanny asked.

William shrieked and turned himself around to get away. Sadly, this just didn’t work. Vanny quickly wrapped her sneaky arm around William’s back and waist, and used her arm to dip him backwards like they had just flashbacked to the 20’s.

William yelped and giggled quite bashfully at this sudden turn of events, but was immediately thrown back into his frustrated frenzy the moment Vanny tickled all over his belly. “NoHO! VANNY! IHIHIHI’LL KIHIHILL YOHOHOHOU!” William threatened as he fell into another hysterical laughing fit.

“Ooooooh! I see…” Vanny said to herself while she poked and prodded at the green circle that highlighted the bunny’s belly button. “You don’t really have a belly button! Just a little green circle that sticks it out from your tummy.” Vanny explained to herself.

“YEHEHES! YOHOHOU HAHAVE YOHOHOUR AHANSWEHER! NOHOW LEHEHET MEHE GOHOHOHO!” William ordered.

Vanny rolled her eyes with a smile and continued to tickle his belly. “Ever heard of manners? Even dogs develop better manners than you!” Vanny teased.

William growled through his laughter and started to push her away. Vanny sighed and stopped tickling his belly. William went limp in her arms as bits of sweat started to fall down the bunny’s face. Was...was that just an overexaggerated emotion?! Or was William actually able to ‘sweat’? “Ohokahay. Can...can you put me down?...pleeeease?” William asked. His attempts to be polite sounded very childish. But, it somewhat worked.

Vanny smiled and laid William back down. “I-Thank you. Though, you didn’t need to lay me- HAHAHA! HEHEHEHEY- YOUSONOFA- EEEEEHEHEHEHEK!” William accidentally interrupted himself. It turns out that Vanny couldn’t resist sneaking a tickle or two onto his ears again.

“No more statements, Giggly Willy. Just a thank you will work well.” Vanny told him as she stopped fully this time.

William grabbed onto his ears and curled up into a little ball on the floor of Vanny’s mind. It was...Quite hilarious to see a tough, put together man doing such a childish move.

“I...Am content with wo-working with you, but…*huff*...C-Could we keep the tickle attacks to a minimum?” William asked.

Vanny hummed as she thought. She finally sighed. “Fine. Once a month.” she told him. “I’ll tickle you once a month.”

William looked up at her and uncurled himself. “Wanna move that to twice a month?” William asked.

Vanny blinked in surprise. “Bi-weekly?! I thought you wanted to keep the tickling to a minimum.” Vanny reacted.

“For-forget that. I don’t mind them.” William admitted casually.

Vanny did everything in her power to not throw her hands in the air and shower him with tickles. But she knew one thing for sure:

Vanny is never letting William live this down!

[blametheeditor]

D To The D

Warnings: Cursing. Mentions of murder. Degrading someone.

Run Down: You need three things when you start a D&D campaign.

1. A dungeon master

2.  couple of friends

3. and a few more friends you shrink to use as miniatures.

Never call the Scott a nerd. That’s James’ nickname

____________________________________________

Scott Cawthon has very few things in his life that he despises.

Before a year ago, the list used to be much longer. Of course nothing has changed about his past. They might have a magical animatronic that honestly shouldn’t exist, but making the impossible happen is never used to help the night guards who work under Fazbear Corporation, only to torture them by being sent on ‘adventures’. Meaning he’s hasn’t gone back in time for a do-over.

No, he’s only been able to become...accepting of his past. The one filled with working for the company that made his wife leave him along with his sons. Who turned his best friend into a murderer. Made him a major part in making it so anyone who became a night guard didn’t know what horrifying death was waiting for them until it was too late, giving barely enough information they might survive the night.

He’s not proud of it, and he never will be, but it doesn’t haunt him like before. Instead of dragging useless weights that did nothing but make him feel even more insignificant and hateful toward himself, they’ve been left at home more and more often. All thanks to the handful of people that instead of running for their lives like they should’ve after surviving murderous animatronics for a whole week, or were killed as per the norm, they came back to continue working. Tried their hardest to meet the ‘phone guy’ who taught them limited knowledge to stay alive.

“Hey assholes!”

Scott glances toward the man that’s been given the title of head guard despite being the one quickest to anger, and unable to keep himself from cursing every other word. Instead of trying to berate him for still being unable to censor himself in front of an eight year old boy, he smiles at the excitement being displayed. “What are you so happy about?”

Mike presents a box with a giant smirk. “I found a fucking board game.”

“W-W-What kind!” Jeremy immediately questions as he jumps out of his seat in order to help the taller read the description on the back.

The sounds of the rest quickly becoming aware of what they’ll be forced to participate in slowly begins to announce who’s joining without needing bribes and who will be subjected to puppy eyes.

“Why the hell is he excited about a board game?” David demands, his eyes looking everywhere but at Jeremy, knowing the stuttering guard will immediately turn to him and beg he plays. “They have the word ‘bored’ in them.”

Eggs snickers from his spot beside the business man. “Harrison, you sound like my five year old sister.”

“Are you talking about yourself?”

“How did you know!”

“I want to play a board game,” Caleb states with a lot more conviction than they expect from the youngest. Then again, they’ve seen how his brother treats him, and any game not including scaring the poor kid dubbed ‘Crying Child’ wouldn’t be played.

“Show of hands,” Scott quickly interrupts with Mike still being occupied figuring out if the game’s playable. “Who wants to play?”

Mike, Jeremy, and Caleb’s hands are already high in the air. James quickly joins once the question’s made clear, followed by Eggs, Fritz waving secretly in order for David not to spot and ground him.

“It’s settled, we’re playing the game.”

“Scott!”

The man scowls to state they’re not having an argument. “It’s six out of nine not including me.”

“Six out of-” David’s gaze lands on the redhead sitting on his other side currently trying to hide behind a cup of soda. “Fritz, you’re grounded.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about Mr. Harrison.”

“Are you sure you don’t to pretend you asked who doesn’t want to play, Scotty?”

Scott hesitates at the purr in Vincent’s voice stating his best friend knows something he’s supposed to be dreading.

One look at the purple man gently taking the box from Mike, and he finally spots the name of what they voted on without even making sure it was a game. Because as much as their leader keeps them in line, there’s a reason Jeremy had to help him access the situation.

“Sorry Sc-Scott,” Jeremy begins. “I didn’t kn-kn-kn-know w-w-what D&D i-is.”

Oh God.

“Don’t worry, Jer!” Vincent grins. “Scotty knows aaaaaall about it!”

Just like that, he’s transported back into high school, that same tease coming out of a different crowd of kid’s mouths. All of them taller and stronger than the skinny kid who stuttered just enough it was noticed. Who had no right to sound so friendly as they shoved him out of the way with a scoffed ‘nerd’.

He knows that Vincent, while being an asshole, means it fondly when he comments about how much Scott used to love D&D. Because when they were younger the purple man sat down and listened to his rants with interest. The only problem is the rest of the people sitting around the table don’t have the same fondness in mind as they burst into laughter.

Eggs is inconsolable as he gasps for air. David allows a sneer to appear on his face. “You’re an even bigger nerd than James if you played Dungeons & Dragons!”

“Don’t, don’t tell me you, you were a fucking dungeon master!”

Scott feels an angry blush begin to flood his cheeks at the apparent reality that despite being thirty-eight years old, and having graduated high school twenty years ago, he’s still hearing the same insults. And he knows if David was given the chance to knock his books to the floor and toss his backpack over a gate, he would.

“Golden.”

The man freezes as soon as the words leave his mouth, watching the two staring wide eyed at him, Eggs’ mirth having vanished within seconds. They wait. And wait. But thankfully, there’s no snap saying they’re being sent on an adventure.

“What the fuck, Scott!”

“You can’t just make fun of me!” he defends.

