#joe and love

[notastranger]

[heartshapelocket]

Is this too much to ask for ?

[thegirlwiththeblush]

Honest

- Love Quinn x Reader

- Word Count: 2,484

- Shared prompt with @vorsdany

Summary: Reader pursues a crush on Love Quinn, only to discover she’s not exactly what she seems. 

a/n: sometimes i just throw words together and they’re not great but i try

I’m not sure what it was that first caused me to fall for Love Quinn.  

It’s not that there wasn’t anything about her that stood out; quite the opposite, in fact. In a city full of self-absorbed, fame-hungry narcissists, her kind heart and unreserved smile were a sight for sore eyes. She never forgot a face, and she never refused anyone her time or her effort. Being the younger sibling of her twin brother Forty’s best friend, I’d had the opportunity to watch her grow into a strong and generous young woman.  

So it was really no wonder that I’d taken a fancy to her. But I wanted to know why it took so long.  

I remember the day I figured out that I was attracted to her; it wasn’t that the feelings developed then, but rather, it felt like I stumbled upon them, already existing, hidden deep in my mind.  

The four of us had been out picnicking, a rare opportunity we’d taken when the Quinns had the day off from Anavrin and my brother wasn’t working on one of his hundreds of projects. When our brothers had decided to crack open some beers and start discussing business concepts and Forty’s never-ending script ideas, Love and I excused ourselves to sit mindlessly and make daisy chains.  

“Y’know,” Love said, breaking the silence as she gently split a stem, “these are actually two flowers in one.”  

I raised an eyebrow in intrigue, waiting for her to elaborate. A lock of hair slipped over her shoulder from behind as she leaned forward, continuing.

“The yellow in the centre is a separate bloom from the petals,” she explained. “It turns out a plant is better at multitasking than humans are.”

I chuckled at her joke and returned my attention to my task. She began humming softly, a tune I couldn’t quite put my finger on, but the melody moved something in me. I looked up at her again, taking her all in; her hair draping into the long grass as she leaned forward, her long, slender fingers working delicately. She ceased her humming for a moment, and without moving her head, her eyes darted up to meet mine, a small smile breaking her focus as she caught me in the act. Then, as if nothing had happened, she continued her song, murmuring the lyrics, and even shuffling closer to me.  

The solace I found in her presence in that moment, the sense of safety and absolute comfort, awakened something in me.  

Hardly a day went by once I discovered my feelings for her that I didn’t pop in to Anavrin. I didn’t always say hi; sometimes I’d just watch her through the kitchen window, admiring her focus and enthusiasm as she baked and cooked for her friends. There was a good chance she knew I was there; if I ever encountered her in the store, she’d flash a knowing grin at me, as if she was proud of keeping my secrets to herself. Occasionally I was invited to events with her, Forty, and my brother, but these were rather infrequent, and far from enough to feed my curiosity, so I had to resort to my little spy missions.  

“I honestly don’t know why you like her so much,” Delilah said as she sipped at her smoothie. She sat across from me in our favourite café, an umbrella over our table protecting us from the unforgiving Los Angeles sun. I shifted shyly in my seat, the sweat on the back of my legs gluing me to it. Delilah was one of my closest friends, but she was never one to mince words, even with those she cared about; not to mention, with her independent mindset, she probably wouldn’t call me one of her closest friends.  

“The Quinns are just a bunch of rich, stuck-up bitches,” she continued, pushing her shades up to the top of her head as she sat back. “Love’s the only decent one, but even if she was worth it, I’d never marry into that family.”

No one said anything about marriage, but I could see her point.

“It’s nothing, really,” I insisted. “It’s probably just a passing fascination, honestly; no one else here is interesting enough.”

I expected her to get snarky about me inadvertently calling her uninteresting, but she simply stuck out her lower lip and tilted her head in agreement. “Everyone thinks they are,” she pointed out.  

Unfortunately, she had a solid point.  

That afternoon, after Delilah had gone back to the hotel she managed to check in on her younger sister, I gave in to my tendencies and headed towards Anavrin. I wondered if the other employees there were wary of me, always coming in and, most of the time, leaving with nothing. Not that it was going to stop me, but I didn’t want to come off as some loiterer or stalker.  

“Hello, again, stalker.”

I spun round to face Forty Quinn, raising an eyebrow to appear confused by his accusation. He smirked, not at all convinced by my ploy. “You have a contender,” he added innocently, gesturing in the direction I had been heading. Turning to follow his gaze, I saw a young man around Love’s age, chatting casually with Love. I blinked rapidly; she looked so engaged, so enraptured by him, that I immediately felt jealousy bubbling up in my throat.  

“You’re jealous.”  

