#last year at this time I had a group of at least ten close online friends I talked to constantly I was getting attention online from

[milo-is-rambling]

I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this

[riversofmars]

I see. Well I find companion support group absolutely amazing, been reading any fics on that especially ones with other companions being added but no one includes Grace Holloway. I asked someone else actively doing requests but turns out they haven't even seen the TV movie :( So was just wondering if you would be interested.

Alright, lovely Anon, here we are!! I really hope you like this, it ended up a lot longer than anticipated but it as a lot of fun and I don't do 'short', really, so XD

I hope you don't mind, I ended up combining two things: Grace's experience of visiting London and the support group and Liv's experience of staying in London post "Stranded". The two really compliment each other! Yes, somehow this turned into another Stranded Fix-It, sue me. Rating G, Length 7.3k, might be worth reading this one on AO3 rather than under the cut lol!

Hope you like it!

Missed Opportunities

Grace nearly turned around and walked away. It would have been a waste of a lot of money and holiday time but now that she was here, she simply felt stupid. "Here" was London. She had made the journey across the pond on nothing but a hunch and a memory. A memory that was over twenty years old. The average active working memory of a human was about ten years, she knew, things older tended to fade with the exception of deeply memorable events. After such a long time she couldn't be sure her memory was entirely accurate but things had certainly been... memorable. One mad New Year's Eve at the turn of the millennium...

Years later, whenever she spoke of it to anyone, they would make fun of her, assuming she'd simply had a bit too much to drink that night and ended in a vivid dream. Sometimes, when she was feeling particularly low, she almost believed that too. She rarely spoke of it now, to anyone. Most of the time, she didn't think about it at all anymore. She had carried on with her life, her career, had found love again and married, and things had been good... but there had always been that nagging feeling of a missed opportunity; of something amazing that she had allowed to slip through her fingers.

The Doctor. The Doctor and his mad blue box of tricks. The Master and his evil plan that they had foiled at the last moment. The Doctor's offer to see the universe with him. And the regret she felt for having turned him down. All but a distant dream.

At least until she had come across a social media post that struck too close to home. She hadn't even been thinking about the Doctor and New Year's 2000 at the time. She had been reading an article about the state of the UK's National Health Service and felt for her colleagues across the pond, but then, something in one of the comments on the article had given her pause. Things had spiralled from there. She had taken a deep dive into conspiracy theories, far removed from her scientific nature, and found an awful lot more than she had ever dreamed of.

And now she was in London, standing in front of what looked like a community centre with a support group advertised on the door. Of course it wasn't really a bereavement and loss counseling group - at least from what she had been able to find online. That was just a cover story. One could hardly advertise a meeting group for people who had once encountered a time travelling alien... and yet, she had made the jump across the pond with no other reason in mind. If it was a waste of her time, it would teach her not to trust things she found on the internet but if it wasn't... she had so many questions. Questions that had been weighing on her for over twenty years and if she could get answers to some of them, it would be well worth the trouble.

That, however, meant she had to take the plunge and actually go in.

Grace took a deep breath. She was a successful heart surgeon, accomplished and admired in every way, she could manage the task of walking inside a building, even taking the risk of making a fool of herself. What did she have to lose? No-one here knew her.

"Are you looking for something?" A voice drew her out of her internal conflict and made her jump.

"S-Sorry?" The surgeon stuttered, her head snapping around. She felt as if she had been caught red-handed, even if she knew she had done nothing wrong.

"It's just... you've been standing here a while." The voice belonged to a woman, slightly younger than Grace herself and significantly shorter, with shoulder-length brunette hair and bright eyes. Her brow had knitted into her curious frown as she approached.  

"Yeah I... I'm not sure I'm in the right place." Grace didn't know what to make of her. 

"You're not from around here, are you?" The brunette observed, tilting her head a little. "The accent," she clarified before the surgeon could muster a response. "I'm not either but I've been here a while now so... maybe I can help? What are you looking for?" It was a kind offer but Grace felt it wasn't one she could actually take her up on. That would have involved explaining why she was here...

"You'll laugh if I tell you," she tried to put her off and the other woman gave her a smile that did wonders to lighten her otherwise surly demeanour.

"I've heard it all. Don't worry," she gave back kindly and cast a glance towards the community centre. "What makes you come all this way from the US?"

"I-" Even if she had wanted to tell her, Grace wouldn't have known where to start. She was beginning to feel incredibly silly. "I'm sorry, this was a mistake, I don't know why I came here." She shook her head, looked up the road for a way out of the awkward situation. Her husband would laugh when he found out she had chickened out. He had been ever so supportive and encouraged her to go, hoping she would find some answers to the questions that had bothered her for the past twenty years. At least he believed her when so many others did not. He would be disappointed, surely, unless he had just indulged her all this time…

Grace turned to leave but then, the woman said something that made her stop dead in her tracks.

"You wouldn't happen to know a blue police box, would you?" She questioned and Grace whipped around.

"How do you-" She stared at her and the brunette grinned triumphantly.

"Thought as much," she chuckled and pulled a hand from her jumper, extending it. "I'm Liv Chenka."

Grace blinked, overwhelmed for a moment. If she knew about the police box it meant that- The surgeon wrestled her emotions back in check and quickly grasped her hand.

"Grace. Grace Holloway," she introduced herself and Liv smiled, almost knowingly.

"He's talked about you," she observed as she retreated her hand.

"What?"

"The Doctor," the brunette elaborated, her expression a picture of kindness. "We went to San Francisco once. 'Died and born again here' he said, of course we made him tell us about it," there was a certain wistfulness in her voice. "Lovely city, though I suppose we were there a bit before your time." Grace couldn't believe what she was hearing. Well, she could and she couldn't. It was utterly ridiculous. The woman in front of her insisted she had travelled in time with the person she had come to doubt ever existed. It was a lot to take in, almost more than she could comprehend, but the one thing that struck her, the one thing that stuck was: She hadn't made it up. The Doctor was real. And he was out there.

"So I-" She struggled for composure, tears of relief after years of nagging doubts and pent up tension threatened to overcome her.

"Are you okay?" Liv's expression turned to concern. She took a step closer but didn't seem to dare to reach out, not when Grace was visible trying to keep herself together.

"Yes... yes... I just... it's been twenty years... I thought perhaps..." She drew a deep breath and turned her gaze skywards to prevent her tears from falling. "I thought perhaps I had just made the whole thing up," she confessed at last.

"You haven't," Liv offered gently and didn't push for further explanation. Perhaps, Grace thought, if she knew the Doctor, she understood just what she was going through. "Do you want to come in?" The brunette offered and gestured towards the door of the community centre.

"I... I guess I should..." Grace remained hesitant. She followed her gaze. Where before, she had had doubts about why she was even here, she now found herself wondering if she had any place to be. She had met the Doctor only once whereas Liv seemed to know him better than that...

"Don't worry. We don't bite. Everyone's lovely and we all have stories to tell," Liv encouraged her, seemingly sensing her hesitation.

"So you... you travelled with him? Actually travelled in time?" Grace asked, feeling a twinge of jealousy at the notion, and the other woman nodded.

"I did, yeah, for a long time," she gave back and there was that wistfulness again. No, more than wistfulness. It was sadness. Sorrow.

"And now you're..." The surgeon wanted to ask more, even if it probably wasn't her place, but Liv interrupted her, gently, but decisively.

"Not," she clarified curtly. "We'll be late if we don't go in."

"Right, okay..." Grace nodded and Liv smiled before climbing the steps and holding the door open for her.

---

Grace wasn't sure what she had expected, but what she found was rather similar to the average AA meeting portrayed on TV. They were sitting in a circle on uncomfortable chairs with makeshift name tags and tea in paper cups. She usually would have preferred coffee over tea but since she was in the UK, she figured she ought to adapt. So she sipped the hot liquid and got absorbed in the task of assessing the people around the room. They were all sorts of ages, some older, some significantly younger than her. They had greeted her kindly and Grace had taken a seat next to Liv, accepting her unspoken offer of being her guide through it all.

The brunette had taken it upon herself to introduce her to everyone: A lovely elderly chap called Ian, a bubbly blonde by the name of Jo. Mel, a kind lady who had come to sit on her other side. There were Tegan and Ace and Kate... all pleasantly inquiring about her journey here... A young girl - Yaz - had greeted her eagerly, always happy to meet new people. And there were more: Graham, Ryan, Dan, Osgood, Martha, Gwen, Harry... Liv had explained that there were a lot more and that attendance fluctuated but already, Grace found herself overwhelmed by the sheer amount of people the Doctor had encountered in one way or another.

"We have a new member," Graham announced, making Grace snap to attention. She hadn't expected to take an active role in proceedings, she would have been quite content to simply sit and listen, but it seemed that was not to be.

"I- Yes, I- When I found out about this group I thought I ought to-" She blushed a little, uncomfortable in the centre of attention. Where the Doctor was concerned, she was out of her depth.

"You've come a long way," Kate observed kindly.

"Yes. I met the Doctor in San Francisco over twenty years ago..." Grace said and found everyone listening intently, with kind smiles and genuine interest. No-one was doubting her. No-one was making fun of her. And everyone understood. It was a wonderfully freeing feeling and she felt encouraged for it. "Just the once and I-" She took a deep breath. "I don't have that much of a story to tell, it was one night. One mad night of adventure, dealing with the Master and… I guess I'm just glad to have confirmed that I didn't make up the whole thing." 

"Well, you are in good company," Ace smiled and Grace felt as though a great burden was lifted off her shoulders at last. 

"It's difficult when no-one else understands... but we do. We've all been there, love," Jo said, seemingly sensing her emotional state.

"Thank you, that- that actually means a lot," Grace nodded gratefully and managed a small smile of her own while everyone beamed at her.

"It means a lot to all of us," Yaz replied. " The Doctor means a lot to all of us and being able to share our adventures, even if they're over... whether they were a big or a small part of our lives, we were all changed by it. We learned that there was so much more in the universe and that's such a wonderful gift." Her words betrayed a wisdom Grace wouldn't have thought someone as young as her capable of and her words shone with such affection, it was lovely to hear and lifted the surgeon's spirits more than she had thought possible. Perhaps she really had done the right thing by making the trip.

"The journey never ends," Tegan hummed in agreement and Yaz nodded.

"It doesn't," she agreed. "And we may see them again. Or we may not and that's also... fine..." It was obvious that the latter was something Yaz struggled voicing but she managed it. "But we're all connected by that wonderful, wondrous thing and that's something so special."

Grace found herself nodding, her heart a little lighter, even as she noticed Liv slumping in her chair beside her. Before she had a chance to enquire or wonder about the heaviness of her demeanour, Osgood demanded Grace's attention.

"What was your Doctor like? What did he look like? Where does he fit in?" She asked eagerly.

"Well, he... he was this little man before, he had been shot and... I was operating on him but he had two hearts!" Grace recalled, unpleasantly reminded by her failure to save his life back then.

"That can be quite confusing," Martha chuckled.

"I think I may have... killed him... by accident," Grace confessed, mortified by the whole experience.

"Let's just assume it was the gunshot wounds," Kate interjected.

"But then he came back. With a younger face and dark curls. He was quite dashing," the surgeon continued and a smile came to her lips as the memories took shape in her mind.

"Oh, that's him, alright," Liv hummed beside her. "Fairly certain we know the same Doctor. 

"So how many are there?" Grace asked, curious beyond belief by this point.

"Well, that's quite the difficult question," Osgood adjusted the glasses on her nose, obviously ready to launch into lengthy explanation but Mel interrupted:

"I remember his blonde curls..." she smiled fondly.

"I have met a fair few, it's quite the change every time," Kate carried on and Yaz shook her head, bemused:

"I always struggle to imagine her as a bloke!"

"Imagine our surprise!" Tegan shot back and the room descended into laughter, all except for Liv, as Grace noted with curiosity and concern. Something seemed to be weighing heavily on her and the surgeon wasn't sure whether if it was any of her business to try to figure out what it was. The brunette had been so kind to offer her help tomake this big step that meant so much to her, she would gladly return the favour.

"This is an awful lot to wrap your head around..." She stated, once the laughter had died down. "I never expected all this... it's more than I could have hoped for." And it really was. After over twenty years, she finally felt understood.

"You're one of us, Grace, feel free to dial in any time. I imagine making the trip would be quite the expense every time, what, without a TARDIS," Graham offered kindly.

"Thank you. Thank you all so very much, it just... thank you. It's wonderful to be surrounded by people that understand," she nodded gratefully, regarding each and every one of them with a smile.

"Oh boy, do we understand," Jo grinned. "Let me tell you about the time-"

---

When the meeting concluded, Grace felt it had been over far too quickly. As she said her goodbyes, it didn't feel like an end though, it felt like the beginning of many wonderful friendships and she couldn't be happier. With numbers and email addresses exchanged, she felt like she was well set up for the future. She would have stayed longer, chatting some more, if she hadn't noticed Liv making for the exit all by herself.

Grace quickly said her final goodbyes and rushed after her.

"Where are you going now?" She inquired boldly once she caught up with her outside.

"Just... home, I guess..." Liv answered slowly, surprised to have been followed.

"Do you want to grab a coffee? I haven't really got anything else planned and I- we didn't get to talk much," she observed and it was true. Everyone had spoken at length about their time with the Doctor, answered Grace's questions and shared their experiences. Liv, however, had remained pensive through most of it.

"Sure... why not..." The brunette shrugged and forced a smile. Her demeanour seemed changed to before the meeting, almost as if the event had taken a lot out of her. Perhaps it had... Grace was determined to find out as they headed towards a Costa Coffee across the road.

“You said you weren’t from around here?” Grace made a bold opening once they were seated, eager to find out more about her and thus, perhaps, learn what was bothering her. “Where is home for you?”

“Kaldor,” Liv answered simply and when it became obvious that Grace was at a bit of a loss, she elaborated: “A different planet.”

“Wow, that’s…” the surgeon didn’t know what to say to that and the brunette smiled, though the joy didn’t quite reach her eyes. 

“Been here a while now…” 

“Must be quite the change,” Grace observed and Liv gave a little shrug with her eyes angled down, watching her coffee splash up the sides of her mug as she stirred it.

“You could say that,” she hummed and Grace decided to take the plunge.

"If you don't mind me asking... you don't seem... happy... here,” she stated gently as that much was blindingly obvious. 

"I'm not," Liv shrugged nonchalantly and the surgeon was taken aback by her candour. It seemed as though she didn't see a need in pretending otherwise.

"Then why..." Grace wasn't sure how to phrase her question. What she wanted to ask was ‘Why would you stop travelling with the Doctor if you miss it so much’ but she couldn't very well say that, could she? Fortunately, Liv elaborated without her having to enquire.

"I... made a mistake... asked the Doctor to leave me here and I shouldn't have... now it's too late," she explained bitterly and indignantly dropped her spoon onto the saucer.

"You can't... you can't call him or-" Grace wasn't sure how the whole thing worked. Her experience was rather limited but she felt she ought to say something like it. 

"Doesn't work like that," Liv hummed miserably. "I wish I-" She took a deep breath but caught herself before saying any more. "You don't need to hear this." She shook her head and gave her a sad smile before she took a sip of her drink.

"I turned him down," Grace blurted out, voicing something she had purposefully not mentioned at the meeting and had had no intention of sharing with anyone, but suddenly she felt like she needed to. "The Doctor," she clarified when Liv raised her eyebrows at her. "He said I could come with him but I... didn't."

"And you regret it," the brunette observed with a knowing smile.

"A bit... maybe... I don't know. We had a mad adventure and that was quite the experience but I had a life... I still do. And I'm happy. Sometimes I just wonder what else there could have been," she gave a small shrug and awkward smile.