“We’re assholes! What did you think we were going to do!” David snaps. Rightfully angry because the son of a bitch called for Golden. The animatronic knowing for teleporting them into dangerous situations. All because Scott couldn’t take a little teasing? “Say ‘oh yeah, I remember that game, sitting in a dark room all alone, pretending I’m some king’ and shit!”

Scott knows he should let it go, because the business man is right. He should’ve expected it, and if it hadn’t happened he actually would’ve been borderline concerned. They’re all full-grown adults save for Caleb, so he should be the bigger man and move on.

“You know, Scotty.”

David’s face has gone pale as Vincent stands besides his best friend. The one they just insulted. Something that’s definitely pissed him off considering the glare promising a knife in their backs.

“It wouldn’t really be any fun if we didn’t have miniatures to play with~”

That’s when the snap finally emits. Leaving Fritz and James sitting in their seats as David and Eggs disappear.

“WHAT THE FUCK MUTATED GRAPE!”

Jeremy and Caleb for their parts don’t move after wisely staying out of the argument. They do look at each other nervously when the sound of David’s angry and scared shriek seems to originate from his chair. After Vincent suggested miniatures...

Mike raises an eyebrow as Scott whacks the purple man currently cackling upside the head. “Is this how our asses play with goddamn dragons?”

David wants to scream no, this is not how they play the game. He is not staying shrunk at three inches tall and being used like a miniature!

His throat had closed after screaming for Vincent to fuck off. Not a single sound comes out as he locks onto a hand with fingers longer than he is tall resting on a knee he could stand on without remotely hurting it. In fact, he can’t even breathe as his eyes finally manage to lock on bright green orbs as big as his head.

Fritz is a giant. The teenager he takes care of as a guardian and is only five feet tall could pick him up with two fingers.

“James, wait, FUCK!”

Their staring contest ends as Eggs’ panicked screams make them turn to where the blond stands. Well, where he had stood.

“DUDE!”

James gently curls his hand around Eggs before the shrunken man throws himself off a chair currently making a height large enough more than just a few bones would break. The significantly smaller makes a sound a lot like Jeremy’s signature squeak as the fingers secure their hold before lifting him up, up, before staring eye level with a look that makes their resident doctor seem more like a mad scientist.

“Hands off, jerk!” Eggs yells as he kicks in the attempt to be put down. You know, not in a giant hand. As entertaining as having a giant as a ride might be, he prefers the shoulder, thank you.

A small hum makes his entire body vibrate by the power alone. “You aren’t going to throw yourself off the table, are you?”

“I’m allowed to do what I want!”

“James, put him down,” Scott breathes, watching as the blond is carefully set on the table, looking angry and shaken but unharmed.

The only problem is he’s just under three inches tall. A glare they usually take seriously considering the various wrenches he keeps close being throwable makes them want to do nothing put scoop him up. Something he’s definitely against as an angry finger points up.

“I see the ‘cute’ face, and no one’s touching me without a pick up line.”

“And here I thought you wouldn’t be a dumbass for once,” David mutters as he struts off Fritz’s hand. The intimidation of being surrounded by seven giants is quickly brushed aside to properly glare at Scott. “What the hell are you doing standing there? Go get Golden and-!”

“I’m Jerber’s shitty miniature.”

“Mike!”

Before they can do anything, the lead guard appears downsized beside Eggs. That’s when James turns to Vincent in order to complete a single round of ‘rock, paper, scissors’, the guard for Fazbear fright beaming as his paper covers a purple rock, high fiving Mike after shrinking as well.

“Vincent!” Scott growls.

“What! I’m allowed to think I’d make a great bard!”

That’s not why he’s angry. He’s angry because his best friend took advantage of Scott letting his anger get the best of him and ask Golden for help with payback. He’s angry because he has four employees currently shrunk, and considering it was to be miniatures for the game, they won’t be growing until a full campaign is completed.

That’s why he’s angry!

“Besides, Eggs will clearly make a better bard,” the purple man smiles as he snags said blond.

There’s only a single kick as a miniscule huff is given. “I expect a better line next time!”

Scott glances down at David remaining silent, and James having moved to stand beside Caleb, and Mike’s already stated he’ll be Jeremy’s character.

“Up to being the dungeon master, Scotty?”

“I’m blaming this on you,” the man huffs as he finally sits down. A palm is held out for Eggs to be handed over as the eight look at him for instructions. “Before we get started, I need to lay out a few rules.”

“As long as I’m six feet tall by six am.”

“The shortest campaign I have takes three sessions of six-hour intervals to complete.”

David stares at him as the math is carefully calculated until finally the business man’s eyes widen.

“GODDAMN IT!”

[dualswordskings]

Ulrich handles very well being in love with Odd. (spoiler : it's not true)

aaaaah i’m finally done with this rbfkdjw i hope you guys will enjoy it !! i’m not english so sorry if some things don’t make sense. (i’d love to see what you thought about this so don’t be shy to comment or leave tags if you reblog 👉👈) a big thanks to @vexfulfun for motivating me to write this djsjd that being said... enjoy !

• Yumi comes out to Ulrich as aromantic a few months before they finally beat Xana, and now that they're on the clear about the nature of their relationship, it's easier to move on from the massive crush he had on her since Day One. Considering how pretty chaotic their relationship was sometimes, he thinks that the next time he gets a crush on someone it will be easier (spoiler : it's not. it's really not.)

• He figures out his crush on Odd a few months after putting an end to Lyoko, during the summer break. They got closer a few weeks before the end of school, and they've been texting or calling each other almost non-stop since the holidays started. Now Ulrich is lying on his bed, looking at the blank walls of his bedroom, wishing Odd was here to fill the silence like he did in their shared bedroom at the school, when it hits him and he's like. oh. Oh. OH NO.

• At first he thinks it's going to go away if he doesn't think about it, so he tries, but now that he knows, he sees it everywhere. And it doesn't help that Odd keeps texting him things like "hey it sucks without you, Kiwi and i miss you". (Granted, Odd does says the first part to every of their friends, but the Kiwi part ? that's just for him, and Ulrich loathes how proud and happy it makes him feel)

• So, yeah, the "i do not see it, i can not see" method doesn't work at all, but it's okay ! Ulrich is Smart, he can find a solution to that ! Maybe if he represses it hard enough, it will go away !

• Surprise : it doesn't work too.

• So whatever. Ulrich has a crush on Odd. It's fine, it's totally fine. (It's not.) He can handle this. (He can't.)

• Ulrich ends up being in a constant crisis about it during the whole summer, until the last week before school starts and he texts Yumi to tell her everything because, and he hates to admit it, he can't handle it and he might need help.

• Yumi instantly makes fun of him BUT she does help and at the end of the day Ulrich is much calmer about it because he finally got it off his chest and can now think a bit more clearly.

• So, he has a crush on Odd. And it... might be not that bad. Actually, it's okay. Yes, he has a crush on his best friend, and so what ? It's just a crush, and it will all be over soon, when they get back to seeing each other everyday and Ulrich is going to remember the little things he dislikes about Odd and why they would never work together anyway.

• ...It’s a month and a half in the school year when Ulrich thinks he should start taking circus classes, because he's becoming a clown.

• His crush does not go away. His crush gets WORSE. because of course he dislikes things about Odd, like how coward he can be sometimes, or how bad his feet smells, but it's not important compared to how many things he -loves- likes about him. and the worst thing is, they do work well together !

• Ulrich hates it ! He is tired of feelings, he doesn't want them ! Why did it have to be Odd ! Why does he keeps getting crushes on people he shouldn't !

• Eventually, after a long time.. He learns to live with it. He ends up accepting (for real, this time) the fact that he has a crush on Odd, and that it's not going away any time soon. And he's fine with that ! If he's destined to pine over Odd forever, then so be it. Ulrich finds that it's not a terrible way to live, anyway.