I turned back to face him, shoving my emotions down. “I’m not,” I argued calmly. “I’m very happy for her actually.”

“Mhm.” He nodded sarcastically, obviously not buying it. “Maybe you should’ve made a move sooner, huh, sport?”  

I squinted at the nickname but didn’t have the courage to roll my eyes. Who knew what Forty could do to me if he got wound up. Instead, we both continued spying on the newbie and Love. They were too far for us to catch the entire conversation, but I heard enough to figure out his name was Will, and he’d just been hired to work in the Anavrin café. So he’s gonna be sticking around? Damn it.  

 It was Forty’s turn to raise an eyebrow at the long, wistful gaze they exchanged, before Love excused herself, leaving Will to watch her while Forty and I ducked behind a bookshelf to avoid Love.  

“Something definitely just blossomed there, sport,” he whispered to me, rubbing his chin thoughtfully with his thumb and forefinger. “I’m gonna have to keep a close eye on this Will guy.” He looked at me with a glint in his eye. “And you’re gonna have to up your game.”  

I left before I could get myself caught up in any more of Forty’s scheming, but not before buying a frosted bun from the café so as not to look suspicious.  

I wasn’t really sure what to expect when it came to Will. Love had never been interested in anyone since her husband James had passed; I’d always used this as an excuse for myself not to approach her with my feelings. But as I continued my little missions to Anavrin, and the more I observed Will, the more I began to question any chance I could have with the older Quinn twin. His character seemed so much deeper and more interesting than mine. He organized the bookshelves and stands in such a way that made him seem worthy of managing the store. Even Forty had taken a strong liking to him, enough to make me feel a twinge of jealousy.

“A good story cannot be devised,” Will said, speaking as if poor Forty could recognize literary quotations outside of comic strips and B-grade movie scripts, “it has to be distilled. That’s Raymond Chandler,” he added when Forty had no reaction but complete dissociation.  

Forty slapped Will’s shoulder in delight, saying “Exactly!”, trying to give the impression that he’d felt Will’s sentiment in the depths of his soul. The quotation would’ve been better appreciated by Love, and I hated that.  

Forty stepped back, surveying Will’s face in deep thought. “Sport,” he said. “Come with me to Harold night after work. I’m talent scouting.”

I turned away before I could catch more of the conversation and let it sting me any more. Sport. That was my nickname.  

Forty wasn’t the one I was trying to win over. But if he was a harbinger of what was to come, things weren’t looking so good.

As if things couldn’t get more complicated, my brother was offered an amazing business proposal out of state the very week I spotted Forty and Will chatting. A golden opportunity, there was no way he could turn it down; and while I’d never left California, there was no way I was sticking around if he wasn’t staying. Not when my two best friends were being snatched away from me by some tall, gangly nerd.  

Unless.

Maybe there was still some chance I could win Love over, if I was finally honest with her.

The next time I came into Anavrin, Love was in the kitchen; fortunately, the Quinns had given my brother and I complete access to the store, and most of the staff knew me. I made my way through the halls of lockers, fighting the urge to flip off Will as I passed him.

I opened the kitchen door softly so as not to startle Love, and blushed a little when a surprised smile came over her face at the sight of me. “Good morning,” she greeted as she slid some oven mitts on, “care for a muffin?”

I closed the door behind me and pulled up a chair next to the counter. “What kind?”

“Apple cinnamon,” she replied. I bristled as a wave of heat from the oven washed over me, and Love removed a tray from inside. The most tantalizing smell overwhelmed my nostrils, and my mouth immediately started watering. Good Lord, I was gonna have to be at my most vulnerable during this difficult conversation; I really had my work cut out for me.

  “What brings you here, other than my unmatchable baking skills?” she asked. She handed me a muffin on a paper towel, the sweet aroma floating up into my face. I breathed in deep before answering.  

“I’m sure Forty’s told you about my brother,” I began, before blowing on the muffin and taking a bite. An impossibly perfect texture; it held its shape when bitten into, but melted in the mouth. Why did everything she did have to be absolutely flawless?  

“Yeah, he mentioned it yesterday,” she agreed, leaning back against the bench with a muffin of her own. “I’m excited for him! Are you moving with him?”

And here we were. The moment I’d denied myself for so long, but had no choice but to face now.  

“That’s actually why I came to see you,” I said, lowering my voice. “I’m not sure.”

She tilted her head curiously. “Where do you feel more drawn to?”

I took another mouthful of muffin to stall myself up, before looking up to meet her gaze. Swallowing hard, the cinnamon flavour suddenly making breathing more difficult, I mumbled, “I feel drawn to you, Love.”

She grinned widely. “Aw, that’s sweet! I think you’re a great friend, too.”