"A hell of a lot, is what. But if you're happy, that's not a bad place to be," Liv hummed after brief consideration. "Life with the Doctor is brilliant but also... it's not fulfilling in the same way. He's just... he's a mad dream. And he changes, as you've heard. He doesn't tie himself to one person or one companion or- Times change. He changes. Nothing is forever when you're with the Doctor," she gave a bitter laugh and Grace's heart went out to her. While she was lacking a lot of pieces to the puzzle, her pain was more than obvious. Liv dropped her eyes, taking keen interest in her coffee again as she fiddled with a napkin. "That concept of lasting happiness and fulfillment... that thing that humans need... you can't find that in him. You find that in-"

"Another human?" Grace offered as suddenly, the penny dropped.

"For instance, yeah," Liv mumbled and they way her shoulders slumped and she wiped her eyes awkwardly, told the surgeon everything she needed to know.

"So you weren't alone when you travelled with him? There was someone else?" She deduced. "Earlier when you said about visiting San Francisco, you said 'we made him tell us'."

"You are observant," Liv mumbled and Grace smiled:

"I'm a doctor, I have an eye for detail."

"I'm a doctor too, actually... well, a med-tech..." the brunette replied after a brief pause of heavy silence.

"You are?" Grace's eyebrows shot up, curious and eager to learn every detail she was willing to share.

"Yeah. In the future, in the 30 th century, which is where I'm from, medical professionals are called med-techs," she explained.

"30 th century?!" Grace gaped and Liv gave a little chuckle, a momentary reprieve from the heaviness that seemed to engulf her.

"So you can imagine 21 st century medicine is just not for me... I miss practising... I miss working..." She sunk into herself once more. "One of the many disappointments..."

"Why did you ask to stay here? If you don't mind my asking," Grace decided to brave the question. She was sure the other woman would simply refuse her if she pushed too far. She seemed like the sort of person that would.

"I... I met someone here," Liv answered after a moment of deliberation in which she seemed to be weighing her options. In the end, she appeared to settle on letting her in and Grace thought that maybe, Liv, too, needed someone to understand her. "We were stranded for a while in 2020 when the TARDIS wasn't working and... things were going well, I thought it would... it was nice, good, for a while but it didn't last. There was just too much that made me unhappy here. The fact I couldn't work. Knowing I would never see my sister again... Missing my-" Liv broke off and Grace thought she knew where she was going.

"The other person that was travelling with you?"

"Sometimes you just can't see what's right in front of you, can you..." the med-tech gave a sad smile.

"I'm sorry," Grace offered as there wasn't much else she could say. What was there to say? She knew all about missed opportunities...

"Me too," Liv took a deep breath. "But what's done is done, I'm stuck here now and... What about you? Sounds like you made the right decision staying here. New isn't always better," she seemed eager to change the topic.

"I still would have liked to see some of the universe, I think..." the surgeon answered softly.

"Who knows... maybe he'll pop by eventually and you can ask for a little trip. If he does, you better call me though so he can-" Liv stopped herself once more, apparently unwilling to indulge the hope that she didn't seem to have anymore.

"There must be something you can do," Grace reached out across the table for Liv's hand and gave it a squeeze of comfort. "You can't just... I mean, what do you do? If you can't work, if you-" She didn't want her to give up. It simply felt wrong. For someone to be stuck in the wrong time, the wrong place, all alone. She wished there was something she could do to help.

"Sit at home, mostly, dream about the stars... I mean, I can do some things... UNIT... this top secret government organisation that Kate Stewart runs? I help them every now and then with technology, freelance, sort of... but it's... when I get home, I'm still all alone," Liv confessed miserably. "And Tania- that's who I was with, who I stayed for... She's lovely. She still tries to be a friend to me but it's... it's not fair on her and I don't want to be a burden, I just want-" Tears welled up in her expressive eyes.

"Your other friend back?" Grace made an educated guess. "It's not really about the Doctor, is it?"

"Yeah..." Liv mumbled and a thought struck the surgeon.

"Have you told anyone else?" She questioned, considering the effort it had taken to get the truth out of the med-tech.

"What do you mean?" Liv frowned.

"The rest of the group? You were there but you... well, everyone had something to say but you didn't," Grace observed. Everybody had been so eager in their response, so kind, Grace couldn't imagine they wouldn't want to help Liv as well if she had said what was weighing on her.

"I've told them about my adventures with the Doctor," the med-tech answered, almost defensively.

"But have you told them about this? That you want to find a way to get back to them?" Grace wasn't dissuaded.

"They don't need to hear about my heartbreak," Liv huffed.

"Maybe they do. Maybe someone has a way to, I don't know, reach out?" The surgeon carried on. "Unless you tell them that you need help, that you're unhappy, they won't think to offer it."

"I suppose..." the med-tech mumbled.

"What about that technology that you were talking about? From UNIT? Could you not-" She was stabbing in the dark now. She had no idea what it took to reach out to the Doctor but surely with all the expertise gathered in that community centre, they could work something out. The other former companions all seemed to have closure, Liv, however...

"What's the use... why would they take me back after I walked away?" The med-tech huffed and Grace felt she was getting closer to the root course of it all.

"So the reason is not that you couldn't reach out, it's that you won't," she deduced and Liv couldn't muster a response. She simply looked incredibly guilty and it was all the confirmation Grace needed so she carried on: "I mean, I'm a heart surgeon, not a psychiatrist but... maybe forgive yourself for your mistake, be ready to admit to it and... try. Just try. Else you will regret it for the rest of your life." That was something she could attest to and Liv easily picked up on it too:

"Like you're regretting not going with the Doctor?"

"A missed opportunity, yes..." she admitted with a wistful smile. "Perhaps we could... both... just... try. See what happens. And if nothing comes of it at least we can say we tried."

"Are you hoping I can get you a meeting with the Doctor?" Liv raised her eyebrows and her lips curled into a smile that blew away the heaviness of the moment. It felt as though they were coming out the other side at last.

"Maybe..." Grace gave a sheepish grin as well as she felt the atmosphere around them lighten with a sudden rush of excitement and optimism. Perhaps it was false hope but what if it wasn't… It was the sort of closure she felt she needed after everything and well, her new friend stood a lot more to gain.

"Bit cheeky, isn't it? Bit selfish," Liv grinned, amused.

"It would mean reuniting you with your friend, too," Grace reminded her and Liv didn't seem able to argue with that. Instead she confessed:

"I left because I didn't think Helen would ever feel the same way about me as I did for her and I thought at least with Tania, I could find some measure of contentment."

"But you didn't," Grace deduced, understanding at last with all the cards on the table.

"I didn't," Liv admitted sorrowfully.

"Does it matter how Helen feels about you?" Grace asked tentatively. Without knowing any of the women in question, it was difficult to judge the situation. The best she could hope for was that Liv would explain in greater detail.

"She's likely angry..." the med-tech mumbled, hanging her head. "She didn't want me to leave but she also didn't- I wanted her to say something, for her to admit that- if-" she gestured vaguely at nothing at all and Grace understood anyway. "I shouldn't have pushed, I should have been happy to just have her in my life in whatever capacity and not been so selfish." She gnawed her bottom lip anxiously. "I don't know if she'd forgive me."

"Surely it's worth a shot," the surgeon offered gently. "I think you've punished yourself enough."

"Do you... do you really think so?" Liv sounded ever so insecure as she looked up to her and Grace smiled:

"If you have a way to contact them, if you have that opportunity... don't miss it."

"Come on then," Liv jumped to her feet, releasing her hand and abandoning her coffee.

"Where are we going?" Grace frowned, confused.

"My place. And I'm warning you now, it's a state." She barely looked back as she spoke, making for the door.

"And what-" The surgeon scrambled to grab her handbag and downed the rest of her coffee in one go.

"I've built something... I signalling device... with bits and pieces I took from UNIT. I just haven't..." Liv waved for her to come along and she did.

"Why not?" Grace couldn't believe what she was hearing.

"I didn't think it was a good idea, I didn't think I..." Liv let her voice trail off as she left the coffee shop. Once out in the fresh air, the med-tech took a deep breath, gathering her thoughts and her emotions before she squared her jaw and made a decision: "But you're right, I just need to take the plunge and- and even if Helen doesn't want me there, at least I can ask the Doctor to take me to Kaldor where my sister is... at least there I can work and have an actual life..."

"That sounds like a good idea," Grace agreed, it made a lot of sense and she was swept up in her excitement as they hurried up the street.

"Besides... you came all this way to London, can't have you waste another opportunity," Liv grinned, casting a sideways glance at her.

"Thank you," the surgeon gave a weak smile as well.

"Don't thank me yet. I don't even know if it'll work. Or if the right Doctor will turn up, or-" Liv fixed her eyes forward once more.

"But at least we will have tried," Grave interjected and the med-tech nodded in agreement:

"At least we will have tried." That's all any of them could do.

---

"This is..." Grace didn't really have words to describe the state of her new friend's flat at 107 Baker Street. 'Mess' was probably the most accurate term. Dishes were stacked high. The place could do with a good hoover and dusting. There was stuff everywhere. She didn't need to be a psychiatrist to spot the symptoms of depression littered around the place.

"I did tell you not to expect too much," Liv didn't pay much attention to her, she marched over to a shelf. "Now let me just..." 

What struck Grace was how empty the place seemed once you looked past the mess. There wasn't much in the way of personal effects, just a few books and dvds here and there but otherwise, not much filled the empty space and empty life... One thing she spotted as she wandered over to the sofa was a stack of photos. They lay spread over the setteegb and coffee table, some had even dropped to the floor. They were snapshots as one might take with their phone and they featured three people again and again. Liv, of course, was in many of them and there was the Doctor. Grace recognised him immediately even if his wardrobe was a little less extravagant and his hair had had a cut. His smile was as radiant as ever. There was a second woman too. A blonde with a bright smile and kind eyes. It didn't take a genius to work out that this was Helen. She was in almost every picture, the obvious object of adoration of the photographer.

"These are lovely pictures," Grace observed as she picked one from the pile in which the three of them were beaming at the camera while eating ice cream.

"It's... it's all I have of them," Liv answered in a small voice and blushed self-consciously.

"It's definitely him," the surgeon pointed out the Doctor and Liv nodded as she made her way over, carrying a small device unlike anything Grace had ever seen before.

"Good," the med-tech smiled as she set it down on the coffee table. “That should make things easier if this does work…”

"And this is Helen I take it?" Grace asked, pointing out the blonde in the picture and the way Liv's face lit up told her everything she needed to know.

"Yeah..." She reached out and took the picture, brushing her thumb across the surface before gathering the pile together. Grace noticed the way in which some pictures had creased and others bore tear stains... she hoped they would succeed in their endeavour. "Here we are..." Liv turned to the device on the coffee table.

"Are you okay?" The surgeon asked and received an absent-minded nod. There clearly was a lot going on in the other woman's mind.

"Yeah..." She confirmed nonetheless and took a deep breath.

"Maybe run a brush through your hair," Grace joked to stop her overthinking and it worked.

"OI!" Liv exclaimed, affronted and amused but before she could put up a defense a voice sounded from the other side of the room.

"Bit late for that."

Both women whirled around and there, in the doorway to the kitchen, stood the Doctor, regarding both of them with a kind smile.

"Doctor?!" Liv found her voice first and exclaimed. Her eyes shot in between her device and the Time Lord and back again. She hadn't even activated it yet! "How did you- when?!"

"Been here a while... you really did let this place go. That'll teach me entrusting you with my things," he mused, scanning the room with keen eyes. Finally, his attention turned to Grace and he smiled: "Hello Grace," he stated simply and the surgeon was stunned into silence.

"What?! How?!" Liv continued raging while Grace just about managed a small smile of greeting:

"Doctor."

"I haven't even..." Liv pointed at the device and the Doctor chuckled.

"I've had a message from UNIT, as it happens," he revealed and his expression turned more serious as he regarded his friend with concern: "Messages of concern. Someone called Kate Stewart? And from Tania too..."

"I-" Liv didn't seem to know what to say and Grace felt validated in her previous assessment. Of course the others had wanted to help and Liv's state of being had not gone unnoticed.

"But I see you have found lovely company," the Doctor observed with a smile to Grace who still didn't really know what to say or do. Liv, meanwhile, seemed to be pulling herself together and realise what was truly important now:

"Doctor, where is..." She didn't get to finish her question. Helen appeared beside the Doctor.

"Hello Liv," the blonde spoke softly, insecurely.

"Helen!" At that, Liv lost all remaining inhibitions. She rushed forward, closed the short space between them, and pulled her into a bone crushing hug.

"And you, Grace? Here of all places? How have you been?" The Doctor turned from the display of affection, pure and heart-warming as Liv mumbled apologies and Helen held on to her tightly, evidently more than happy to forget all about it. Grace's attention snapped to the Doctor.

"I-" She had had so many questions, so many things she'd wanted to say but now that it came to it, she couldn't phrase any of them and instead, chose to devote her attention to the lovely reunion they were witness to. 

"Helen, I'm so sorry, I should never have-" Liv pulled away and brushed tears from her eyes. "I'm sorry, please forgive me, it was a mistake," she pleaded. "All I wanted was for you to- But it doesn't matter. I don't need any of that, I just need you back in my life and I-" Her words spilled out of her like a waterfall and it seemed Helen had heard more than enough already.

"Liv, shut up," she whispered, her voice heavy with tears of her own. And she silenced her with a kiss. Grace wanted to cheer but she settled for a content smile, one the Doctor shared. Helen pulled back and took Liv's face in her hands. The med-tech stood petrified gaping in surprise and wonder, and Helen elaborated: "I'm sorry too. I should have just... spared us both a lot of heartbreak." She brushed her thumbs over her cheeks affectionately, catching her tears.

"So you'll take me back, you'll-" Liv stuttered insecurely and Helen smiled, just as self-consciously:

"If you'll have me."

"Shall we carry this on in the TARDIS?" The Doctor interrupted before she could meet in another kiss. He ushered them along into the kitchen, then turned to look back: "Come along, Grace."

"I-" The surgeon didn't know what to say. She didn't feel like she had a place here, she didn't want to intrude but the Doctor was insistent:

"Come on. Someone else will have to clean up this mess... might call a removal company..." She looked around the place, wrinkling his nose.

"OI!" Liv exclaimed and he grinned:

"There's that snarky med-tech I've been missing."

"We were just about to call you, actually..." Grace decided to explain as she caught up with them. They weren't going far. The TARDIS was standing in the middle of the kitchen and the Doctor opened the door for them.

"So timing couldn't have been any better," he observed joyfully as they stepped inside. "Tea! Where are my manners, would you like some? Helen, Liv? Would you mind?"

"Not at all," Helen smiled and grabbed Liv's hand to lead her away, further into the TARDIS as Grace remained with the Doctor.

"Don't get lost on the way! Straight to the kitchen! Time for everything else later!" He called after them, then devoted his attention to Grace who was looking around the console room. It had changed since she had last seen it twenty-odd years ago but some things remained the same. She couldn't believe she still recognised them after all that time... it was even bigger than she remembered... "It's been a while," the Doctor observed as if he had read her thoughts.

"Yes... yes, I suppose it has," she answered softly, still taking in the wonders of it all.

"How have you been?" He asked and her attention snapped back to him.

"Good, I- yeah, I've been good," she answered at last, shaking her head free of the distractions. "Married. Working. I've been involved in some fascinating research of- But you don't need to hear that. Of course. That's all in the past for you." She realised how utterly small and insignificant it had to appear to him. It gave her pause.