• He does try to date some people there and there during high school, but he always ends up cancelling plans after the second date because it's clear it's not going to work and people deserve better than being a last resort to a guy who has a crush on his best friend.

• He takes a gap year after high school, because he doesn't really know what he wants to do with his life. Odd goes to an art school in a close town, and ends up being roommate with Sissi, of all people ! (She moved out of their city before starting high school, and she changed a lot during that time).

• They don't see each other as much as they used to, since they're not in the same town anymore and they both have different things to do. They were both scared of drifting apart or not finding the time to hang out with each other (or with the rest of the group), but in the end they make it work.

• But still, a lot of things change. They spend week-ends together, whether it's Odd going to Ulrich's place or the opposite, and sometimes they go out, or they stay inside when they can.

• Ulrich barely sees Sissi because she's not here a lot during week-ends, and he still believes that Odd has been lying to everyone when he says she's nice now and they're getting along really well, because there's no way that's true.

• Anyway, the point is. They spend a lot of time together, and Ulrich ends up having dog food for Kiwi for when Odd comes over with him, and Odd ends up having Ulrich's clothes in his closet (and yes, sometimes he wears them but you can't blame him ! it's not his fault Ulrich keeps forgetting to take them back !) (what really happened is that Ulrich only forgot his clothes one time, and then he noticed Odd wore them, and look, he's enough of a disaster already, let him at least have this, he's been pining for *years* now). It's totally not gay, purely platonic, of course.

• And then comes The Competition. They don't remember when it started, but one day they noticed that every time they hung out outside, people mistook them as a couple and... well. They started playing along, calling each other ridiculous pet names, and of course it turned into a competion, to see who could come up with the worst pet name and who could be the most mushy.

• They're insufferable. Jeremie, Aelita and Yumi are planning their deaths because they're so tired of their stupidity.

• There’s no “rule” for this, but they never call each other pet names that are used a lot, like "babe" or "darling" etc. It always has to be ridiculous. Why, you ask ?

• Because one day Ulrich called Odd "babe" and they just. stared blankly at each other, both desesperatly trying to hide the fact that they were screaming inside, and both went "uh. that was weird. let's never mention that again." and that was it.

• So voila, everything is fine in their lives. They flirt (but as a joke), and they sleep in the same bed when they see each other during the week-end (because the couch is uncomfortable, and it would be rude to make someone sleep on it) and Odd wears Ulrich's clothes sometimes, and Ulrich keeps dog food in his apartment for Odd's dog (but there's nothing domestic about that). Everything is fine.

• Yumi, Aelita and Jeremie aren't as stupid as them though, and they kind of notice that... there's no way this is going to end well for Ulrich. (Ulrich hadn't planned on telling Aelita and Jeremie about his crush, but they figured it out themselves after a few years, because Ulrich is sometimes pretty obvious) (yes, Yumi, Aelita and Jeremie are keeping bets on who's going to confess first)

• So Yumi tries to talk to Ulrich, like 'hey maybe you should confess because you're kinda acting like a couple but you're not and we don't want you to see heartbroken the day Odd starts dating someone else'.

• And Ulrich wishes he could pretend everything is fine and there's no way this could go wrong, but he's a Responsible Adult now, or at least he's an old teenager, and maybe it's time to.. stop waiting. Maybe he could tell Odd, and it would make their friendship change, but maybe that's for the best. Maybe. So he promises to think about it, and he does.

• There's comfort in the way things are now, but at the same time, Ulrich has to move on someday, because as much as he loves loving Odd, it doesn’t stop it from hurting. and he doesn't want to wait until forever to confess either. the only reason he hasn't done it by now is because he's never sure about how Odd really feels about him, but then again, if he waits to be sure, then he'll never say anything.

• So it's decided. Ulrich is going to confess, and then life will move on, with or without Odd in it.

• He hopes it will be with Odd in it. He really, really hopes it will. He doesn't know what he would do if he had to live without him. Because before being his crush, Odd is his best friend since middle school, he's family, and Ulrich can't find the appeal of a life without Odd, no matter how hard he tries.

• (Fuck, Odd was right when he told him he wouldn't be able to live without him, the first day when they met.)

• It's a good thing to know you're going to confess. But the important question is, how are you going to do it ?

• Ulrich doesn't know. UnFortunately, he doesn't get the chance to think about it for too long.

• One week-end, while they're watching Pacific Rim again in Odd's apartment, with Odd buried in Ulrich's big hoodie, his legs resting on Ulrich's lap, Sissi comes home early.

• It's a little bit awkward between her and Ulrich, in the way that they're only acquaintances now, so they don't know each other really well. But that doesn't mean they don't get along, which is why it's not much of a problem when Sissi decides to watch the end of the movie with them.

• But she keeps glancing at them, especially Ulrich, until it's time for him to leave. And it's weird, because Ulrich doesn't understand why she would do that. It might be stupid, because it's not a big deal, but Ulrich got a sinking feeling in his stomach during the whole ride home and it doesn't leave him even after.

• Odd texts him a few hours later, and for the first time Ulrich doesn't want to know what he said. But still, he opens his phone and reads the text, because he's a weak man who can't refuse anything to Odd.

• It's something along the line "Sissi thought we were a couple hahahaha, that's so weird."

• It shouldn't be a big deal. It shouldn't. It's not the first time someone tells them they look like a couple anyway. Heck, they often pretends they are with the pet names competition. But there's something about that makes Ulrich sick in his stomach.

• Technically, nothing is wrong, because Odd still texted him, and he's laughing about it, like he always does, but. But Odd never uses capital letters, and he never types "hahaha" and he never puts punctuation in his texts, and sure, it's just some details, but Ulrich knows Odd and he knows that something is wrong and that somehow, now, everything is going to change. For the better or for the worst.

• He types back a simple "yeah, weird." and Odd never replies.

• It's... strange, for about a month. Odd starts avoiding him, answering his texts really late (if he answers them at all), never calling, coming up with shitty excuses to not spend time with him. They don't see each other once. Ulrich doesn't know how to feel about this situation.

• He's frustrated, because what the hell ? What happened ? Did he do or say something wrong ? He keeps replaying the last time they saw each other in his head, but he can't find anything out of the ordinary, except, well. their last texts.

• It angry, too. Because he doesn't understand. Odd had never been bothered when people mistook them for a couple, so why did he now ? And even if this was the reason, his behaviour still didn't make any sense. Odd would never stop talking to someone just for that, or at least he never did before.

• Did he discover Ulrich's crush on him and decided to put some distance between them because he thought it would be awkward to acknowleged it ? Odd had never acted like that when learning someone loved him, but maybe because they were best friends, this was different ?

• It hurts to think about it. It's not like Ulrich wasn't prepared to be rejected if he were to confess, but losing Odd like this ? It sucks. Odd is his best friend first and foremost, so of course Ulrich doesn't want him out of his life. He just always thought Odd would want him to stay in his, too.

• He's angry, and he's sad, and he's hurt and he's tired of this. It makes him mad that Odd was right when he said Ulrich wouldn't be able to live without him, and he’d like to believe that maybe he's got it all wrong and something else happened to make Odd stop talking to him, but he knows it can't be anything else after spending time with Yumi, Aelita and Jeremy. They all acted a little awkward, and Ulrich knows Odd still talks to them on the regular, and it's enough proof to know that the problem is indeed with him.

• He talks to Yumi about it, and she just tells him that Odd is an idiot and that maybe he should still confess so he can move on.

• Ulrich actually starts thinking about it, after the third week. Moving on that is- not confessing, because that is way too scary.

• And of course it's not going to be easy and it sucks but if Odd wants to act like a dumbass then fine, Ulrich isn't going to wait and cry about it forever. He deserves better than this bullshit anyway.

• (It doesn’t make it any less hurting. Ulrich is not really sure he wants to fully admit that he lost his best friend.)