I closed my eyes slowly. She was only making this more difficult. I bit my lip before adding, “I’m drawn to you in a way friends don’t understand.”  

I didn't open my eyes. I was afraid of what I'd find; embarrassment? Disgust? A mix of both? My chances with her seemed to be growing slimmer the longer I gazed at the back of my eyelids, so I finally gave in and looked back up.  

But what I saw deeply unsettled me. Her gaze had turned dark, her beaming expression completely erased.  

“You don’t want me,” she murmured, her voice and tone lowered to an almost-deathly note. “Trust me.”

I blinked, putting the muffin on the bench behind me as I tried to recover my voice. “Wh-what do you mean?”

“You don’t know what I’m capable of,” she continued. “What I’ve done.”

What was she talking about? The way she spoke, it didn’t seem like she was just talking about relationships...

“Listen,” she said, stepping away from the bench and towards me. I felt as if I should get up and step back, but I didn’t move. “I think it’d be wise if you moved with your brother, okay? Feelings come and go... and they, can’t be trusted.”  

And in that moment, as Love gazed down at me, with a look that didn’t belong to any Love I thought I knew, I didn’t love her.

I feared her.  

I left with an abrupt farewell, leaving the muffin behind due to a sudden loss of appetite. The moment I got home, I began packing my things to move with my brother.  

As months passed, I’ll admit, I couldn’t help but keep tabs on Love. While the things she’d said to me had frightened me in a way I couldn’t understand, curiosity got the best of me; maybe I could uncover whatever secret she held that separated her from the Love I thought I’d loved. I watched as she married Will, had a child with him, moved to Madre Linda to have more privacy (not enough to evade my stalking).  

All through that time, I tried to bring up what had happened with my brother. He called me paranoid, told me I was overthinking or reading into her words, but I never backed down. The Love I’d seen that morning was someone to be wary of. I wanted to prove it to him so badly.  

Until she died.

The story managed to make it to a news channel in LA, so it required no stalking on my part. After sending out a suicide note, Love had burned down her home, with her and Joe inside. No one yet knew what had become of their son, Henry, but they’d found remains of the two of them in the aftermath of the fire.  

“Fucking hell,” my brother murmured, resting his head in one hand as he watched the article play out. “When you told me she was crazy...” He waved his other hand at the TV. “I’d never expected this.”  

I bit my lip and asked him to change the channel. I stared at the TV, trying to keep my attention on the mindless sitcom he’d switched it to. It bugged me, that after I’d been honest and open for the first time in all my life, I’d been given dishonesty and mystery in return. But, of course, there was nothing I could do now. There was no way I could find out what she’d meant that day, or what she’d done that made her someone to be afraid of.  

Maybe it was best to let sleeping dogs lie, and forget all about Love Quinn.

[lilmackiereads]

YOU LOVE ME (2021) BY CAROLINE KEPNES SPOILER FREE BOOK REVIEW:

I have been meaning to do this for a month now so bear with me! I wanted to finish it in time for the fourth installment to come out and I’m SO REEAAADYY FOR MORE JOE GOLDBERG CONTENT <3 

SPOILER REVIEW HERE

My Score Chart:

0 Stars = Hate it/ Regret reading it

1 Star = Meh, not for me

2 Stars = Ok/ neutral

3 Stars = I liked it

4 Stars = I loved it

5 Stars = One of my favorite books ever!

Overall Rating and Basic Summary: 3.5 Stars

Out of the three You books I have read [as the fourth installment, For You and Only You (2023) just came out in April and I haven’t had a chance to start it yet] this is my second favorite. My favorite is the first book in the series, You (2014) [4 stars], and my least favorite so far is Hidden Bodies (2016) [3 stars]. If you are a fan of the first two books or the tv show I would recommend reading it, however, book 3 and season 3 are completely different in almost every way possible, so make sure you can separate them. I read You Love Me after completing season 3 so I was able to keep them apart. However, if I had read the book first, I may have been nitpicking the series for diverging so much from the text. YET, in the show’s defense, season 3 was filmed before book 3 came out, hence the major differences of the storylines and character arcs.

Similarities and Differences to the season 3 of the tv series (sans major spoilers other than basic plot and character definition):

While the tv show follows the first two books pretty closely, season 3 takes place in California in a small suburban town where Joe and Love are married and raising their newborn son, Henry. Love just opened a bakery and Joe is working at the local library. Murder ensues and lots of cheating and scandal yada yada. His main love interest outside of Love is a librarian named Marienne who has a past of substance/ drug abuse and is doing her best to remain clean to gain custody of her elementary-school aged daughter. Instead, in the book, Joe is living without Love and Henry in Washington state and he is working at a library. Of course, he soon becomes interested in his librarian boss named Mary Kay DiMarco.  