"But I do! I do! I want to hear all about your life, your accomplishments, your adventures," he encouraged her enthusiastically  and she wanted to believe him.

"Hardly adventures. Not like yours," she answered, trying her best not to sound jealous.

"Why not? Every day is an adventure, you step in front of your door and never know where the path will lead you," he beamed.

"Just like you step out of your blue box and you never know where you end up?" She asked and he nodded.

"I suppose so, yes." And then he added more seriously: "Not every adventure is about saving the universe."

"I regret it," Grace gave a soft smile.

"What?" He frowned in response and she explained:

"That I didn't come with you. Not all the time. Not when I think about what I have and what I have accomplished, I'm happy but- there is always that little nagging voice of 'what if'..." her voice trailed off and the Doctor took advantage to fill the space with words of his own:

"I'm proud of you. For what you have done. What you have accomplished. And I'm ever so glad to know you," he took a step closer to her. "Maybe we missed a trick, you and me, but also, maybe, it was always meant to be this way."

"You seem to have so many wonderful friends," Grace thought back to the group she had met only hours ago and she wasn't sure whether to be jealous that she never got as much time with him as they had, or to be glad to be counted among them. 

"I have. And you're one of them," the Doctor spoke to the latter but she couldn't quite accept or believe it.

"Hardly compares, one night of adventure versus years of shared experiences, shared..."

"That doesn't make it any less significant," the Doctor interrupted. "Besides, the journey is never over." At that, Liv and Helen returned. Helen was carrying a tray of cups and Liv a pot of tea and a tray of biscuits.

"How do you take your tea, Grace? Do Americans drink tea?" Helen asked kindly as she set the china down on a small table in between some armchairs. 

"Where would you like to go?" The Doctor posed an altogether more intriguing question.

"What?" Grace had been good and ready to answer Helen but the Doctor's words interrupted her train of thought.

"If you could go anywhere in time and space. I have nothing else on," he shrugged and looked to his other friends. "I have put right a great wrong, everything else for today is just... fun."

"You're not serious," Grace couldn't believe what she was hearing.

"I imagine Liv and Helen will want some time to themselves so how about it? You pick a destination and we have a little adventure," he beamed and gave a dismissive wave to his companions. "They can get up to whatever they want to get up to in private-"

"Doctor!" Liv scowled and Helen blushed but the Time Lord didn't pay attention to either.

"-and we explore."

"Anywhere? In space and time?" Grace asked, her voice more shaky than she would have liked and the Doctor nodded enthusiastically.

"And I can have you back here in an instant. Maybe not here... wouldn't want to put you through that again. But I can take you home after," he offered.

"Go on, Grace. You deserve this. Don't waste more time on indecision. No more missed opportunities," Liv smiled at her as she grabbed Helen's hand. The blonde smiled in agreement:

"No more missed chances."

Grace couldn't help but smile too. Liv's demeanour was completely changed. Where she had been muted, pensive and surly before, joy now shone from every aspect of her being. It was lovely to see and the same joy and hope radiated off her lovely companion too. It seemed as though the time in between had been washed away without a trace.

"We can't turn back the clock but we can carry on where we left off. All of us," the Doctor observed and Liv nodded:

"I'd like that."

"Me too," Helen agreed and they all turned their attention to Grace, awaiting her decision.

"Just one trip!" She exclaimed at last. "I have to- and nothing too dangerous, I have patients relying on me and my husband-" A world of possibilities opened up in front of her and while she didn't want to spend her life in the stars as some did, she at least wanted to see what was out there.

"You will be back before you know it," the Doctor promised kindly. "So what do you say? Come with me? With us?"

"Yes. This time, I'll say yes," Grace grinned.

[love-advice-on-call]

Hi Brian! My name is Olivia and I have a huge crush on this guy, but he is very quiet, always sits alone in class, hangs around by himself on breaks and is the first out the door when the bell rings. People say he's obsessed about soccer, always talking about soccer. And I've noticed he really likes anime. I enjoy soccer and anime, but not enough to keep a conversation about it with him. And I'm extremely shy and insecure, and have close to no self-esteem. I've messaged him a couple times but it's always about exams and such. He's fit and I'm fat and I think I'm at least ten years older than him (I'm 33 and he's around 22). I have never been with anyone and it makes me feel pathetic. I don't think anyone has ever liked me. I just think I'm going to make a fool out of myself and then I could never go back to class. I guess I'm asking for advice on how to approach him, make him notice me. Thank you in advance!

Hi Olivia! Cool, I literally just decided to put my name in the About recently so it's nice to see that you read it.

You enjoy soccer and anime, but it's that you don't KNOW if you can hold a conversation with him about it. It's not that you can't. Sometimes people love things and that is what can make those topics the best to talk about. Because he likes soccer and anime, you can always explore what it is he really enjoys about it. What his favorite team/player is, why, maybe what he likes about anime, how did he get into doing soccer, etc. Possibilities are endless and people always enjoy talking about their favorite topics. Of course this can be difficult if you are a bit shy.

Look, if you're afraid of making a fool of yourself, I think that's okay. Everyone is, and they especially are afraid when it comes down to talking to someone they are interested in dating. I think if you are afraid of getting out there, then the best thing you can do is practice talking to people for starters.

If you are afraid of what talking to this guy could do for your class, then maybe you can try doing something a bit softer first and work up to eventually talking to him. A very low stakes start is online dating so maybe you can try making a profile. Seeing if you can meet some people there first just as practice before talking to him.

Fair warning, event he most attractive people dread online dating and what it does to your self-esteem, but if you want a modern way to get your feet wet on dating and are a bit overwhelmed to try meeting people in person, then this is a great place to start. You can refer to this post on how to make a dating profile:

If online dating isn't your thing, then your alternative is to find people in person. Which is actually easier than people think. Now a days, you can meet people at any common interest group. Maybe find a hobby you like and find other people who do it. Maybe go to trivia nights alone and see if you can join a random team and meet anyone there. Folks are really into this kind of stuff now a days and they'll be friendlier than you think. It can be daunting at first though, but you will get the hang of it.

A last bit of advice. A person is only as attractive as their personality. Lizzo for example goes against conventional beauty standards but is highly regarded as a goddess because she simply tells people she is hot and walks the walk. So there is nothing more attractive then someone being confident with their body. She simply did that.

April 24, 2023

[thefanficmonster]

Let Them Talk

Corpse Husband x Reader (Female) ft. Sykkuno

Warnings: Swearing, Jealousy

Genre: Fluff, a bit of Angst

Summary: We can all agree Among Us is a fun game on its own but what makes it ten times better is playing it with the right company. Y/N could agree 100% Being a streamer herself, she loves playing with the streamer gang that includes her boyfriend and best friend. But, what happens when her boyfriend starts doubting her feelings for him due to her close relationship with her best friend.

Requested by @cheetoscat . Thank you so much for your request! Sorry it took so long to write, I hope the final product is worth the wait. Enjoy! Love, Vy ❤

Y/AU/N - Your Among Us Name

I settle in my gaming chair, adjusting my webcam one last time before joining the Among Us lobby with my friends. 

“Hi everyone!“ I say into the mic, a smile plastering itself on my face. Discord is a magical thing, man. It’s so easy to forget that the people you are talking to aren’t around you or within arm’s reach. You could be separated by miles and miles of land or - in our case - oceans as well. Distance becomes negligible when you hear your friends’ voices, their laughter; when you have a good time together despite being each behind a screen, often times alone.

Well, I’m one of those lucky ones that isn’t alone. No one knows that, though. Everyone thinks I’m a single, self-employed girl that’s straight out of college. And they are 90% right. Only thing is - I’m not single. That would be a shocker in and of itself, but revealing who’s changed my relationship status would be a bomb with a whole new intensity.

Speaking of my significant other who shall remain unnamed - just kidding, it’s Corpse - his form materializes in the doorway of my recording room. I give him a hand signal the camera isn’t able to capture, alerting him of the fact that my mic is on. He replies by blowing me a kiss and walking off down the hall to his recording room where he’ll be stationed for the next three or so hours.

I owe this relationship to my best friend Sykkuno. I’m a pretty new and not very well known on the platform, however, thanks to him I haven’t only obtained a boyfriend, but a following of a little over million subscribers as well. 

It all started with an invitation to fill a spot in the Among Us lobby him and his friends had created. It took him quite a bit to convince me to join, but I eventually caved and agreed. Suddenly, there I was. In a Discord call, in an Among Us lobby with some of the most well-known names on this platform. I’m talking YouTube legends. I was that puppy playing with the big dogs. The newbie tagging along with the big leagues. Or at least that’s how I felt until we all started vibing - talking and teasing each other as though we’ve known each other for years and not minutes.

When I joined the call, Corpse wasn’t present. After everyone else introduced themselves, Sykkuno informed me that we were waiting for Corpse to return. The name sounded really cool to me and I was genuinely very excited to meet this Corpse guy.

And then, out of the blue - no prep, no warning...

“Did you get someone to fill the spot? Oh- Hello, Y/AU/N.“ 

…he started talking and he had me star-struck. Apparently, he also had me a blabbering mess cause I remember blurting out: “Whoa, who’s this guy speaking in bold and underlined at the same time?”

The entire lobby, including Corpse, laughed. Sean, or Jack like they called him most often, answered my question, “That is the voice of God, Y/N. Its source is named Corpse, though.”

Heat spread from the bottom of my neck to the tips of my ears. I was mortified by my own stupidity. I was well aware they couldn’t see me and I was incredibly thankful for that, but I simply could not get myself to open my eyes. “I’m so sorry.” I said through nervous laughter.

“No, no, I like that description. Bold and underlined at the same time, huh?“ His voice sounded even more pleasant when it had that teasing, mischievous note to it. That thought popping up in my head only made things worse for my self-esteem and only made me more embarrassed, causing me to hide my face in my hands. “You sure it’s not in Italics as well?“ 

His question got a weak laugh out of me. “Nope, definitely not. Nothing Italic about it.“

Yes, I don’t even know how some terrible jokes about MS Word fonts got me as far as a romantic relationship, but they did! We’ve been living together for quite some time now, dating for even longer - hiding it just as long. It’s not that we have been actively trying to hide it or something, we just wanted to see how long it would take someone to become sus of us. When we realized no one would notice, we decided that if any rumors about us started, or even fans shipping us, we’d come clean. That hasn’t happened either, so we haven’t had the proper chance to address our relationship and neither of us minds.

At this point, I’m honestly afraid of revealing it to the gaming squad. Sykkuno especially. He’s my best friend, after all. I can see him being hurt by the fact that I kept a secret so big even from him. The last thing I wanna do is hurt my best friend but it’s already too late for that, it’s inevitable.

“Y/N have you looked at Twitter today?“ Rae, another streamer I’ve become close with over the months, says urgently.

Overlooking the tension in her words, I answer: “Nope, haven’t had the time. Why? What’s up?“

Before Rae can say anything else, Sykkuno joins the conversation, his voice somehow even more urgent than Rae’s. “It’s nothing, Y/N. If you see it, just don’t let it bother you, ok?”

Hearing such a tone from Rae isn’t unusual, but hearing it from Sykkuno is completely different and a lot more worrisome. “Well if it has the potential of bothering me it can’t be nothing. What’s going on?”

Just then, my phone dings with two notifications. I check to see they are messages from Rae.

“I sent you screenshots. Sorry, Sykkuno. She has to know in order to address it and defuse it as well. I know better than anyone how fast these rumors can spread, especially if no one reacts to them.“ She says, her tone barely apologetic at all.

I open the screenshots she has sent me and I find myself frozen in shock. Some old pictures of Sykkuno and I have been posted on Twitter by some random user. These pictures have started an entire thread of suspicions surrounding our relationship.

The pictures in question are from a New Year’s Eve party a mutual friend of ours held two years ago. Sure, in the pictures we are a lot closer than what would be considered a platonic proximity. And yes one of the pictures is of me kissing his cheek. Yes we were both a bit tipsy. I acknowledge all those things and yet none of them are concrete reasons for these rumors to have started piling. 

“This is silly.“ I finally say after maybe five minutes of silence on my end. ”This is absolutely ridiculous! And why are people so serious about it as well? Actual, important matters get discussed more nonchalantly than the potential relationship between two online personalities! What is this world we live in?“ I know I shouldn’t let these rumors get to me like this, especially not on camera. Still, I can’t help it. I feel it’s so unfair to Corpse. He has to put up with this as well and it’s by no means easy for him. I’ve been shipped with people from our group in the past and he always took those rumors to heart despite acting like he didn’t care. Neither of us should get worked up, but him getting upset about them creates a domino effect with my emotions - causing me to be hit just as hard as him, in some cases harder.

Rumors of the past aside, this one is the worst by far. Mostly cause even Corpse himself suspected something between Sykkuno and I at the very beginning, when we were still acquaintances, barely crossing into the realm of friends.

I pull up Twitter to look for the whole thread, barely sparing my stream chat a glance in the process. It seems pretty split - those who agree with me and those who think Sykkuno and I make ‘such an adorable couple’. The thread is ridiculously long, and if we take into account that it was only started approximately five hours ago, you can either view it as impressive, amusing or sad. Why sad? Because someone has dedicated so much time and effort into fueling the fire of a weakly supported theory.

I love Sykkuno with all my heart. Everyone knows that - fandom, streamer squad, Corpse and Sykkuno included. I love too much and too platonically to ever even dream of having a romantic connection with him. I thought that was more than obvious, but people are either blind here, or just grasping at straws. One thing’s for certain - they’re stepping on a nerve.

“Hey where’s Corpse? Did he disconnect?” Felix asks, gaining my full attention. My eyes dart to the monitor, searching through the little avatars in a desperate search for the one of my boyfriend. It’s nowhere to be found.

“He just messaged me saying his connection is unstable but he might join us later.“ Rae says, “You guys can invite someone to fill...“

“Bathroom break.“ I interrupt, not waiting for a response before shutting my mic off, putting the ‘BRB‘ graphic on my stream and yanking the headset off. I basically run down the hall to Corpse’s recording room, my heart pounding like a bass drum.

“Corpse?!“ I call out to him, one hand already on the doorknob. When five seconds pass by without a response, I barge in. 

Inside, I find his usual spot on the gaming chair empty and his slumped figure seated on his bed.

“Corpse?“ I try again, watching for even the tiniest change of body language. He remains still as a statue, not bothering to look up at me either. 

His hands are gripping the edge of the mattress, his head hanging low. His eyes are covered by the short curtain of his dark messy curls. I can’t gauge much. Is he angry? Is he sad? Both? How should I approach the situation?

Before I find the answer to any of those questions, I am kneeling in front of him, our height difference eliminated. I gently pry his hands off the mattress and take them in mine, holding them firmly but tenderly. With one hand I reach up to tilt his head so his eyes can meet mine. He complies, his tear-filled brown orbs meeting mine. Those tears have the same effect on me as fifty sharp knives stabbing into my chest. These tears focus their attack straight on my heart, tearing it to pieces.

“Baby....“

He cuts me off, “Why is it always someone else, huh? Do they deem me not worthy of being with you? Do they think you deserve better?” His voice wavers, “Well, they might be right. They are correct and there’s little I can do to prove them wrong. They mean you well, Y/N - pairing you with guys better than me. Those are some loyal fans you’ve got. They only want what’s best for you. And so do I. If ‘best’ is being with someone else then...”

It’s my turn to cut him off. I put an end to his nonsense ramble that’s slowly killing me by pressing my finger against his lips. The sternness of my gaze is beyond me as I get up and walk over to his computer setup. I put on his headset and hop into the call as well as the lobby with his avatar.