• He tries to talk to Odd a few times during those three weeks of course, but it never ends anywhere. He either leaves him on read or answers vaguely and doesn't participate in the conversations. Ulrich tries to confront him one time, and they end up fighting. It's not a big fight, but it's still shitty, and Ulrich stops trying after that, and Odd doesn't say anything.

• Then out of nowhere, on the fourth week, Odd calls him. Ulrich stares in shock and considers for a brief moment not answering and ignoring him, because that would only be fair, but he ends up answering, because maybe this their chance to make it right again and fuck, he missed his best friend, okay ?

• It's... it's awkward. At first, Odd tries to act like nothing happened, and Ulrich pretends that they don't need to talk about it, but they both know ignoring the elephant in the room won't resolves anything.

• And surprise ! After a few awkward silences, they do end up talking about it. Or at least a little.

• Odd apologies, but doesn't offer any explanations, and Ulrich decides that it's enough, at least for now.

• They start catching up on what they missed during the month, though not a lot happened on both sides, and they joke around and that's pretty much it.

• Ulrich is sure life is going to go back to normal (until he confesses), and he's happy with that, but then it's the end of the call, and Odd tells him about this movie that's going to come out soon and how they should go watch it together, and Ulrich agrees, and Odd says "cool, so it's a date then ?" which is. what. WHAT.

• Ulrich takes five whole minutes to answer because his brain decided to shut down. He's not sure if it's a joke, like their pet names competition, or if it's a dream, but it can't be real. Except Odd is silent at the end of the line, so he must be serious, and oh, Ulrich is a weak, weak man.

• "Uh. Yeah, ok." "Cool, see you on the week-end for our date then !"

• And that's it. That's how the call ends and Ulrich doesn't know for how long he stares at his phone like it holds the secrets of the universe, but when he finally registers what happened, a lot of time has passed.

• Ulrich has a date. With Odd.

• He wakes up Yumi by calling them. (They're mad because they lost the bet on who will ask the other out on a date first, but she doesn't tell him that.)

• And so the week-end comes, and Ulrich gets ready. to go on his date. with Odd.

• He's expecting this to be a bad prank but still, he takes his time to dress well and make sure he looks good. And then he goes pick up Odd on his motorcycle and tries his best not to have a gay panic when Odd comes out of his apartment wearing his best date outfit with the jean jacket Ulrich bought him for one of his birthday.

• They go to the cinema, and it's awkward at first, because how are you supposed to act on a first date with your crush who's also your best friend who you also haven't talked to since a month ? It's.. a little bit weird, doing romantic coded things together for real and not as a joke, but it's nice. It's something they could get used to, something they /want/ to get used to.

• And so it doesn't take long for them to be comfortable around the other again, and everything falls back to normal, and they have an amazing time.

• None of them confess that day, because they want to take the time to enjoy this new thing, and they go on a lot of other dates and Ulrich feels weird because he's not used to have luck on his side when it's about romance, but he's definitely not complaining about it.

• A few months later, when they're coming home to Ulrich's apartment after a midnight walk with Kiwi, Odd tells him about the month when they stopped talking to each other. It slowly becomes a confession, because it turns out Odd realized he was in love with Ulrich after Sissi's comment and didn't know how to process it, but Ulrich cuts him in the middle of it to confess how he feels because 1) he hasn't been suffering all these years only to not confess first and 2) Yumi would kill him if he didn't.

• So that's how they start dating.

• Yumi, Aelita and Jeremy are like "finally ! we can have peace now. no more them being fools." and also very happy because they've been waiting for this for so long and their best friends deserves to be happy together.

• jokes on them though, because now that they're dating, they're worse than before. the pda, the jokes, the love confessions at any given time, they're everywhere. the awful pet names ? even worse now because they call each other regular pet names too.

• But hey, for their friends happiness, they can endure it. a little. they do deserve to be happy after all of this.

• Bonus :

Later, after a few years of being together, someone looks at them and goes "wow, you're such good friends ! i would love to have a bro like that", and it's the pet name competition nightmare all over again, except it’s reversed. Yumi, Sissi, Aelita and Jeremie have to deal with them calling each other "bro" or "dude" constantly and they regret being friends with them.

[dream-a-little-bigger-x]

Quarantine Lovers (Part Two) | Charlie Gillespie

Part 2 in the “Life in Quarantine with Charlie” / “Quarantine Lovers” series! You can find part 1 HERE!! Hope you like this!

Pairing: Charlie Gillespie x reader 

Warnings: Implication of sex, more sexually tinted scenes

A/N: I used some songs in this one too, none of which are mine. Full credit for those go to the creators of the songs! 

How Can I Say No To This? 

So far, quarantine with Charlie has been a blast. Though things are scary and you both get a little anxious at times, you still have each other, and for now, that’s all that counts. It’s all you have. But it’s more than enough. 

One day, when Charlie has back-to-back interviews, you -- being bored as hell -- figured it would be fun to surprise Charlie and you knew exactly how. There was only one person you could call to help you with it. Tori Caro. The two of you had talked on FaceTime before when Charlie had a bit of a reunion over Zoom with all of them and all of them wanted to meet you after Madi, Owen and Jeremy told everyone about you. 

“Hey, girl!” you greet when the girl appears on your phone screen. “Hey, Peaches!” she greets back, her smile nearly reaching her ears. “What’s up?” She settles herself onto her bed, leaning against the bedframe whilst holding her phone up to her face. 

“I am extremely bored and Charlie’s doing interviews all day, but I kind of had the idea to surprise him, which I need your help for.” Her eyebrows raise in intrigue. “Do spill.” You place your phone on the coffee table, letting it balance against a glass of water. 

“I want you to teach me Madi’s part of the choreo to Perfect Harmony, so when we listen to music while cooking tonight, I might be able to surprise him by doing the dance with him?” You explain, then laugh at yourself. “That sounds lame, doesn’t it?” 

“What? No! Not at all! I think it’s cute! I’ll definitely help you!” And with that said, the two of you spend about an hour teaching the choreography. “I bet he’s going to be extremely surprised by this, Y/N!” You giggle at her compliment, panting a little from the exertion. 

“Thanks, Tori!” You say when you hear the door to the studio/office open. You quickly take a seat on the sofa, grabbing your phone with you and sipping from the glass of water. 

“Please, film it when you do it!” she tells you, and you  just simply nod vigorously. When Charlie enters the living room,  you look up, offering him a smile. 

“Who are you talking to?” he asks with a smile before sitting down next to you and glancing at the screen himself. “Tori!” he exclaims excitedly, his face lighting up entirely. 

“Charlie!” Tori retorts, matching his level of enthusiasm. “How were interviews?” He wraps an arm around you as you lean further into his body, a habit you’ve accumulated over the course of being together. 

“Great! We’ve played a couple games as well. It was good fun!” He explains. Though there’s a smile on his face, you can tell he’s tired and would rather curl up on the sofa with you. 

“Hey, Tori. We’re gonna go, start on dinner and stuff,” you tell her, to which she shoots you a knowing look. “Thanks for helping me out.” 

“Helping you out with what?” Charlie asks, his fingers trailing up and down your arm. 

“Uhm… She helped me pick an outfit for our date tomorrow,” you lie. It’s a plausible lie. Ever since getting to know Charlie’s friends and cast members, you’ve been calling or texting the girls from the cast to ask for help with stuff like that. 

“Aw, that’s cute!” he says with that same, excited, beaming smile on his face. “You could come in pj’s for all I care, and you’d still look gorgeous to me.” Tori pouts at this, and awes loudly. 

“Alright, we’re gonna go and make dinner,” you say, patting Charlie’s thigh twice. “See ya, Tori!” You offer her a wave and the brightest of your smiles, Charlie doing the exact same. 

“Bye, Peaches!” You hang up the phone and get up from the sofa, turning to Charlie and reaching your hands out to help him up. 