Other than Marienne and Mary Kay both working in libraries, being mothers, and having names that start with “M,” they are completely different characters. Also, all the annoying neighbors and cheating storylines from season 3 don’t exist in the book which I am grateful for since I couldn’t stand those aspects. Regardless, the last episode of the season 3 of the tv show was wild and I enjoyed it.

In the novel, we have a bunch of new characters for Joe to interact with. Mary Kay has two toxic friends, Melanda and Seamus aka “Shortus” plus a has-been rock n’roll husband with infidelity issues, Phil. Of course, Joe doesn’t approve of any of these people in her life and makes moves to remove them. He sees himself as a soon-to-be step-dad who is making life better for Mary Kay and her teenage daughter, Nomi whom he calls “Meerkat.” In this version, Love and baby Henry are in and out of Joe’s life as well as the Quinn’s kinda-sorta-hit-man, Oliver.

Without giving spoilers as to who lives and who dies, I thought that the build-up of the plot was a bit slow until about 100-150 pages which felt very heavy on the exposition of what happened between books two and three. Once the first character is in Joe’s grasp, I began to get interested. The strength of this book was absolutely the climax. The last 100 pages were an absolute WILD ride and I felt like I was truly on a rollercoaster with the back-to-back twists. It’s really hard to surprise me with a twist, so this was excellent!

I feel like I can’t really give the book characters reviews out of 5 because Joe’s perspective of everyone is so skewed. I disliked most of the new characters, but I am not sure how much of that is due to their actual personalities or Joe’s extreme loathing of them. Either way, making a reader feel those emotions is an indicator of good writing since it shows realistic, flawed characters. 

Would I recommend reading this book?

YES, but only if you read the other two first. I don’t think you have to watch the show to enjoy the books, but Joe references past characters often and I think it’s important to read the prior two books to understand his psyche. 

Would I read this book again?

Honestly, I sort of want to re-read it already because I just finished season 4 of the series and I just can’t get enough of Joe. Perhaps after I finish book 4 I’ll read them all again. 

[livelovecaliforniadreams]

[willpowers]

anyways while senshi is canonically a feminine elf mithrun is canonically a masculine one since like senshi with all his alternate race appearances making him look more cute and feminine mithruns other race appearances have him as an absolute hunk of a man like kabru is fucking teaching self care to a middle aged veteran who sometimes says racist shit like you think kabru ever sighed and was like 'lets get you to bed soldier you're talking nonsense about half foots again"

[johnny-depp-is-loved]

for those who are devastated about the election results right now, here’s your gently reminder to take some time offline, read your favorite book, write that fic you’ve been wanting to write, play with your pets, watch that film on your to-watch list, rewatch your comfort tv show, drink some water, get yourself something delicious, have a nice and relaxing bath, look at the pretty skies and take a deep breath. you’ve survived this far and you will continue to survive. this is not the end ♡

[citrighost]

[ngatwa]

I know how you feel about him. I watch you, Agatha. Just as closely as you watch everyone else. This walk with another woman's son on a road that doesn't…

[d0rianw1lde]

Eddie WOULD write love songs for Steve, you guys just aren’t creative enough.

“But he likes metal!” I hear you shout. I shut your lips. He likes metal, yes, but I think a lot of you are confusing the type of metal Eddie listens to with like, hardcore black metal.

Eddie Munson listens to Metallica, Motorhead, Ronnie Dio, all THREE of which have love songs in their discography. Sure, he’s not writing about how much he loves the feeling of Steve’s lips against his and how the sun hits Steve’s eyes at just the right angle or something, but he IS writing about a looming monster, imprisoning him in chains that wrap tightly around his soul like a curse. A fire-breathing demon that pulls him back from his true desires- to capture the forbidden idol from its temple and slay the monster once and for all. He IS writing about running away with precious jewels and destroying all that comes in his path.

Eddie Munson’s writing Wizard-metal love songs about Steve Harrington in a language he’ll never understand. His band loves it because it’s fantastical, it’s intense, it’s metal. Eddie likes it because it’s about the feeling of loving someone that, to his knowledge, he can never have.

You guys gotta start getting wild with it, man. Because the Eddie I know is putting it all on the line tbh.

[glxybld-mustdie]

mentally i’m here

⬇️⬇️⬇️

please take me back to 2005 i need to go to this tour like i need to breath

[akamitrani]

Behold, ginger twinks supremacy.

[p00pdev1l]

how I feel reading monster fucking fics first thing in the morning

[holyblanchett]

I used to pray for times like this

[livelovecaliforniadreams]

Narlie + Favorite Parallels, Callbacks, Foreshadowing, & Glowups (Season 3)

[zhukzucraft]

Wither: Ascend