“Hey Corpse’s back!” Toast says, “Good to have you back buddy.”

“No, not Corpse.” I say in a casual, nonchalant voice.

“Wait, wha-“ Sean’s voice shows just how confused he is, representing the confusion of the entire lobby actually.

“I know all of you are streaming so this message will be heard by several different audiences so I’m gonna make myself perfectly clear.“ I take a deep breath, “Sykkuno and I aren’t dating. He’s a lovely guy and he deserves to find a girl who will treat him right. That girl isn’t and won’t be me though. I am already treating someone right. Someone who treats me more than right as well. An amazing person. A man-child with a heart of gold. You know him, to a certain extent. He goes by the name of Corpse Husband, but I prefer to call him ‘Love of my life’. Thank you for your time and attention, goodbye.“

I exit the call and turn around to find a stunned Copse looking at me.

“That was meant for you just as much.“ I say with a fake strict attitude, one hand on my hip the other rested on his desk behind me, “Were you listening?“

Within milliseconds, he’s on his feet standing directly in front of me, his lips inches away from mine. “I heard and memorized every word. But...” he pauses for a moment, “I think you have no idea how big of a chaos you just created.”

I smile mischievously, “We’ll worry about that later. For now...” I close the gap between us, connecting our lips in a sweet and passionate kiss. 

@susceptible-but-siriusexual  @simonsbluee  @save-the-sky  @hacker-ghost  @itsminniekat  @bi-andready-tocry  @imtiredaffff  @jazzkaurtheglorious  @hereforbeebo  @fandomgirl17  @chrysanthykios  @maehemscorpyus  @loraleiix  @letsloveimagines  @annshit  @i-cant-choose-a-username-help  @enigmaticmaze  @divine-artemis  @waterlilypat  @idontknowwhatthisisfam  @evi-ka  @classyandfabulous00  @redperson58  @lilysdaydreams  @the-fuck-up-of-today  @slashersdream  @chiefwombathoagiepizza  @solowheein @mythicalamphitrite  @axen-gers  @luckygirl144  @nj01

[themoonwheniamlost]

Last post I ever want to make about this @/lgbtmazight situation

Please do not harass anyone, no matter what their stance on this is. Please be kind to each other and to yourselves.

Here is a link to the original Post, Here is a link to a great focus/framing statement.

In this post, I’m gonna talk about a few things that I think need context, and then I never want to talk about this again. Okay? Ok.

1. Anyone who is using this situation to try and gain clout/respectability points needs to sit down and shut up. No one should be aiming for recognition. Saying “This needs to go viral/I was right all along,” is very unhelpful. If you were hurt by Len you definitely deserve an apology. But please stop trying to accrue brownie points over this discourse.

2. To the people defending Len. Please stop framing that post as a doxxing attempt. The content from that post is all things that Len made publicly available on the internet. Instead of saying “They pulled up tweets from ten years ago.” What should concern us is that for over ten years, Len has shown a documented history of holding dangerous and hateful political views and has constantly lied about different aspects of their identity.

What we should be focused on is the people that Len has hurt and the ways Len has misled our community. The only person who should be defending Len is Len. Speaking of,

3. Re- the subject of the silence of big blogs/ A new Discord server.

A few days ago, I was invited to be a part of a small discord group that was dedicated to “nuanced discussions and recreating the inviting spirit of the TOG fandom” from last summer. I accepted and was surprised to see some of the biggest names in fandom.

Four days ago the mods put out an announcement that a post had been made about one of their mods and that ALL of the accusations were false. And they then asked everyone in the server not to engage with the post at all. I didn’t even see the post until someone sent it to me directly.

The mods framed this call for silence as a way to keep Len and her family safe. As if anyone engaging with the post was directly putting Len in danger, rather than to face the fact Len was the person who put that much personal information online.

The mods in this discord did not allow for any discussion about this situation in the general server. So anyone who was concerned or had questions had to go directly and separately to the mods. How then do we know who has the same concerns as us? You don’t. In this server, a culture of silence has allowed Lens Closest Mutuals (a group of mostly white women) to act as a PR team that fields any and all concerns from people in the server.

The mods assured me that Len had done video calls with them and showed proper “documentation of their family,” to prove that Len is who she says she is. Which version of Len, is who she says she is? No one answered this question.

When I expressed my concerns to the mods, I got a stock response filled with defections, straw man arguments, red herrings as well as various statements that appealed to moral superiority and conflated separate identity terms all at once. I argued against all of their points and the response that I got was that if I was going to continue “not seeing eye to eye about the need for Len’s safety,” then I would be removed from the group.

I removed myself. I won’t ever stay in a group where one person's mental health is put on a pedestal above all the ways they have hurt and wronged others.

3.A - Please be wary of these White and White-passing women talking about what is and isn't racist. The people who claim that these accusations against Len will drive PoC out of fandom. As a whole ass Black and Indigenous woman, NO. What pushes PoC out of fandom is allowing people w/o racialized lived experiences to be the arbitrators of whether or not something is racist.

4. If an argument is made in bad faith but turns out to be true, it doesn’t mean that the accused should get away with everything just because someone accused them with ill intent. In this case, intent means nothing. Len has lied and holds terrible views. The end.

5. Race, Ethnicity, nationality, familial origin, religious background, class, and cultural upbringing are all different aspects of identity. Over the last ten years, Len has a documented history of lying about ALL OF THESE ASPECTS.

6. No one hates Len for being White-passing. However, you cannot be White-passing and “constantly racialized” at the same time. That's not possible because Race is what is read onto your body. If you are Read as White, and if you are allowed to exist in White spaces, you are not racialized. So which narrative is true?

7. I think that the aspect of race is one of the least important things in this to focus on. Len is a genocide denier, steals aspects of different religions, cultures, and lived experiences as their own. On top of this Len has made themselves a pillar/authority in TOG fandom while constantly lying to all of us, causing harm and posing as the authority on all things Maghrebi.

8. This news has already upset the fandom's past and present in ways we can't go back from. I know I personally feel really guilty for having ever followed this person. But again, the only person responsible for Len’s actions is Len. I'm simply dedicated to being more discerning in the future.

I know that a lot of us are angry. But I think there are ways for us to be angry and still kind. We have learned that someone close to us holds hateful views, but we don't have to act in hatred.

It goes back to the source material that brought us together right? In a terrible situation, we can still do some good. Still build bonds in honesty and nuance. Maybe I’m being naive, but I want to believe that our fandom can grow from this.

We're about to get a sequel! Let's get rid of the bad and move forward as a community. "Shit, Let's start a band."

[comicaurora]

Waaaaiiit you grew up an undiagnosed neurodivergent? I feel like I should have a tom of questions because I've recently begun to wonder if I'm neurodivergent too, but I can't articulate my questions at all. So I guess what I'm asking is, what was that like? How were you diagnosed? What's the story behind that? Are you comfortable sharing your experiences with growing up "undiagnosed neurodivergent?"

Big, big caveat that I have not been diagnosed with anything. Smaller caveat that it's looking about 98% likely that I'm very ADHD, which would certainly help explain

"she's very bright, if she would just focus more in class and be less disruptive she'd be perfect" on every single report card I ever got

I'm listening, I promise, I'm just not looking at you, and if you make me look at you I won't be able to keep listening

if I cannot doodle in class I will Die

did I miss the day where they passed out a handbook of social rules

nah coffee doesn't wake me up or disrupt my sleep schedule at all, if anything it makes it easier for me to focus, guess I'm just weird that way

I've finally finished the thing I was working on and I just realized I've been sitting cross-legged for six hours without moving, I'm hungry, everything hurts and I really need to pee

why do I feel so weird and bad AH yes I have forgotten to eat

didn't I make tea sometime in the last four hours

hey wanna hear me talk about the media that's been consuming my every waking thought yea you do here goes

there's a car a block and a half away whose brakes are squeaking so I didn't hear anything you just said

I tried doing the assignment you asked for but it was so boring I wanted to melt so I did this cooler thing instead can I still get a good grade

I already know how to play this music, this is boring, I'm going to play it twice as fast so I'll be done quicker and wait for the rest of the band to catch up, because that is how music works

"oh yea that person hated you for years for some reason, they talked about it all the time, you really didn't know?" no but thanks for letting me know I guess

what do you mean I have to put both my feet on the floor when I sit in a chair, do you want me to die

hey wanna hear some cool space facts yea you do here goes

I'm ten years old in a class of less than twenty people and I don't understand why a solid dozen of those people won't stop making fun of everything I do and say but I've at least figured out I have no way to make them stop so I'm going to try leaning into being proud of being weird even though I'm not really proud I just feel dumb and confused and alone but I can at least pretend I have some control over this situation because I'm receiving zero support because the school administration doesn't know how to address bullying that doesn't involve physical violence and I can't work up the nerve to even be angry at most of these guys even though anger would make things so much easier to emotionally handle because when they're not making fun of me they're friendly and fun to be around and that's really all I want from them and I don't want to push them away when they're being friendly to me because then they might start just being terrible and I'll be even more isolated and I don't even realize I'm scraping along emotional rock bottom for years until

I'm fourteen years old in a new school where I don't know anybody but nobody thinks of me as the designated bullying magnet and people actually act like they like me and think I'm new and interesting and fun to talk to and invite me into friend groups and social gatherings and the things that made me weird and hurt before are what's making me interesting and fun here and I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop but it never does so

I'm seventeen years old at a high school class retreat and I'm clumsily trying to explain to the rest of my grade how much they've done for me just by being kind and I had a plan for what I wanted to say but the minute I got up on the podium it all turned into a blur and I still have no idea what I actually said to them but I hope they got the message

I'm eighteen years old with a close-knit friend group I still can't quite believe is real and I don't think I'll ever be able to explain to them how much they've done for me and I'm really worried we're going to splinter when we split up for college but we don't because sometimes people really do care about each other

I construct a youtube channel specifically designed to let me infodump all my directionless media enthusiasm into carefully-crafted serotonin machines so I can stop boring my friends to tears with them and start inflicting the infodumps on willing audiences that actually seek them out

I very gradually start processing that the fact that my life kinda sucked for several years had nothing to do with my worth as a human being and everything to do with the fact that I was stuck in a bad situation with a lot of other unhappy people, and that things being good now isn't some temporary fluke doomed to fail

I'm twenty years old and I see someone online mention "rejection sensitive dysphoria" for the first time and a whole lot of things about me start making more sense

Everything gets better and I'm happy, well-rested, and not alone

[wonderlustlucas]

home - hwang hyunjin

⇢ prompt “I wouldn’t have offered if I wasn’t sure.” ⇢ pairing hyunjin x female reader ⇢ word count 2.7k ⇢ genre fluff, kind of angsty? ⇢ warnings insinuated that this takes place during covid & that reader has some case of depression/anxiety i literally wrote her as me so like ⇢ summary In which Hyunjin shows you just how special you are.—college!au ⇢ a/n happy birthday to my love, my comfort, my home

What am I doing here?

Unfortunately, there is no one else to blame but herself for being left without plans on this Friday night. Regretfully so, she instead finds herself alone on the upper level of the business building. Scratch that, the whole building, probably – she’s been here since four, and the few students that were once alongside her left hours ago. Initially here to work on an essay, she now occupies her time bouncing between YouTube, Twitch, and Crunchyroll, watching whatever she is feeling at the moment despite Monday’s deadline looming over her.

Sighing, she looks away from a boring page of YouTube recommendations, stretches her neck, and reaches for her hot chocolate. Well, not hot anymore, she realizes with a wince after taking a sip, struggling to swallow the now cold drink. Gaze flicking to the time on the corner of her laptop, she frowns. 9:43. She considers walking home once it hits ten, the unstirred silence of the building starting to prick up her spine like needles. Home, she thinks with an amused exhale from her nose. A too small, overheated double dorm room that technically is a single now that her roommate has gone online for the rest of the semester. Home.

She wonders, briefly, if anyone were to miss her if she were to go home home. If anyone would even notice, anyway.

She wouldn’t expect them to, honestly. It’s not as if she goes out of her way to hang out with anyone, usually opting to cozy up in her room and pretend she does not see the groupchat blowing up with plans to meet at the dining hall, a study session at the library, a trip to the mall. She loves her friends, really, but can rarely find it in herself to actually participate in said friend activities. Sure, there are some nights she actually leaves the confines of her room to join them, but to be quite frank, she’s glad they have learned to simply stop inviting her. Makes the whole looking for an excuse problem a lot easier.

Besides, who would want to go out on a night like this, anyway?

Just as she has flipped to page fifty-three of The Old Man and the Sea, she looks away in boredom, instead opting to gaze out the window. Focusing past her reflection on the tall glass pane, a warm feeling she can only describe as peace seems to settle over her, watching the snow fall like moonlit glitter across campus. The snowstorm had started light when she first arrived, soft enough she could manage with her hood down, dotting her with only miniature droplets of water. Now, though, the flakes are so large she can focus on one at a time as they fly past, covering the ground with a solid two or three inches at this point. In the distance, she can spot snowplows making their rounds to clear the pathways, the route to the business building already turned slushy blue as salt melts the continuous snow.

She sighs, eyes wide like a child as she represses the urge to go outside and grab a handful of it, maybe fall onto one of the lawns and make a snow angel, stick her tongue out and try to catch one of the large flakes. Tomorrow, maybe, she thinks, looking at her grey sweatpants and deciding walking back with soaked pants in this weather would not be the best idea.

So late into March, she cannot help but chuckle at the number of students complaining about the snow and cold temperature on SnapChat, even her friends having to change their plans. She, on the other hand, finds such last chance snowstorm beautiful; sure, she was ready for spring and eventually a break from school, but watching the snow dancing under the streetlights, choreographed by the gentle wind, she thinks it’s something to hold on to, keep her grounded to reality that albeit the stress and monotony of college, such moments like these still exist.

She jumps at the sound of the front entrance slamming closed.

Who the hell? She frowns, annoyed at whoever decided now was a good time to come inside, subsequently ruining her little moment of serenity. Turning red at the thought of some raunchy couple thinking to spice things up in the presumably empty building, she considers packing her bag and heading out. But no matter which exit, they would still see her, and that would be painstakingly awkward. Maybe she could escape into one of the smaller reservation rooms, or at least make some exaggerated noise so they at least know they’re not alone.

Could just be a janitor, or maybe someone else deciding to shelter somewhere other than their dorm to buckle down and do some work, she thinks. No matter who it is and what their intentions are, her leg is already bouncing a mile a minute having gotten used to having the space to herself.

So caught up on how or when she should take her leave, she does not hear the footsteps coming up the stairs until they’re right behind her. Tensing up, she watches in the window’s reflection as the business building’s second occupant steps up onto the platform and… heads towards her. Panic setting in, she tries to decipher who it is through the blurry reflection but to no avail, heart racing at the thought of a stranger approaching her, one of her friends finding her here on a Friday night, a janitor going to ask her to leave.

She turns her head as soon as they stop beside her.

“Hyunjin?” She blurts, taken aback. This was the last person she expected to be here. Somewhat relieved but heart still beating in her throat, she blinks up at the tall boy to make sure it’s really him, brows furrowed in confusion. “What are you doing here?”

“I should be asking you the same thing,” he returns, pulling his mask down below his chin and smiling cheekily at her. “I went to go pick up my food and saw you in the window,” Hyunjin explains, tugging the beanie off his head and shaking his hair out, showering her in the tiny droplets. Wrinkling her nose, she takes notice of the Chipotle bag in his hand and how soaked his coat is.

“Here,” she offers, reaching for the bag. Passing it to her with a grateful smile, Hyunjin unzips his coat and sets it over a chair beside her alongside his beanie, wipes the melted snow and sweat from his eyes, and tries to fix his now mused bangs. “So, what are you doing here?” He asks while doing this, regarding her with an amused glint in his eyes.