“Do we have to cook? Can’t we order something?” he whines, placing his hands in yours. You pull him up to his feet, but don’t really move, causing there to be no space between you. 

“We’ve ordered last night,” you remind him and lace your fingers with his. “Besides, I already bought everything from the shops!” He widens his eyes, faking shock. “Yes, I went to the frontlines, to the most dangerous place on earth at the moment!” You retort dramatically before a giggle escapes you. Charlie lets out an airy laugh before dipping down and kissing you on the lips. 

“Alright, let’s get cooking!” He leads you towards the kitchen and starts grabbing everything the two of you need whilst you turn on the music. You’ve made a lockdown playlist together with all of your favorite songs, including the entire Julie and The Phantoms soundtrack, which is what it starts with; Now or Never. You quickly queue up a couple other songs before adding Perfect Harmony to that list too. The two of you sing along softly at first, until the chorus hit and you’re belting the lyrics at the top of your lungs. This has occurred a few times during lockdown already; the sing-and-dance-along parties in your pj’s or during cooking. 

By the time your pasta is cooking and still has about five minutes left, Perfect Harmony chimes through the speakers. Now’s your time to surprise him. 

“Step into my world Bittersweet love story 'bout a girl Shook me to the core Voice like an angel I've never heard before”

You turn him around and grab his hands, doing the choreography Tori has taught you today. He’s surprised, but dances along as if on automatic.

“Here in front of me They're shining so much brighter Than I have ever seen Life can be so mean But when he goes, I know he doesn't leave”

You push him away to the living room where he has a little more space to do the floor work he did on the show, and does it flawlessly. 

“The truth is finally breaking through Two worlds collide when I'm with you Our voices rise and soar so high We come to life when we're In perfect harmony”

He picks you up into the lift with ease, as though you’re as light as a feather. 

“Whoa-oa-oa, whoa-oa-oa Perfect harmony”

He looks at you in pure surprise and delight, softly singing the lyrics along with the audio. 

“Whoa-oa-oa, whoa-oa-oa Perfect harmony”

“Is that what Tori actually helped you with?” he asks when you reach the part without choreography since the song was cut shorter in the show. He’s still holding onto your hands.

“Yup,” you reply with a cheesy smile. “I was bored and wanted to learn that dance anyway since you and Madi made it look so cool on the show… Plus, I wanted to surprise you after your long day of interviews.” A tender chuckle erupts from his mouth as he shakes his head in disbelief. 

“You’re amazing, you know that?” he kisses your knuckles before turning you around, so you’re with your back pressed against his chest, and throws your hands up, continuing the choreo. 

“We say we're friends we play pretend You're more to me we create Perfect harmony”

He twirls you out and away from him until you reach the wall you carefully place your hands onto to stop yourself. 

“That’s such a fun choreo,” you say as you turn back to the pasta to check how it’s doing. 

“Yeah, I know,” he agrees whilst walking up to you and wrapping his arms around your waist from behind. “Can I tell you a secret?” he whispers in your ear, then presses a kiss underneath it. 

“Of course,” you whisper back, trying to keep your composure. 

“I like dancing with you better than with Madi,” he lets out a giggle after, and it’s the cutest thing you ever did hear. “Don’t tell her.” You turn around, wrapping your arms around his neck and kissing him on the mouth softly. 

“My lips are sealed,” you say and kiss him once again. “With a kiss.” He plants his lips on yours again, for a longer, more passionate kiss this time. “Time for dinner,” you mumble against his lips. 

“I prefer starting with dessert,” he says. You giggle at his comeback, and squeal when he picks you up and brings you to the living room. 

“Charlie!” you protest, detaching your lips, “At least let me put the food off the stove so it doesn’t burn?” He retraces his steps backwards, and plops you back on your feet, so you can take care of the food. “All right, we’re good to go,” you say as you turn to him. “Catch me.” With no time left to think, you jump into his arms, wrapping your legs around his waist as you resume the passionate kiss from before. For once, you don’t mind starting with dessert before dinner. You’ve been bored all day without him, the least he could do is make it up to you… In bed… 

“People are asking to go live on Insta,” you tell Charlie when the two of you are back in the kitchen, heating up the food you’d left out. You didn’t even bother to put proper clothes on. You just grabbed the closest thing you found, which is Charlie’s Canada sweatshirt.��

“Yeah, sure, we could eat whilst chatting to them…” he says, grabbing two plates. After being introduced to the rest of the cast, you’ve been interacting with them a lot more on social media, and -- along with Madi’s blabbing in interviews about Charlie’s secret quarantine partner-- the fans have figured out it was you. And that the two of you are, in fact dating. Especially since Meghan, Charlie’s sister, couldn’t help but jokingly call you ‘sister-in-law’ when commenting on one of your pictures on Instagram. 

Charlie hands you his phone for you to set up the live whilst he grabs dinner from the microwave. 

“Okay, we’re live!” you exclaim when Charlie hands you the plate and a fork. “Thank, babe.” He takes a seat next to you on the couch and sets his plate on his lap. 

“Hello, people!” He greets the now about 1k people watching the live. You watch as a dozen of comments yell back at you that the two of you ‘definitely just had sex!’, and can’t help but giggle at that. “Do you guys have any questions for us?”

At the same time, Alexander Hamilton from the musical Hamilton starts playing through the speakers. You’d forgotten to turn the music off, but it’s quite nice having background noise all the time.

You gasp, capturing Charlie’s attention, and start singing along flawlessly. 

“The ten-dollar founding father without a father Got a lot farther by working a lot harder By being a lot smarter By being a self-starter By fourteen, they placed him in charge of a trading charter”

Charlie looks at you with a surprised smirk on his face while the comments about Hamilton start streaming in, neither of you paying attention. 

“And every day while slaves were being slaughtered and carted away Across the waves, he struggled and kept his guard up Inside, he was longing for something to be a part of The brother was ready to beg, steal, borrow, or barter”

You smile down at your boyfriend as he simply watches you in admiration while stuffing his mouth with pasta. 

“Then a hurricane came, and devastation reigned Our man saw his future drip, dripping down the drain Put a pencil to his temple, connected it to his brain And he wrote his first refrain, a testament to his pain”

The song goes on, but you turn to the phone to see what everyone’s been saying. You laugh when your eyes catch a comment. 

“Someone said ‘Get someone who looks at you the same way Charlie looks at Y/N’.” Others asked if you could do the rap from Guns & Ships, to which you replied with a determined “Yes! And Satisfied too!”  

“We’ve watched the movie on Disney Plus about a dozen times. Of course she knows it!” Charlie adds after swallowing his pasta. “Now eat your pasta before it gets cold!” You comply and eat your food whilst answering some of the questions here and there. Some of them are about Julie and The Phantoms, which Charlie answers, and others are about your relationship. Most of them want to know how you two met and how lockdown is going for you guys. All of which you answer very honestly, chiming in to add something when the other’s answering. 

“Ooh! Tori’s here!” you notice, “Hi, Tori! I’m sorry I didn’t film the surprise!” Tori comments, ‘BOO!’ in all caps, which makes you chuckle. And then all the questions about the surprise started flooding in. “Tori taught me the Perfect Harmony dance, and I surprised him with it when we were making dinner.” 

Everyone’s telling you to do it again, including Tori, so, you obey and put the song on again, showing what you did earlier that evening. 

“AMAZING!” Tori comments with a bunch of hearts plastered behind it. Some other fans comment something along those lines as well, others tell you they liked it better with Madi, but the bigger part of the comments tell you they think otherwise. 

Then, a One Direction starts to play, and you can’t help but sing and dance along from the couch, which gives you an idea. 