“Work,” she sighs. Then, glancing to the screen of her laptop and realizing it’s still the home page of YouTube, she grimaces. “Trying to do work. Not really. Just watching the snow.”

“It’s a lot prettier when you’re inside,” Hyunjin comments, following her gaze to watch the frenzy of snow before taking the bag from her and offering a quiet thanks. “But I meant more why are you here?”

She isn’t quite sure what her relationship with Hyunjin is. Having been one of the many acquaintances she barely made at freshman orientation, he did not seem like the kind of person she expected to still be in her life. She wouldn’t exactly say they were close, but she considers Hyunjin a friend, she thinks. After a good month or two forgetting he existed, she randomly bumped into him at the dining hall, recognizing that unfairly attractive face of his in line for chicken nuggets and immediately falling into conversation. Turns out, he was mutual friends with her lab partner, Kim Seungmin.

She does not see Hyunjin as much as she wishes she did. She had not shared any classes with him in the past three years, and even if her friend group and his overlapped in the slightest, it was not always a given that they both would be able to hang out as much as their closer friends do. Still, there always seems to be a random occasion, such as now, where they bump into one another. Each time is a pleasant surprise, of course, and not just because of his pretty face and wide shoulders, but because he has always seemed to care for her in a way no one else does, and that in itself is enough to have her heart racing every time he comes close.

Not that she has a crush on him or anything, but it definitely is hard trying not to fall in love every time he even so much as smiles at her.

Face heating up in embarrassment at his question, she avoids looking him in the eyes and randomly minimizes the Chrome tab on her laptop. “You know,” she drones on, “just taking it easy for the night.”

Hyunjin hums in agreement, opening the lid of his burrito bowl and stabbing a fork into the layers. Even her mouth waters. “I feel like I never see you,” he contemplates, finally taking a bite. His words surprise her. “Uh, yeah,” she coughs, forcing herself to look away before she gets too enraptured over how beautiful he looks even after trekking through a snowstorm, long hair messy but falling over his face in a way that has her fingers twitching to tuck away. “I usually don’t go out with everyone. Not my scene.”

“Aw,” he coos, “I get that. Sometimes I’m the same way, I just want to relax on the weekends after working so much all week.”

Thank you!, she almost shouts, but bites her tongue. She agrees, but even she does not know why she can’t find it in herself to go out and party with everyone else. She’s just lazy, to put it simply. Nevertheless, his words put her at ease, no longer worried that he might think she’s a loser for staying in every weekend.

“Exactly,” she agrees, “parties are fun, sometimes. But I just prefer laying low. I don’t think my friends like that, though.”

Gaze finding his, her heart does somersaults at the smile he offers. “Nah,” Hyunjin says, confident, “no one thinks that. Everyone has their way of having fun. Honestly, all I’ve ever heard is your friends complaining how they miss you and that you would make going out more fun since you’re so funny.”

“Which is true, by the way,” he adds.

She feels as if she is going to combust. “Oh,” she croaks, throat dry, “um, thank you. That’s sweet of them. And you. I guess I didn’t consider that they miss me when they go out.”

Hyunjin scoffs, raising a brow but finishes chewing before speaking again. “Are you nuts? You’re so fun to be around, of course they’re going to miss you.”

“Okay, stop that,” she laughs, burning from the inside out at his compliments. “Just being honest,” he laughs, opening the bag of his tortilla chips. “Want any?”

She looks at him with wide eyes. “Are you sure?”

“I wouldn’t have offered if I wasn’t sure.”

“Okay,” she huffs out an airy laugh, rolling her chair closer to his. Miscalculating that he was going to move, too, she quite literally feels her blood pressure skyrocket as her knees bump into his. And he doesn’t move. “Here,” moving the bag closer to the edge of the table, Hyunjin glances at her for only a split second before focusing on his bowl again.

Reaching into the bag, she feels emboldened not only by his previous flattery, but his proximity as well, and scrambles to continue the conversation. “Why are you eating Chipotle so late?”

“Pre-birthday celebration. Also, DoorDash took forever,” Hyunjin laughs.

“When’s your birthday?” She asks, munching on a chip.

“In,” he pauses, tapping his phone, “two hours.”

Oh. “What?” She gasps, blinking at him. “What? Why aren’t you out? It’s your birthday weekend and you’re here eating Chipotle?”

“Woah, okay Miss I-Prefer-Laying-Low. Maybe I wanted to chill tonight, since tomorrow I’m going out? Hm?” Hyunjin chuckles at her scowl, pursing his lips. “Okay, yeah, I guess but—”

“No but’s,” he interrupts, the amused glint in his eyes disappearing, “I’m here now, and that’s what matters, right? I’m lucky I saw you in the window.”

“I guess,” she mutters, realizing her heart has not stopped its staccato frenzy since moving closer, “you scared me, by the way. I’ve been here alone for hours and suddenly someone is walking up to me, I think I shit my pants.”

Hyunjin bellows out a laugh, and such an airy sound momentarily leaves her awestruck. Oh, god, she’s in deep. It’s over.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” he giggles, battling her hand to reach for a chip. Even the touch of his long fingers against hers has the entire butterfly population roaring to life in her gut. “Look, I made up for it by gifting you chips.”

“True,” she hums, licking residue salt off her fingers before leaning back in her chair to catch a breather. Too much physical contact and emotion for one night.

“What are you doing next weekend?” Hyunjin asks, taking her by surprise. Again. She thinks she is going to faint if she isn’t able to wrap herself around him within the next fifteen seconds.

“Um,” she starts, then remembers her previous idea of going home after this week was over. “I was probably going to go home next Friday.”

“Oh,” is all Hyunjin says, seemingly disappointed. “Why?”

She grits her teeth. Why? Really? “I don’t know,” she shrugs, not even convinced herself, “I’m bored and lonely here. I love everyone here but I miss my friends at home. I might as well be slightly less bored at home.” Hyunjin frowns.

“Okay, what about this,” he starts, leaning close enough she can count his individual eyelashes and nearly smell the flavor of his lip balm, “you go out with us tomorrow night and if you have fun, you hang out with us next weekend, too. Oh, and whenever you want some company, you text me and we’ll come here or somewhere else and do homework together or just chill. How does that sound?”

All she can do is blink at him. Her initial thought is how dare he try negotiating whether I go home or not? But, there it is, again, she realizes. That extra step he takes, the genuine care he shows her, acting like her well-being is his responsibility. “You don’t have to do that, Hyunjin. I don’t want to bother you every time I feel lonely. I’ll be fine.”

“Christ, you’re dense,” rolling his eyes, Hyunjin sets his fork down, wipes his hands on his thighs, and suddenly leans in to hold her face with both hands, “I wouldn’t offer to sit around and do homework with you when you’re in need of a friend if I didn’t want to.”

Her heart is racing so fast she fears he may be able to hear the thud of it against her chest. What he’s saying is starting to sound a lot more than some friend-to-friend comfort, and it’s making her head hurt, especially with his thumbs ever so slightly swiping against her cheeks. At her silence, he starts again.

“Y/N,” he says, voice dropping an octave, “don’t go home. This is your home, too, you just don’t want it to be.”

Swallowing the lump in her throat, she thinks she is going to say something, but nothing comes out. There is nothing to say. Hyunjin is right, he has read her like an open book, and he’s here to offer his shoulder to lean on. “Okay,” she whispers, “I’ll go out with everyone tomorrow. And I’ll try and stay here for the rest of the semester.”

“That’s my girl,” Hyunjin smiles, leaning closer and pressing a featherlight kiss to her lips. At first, it takes her by surprise. But then it all starts to make sense. The snow makes sense. Her essay makes sense. Being here makes sense. Hyunjin makes sense. His birthday makes sense. She makes sense.

Outside the glass windows, the wind starts to howl, blowing the composed ballet of snow to its final act, covering the pathways and the streetlights and the roof of the business building in perfect white glitter. Inside these windows, she realizes they would notice if she were to go home.

Why would she ever do that when her second home is right here in front of her?

[memphisfaith]

Hearts of Lust: Chapter 18

Pairing Kim Namjoon X Reader

Genre: Collage!AU, Smut

Word Count: 1K

Warning: Cursing, mentions of smut, smut, consumption of alcohol, mentions of violence, violence, crack personality disorders, Chaotic energy.

Summary: College is any young adult's prime years, at least that's what Lee (y/n) and Kim Namjoon thought. The two are infamous for two reasons, by two very different crowds. Among the professors they are picture perfect students with perfect scores, attendance, and image. However, among the student body they're the very essence of lust with amazing bodies, sex appeal, and skill. The two, although strikingly similar, butt heads quite a bit with competitions of everything from grades to who can get a person to drop their pants the fastest. With the two of them ready to conquer the school year it's all a matter of Go Big or Home.

Yoongi found a gift for Jungkook but I had no luck. I knew the gift I wanted to get Jungkook but I'd have to order it online. So without any more luck Yoongi drove me home and we both crashed at my place.

The next morning I made us breakfast but he left soon after. I decided to get dressed and head to school. The school was well within walking distance from my place, but Yoongi doesn't like it when I walk. 

I got to school and used the key Mrs.Withrow gave me to get into the art room. The president of the art club gets to have a spare key to help run events and meetings when she's not here, But she also lets me use it for personal uses as well. 

Like now, I walked to the back room to my station and began to work on the painting for the competition. Within a few hours a had finished the sea and ship, But if you look closely you can see an abnormally large fishtail peeking out of the waves of the ocean. 

I moved on to the sky. It's mostly clear except for the dark storm cloud in the far background. I finally pull away from the painting and look at the clock. It's late and I've been here just about all day. 

I tapped on my phone to see I had missed a call from Yoongi and a few texts from our group chat. Nothing too major but I call Yoongi anyway. "Hey," I call into the phone once he picks up, "Oh you finally decided to call me back?" He sasses.

I roll my eyes and prop my phone between my ear and shoulder as I clean my tools. "Sorry, I was finishing the first piece of my project," I excuse washing out my water cup and brushes. "The one you're going to enter into National?" He questions and I hum in agreement.

"You actually finished it?" He asks in disbelief, I nod my head with a laugh "Yeah but only the first one, I still need to start the second and last one." I mumble mentally thinking how long it should roughly take me. 

"You started this one at the beginning of the year! how are you going to finish two more before winter break?" He scoffs. I hum in response, "That same way you can write ten songs one day and barely finish one another," I chide. 

Nothing comes from his end of the line and I laugh smugly, "I thought so," I continue to laugh. "Are you busy?" I ask him, "No," he answers. "Could you take me home? I walked to school and it'll be dark by the time I'm half way home." I ask. 

"Sure thing darling, I'll be there in a bit." He answers before hanging up. I smile and hang up my phone and finish cleaning up. I make my way to the front and wait for Yoongi. But there was this guy there too. 

As I get closer I recognize him as the boyfriend of my secretary officer for the art club. He looks up from his phone when I get closer and smiles at me. I give him a friendly nod in greeting before turning away from him. 

I may be a whore, but I'm a whore with morals and standards. Helping someone cheat on another person is definitely something I don't do. In a matter of minutes I feel him shuffle closer to me. I stiffen and move away before he moves again. 

"Listen, I may not be the purest girl here, but that doesn't mean I'm into what you're trying to dish out." I spoke stiffly. Said guy doesn't seem to get the memo as an arm wraps around my waste. I glare at him harshly before gripping his arm.

However I hiss as his grip on my waist tightens. Just as I'm about to tell him to get off, the loud rawar of Yoongi's car pulls into the parking lot. Relief floods my body as the guy's grip disappears but it leaves a dull ache in its place. Yoongi pulls into the spot in front of us and eyes us questionably. 

I sent him a bright smile and rushed to get into the car. "Who is that?" He questions, eyeing the guy in front of his car looks all too smug. "Just a guy. His girlfriend is the secretary in my club."  answer. Yoongi hums, "What he'd want?" He continues to ask, why does he find him so interesting? 

"He was just talking about his girlfriend and all the pieces she's been working on," I wave off. Yoongi nods and lets it go before taking me home. The ride home is peaceful despite the tense situation before, but he didn't need to know about that.

When I got home Yoongi decided to stay for dinner, While I cooked he watched T.V. in the living room. While cooking I accidently knocked my hip against the counter and a sharp ache shot threw me. 

I hiss quietly, and look down. It's the same side that guy and his hand on. I quickly finished what I was doing and poked my head into the living room, "Hey Yoongi, Imma go to the bathroom real quick make sure nothing burns." I said before walking off the bathroom.

As soon as I made it in I closed the door and locked it, I turned to the mirror. I lift my shirt and pull down my pants. There right on my hip is a purple hand sized bruise complete with a few small finger print sized ones surrounding it.

Oh shit, if Yoongi sees this he's gonna lose his shit. I swallow hard and put my clothes back in its place. I flush the toilet to make it seem like I actually went to the bathroom and washed my hands.

I make my way back to the kitchen and give Yoongi a heads up that I'm back as I pass the living room. He doesn't look away from the T.V. and continues watching the show. I get to the kitchen and let out a quiet breath. How the hell am I going to keep this hidden?

<---- Prev // Masterlist // Next ---->

[dynyamight]

meet cute number 47 is interesting!

send me a writting ask

47. Texting the incorrect number but continuing the conversation.

“You got all that, right?” Shinsou asks, readjusting his stance, so others can leave their classroom door easily.

Midoriya hums absentmindedly. He’s still quickly jotting down the last few digits onto his planner. “And, you said tomorrow morning, around 7? At the library?”

“Yeah,” Shinsou shrugs, “Or anytime really. The deadline isn’t until next month, you know.”

“I kinda just want to get it done, as soon as possible.”

Shinsou breathes out a snort. “Figured you’d say that much. Just make sure you got my number. Repeat it, if you need to.”

“No time.” Midoriya drops his bag to the side, shoving his now closed notebook inside. “Thank you! I’ll text you later tonight!” He offers hurriedly, before taking off down the campus halls.

Shinsou’s warning falls deaf to his rushed mind.

He has to run the entire way, in order to graciously catch the last bus for the hour. Sweaty and flushed, Midoriya slumps into his seat in relief. Fortunately, he was able to cop a seat for himself, settling by the window and his backpack right next to him.

Staring out, Midoriya tries to remind himself of the rest of his priorities he needed to do.

He still needed to start on Doctor Chiyo’s online Physiology exam, and gather his notes for the open book portion. It was a bit bothersome to handle tests online, but if the rest of class prefers it, there’s nothing Midoriya can do about it.

Speaking of which, Ochako had requested for copies of those exact same notes, since apparently she barely writes anything during lectures. He wants to suggest to her to just simply take better notes, but alas, he will gladly help her out.

And, finally, Midoriya has to collect reliable, approved research articles for his and Shinsou’s debate, in their argumentative project in Communications. Being assigned “PRO SOCIAL MEDIA INFLUENCE”, while being the most uninvolved people on the internet, Midoriya and Shinsou had a lot of work to do.

Not to mention it was already 18:00 by the time he reached the school’s dormitories. And yet, he needed to shower, make dinner, water his plants, and watch the newest episode of his favorite drama, airing tonight.

University was eating him alive.

Thankfully, he’s able to complete half of his list.

He finishes the exam with a 98%, and quickly snaps the pages of his notes over to Ochako and Iida, making sure to highlight the main topics questioned in the exam. Ochako sends a ‘thank you’ gif, and Iida texts a long, yet endearing message of gratitude.

Midoriya doesn’t have time to shower, instead blasting the TV volume loud, as he waters his indoor plants at the same time. He overwaters them a little bit, busy glancing back at the screen for too long. But, at least he’s able to watch the episode. He pouts when it ends on a cliffhanger, almost drowning his bonsai tree in frustration.

He’s only able to warm up a plate of leftovers, and read through only one research article, by the time it’s already blinking 21:30 on his phone. Sighing, Midoriya closes his laptop and grabs his cell phone instead.

An all nighter wasn’t preferable. But, if Shinsou is working overtime at his late night job, Midoriya supposes he can stay up and keep looking through more articles, until he has at least the required ten.

Flipping open his planner, Midoriya inputs Shinsou’s number into his phone. He adds his name, a contact photo of him sleeping, and finally taps a quick message.

(21:38) < You working?

When Shinsou doesn’t respond right away, Midoriya simply sets aside his phone on his desk. Stretching his arms, he sighs in defeat, now expecting Shinsou to be stuck at work.

He’s never worked at a restaurant, but he bets Friday nights can get pretty busy. And, Shinsou always complains that group outings and dates tend to stay over, even after the place is supposed to close. And, Midoriya trusts his word.

So, by the time his phone dings, Midoriya has been clicking through more articles on social media, bookmarking a few to go over later, as he went.

He lifts his phone, and with a bright screen, a message stares back at him.

shinsou hitoshi (21:58) > Who’s this

Oh, he did forget to specify. But, Midoriya smiles, having a small prank in mind. There was no harm in teasing his friends, let alone Shinsou, who definitely needed a good laugh, now and then.

(21:58) < It's the cutie from your communications class ;)

shinsou hitoshi (21:58) > So, no one

(21:59) < Haha! I guess you’re right about that

(21:59) < Anyways, it’s Izuku! You still working late, Hitoshi?

shinsou hitoshi (21:59) > This ain’t Hitoshi

Midoriya's face drops, blinking. Oh god, did he mistype the number?

(21:38) < Wait, you’re not???

Another text pops up, shortly after.

shinsou hitoshi (22:02) > You got the wrong number

Embarrassment burning his entire face red, Midoriya wishes he could delete himself from the world.

(22:03) < I’m so so so so sorry!

(22:03) < God, I thought I wrote down my friend’s number right

(22:03) < But, I was in this stupid rush to get on the bus that I didn’t make sure

(22:04) < And, listen, if I had missed that bus, I would’ve had to wait

(22:04) < Not like a few minutes wait

(22:04) < Like, a whole two hours wait!

shinsou hitoshi (22:05) > I didn’t ask

Deleting the conversation, Midoriya erases the new contact completely. And instead, he looks back to his planner, and retypes the numbers in his phone onto a new conversation.

Hopefully, he has typed the correct series of digits.

(22:07) < Hey, Hitoshi! It’s Izuku

unknown (22:08) > ...

unknown (22:08) > What the actual fuck

unknown (22:08) > You've still got the wrong number, you goddamn idiot

Slamming his phone onto his desk, Midoriya grabs a pillow off his bed and shoves it in his face. The temptation to scream sounds awfully pleasant, but it’s too late at night to do so. His dorm neighbors would definitely wonder what the hell is wrong with him.

What’s wrong? Oh, he has completely done one of the most dreaded imaginary scenarios in his head; text a complete stranger. Twice.

What was he supposed to do now? Never text back? Delete it? Block it?

How is he supposed to contact Shinsou now?

His phone dings again.

Lifting the pillow off his face slightly, Midoriya eyes his phone warily from his swivel chair.

That definitely wasn’t supposed to happen. Another text from the same stranger sounds a bit unheard of.

After a seconds-long hesitation, Midoriya lifts his phone and opens it once more.

unknown (22:13) > Double check next time

unknown (22:13) > You can fucking wait the two hours, dumbass

Midoriya grows a little irked. He has a bad feeling that his stranger isn’t too friendly, to say that least.

There was literally no reason to text back something so rude.

(22:14) < Well, that wasn’t nice

unknown (22:15) > Wasn’t trying to be

(22:15) < ..Are you always like this?

unknown (22:16) > Pretty much

(22:16) < That’s sad

unknown (22:17) > What’s fucking sad is that I was woken up from my sleep

unknown (22:17) > Because a damn moron didn’t write down the right number

Midoriya winces. He hadn’t even thought about the other person’s predicament, let alone if he had interrupted anything.

(22:20) > I really didn’t mean to do that, I’m sorry :(

unknown (22:22) > Yeah whatever

(22:24) > You should try to go back to sleep, then

unknown (22:25) > I was

unknown (22:25) > But the same moron from before keeps texting me

(22:27) > Who?

(22:33) > Oh.

(22:33) > It’s me, huh?

unknown (22:34) > No shit

(22:35) > Right, of course. My bad!

(22:35) > I’m going to just stop now

unknown (22:36) > Thanks

(22:36) > For the umpteenth time, sorry! ><

(22:37) > Okay, Okay! I’m stopping now, for real

Midoriya desperately needs to call it a night.

After going through his nightly routine, he slips under his bedsheets, exhausted. He sets an alarm for 5:00 on his phone, hoping Shinsou will show up at the library, regardless of the missing confirmation text on Midoriya’s end.

He keeps his phone on awhile longer, swiping through his professors’ emails, before a surprising text notification pops in front of him.

unknown (23:01) > FUCK YOU FUCK YOU

(23:02) > …

(23:02) > What was that for??

unknown (23:04) > I CAN’T SLEEP

unknown (23:04) > GOD, I CAN’T GO BACK TO FUCKING SLEEP

unknown (23:05) > AND IT’S YOUR FAULT

(23:06) > What do you expect me to do????

unknown (23:07) > HAHAHAHA OH DON’T WORRY

unknown (23:07) > IF I CAN’T SLEEP, NEITHER CAN YOU

unknown (23:08) > AND IF YOU TURN YOUR PHONE OFF I WILL SEND HELLFIRE

(23:09) > Wait

(23:09) > No, please

(23:09) > My alarm is on my phone, I need it on

(23:10) > I need to go to an important meeting for a group project at 7:00!

unknown (23:10) > Aw, really? :0?!

(23:11) > Yeah! I really do!

unknown (23:11) > Sike. I don’t fucking care

unknown (23:12) > Hope you eat shit tomorrow

(23:13) > ..Why are you like this?

(23:13) > I could literally be a twelve year old, for all you know

unknown (23:14) > I doubt fucking twelve years do group projects

unknown (23:15) > But whether you’re a damn infant, or grown adult, I hate you

(23:16) > I wouldn’t say I hate you. That’s too harsh

(23:16) > But, wow, you are very unlikable :/

unknown (23:17) > That’s the fucking nicest thing anyone has said about me

(23:18) > It wasn’t supposed

(23:19) > Nevermind.

(23:19) > Do you have any friends? Just might as well ask

unknown (23:21) > Surprisingly yeah

(23:22) > Oh, so you also agree. That it’s a surprise

(23:22) > At least you’re self aware :0

unknown (23:23) > Yeah, they are annoying as hell

unknown (23:24) > But, also pretty good people, I guess

(23:25) > Pretty good or pretty dumb?

unknown (23:26) > SHUT IT

unknown (23:27) > Only I can make fun of them

unknown (23:27) > You. Don’t.

(23:28) > You’re right, I shouldn’t have said that

(23:29) > I’m sorry :(

unknown (23:30) > You like apologizing, huh

(23:29) > There’s a lot to apologize for tonight

unknown (23:30) > Still, you don’t have to say it every damn minute

(23:32) > You probably don’t ever apologize

unknown (23:33) > Fuck no

(23:35) > Right, of course

(23:36) > Well, you know what I need to do tomorrow

unknown (23:37) > Unfortunately

(23:38) > What about you?

unknown (23:39) > I’m covering a shift at my shit job at the ass crack of dawn

(23:40) > Unnecessary visual, but I digress

(23:40) > Uh, where do you work?

unknown (23:42) > No. I don’t even know your damn name

(23:43) > I told you?? It was in my first text

unknown (23:44) > Yeah, I ain’t scrolling

(23:48) > Well, it’s Izuku. Midoriya Izuku :)

unknown (23:49) > Great. I still ain’t giving you mine

(23:50) > ?? Is there anything I can know about you??

(23:50) > You know more about me, than I do about you

unknown (23:51) > You know I hate you

unknown (23:51) > That’s plenty

(23:52) > But, I have been staying up for you :(

unknown (23:53) > Because it’s your fault I can’t sleep

(23:54) > You aren’t feeling sleepy yet?

unknown (23:56) > ..Are you

(23:57) > I asked you first

unknown (23:58) > I asked you second

(23:59) > That

(23:59) > Look, it’s almost midnight

(24:00) > Oh, now, it’s actually midnight

unknown (00:01) > I have fucking eyes. I can see the time

(00:02) > And we BOTH have places to be tomorrow

(00:02) > So, let’s just sleep. Call a truce, please

unknown (00:03) > What about my petty retribution

(00:04) > PLEASE LET ME SLEEP

unknown (00:10) > FUCK

unknown (00:10) > FINE

unknown (00:11) > I STILL CAN’T SLEEP BUT WHATEVER

unknown (00:12) > HOPE YOU FUCKING OVERSLEEP TOMORROW

The rest of the night, Midoriya hears his phone go off, but he doesn’t bother to open the messages. Fortunately for him, the time staying awake quickly catches up to his body, the moment he shuts his eyes. And, in an instant, he falls asleep, heavy.

However, he’s jolted awake by the ringing of his phone, the tone alerting him of an incoming phone call. Banging his head on the headboard, Midoriya blindly grabs and answers his phone. “Uh, H-Hello?” He blurts quickly.

“Tch.” A low voice emits, “You owe me, Deku.”

Click. The phone call ends.

Confused, Midoriya hurriedly rubs his eyes open. Running his messy curls through his fingers, he lifts his bangs up, in order to correctly look at the time.

The time was 5:10. And, his 5:00 alarm had been off the entire time.

And, instead, that same unknown number from last night was his saving grace.

[throughtheinterstices]

massive and small stars

❝ you were a massive star destined to burn for a few hundred thousand years, culminating in an inevitable explosion. kuroo tetsuro was the sun, a small star, bound to give light for several billion years. the difference between the two of you makes you ask him how he manages to keep his light. ❞

pairing. kuroo tetsuro x fem!reader

genre. college au where you and kuroo are apartment neighbors, implied comfort 

word count. 1.7k words

warnings. themes of burnout due to the pandemic

a/n. reblogs are very much appreciated. i’d be happy to hear your thoughts too. 

HAIKYUU MASTERLIST • AO3

You are by no means an astronomer. You are studying to become a physician. You are a hundred and ten percent certain of this fact. But as you lie limp atop your unmade bed, your mind can’t help but ponder on stars, how they are made, and how they die.

The lifetime of stars depends on their size. Massive stars exhaust their energy much faster and are only able to last for a few hundred millennia. Small stars, on the other hand, burn slowly, allowing them to exist for several billion years. 

You have always been told that you were destined to be a star, to burn brighter above everyone else. You are fated for brilliance, they said. All your life, you are convinced by their words.

Entering college, you believe it is your time to shine. Your days in the dust are long gone. All the ashes and gas are finally going to pool together as the enormous celestial body everybody expected you to be. You are finally away from the drama of high school. You’re supposed to be joining organizations, getting good grades, making lots of friends, and living.

You were supposed to be doing all of that. You were finally safely moved into your one-bedroom apartment near a prestigious university in Tokyo, aching for all of it.

Then the pandemic hit. The club fairs turned into online zoom meetings. The good grades turned into just-above-the-passing-rate marks. Those friends turned into monotonous group chats about academic requirements. Living turned into surviving.

You are destined to be a star, they said. Indeed, you feel like a massive star. You expected too much, gathered too many particles from the universe, that you ended up an immense ball of burning gas about to explode in the near future. You are so close to wearing yourself out. You try everything to avoid it.

You turn up the volume of your favorite songs because maybe it will drown the negative voices in your head.

You bathe yourself in sunlight because maybe it will overpower the darkness slowly wrapping itself around you.

You soak yourself under the shower for hours because maybe it will wash away the dread and anxiety.

You laugh humorlessly.

As if.

As much as you were predetermined for greatness, you are designed for destruction as well.

You look at the time. 5:11 PM.

There’s still time before he comes. You can still take a nap. You’ve been a light sleeper for the past few months anyway. You’ll hear him knock.

The knock comes two hours later, 7:00 PM sharp.

“Good evening,” Kuroo Tetsuro says.

You mimic his greeting weakly.

Kuroo Tetsuro is your university apartment neighbor. You became friends a month into the pandemic, when he came to your rescue after you almost burned down your apartment (you left the stove on while you were in the shower). Since then, the two of you had formed an unusual partnership. He was in-charge of half of the groceries and cooking the main course. You were in-charge of the other half of the groceries and preparing dessert. You took turns with the dishes.

You’re grateful for his companionship. Somehow, being able to interact with another person face-to-face lessens the gravity of the whole situation.

Today, the weight is just a tad bit heavier for you. You barely have the energy to contribute to the dinner table conversation. You just nod along and give a few replies here and there.

After catching his fingers lingering on his phone and after noticing his sensitivity toward notification sounds, you sense that the weight is heavier for him too.

“Expecting a call?” you ask, getting a bite of tonkatsu.

“Hoping for one,” Kuroo answers, picking at his own food.

“She cut the call short again?” Whether it was his mother or his sister, you don’t bother asking. It was always between the two of them anyway.

“Didn’t even bother answering,” he says. That explains it.

You offer him a sympathetic look. “I’m sorry.”

He scoffs. “’S not your fault.”

You know that. Still, you wanted to help him.

There was only one thing you can think of at the moment.

“Dessert?” you offer.

His face lights up a bit. “Yes please.”

You give him a small smile and stand up to reach for the newly-bought mochi.

 The days after, you still feel the looming sense of your inevitable combustion. Exams were still difficult. Readings were still extensive. Social interactions were still monotonously online. Club participation was still nonexistent.

 You turn the volume of your music a little higher. You stay under the sun a little longer. You soak under the shower head a few minutes more.

Yet, you still end up on your bed, drained. Nothing’s changed.

Another thing that hasn’t changed is him.

Seven o’clock sharp, he’s there, knocking on your door (tap, tap-tap-tap, tap-tap—a unique pattern he uses every time). He still cooks you dinner. He still talks to you about his day. You never see the light leave his eyes.

Kuroo Tetsuro was a star by his own right. He was the sun, bright and warm. You are always sure of his presence. You sense the remnants of his radiance the night before in the early morning just as you wake up. You hear the warmth in his boisterous laughter through the thin walls of your apartment. You feel his blazing passion for the sport that he loves when the sound of rubber on skin hits your ears (or sometimes it’s the sound of things getting broken).

Kuroo was the sun, a small star. Small stars don’t go as loudly as massive stars do, and they stay around for much longer. But they still cease to burn once they exhaust their fuel.

You wonder, sometimes, how Kuroo manages to keep his light burning.

There are days that the darkness creeps into his being. You’ve seen it. On days when the knock on your door isn’t as loud and lively, when his hands aren’t as nimble in slicing onions, when his laugh doesn’t ring the right way. And you know that the sun, like massive stars, like all stars, will collapse.

But he doesn’t.

He still calls his mother and sister relentlessly, trying to rekindle what was once there. Despite the social barriers that the pandemic has built, you can hear him still laughing loudly with his friends on video calls. Despite the halt in sports activities, he keeps his love for volleyball burning.