“Babe!” you exclaim, gripping his bicep, “We should show them what we do in Quarantine when we’re cooking meals!” Charlie chuckles, shaking his head in amusement. “Yes! Come on!” You turn to the phone again. “Guys! Tell Charlie we have to show you what we do whenever we need a break from work or we’re cooking together!” Comments flood into the box at a fast speed, all of them saying “DO IT CHARLIE!”. 

So, with a groan, he gets up from the couch, taking the phone with him and placing it a bit higher, so you’re both in shot completely. 

“But I need you guys to vibe along, okay?” Comments of assent pile in, and Charlie turns the volume up a little whilst you get up too. The both of you start singing and dancing along to the One Direction song, knowing everyone at home is dancing with you. After that song, Dead Girl Walking from the Heathers musical starts playing. 

“Oh! Where are my Heathers fans?!” you ask the audience, glancing at the phone for all the Heathers comments to come in. “I saw the West End version when I was in London in 2018!” You tell them, and Charlie, though he knows that. 

“Yeah, I know, babe,” he tells  you with a smile before you turn back to him, standing in front of him with barely any space between you. He towers over you, like he always does, and it would normally get you weak in the knees, but not this time. Not with this song playing. 

“Ssh…” You press your finger to his lips, a teasing smirk tugging at your lips. 

“Had to see you hope I didn’t wake you See I decided I must ride you ‘til I break you” 

You wiggle your eyebrows, both of you knowing that already happened earlier. 

“‘Cause Heather says I gots to go You’re my last meal on death row Shut your mouth And lose them tighty-whities!” 

Charlie knew you could sing, but he had no clue you could hit notes this high. 

“Come on! Tonight I'm yours I'm your dead girl walkin' Get on all fours Kiss this dead girl walkin' Let's go, you know the drill I'm hot and pissed and on the pill Bow down to the will of a dead girl walking!”

You see Charlie swallow visibly, glancing nervously at the phone filming all of this and decide to stop before he completely melts down into a puddle of sweat. Now or Never begins to play when you skip to the next song. 

Charlie’s demeanor suddenly changes and fully starts rocking out now, forgetting anything just happened mere seconds ago. You follow his example and start jumping around like a hyper rabbit. 

“When all the days felt black and white those were the best shades of my life!” 

You throw your hands up in the air at this, stopping the jumping. “That’s my favorite line ever!” you exclaim loudly, making sure the viewers hear too. 

Comments of agreement flash onto the screen as you and Charlie lapse into the bridge. 

The next song is one of your favorite Hamilton songs to belt; Say No To This. Though not your favorite scene from the musical, it is still one of your favorite songs. 

“You know this one, baby!” You say to Charlie. 

“No, I can’t, I can’t do--” he cuts himself off and starts singing along with Lin-Manuel Miranda. 

“That’s when miss Mariah Reynolds walked into my life, she said,” he points at you, telling you to take over. 

“I know you are a man of honor I'm so sorry to bother you at home But I don't know where to go, and I came here all alone”

“She said”

“My husband's doin' me wrong Beatin' me, cheatin' me, mistreatin' me Suddenly he's up and gone I don't have the means to go on”

He struggles with the next line, not knowing the musical quite as well as you do. 

“You're too kind, sir,” you sing anyway with a smile on your face. He does know the next line. 

“I gave her thirty bucks that I had socked away She lived a block away, she said”

“This one's mine, sir”

You try your best to imitate Jasmine Cephas-Jones’ husky, warm tone. 

“Then I said, "Well, I should head back home She turned red, she led me to her bed Let her legs spread and said”

“Stay”

“Hey”

“Hey”

Then both of you started to sway back and forth, twirling around the living room, singing along to the ‘no’s and ‘go’s from the ensemble. 

“Ooh! This is my favorite part!” you say excitedly, preparing yourself for the belts. 

“No, sir”

“Half dressed, apologetic, a mess, she looked pathetic, she cried”

“Please don't go, sir” 

“So was your whole story a setup?”

“I don't know about any letter”

“Stop crying God dammit, get up”

“I didn't know any better”

“I am ruined”

“Please don't leave me with him, helpless”

“I am helpless, how could I do this?”

“Just give him what he wants and you can have me” 

“I don't want you, I don't want you”

“Whatever you want, if you pay You can stay”

You grasp Charlie’s bicep as a support to keep your balance while you throw your head back to belt out the note. This shuts Charlie up entirely, impressed with your singing abilities. 

“I knew you could sing, but damn, babe, you got pipes!” He turns to the phone where fans voice their impression and awe, complimenting your voice. 

Connecting with Charlie’s fans and doing things like this with Charlie is literally one of your favorite things you’ve ever done. There’s nothing better than rocking out with a bunch of friends, even if you don’t see 2k of them. 

“Alright, guys,” Charlie says, turning down the volume after a few more songs, “We’re gonna go.” He wraps his arms around your waist from behind, placing his chin on your shoulder to peer at the screen. “Thank you for jamming out with us today! We’ll see you later!” You offer a smile and a wave before ending the livestream. 

“That was fun!” You exclaim excitedly, bouncing up and down as you make sure to save the video onto his IGTV. Charlie turns you around, placing his hands on your hips and pressing a kiss to your forehead. When you’re done, you lock his phone and put it into his pocket, looking up at him with a happy smile on your face. 

“Can you hit that last note again?” he asks with hope in his eyes. 

“That gets you going, doesn’t it?” You wiggle your eyebrows as a teasing smirk creeps onto your face. He bites his bottom lip, which to be fair, gets you going. So, you cough and place your hands under his biceps on his ribcage, gripping at his shirt tightly. “Just give him what he wants and you can have me. Whatever you want, if you pay, you can stay!” 

“We ought to get you on season two,” he whispers before crashing his lips onto yours for a passionate kiss that leads you straight to the bedroom again. 

“How can I say no to this?” You mumble against his lips cheekily. 

This lockdown and quarantine thing isn’t as bad as you thought it would be. If you’ve got Charlie by your side, you’re good to do anything. 

Taglist: @hannahhistorian92​ @marinettepotterandplagg​ @thequirkybookaholic​ @bookdealer5​ @tenaciousperfectionunknown​ @hemmingsness​ @iainttakingshitfromnobody​ @ifilwtmfc​ @angryknightstatesmantrash​ @kiss-themoongoodbye​ @parkeret​​ @lukeys-giggle​ @gingerxarmy​ @lovesanimals​ @lolychu​ @perfectlywrongformend3s​ @luckylouiebug​

[amwritingmeta]

15x14: Striking A Balance

This is late. I fell behind. Life happens. I still haven’t watched 15x15. Gah! But now to some thoughts on 15x14...

I thought this was a great episode the first time I watched it. Then I thought it was a bloody fantastic episode the second time I watched it, and the third time… well, it just gets better and better. I’m thoroughly looking forward to the final six. I hope you are too. 

I hope you’re as well as you can be and that you’re not living in a stress bubble. They’re the worst. I’d hand you a big old needle if I could. Maybe this meta can be some sort of needle (for popping), because at least I don’t feel the ending of this show is anything we need to stress about. I do believe it’s going to be utterly spectacular. *all the faith*

So I spent a chunk of lockdown watching this show of ours. I started at 12x19 (that episode still makes me tremble with its sheer brilliance) through to 15x13, and felt an overwhelming satisfaction at the evenness of the storytelling for these last three-ish seasons. 

A brief breakdown of three years of meta writing would be: Dean has been pushed to face, recognise and dismantle his internalised toxic masculinity traits aka his Shadow (which has been the root of unhealthy coping mechanisms and an inability to put down boundaries, communicate openly and handle his emotions), he’s been pushed to see the strength and power of his feminine traits (his nurturing side, his compassion, his protective nature) through being put in situations where he’s had no choice but to open up to being honest with himself, in turn bringing him on a course to him handling his emotions better, as well as the narrative giving us moments where he’s gotten the chance to acknowledge and embrace his neglected inner child. 