It makes you rethink whether he is a star in the first place. Something as brilliant as he is, who manages to burn bright despite everything, is something out of this world.

 You ask him one day.

On this particular day, he shows you a meme, “Are medical students who graduated online called google docs?”

You give a skeptical look at the idiot who was hysterically cackling himself to death.

“Why do you laugh at this as if it’s going to solve all of your problems?” you ask him.

The premise is anything but serious. Yet, you feel like he knows what you’re talking about.

Kuroo tries to regain some composure.

“It won’t,” he says, moving a hand across his all-time bedhead. “But hey, at least even with all my problems, I was able to laugh, right?”

 Huh.

You stare at him, as if seeing the sun for the first time in a long while.

The next day is still loaded with tests and homework. You still feel dumb. You still have no friends and no clubs. You still turn up the music. You still linger under the sunlight a little while longer. Your time in the shower is still a bit lengthier.

This time, you allow these things to make you smile.

Six fifty-nine—you are by the door, waiting.

Tap, tap—

You open the door before he finishes knocking.

“Good evening,” you greet first.

“Good evening,” he says, a bit taken back.

You hum your favorite song as he cooks sanma shio yaki (which you know is his favorite) and talks about his day.

Later, when you are preparing dessert, he asks, “Did anything good happen today?”

You think about it. “Hmm… Nothing in particular. Why?”

“I just… haven’t seen that smile in a while.”

Your fingers stop cutting midway across the strawberry shortcake you bought two hours before.

“Hmm?” You glance at him in your periphery.

“Yeah. It looks pretty.” 

You take a sharp breath in.

You sense him take in his words as well.

You slowly turn your head back. As you expect, Kuroo Tetsurou has his hands scratching the back of his neck, trying to avoid your gaze.

Well, I’m not going to be the uncomfortable one here.

You allow yourself to tease him. “I do look pretty, don’t I?”

He glares at you. “As if!” But you see his ears flush pink.

You return to the strawberry shortcake that you were cutting.

You feel the edges of your lips inching their way closer to your eyes.

It’s been a while since you felt this way—this light. At the back of your mind, there were still essays to write, exams to study for, professors to impress, parents to make proud, and yourself to fix. The problems will never disappear.

And it’s not as if louder music, stronger sunlight, more bath water, and cornier jokes of the guy behind you could solve all of them.

But maybe if they can make you smile despite all the problems, then maybe… maybe you’re going to be okay.

Whether you are a massive star or whether Kuroo Tetsuro was the sun, you don’t know for sure.

You are by no means an astronomer. You are studying to become a physician. Instead of concerning yourself with celestial bodies, you should be concerning yourself with the human body.

From all the things that you were taught in medical school, this is something you know by heart: humans are made of the same elements as the stars are.

They are the same, yet they are different. Stars burn bright. And borrowing Guy Consolmagno’s words, they will end “either in a bang or in a whimper.”

Humans are different. They can burn unyieldingly without ceasing. Kuroo Tetsuro has proven that to you.

At present, that is all the reassurance that you need.

HAIKYUU MASTERLIST • AO3 LINK

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Recommendation engines and "lean-back" media

In William Gibson’s 1992 novel “Idoru,” a media executive describes her company’s core audience:

“Best visualized as a vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organism craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed. Personally I like to imagine something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It’s covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth…no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote. Or by voting in presidential elections.”

It’s an astonishingly great passage, not just for the image it evokes, but for how it captures the character of the speaker and her contempt for the people who made her fortune.

It’s also a beautiful distillation of the 1990s anxiety about TV’s role in a societal “dumbing down,” that had brewed for a long time, at least since the Nixon-JFK televised debates, whose outcome was widely attributed not to JFK’s ideas, but to Nixon’s terrible TV manner.

Neil Postman’s 1985 “Amusing Ourselves To Death” was a watershed here, comparing the soundbitey Reagan-Dukakis debates with the long, rhetorically complex Lincoln-Douglas debates of the previous century.

(Incidentally, when I finally experienced those debates for myself, courtesy of the 2009 BBC America audiobook, I was more surprised by Lincoln’s unequivocal, forceful repudiations of slavery abolition than by the rhetoric’s nuance)

https://memex.craphound.com/2009/01/20/lincoln-douglas-debate-audiobook-civics-history-and-rhetoric-lesson-in-16-hours/

“Media literacy” scholarship entered the spotlight, and its left flank — epitomized by Chomsky’s 1988 “Manufacturing Consent” — claimed that an increasingly oligarchic media industry was steering society, rather than reflecting it.

Thus, when the internet was demilitarized and the general public started trickling — and then rushing — to use it, there was a widespread hope that we might break free of the tyranny of concentrated, linear programming (in the sense of “what’s on,” and “what it does to you”).

Much of the excitement over Napster wasn’t about getting music for free — it was about the mix-tapification of all music, where your custom playlists would replace the linear album.

Likewise Tivo, whose ad-skipping was ultimately less important than the ability to watch the shows you liked, rather than the shows that were on.

Blogging, too: the promise was that a community of reader-writers could assemble a daily “newsfeed” that reflected their idiosyncratic interests across a variety of sources, surfacing ideas from other places and even other times.

The heady feeling of the time is hard to recall, honestly, but there was a thrill to getting up and reading the news that you chose, listening to a playlist you created, then watching a show you picked.

And while there were those who fretted about the “Daily Me” (what we later came to call the “filter bubble”) the truth was that this kind of active media creation/consumption ranged far more widely than the monopolistic media did.

The real “bubble” wasn’t choosing your own programming — it was everyone turning on their TV on Thursday nights to Friends, Seinfeld and The Simpsons.

The optimism of the era is best summarized in a taxonomy that grouped media into two categories: “lean back” (turn it on and passively consume it) and “lean forward” (steer your media consumption with a series of conscious decisions that explores a vast landscape).

Lean-forward media was intensely sociable: not just because of the distributed conversation that consisted of blog-reblog-reply, but also thanks to user reviews and fannish message-board analysis and recommendations.

I remember the thrill of being in a hotel room years after I’d left my hometown, using Napster to grab rare live recordings of a band I’d grown up seeing in clubs, and striking up a chat with the node’s proprietor that ranged fondly and widely over the shows we’d both seen.

But that sociability was markedly different from the “social” in social media. From the earliest days of Myspace and Facebook, it was clear that this was a sea-change, though it was hard to say exactly what was changing and how.

Around the time Rupert Murdoch bought Myspace, a close friend a blazing argument with a TV executive who insisted that the internet was just a passing fad: that the day would come when all these online kids grew up, got beaten down by work and just wanted to lean back.

To collapse on the sofa and consume media that someone else had programmed for them, anaesthetizing themselves with passive media that didn’t make them think too hard.

This guy was obviously wrong — the internet didn’t disappear — but he was also right about the resurgence of passive, linear media.

But this passive media wasn’t the “must-see TV” of the 80s and 90s.

Rather, it was the passivity of the recommendation algorithm, which created a per-user linear media feed, coupled with mechanisms like “endless scroll” and “autoplay,” that incinerated any trace of an active role for the “consumer” (a very apt term here).

It took me a long time to figure out exactly what I disliked about algorithmic recommendation/autoplay, but I knew I hated it. The reason my 2008 novel LITTLE BROTHER doesn’t have any social media? Wishful thinking. I was hoping it would all die in a fire.

Today, active media is viewed with suspicion, considered synonymous with Qanon-addled boomers who flee Facebook for Parler so they can stan their favorite insurrectionists in peace, freed from the tyranny of the dread shadowban.

But I’m still on team active media. I would rather people actively choose their media diets, in a truly sociable mode of consumption and production, than leaning back and getting fed whatever is served up by the feed.

Today on Wired, Duke public policy scholar Philip M Napoli writes about lean forward and lean back in the context of Trump’s catastrophic failure to launch an independent blog, “From the Desk of Donald J Trump.”

https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-trumps-failed-blog-proves-he-was-just-howling-into-the-void/

In a nutshell, Trump started a blog which he grandiosely characterized as a replacement for the social media monopolists who’d kicked him off their platforms. Within a month, he shut it down.

While Trump claimed the shut-down was all part of the plan, it’s painfully obvious that the real reason was that no one was visiting his website.

Now, there are many possible, non-exclusive explanations for this.

For starters, it was a very bad social media website. It lacked even rudimentary social tools. The Washington Post called it “a primitive one-way loudspeaker,” noting its lack of per-post comments, a decades old commonplace.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/05/21/trump-online-traffic-plunge/

Trump paid (or more likely, stiffed) a grifter crony to build the site for him, and it shows: the “Like” buttons didn’t do anything, the video-sharing buttons created links to nowhere, etc. From the Desk… was cursed at birth.

But Napoli’s argument is that even if Trump had built a good blog, it would have failed. Trump has a highly motivated cult of tens of millions of people — people who deliberately risked death to follow him, some even ingesting fish-tank cleaner and bleach at his urging.

The fact that these cult-members were willing to risk their lives, but not endure poor web design, says a lot about the nature of the Trump cult, and its relationship to passive media.

The Trump cult is a “push media” cult, simultaneously completely committed to Trump but unwilling to do much to follow him.

That’s the common thread between Fox News (and its successors like OANN) and MAGA Facebook.

And it echoes the despairing testimony of the children of Fox cultists, that their boomer parents consume endless linear TV, turning on Fox from the moment they arise and leaving it on until they fall asleep in front of it (also, reportedly, how Trump spent his presidency).

Napoli says that Trump’s success on monopoly social media platforms and his failure as a blogger reveals the role that algorithmically derived, per-user, endless scroll linear media played in the ascendancy of his views.

It makes me think of that TV exec and his prediction of the internet’s imminent disappearance (which, come to think of it, is not so far off from my own wishful thinking about social media’s disappearance in Little Brother).

He was absolutely right that this century has left so many of us exhausted, wanting nothing more than the numbness of lean-back, linear feeds.

But up against that is another phenomenon: the resurgence of active political movements.

After a 12-month period that saw widescale civil unrest, from last summer’s BLM uprising to the bizarre storming of the capital, you can’t really call this the golden age of passivity.

While Fox and OANN consumption might be the passive daily round of one of Idoru’s “vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organisms craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed,” that is in no way true of Qanon.

Qanon is an active pastime, a form of collaborative storytelling with all the mechanics of the Alternate Reality Games that the lean-forward media advocates who came out of the blogging era love so fiercely:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/06/no-vitiated-air/#other-hon

Meanwhile, the “clicktivism” that progressive cynics decried as useless performance a decade ago has become an active contact sport, welding together global movements from Occupy to BLM that use the digital to organize the highly physical.

That’s the paradox of lean-forward and lean-back: sometimes, the things you learn while leaning back make you lean forward — in fact, they might just get you off the couch altogether.

I think that Napoli is onto something. The fact that Trump’s cultists didn’t follow him to his crummy blog tells us that Trump was an effect, not a cause (something many of us suspected all along, as he’s clearly neither bright nor competent enough to inspire a movement).

But the fact that “cyberspace keeps everting” (to paraphrase “Spook Country,” another William Gibson novel) tells us that passive media consumption isn’t a guarantee of passivity in the rest of your life (and sometimes, it’s a guarantee of the opposite).

And it clarifies the role that social media plays in our discourse — not so much a “radicalizer” as a means to corral likeminded people together without them having to do much. Within those groups are those who are poised for action, or who can be moved to it.

The ease with which these people find one another doesn’t produce a deterministic outcome. Sometimes, the feed satisfies your urge for change (“clicktivism”). Sometimes, it fuels it (“radicalizing”).

Notwithstanding smug media execs, the digital realm equips us to “express our mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire” by doing much more than “changing the channels on a universal remote” — for better and for worse.

Image: Ian Burt (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/oddsock/267206444

CC BY: https://creativecommo

ns.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[therabbitsmuse]

10

my new first post. i decided to private most of my content instead of creating a new Tumblr from scratch. not sure why i felt such a strong urge to do so. it's not like anyone reads my posts & almost no one from real life knows about it. i was driven by this overwhelming urge to reset, to start over. as silly (& time-consuming) as it was, i did feel a lot better after coming back to an almost blank slate.

I've slowly been shifting into who I'm meant to be. that's probably one of the best things about moving somewhere new, where I know maybe 2 people. I've been really happy with my routines and not having to take anyone else into consideration. but letting go can be lonely, esp when I held onto certain identities and ideas for so long. I'm not quite sure what to fill that space with. But I know it's time to let go. It's served its purpose and now i no longer feel the same.

For the first time in probably ten years, this is the most inconsistent I have been with electronic music. I'm not excited by any of it. I'm even less excited by the prospect of festivals. i went to a few shows in brooklyn but i felt like i was only trying to chase a feeling. it's a strange thing to face. i thought maybe i was in a slump. i didn't want to believe that maybe I'm becoming one of those ppl who outgrow this phase of life. but all the signs are there. I unfollowed all the rave ig accounts i used to watch religiously. I no longer listen to or update my playlists. I can't name any songs that have really pulled me into the depths of layered complexity. It's fucking weird honestly. i don't think electronic music and shows will go away completely from my life, but i think, for the time being, it's one of my last priorities

you know when you have those thoughts that haunt you a little? where you wonder if maybe it's you that's the problem? I've been in that state as I've navigated through this new life.

i'm so glad i didn't choose to live in the city (tho tbh it was out of my budget anyways lol). i love my space. it's old but it's charming. i am surrounded by good food and small local businesses. i loved it the moment i moved in, minus the few dead cockroaches that appeared out of the abyss. however, when i met some people and told them where i lived, they looked at me as if i said i chose to live on mars. i went over to a few apts and wondered if I made the wrong choice. i have no city view. the kitchen was small af and probably older than i am. there's no doorman. no in-unit laundry or dishwasher. and then i felt dumb trying to chase some sort of illusion of what type of place i 'should' be living in. my studio doesn't feel like home just yet but I've always been happy to return back to it and i think that's all that matters

i feel like my old life is dead. i mean, it is in the past. but it's crazy how only four months on the other side will make me feel like there's a bigger disconnect between the before and after. it feels more like four years have passed by.

making friends is hard af. it's like online dating. you gotta meet a shit ton of people just to find a few that you like. and the ones you do like also have a lot of other choices waiting for them. you gotta schedule something again within the next week at least before the opportunity drops off into the abyss. and then on top of it, you gotta deal with ghosting and people who just want to use you for something. it's fucking exhausting. I've met a few cool ppl and a few potentials i think? like there's no shortage of people to hang with but i still feel a bit like an alien when i go to these group things.

life is so short. and everything can be taken from you at any moment.

i can't believe i had a celery juice phase earlier this year. like what the fuck kind of dark spot was i in LOL

something tells me i need to run after these rays of happiness because we're closing in on the end of everything [again].

[winterscaptain]

dead man’s hand.

Aaron Hotchner x Fem!Reader

a/n: our 52 pickup ajf episode! i dunno about yall, but i was so excited to get my hands on viper in this universe. he’s ridiculous, and i think he deserves to be absolutely put to shame by aaron “BDE” hotchner. 

a joyful future fic, but requires little context. 

words: 5k warnings: canon-typical misogyny, language, improper comm conduct, emily prentiss: lesbian icon™

summary: your first case back to full duties after your injury at the septarian ranch just had to take you undercover, didn’t it?

masterlist | a joyful future masterlist | requests closed!

You’re happy to be back in your usual plane seat, just to the left of Aaron, with your notes in your lap. With your arm in the sling, you were relegated to the table, in Derek’s usual spot beside Rossi, to discourage you from slouching. It was Hotch who suggested it, of course, but that didn’t help your pride. 

Though your sling is gone and you’re back where you belong, your shoulder still twinges a little from time to time. 