Yes, Jungian doctrine runs like a river through it, what can I say? I’m a fan.

With Dean as our protagonist, Sam and Cas are both on mirroring journeys, though Sam is Dean’s mirror opposite and Cas is Dean’s mirror likeness. It doesn’t take away from the individual journeys of Sam and Cas: it’s just that their choices and their progression are not determining the course of the narrative. Rather, their choices and progression work to underline and highlight Dean’s growth. Sam and Cas are main characters, but they’re not driving the core of the plot. 

Make sense? Cool!

Especially as this also means that Dean’s progression is pivotal for all three of them to actually reach… well, since it’s a word used twice this season why shouldn’t we just go with it? — completion. 

Which is why my eyes are happily peeled for Dean having moments that display a deepened sense of self-understanding (like his prayer to Cas, where Dean put words on the anger he’s always feeling and how he doesn’t know why or where it’s coming from) (an enormous step toward actually dealing with that emotion) (as self-deception through denial caused by fear of weakness tied to fear of rejection and fear of failure — that’s a mouthful — has always formed Dean’s biggest internal obstacle) because neither Sam nor Cas should, when we look at the narrative as a whole, be able or allowed to reach full completion (or individuation, to use Jungian terms) without Dean getting there first, or at least being shown to be well on his way to getting there.

This episode then is more of an epicsode, because, man, do we get to explore balanced!Dean, and it’s all through Jack: the narrative representation of Dean’s inner child.

Oh, yeah. Way I see it, Jeremy Adams brought us right back to the threads he was pulling on in Scoobynatural. *bless his brain* Only this time he’s pushed it a step further and rather than Dean simply facing his inner child—as (14x16 whoops I mean) 13x16 opened up that can of worms—now, in 15x14, Dean is forced to properly acknowledge and embrace that inner child. I mean. The mind crackles. The feels are cascading like a waterfall over a great cliff. The excitement, people, is real.

Let’s dig in!

Sam and Dean

They were glorious this episode!!

So Sam ended up tortured a little, but that was because he was shooting first, asking questions second, and sure, Mrs. Butters had gone a bit crazy, but as he learned: it wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t her nature, the crazy had been torture-nurtured into her.

And Dean was faced with yet one more reminder of how kindness, compassion and protectiveness can go haywire when there’s influence from toxic masculinity (aka Cuthbert Sinclair) pushing someone into a position of mistrust, insecurity and need for control. 

Let me reiterate the fact that when I’m talking masculine/feminine I’m not tying these concepts to gender, though of course these concepts have been tied to gender traits to the point of brainwashing people into thinking they should dictate what is male and what is female. (mental) Rather I mean all of our internal masculine/feminine traits that need to find balance if we are each to feel happy and content as human beings. 

It’s Tao, and it’s Jung, and it’s beautiful. Is all I’m saying. 

Digression.

My point is that in spite of sorting stuff out in their individual arcs, the brotherly relationship was depicted awesomely this episode, with Dean being 1000% supportive of Sam going to get itches scratched with Eileen, to the point of feeling he would rather just handle the sudden turn of events and this new threat by himself, than disrupt Sam and Eileen’s fun times (and by “fun times” I mean sex), and Sam going along for the joyride of holiday celebrations, home cooked meals and the supportive, warm and caring mother figure that they’re both, again, missing in their lives.

Sam was submissive this episode, following Dean’s opinions on how to best handle Jack (even with Dean being disastrous in the past when stating what Jack needs) which is somewhat frustrating, because Sam has so much more in him, but he also got to show that humongous heart of his, where he understood the root cause of Mrs. Butters’ behaviour and showed compassion, rather than judgement. His compassion has always been one of his most formidable strengths. 

And, of course, Sam had to ride sidesaddle this episode because if he was putting up any sort of protest—regarding accepting Mrs. Butters as part of the bunker or how best to deal with Jack— Dean wouldn’t have gone through the push for progression, delivered through the representation of his inner femininity that is Mrs. Butters, but primarily through the representation of (and here we go into the deeper digging) his inner child—Jack.

Dean and Jack

You know, end of the episode Dean states what is evident throughout: he’s trying. 

In the opening scene he asks Sam if Jack’s come out of his room, and then he’s the one who goes and knocks on Jack’s door to warn him about Mrs. Butters, placing trust in Jack that he can handle it and will call them if anything gets weird, and he cajoles Jack to come out with the promise of snickerdoodles. All of this subtly shows us that Dean knows what Jack is suffering, and we can be sure of that because we know he’s been there enough times.

The guilt, the self-blame, as well as the self-doubt underpinning it all, making it difficult to forgive. 

Because, thing is, Jack is struggling to forgive himself. To accept that it was an accident. He’s waiting for Dean’s forgiveness to give him a marker for whether it’s okay for him to even begin to forgive himself, which is understandable on all the levels of his character progression, but especially when looking at him as a representative of Dean’s inner child.

So then, why is Dean acknowledging, embracing and nurturing his inner child important?

Because, when looking at the narrative from the angle where it’s filled with symbolisism to do with Dean’s internal journey (and by extension the internal journeys of all the characters), then Dean’s progression, and especially lack there of, has been closely tied to the fact that he never got to be a kid. 

He had to grow up fast, got responsibility put on him that was way out of proportion for a four year old child, had to be a father and a mother to his younger brother, and learned to repress and suppress his childish urges, wants and needs through unhealthy coping mechanisms in order to dress himself in the image of the strongerst person that he’s ever known: his father.

(which is a misnomer because there was plenty of weakness to John Winchester) (especially how he was a highly emotional man who spent the years after his wife’s death driven by grief, but hammered it into his eldest son that emotions are weaknesses that will get you killed and you should control them to the point of barely being able to recognise them anymore) 

It’s imperitive for Dean to deal with the neglect he suffered in his childhood, rather than ignore it, if he’s ever going to be able to let those wounds heal over. And letting them heal over is important because pushing down trauma leaves it room to influence our choices and to keep us in old patterns of behaviour. Because self-denial and self-neglect is where our Shadow lives and thrives—our unconscious gaining power over us and dictating our behaviour even as we’re unaware of it.

Remember how Jack swallowed Michael? Remember how Michael was Dean’s Shadow representative? It’s not by accident that what Dean has left to confront, fully, is self-trust, self-forgiveness and finding his way to real self-love, symbolically given to us in this narrative through his treatment of Jack.

Because Jack is the final piece of Dean’s internal puzzle: his inner child in need of some real TLC.

So then, what does Dean need in order to be able to show Jack aka himself some real TLC?

Mrs. Butters

Ah, yes, of course what Dean needs most is to engage with his internal femininity. 

Mrs. Butters represents Dean’s suppressed and repressed longing for more in life, for a home, for love, and the only reason there’s been a need to suppress and repress this longing is to due with what he was taught as a child and throughout his formative years, actively by his father, and unconsciously by the way he was never taught or shown how to deal in any type of healthy way with the loss of his mother. 

Mrs. Butters as our representative of positive femininity then shows us as the audience how Dean, in his heart of heart, wants to believe that he can have good things in his life. That he deserves them. 

Mrs. Butters shows us that what Dean needs is to allow himself to feel joy, without expecting it to flip at a moment’s notice into feeling loss. 

And yes, I realise where the episode ends, but perhaps the feeling of joy wouldn’t flip if the lesson was learned in full and Dean knew how to trust and simply let go of the undercurrent of fear that the flip is lurking somewhere just around the next bend. 

What this episode shows us is that he’s just not quite there yet, but omg the threshholding is intense.

Because Mrs. Butters underlines that what Dean needs, more than anything, is to practice trust. Dean needs to practice opening up. Dean needs to practice letting go of his need for control. 

He can still be in charge of a situation, without thinking it’s all on him always.

Now, the episode highlights this in a rather glorious way, by trapping him in a room, under threat, knowing Sam is about to walk into the situation, and deciding not only is he not going to call Sam for help, he’s not even going to text him a heads up.

Look. This might be a plothole here. Jeremy Adams might have been so focused on the joke of Dean not wanting to interrupt Sam’s sexy times that he didn’t realise the implactions of Dean not even sending a text to warn Sam that he was essentially heading home to a dangerous situation, yeah? 

But the rather lax attitude of the brothers this episode: letting Mrs. Butters stay, and both of them neglecting the need for them to look into her backstory further, because they both got so distracted by holiday celebrations and her amazing cooking, combined with the hopscotch way they approach getting rid of her, all this is intentional enough for me to lean into the reading of Dean’s need to practice trust being explored in awesome ways.

Because Dean needs someone to take the load off, and Mrs. Butters does this in spades. 

What with how she brokers zero arguments, immediately getting him to clean up his language, and I mean, Dean then defying this is a moment of awesomeness and of course we all want him to continue being midly CW foulmouthed, but for all intents and purposes, he succumbs to her chastising quickly, and she gets him to open up to the joy of the moment via holiday celebrations, and, to top it all off, she gets him to eat healthier.

The fact that she’s introduced folding his underwear, and then goes on to tell him that she wouldn’t have had to if he’d just done it right to begin with, is fairly epic. (verrryy epic) As is her giving Dean the nightshirt from Scoobynatural. Obviously! He’s wrapped in hugs! Purple hugs! And having Dean dressed in purple and eating vegetables in the same episode is enough to make one’s head explode.

*head* *ex* *ploded*

Balance. Is why my head is exploding. The purple and the vegetables are indications of growing internal balance. *yes please and thank you!*

I loved them celebrating Sam’s birthday and Dean having specific requests for his, Mrs. Butters dismissing him with how she thought he’s too old to want to celebrate. It was such a moment of reminding Dean that he’s not supposed to regress, he’s not to forget that he is, in fact, an adult, and nurturing his inner child is about letting go of the need for the childhood he never had—which is keeping him from properly having the adult life he deep down yearns for. 

(and then this reminder was followed by a moment of kindness) (as there already were rice crispie treats waiting for him) (and his eager little face!) *heart eyes*

There was so much to love about Mrs. Butters, though!

Like the big bowl of crispy bacon on the breakfast table and her encouraging Sam to enjoy the world he’s fighting for, the waxing of Baby (!!), the introduction of the monster radar, finally getting the telescope—pardon me, the interdimensional geoscope—given some attention, Dean blowing a door down by using the grenade launcher (symbolically tied to self-liberation), the fixing of the TV in the Deancave (with thanks to Jeremy! he who breaketh he too shalt fixeth), the fact that Mrs. Butters is a straight-up anti-Nazi killing machine and that her violence stems directly from her need to protect her home and the people she cares about.

Yeah, there’s so much good in her that her not ending up shot, even though she tortured Sam, is not very surprising and I really enjoyed the fact that her story ended on a compassionate note of understanding, and that, if she hadn’t longed to go back to the woods, the boys would have wanted her to stick around. 

Forgiveness—looking for it, or needing it— is a clear thread through this episode.

As For the Deeper Symbolism

Dean starts out cooking, wearing his new favourite garment—an apron. Now, I could tie that to Dean embracing his inner femininity and the rest of the episode working to underline this fact to us, but that’s just my reading of it, so who knows what the deal with the apron actually is. I do love it though, and it’s put in dialogue twice so we were definitely meant to make note of it.

The cooking ties him directly to Mrs. Butters, of course (or her to him, if you will) and creates a bookend for the episode, where Dean starts and ends the episode wearing the apron: first presenting Sam with a burger (meat man!) and then presenting Jack with a birthday cake. 

This bookend is also tied very strongly to Jack. 

Dean asks about him in the opening scene and we learn Jack is holed up in his room, the episode going from having Jack hiding himself away, ashamed and self-hating in his room, to him sitting opposite Sam, expressing concern that they’re putting all their bets on him and he’s not sure he’ll be able to kill God, Sam offering assurance and Dean, through his cake-baking and happy birthday wishes, offering forgiveness and support.

It’s awesome! Beyond awesome! It’s bloody brilliant, is what it is!

Especially when looking at the implications it holds for Dean’s inner work: his inner child starts out locked away, fearful and despairing, being brought out of that room through the kind and supportive side to his internal femininity representative, only for that representative to turn around and step into the shoes of the toxic masculinity traits that have always been the source of Dean’s self-hatred, distrust and lack of faith in himself, and once being granted honesty from the ego (Dean’s consciousness admitting that he’s trying, he’s angry, maybe always will be, but he’s trying) his inner child ends up with the ego showing that inner child how much it matters, that it’s trusted, cared for and loved. 

*brains on ceiling*

Now, as mentioned briefly, the narrative gives us Dean’s inner femininity (Mrs. Butters) influenced by what is a clear toxic masculinity/Shadow character (Sinclair) and shows us why Dean is still wary of his inner child, still not entirely trusting, and it makes all the sense, especially now that the inner child has swallowed up the Shadow and incorporated it into himself. 

Mrs. Butters’ mistrust of Jack becomes emblematic of Dean’s own mistrust in himself, but his inner child knows better and Jack’s continous denial of Mrs. Butters’ accusations underscores this fact. There is self-trust within Dean. Stronger than the lingering mistrust.

All of this inner work for Dean and Sam’s the one who gets tortured?

Well, I can see good reason why Sam is Mrs. Butters’ favourite and it’s to do with how he’s so closely tied to Dean’s purpose in life. Mrs. Butters is a reflection of Dean, and as she moves into Protector of the Bunker she’s also a reflection of any lingering toxic masculinity within Dean, and how it’s always been trying to find a way to sink its claws in Sam, but Sam has never bought into the toxic masculinty spiel, and because of that he’s needed in this instance, to see through the behaviour, to push for compassion, to break through the brainwashing that Mrs. Butters is under, to point out how she was used, taken out of her true nature to do someone else’s bidding.

The most thrilling part is that it’s Dean who delivers the biggest missing piece to Mrs. Butters’ puzzle: the true nature of Jack. 

Because, looked at symbolically, Jack’s ability to save the world represents Dean’s inner child’s ability to save Dean.

Because if any side to Dean were to destroy/thoroughly repress his inner child, he’d be lost. He would never be able to heal. 

The fact that Dean gets to be the one to do this, to talk a representative of his own inner imbalance down, makes me giddy. 

He would not have been able to do this a season ago. He was barely able to do this at the beginning of this season, because he was so full of anger.

That anger, after voicing it to Cas, doesn’t hold the same sway anymore.

He freely admitted to Jack that he’s still angry, and perhaps he always will be a little angry, but he is trying, and this, to me, is enormous. He expressed his emotion and he’s in zero ways allowing that emotion to control his actions anymore.

And, hey, we got Dean, wearing purple, assuring Mrs. Butters that Jack is a good kid.

It’s just… happy happy joy joy!

And a standing ovation to Meagen Fay. She really helped make the episode compelling to watch, balancing Mrs. Butters’ homely and darling characteristics with the darker and MoL compelled Protector of the Bunker that slowly, but surely, reared its not-as-darling head. Kudos!

Right. I could write about this episode some more, because layers, but it’s time to leave off. One thing before I go, though: I loved that we finally had them talk about that big-ass telescope. And I love that it’s not a telescope, because it makes sense. They’re underground—how would they see the stars? I figured there was some sort of skylight somehow that would open or something but meh, dull. This is so much better! And I loved that the green colour of warning was actually to do with the fact that they’re now not being able to see anything through it, rather than the colour having to do exclusively with Mrs. Butters. Utterly brilliant! And… oh dear, what horrors lie ahead??

Now to go watch 15x15. 

I’m not biting my nails. 

At all.