As it happens, a twinge hits you right as Rossi asks, “How does our unsub go from loser of the year to Don Juan?”

While Spencer answers him, Hotch glances over at you. You wave him off. I’m fine, Hotch. 

He sighs and you both tune back in to Spencer. “...Don Juan was an ironic reversal of sex roles and when -” Spencer looks at Hotch, finding something in his face that usually made you laugh, but stops Spencer in his tracks. “Th-That’s about it.” 

You suppress your smile as Hotch refocuses the group. “Something must have happened between the last prostitute and Vanessa Holden, making him change his victimology.” 

“Could the unsub have known Vanessa?” Jordan’s question almost surprises you. She’s still settling in, but you’re learning she doesn’t hesitate to freely share her opinion. 

Hotch hesitates, as if waiting for someone else to answer. You oblige him, leaning around Dave a bit to see her better. “It’s unlikely.” 

Derek picks up your thought. “Yeah, sexual sadists attack anonymously”

“They have to sever a personal connection and see their victims as objects to perpetrate this level of torture.” Spencer softens your quick rebukes with a little closed-mouth smile. 

You spare a glance for Hotch and he raises his eyebrows for a split second before they drop back down. Your elbow makes contact with his arm, and you press into him for a second. Be nice. 

He huffs a light breath through his nose as Prentiss and Rossi bounce off each other. I am being nice. 

Then, as though your silent sidebar never existed, he jumps back in. “The victimology is so different, we’ll treat them as separate unsubs and see what overlaps.” He makes assignments, finally rounding out by assigning Derek, you, Jordan, and himself to the victim’s family. 

+++

Todd’s initiative continues to take you by surprise long after you land. She takes command of the situation at the precinct, and there are a couple of times where you can feel Hotch shift his weight. 

He’s uncomfortable. 

When Jordan leaves the room, you turn to the side and he leans in. “If you’re going to pull her, do it quietly. Something tells me she’s adverse to public criticism.” 

He nods, just a little, and you return to your former posture. 

The house is where things get really sticky. 

“Mrs. Holden,” she says, “we can’t begin to fathom the loss you’ve suffered.” 

You nudge Hotch with your shoulder (ouch) and he uncrosses his arms. Loosen up for a minute, would you?

“No, that’s right. You can’t.” Mrs. Holden’s tone is sharp, and you can’t help but feel for her - the stuff Garcia sent over was awful. A daughter, dead, and forums full of people saying you had it coming. Ugh. 

“But, um…” Jordan steps up, and you narrow your eyes a little. 

What is she doing? 

“I lost my older sister in a car crash.” You can feel Derek’s brow furrow as he checks in with Hotch. Aaron has yet to move and, as usual, his face gives nothing away to anyone except you. Something’s wrong. “And it was really hard on our family because she was the responsible one. She was the one that my mother always counted on to watch over us.” 

Your eyes flicker to Hotch’s profile, and you find his mouth a touch tighter, his eyes infinitesimally narrower.

Uh oh. 

We know that look. 

Again, what is she doing? 

“And when she died, my mother wouldn’t let the police in. If she didn’t let them in, then my sister wasn’t really dead.” Jordan leans in closer, as if her next words are a secret. “This man is a monster,” Aaron straightens with an inhale, and you feel yourself wind tighter and tighter as he does. You have no idea what you’re upset about yet, but you’re sure it's something. “...and we can catch him, but we need your daughter’s help.”

The mother turns on Derek in an outburst of pre-emptive anger. He very kindly de-escalates the situation, ever the voice of reason and empathy. Hotch takes another breath as Mrs. Holden turns to invite you further into the house. Jordan checks in with Derek before following her, almost smug. 

Aaron’s brows are drawn when you look at him again. Derek asks the question you’ve been waiting for. “Did you know that about Jordan?”

“No,” he says. “And neither did she. According to her file, she’s an only child.” Hotch walks away immediately, letting his implicit accusation hang in the air between you. 

You share a look with Derek. 

+++

“The information about Vanessa Holden being the responsible sister, where did you get that?”

You try to stay a little ahead of them, but Derek has no qualms about openly eavesdropping, turning over his shoulder. 

Her tone is matter-of-fact. “Some of it was online, and some of it was just an educated guess based on birth order.”

Still facing forward, you squeeze your eyes shut for a moment, as if bracing yourself for impact. 

“A guess.” Hotch’s question is flat and hardly a question at all. You almost cringe. Derek hops up beside you, much less interested in snooping now. 

Shit. You’re in it now, kid. 

‘Kid.’ Gimme a break she’s like...two years younger than you.

Yeah, but on this team, it’s dog years. The divorce alone had to be at least a decade.

“And in the process, you lied.” 

There it is. 

“That mother was shut down. I needed to salvage some rapport.” The note of defensiveness in Jordan’s tone pulls a sigh from you, and you can almost anticipate Hotch’s response. If pressed, you could recite it verbatim. 

“I don’t know how you did things in counter-terrorism, but we don’t make it a habit to lie to get the job done.” They stop walking, but you don’t, pulling Derek by the sleeve of his Henley before he can hesitate. 

“Let’s wait by the car,” you tell him. He gives you an expression that only says yikes. You reply with one of your own. 

As you approach the back door, you hear, “I got you in the door, didn’t I?” from Jordan.

Oh babe. Put the shovel down. This hole you’re digging for yourself is becoming unmanageable, and we’re all going to have to deal with his grumpy ass for the rest of the afternoon if you don’t quit. 

Derek leans against the door of the car, and you follow his lead, leaning against the back bumper. 

“Not only do you represent the FBI, you represent this team - ”

Ah, so it's the “representing the team with integrity” speech today.

 “ - to the press, the police, and to the families who are struggling with some of the hardest times of their lives. If you get caught in a lie, the trust we depend on to help solve these crimes disappears.” You inhale, sharp. It’s been a minute since you’ve heard that tone. “Do I make myself clear?” 

Yikes. 

Jordan, looking significantly chastised, answers, “It won’t happen again.” 

“No, it won’t.” 

Alright, that one pulls a smile from you and you do your best to bite back your laugh. Derek’s in the same boat. You both hope to recover by the time they get back to the car. A fit of giggles will do you absolutely no good at this point. 

“When we get back, I want you to prepare a press release about the unsub. Do not release it.” His phone rings, and he reaches for it, adding “From now on, everything goes through me.”

He passes you without meeting your eye, talking to Rossi over the phone. Jordan approaches you, and asks, “So how bad did I just screw up?”

You take a breath before answering. “Well, Derek would tell you on a normal scale of one to ten, probably about a six.” 

“I have a feeling that’s not the scale we’re using.”

You shake your head and open the door. “On Hotch’s, that was about an eleven.” 

The three of you slide into the car. You take the seat behind Derek, sparing Aaron from having Jordan in his peripheral vision while he’s trying to focus on not crashing the car. 

+++

“Hotch,” Emily says, getting your attention and Aaron’s. You both turn. “Of the self-described pickup artist classes in the area, there’s only one guy who encourages his students to dress like, uh..” she searches for a word for a second, “space cowboys.” 

A laugh escapes you, but you recover quickly. You glance at Hotch, an apology in your eyes.

Emily’s tone matches your mirth. “Are you ready to meet Viper?”

+++

The four of you lurk at the back of the room, listening to Viper’s sermon while trying not to laugh out loud again. 

“...and women, while they won’t admit it, want to be hunted. They need it.” 

You look up at Hotch. You’ve got to be kidding me. 

He doesn’t look at you, but the twitch of his mouth gives him away. 

You turn your attention back to Viper, who’s assertions are so far gone from reality you can’t even believe people paid for this. He goes on and on about the ideal mate, what women want, etc. etc. etc. 

This guy has never gotten laid in his life. 

Hotch nudges you with his shoulder as if he can hear you thinking, and you drop your eyebrows, setting your mouth in a tight line that could give him a run for his money. 

Emily’s losing it beside you, too. She and Derek have shared more than a few glances, and there’s no hiding the incredulous look on her face. 

“If you are smarter and more interesting, you will be a better predator -”

You keep your face from screwing up in a wince, but only just. Poor choice of words, there. 

“- because this is the jungle, my friends, and your prey wants to be caught.”

Derek doesn’t shift his gaze as he asks, quietly, “Would you listen to that language?”

You lean around Emily, whispering, “He’s training serial killers.” 

“Great,” Emily says. “We’re dealing with a rampant narcissist and misogynist who's turned himself into a snake oil salesman.” 

Yeah, that about sums it up. 

You both look at Hotch, who’s still watching carefully. “Just one more thing he has in common with our unsub.” 

At the end of the lecture you all stay where you are: four dark and intimidating figures irresistible to someone with an ego as big as Viper’s.

When he inevitably advances on you, Aaron introduces the team present and explains the situation in an even, measured tone. He doesn’t have to change a single thing about his presentation for the Viper to size him up and compensate accordingly. He doesn’t even acknowledge you or Emily in his futile effort to make Aaron feel small, counting on his own peacocking to do the job. 

That was your first mistake.

“So you think this - what did you call him - unsub took my class?”

With one hand in his pocket and another on his belt, Aaron replies. “He copied your ‘the camera adds ten pounds’ routine verbatim.” 

Viper has the audacity to look pleased. “Yeah. That’s a good gag.”

“If you could just give us your attendance lists, it might help us find him,” Emily says. 

You nod. “Any information you can provide would be helpful.”

“No.” 

Your eyebrows shoot to your hairline, and Emily beats you to a response, her tone appalled. “No?”

He’s decidedly smug now. You’ve never seen a face so well-suited for a punch. “My clients expect a certain amount of confidentiality. I won’t compromise that.” 

“We can come back with a warrant.” Aaron’s quick, flat rebuttal almost makes you smile. Viper ignores him, shifting his slimy attention to you.

You watch Viper take you in from head to toe, resisting the urge to squirm under his gaze. With a deep breath, you straighten your shoulders and ever so slightly put more weight on your right foot, keying you in to Aaron. When Viper meets your gaze again, he looks more than a little annoyed. 

“Be my guest, but keep in mind, the money I make doesn’t just pay for my fabulous lifestyle,” he turns to Emily again, “it also keeps very expensive lawyers on retainer.”

You redirect, hoping to catch him off guard. “What club did you go to last night?”

It doesn’t work. He eyes you up and down again. It’s disgusting. 

“It’s a legitimate question,” Derek says. “You seem to know a lot about our investigation.”

He turns on Derek, and you settle in for the show. “Two things to learn about me. First, I outwit alpha males like you for fun and sometimes profit.” You snort, but he doesn’t spare a glance at you. “How often do you have to rely on your badge to score, baldy?”

Aaron huffs a laugh, and it’s so quiet you’re almost sure you made it up. 

“Second,” he continues, turning to Emily again. “Last night, I was at Club Aqua and I have a stack of tax-deductible drink receipts to back up my story.” 

She shrugs, unimpressed. 

Emily Prentiss, you are my hero. 

You really tune in when his gaze finds Aaron, still standing a good two or three inches taller than Viper in far more expensive shoes. “Now, you might not want to believe that my style works.” You can tell Aaron’s trying to keep from smiling, his head tilted down at a condescending angle. “And here, in this harsh light, you have the advantage.” 

He has the advantage in every light. 

Shut up. 

It’s true, isn't it?

Viper steps up to you, uncomfortably close, and you do what you can to keep the grimace off your face. “But meet me on my turf…” He laughs a little and turns to Emily. It’s revolting. “The things I could make you do.”

The things Aaron could do on any turf, any time, any light -

Quit! Focus! 

Aaron steps between you and Viper. You gladly take advantage of the distance, moving just off Aaron’s shoulder. “If you have any questions, give us a call.” 

Viper’s eyes don’t move from Emily as he takes Aaron’s card. She sizes him up for a moment before turning around, still completely unimpressed. 

Down the hallway, she keeps pace with Hotch. “Please tell me we’re not giving up on that guy.” 

“We’re just getting started.” 

You can tell he’s irritated and tense, but there’s an air of smug amusement that colors his countenance. The lawyer has tricks up his sleeve, it seems. 

When you leave the building, you turn on Derek. 

“What the fuck was that?”

To everyone’s surprise, Aaron, putting his sunglasses on, answers. “Compensation.”

You try not to dwell on that implication for too long, barking a laugh with Emily.

+++

“Hey, Hotch.” You turn around, exposing your half-unzipped dress and bare upper back. “Can you zip me up?” He crosses the room and zips your dress, doing his best to avoid savoring the warmth of your skin under his fingers as he links the hook-and-eye closed. “Thanks.” You turn and he’s a little closer than you expected, looking at you with a peculiar, unreadable expression in his eyes. 

There’s silence for a moment and neither one of you moves. No matter how often it occurred, close proximity to Aaron always did weird things to your heart rate. You take a deep breath to steady yourself and return to the locker for a set of loud silver bracelets. 

“You’d tell me if you were uncomfortable with this, right?”

You clasp two of the bracelets around your wrist and turn back toward him. A little laugh leaves you. “I’m fine, Hotch.” You wordlessly hold your last two bracelets out, unable to secure them with your non-dominant hand. With a fond sigh, he crosses over to you and takes your wrist.

“Emily told me you’d both be alright and she’s handled people like this before, but this guy…” He trails off with a bit of sigh. 

“I’ve handled worse than him. Guys like Viper were a dime a dozen in college,” You shrug, watching him deftly handle the tiny clasps in his large hands. “Plus, you’ll be in my ear the whole time.” He reaches past you for your necklace and you turn around so he can put it on. He smells incredible and you can't help but close your eyes for a moment. 

“I have a good feeling we’ll be able to get somewhere tonight.”

You turn around again, smiling up at him. “I agree.” Thinking for just a second, you add, “Hotch, did you consider putting Jordan on this?”

“I did,” he says, his fingers reaching for the bridge of his nose. “Emily suggested it as well. I’m just not confident in her ability to complete surveillance in such a high-risk environment.” 

“Because of her mistake today?” You pass him and close the door to the room, ensuring the exclusion of prying eyes and ears. 

He removes his hand from his face and looks at you, playing at exhaustion. Of course.

You let all your breath out through your nose and you carry on as if you were explaining to a child. “She can’t recover if you don’t give her an opportunity.” You lighten up, adding, “Do you remember how many times I screwed up my first couple of months?” A wry smile crosses your face. 

He huffs and crosses his arms. “That’s different.” 

“Why? Because I was a NAT?” 

“No, you -” He takes a second to collect his thoughts, his brow furrowed. He gestures with a sharp, open hand as he speaks. “You made mistakes, but you never misrepresented yourself. I’m concerned about her conduct in the field.” 

“Send her out with us tonight.” Your appeal is casual, easy. “Emily and I will keep an eye on her and make sure she keeps her nose clean.” All things considered, Jordan isn’t much of an issue. She’s just green and (you’re sure) accustomed to a decidedly less-upright unit chief. 

“Are you comfortable with that?”

“Of course. Give her a chance, Hotch. We’ll be fine.” 

He nods, ready to leave the room, but then looks down at your wrist with a small, almost amused, frown. “Is that…?”

“The Dead Man’s Hand? Yeah.” You turn your wrist, revealing a pair of eights and aces - both clubs and spades, with the queen of hearts between them - inlaid in the silver. “I figured it was appropriate, if not entirely tasteless.” 

“Clever.” 

+++

You can tell Jordan’s forgotten about the comm in her ear when she leans over and whispers, “How do you do it?”

“Do what?” You keep your eyes on the crowd, lips barely moving as you keep a demure smile on your face. A guy without a chance in hell catches your eye and you break him with just a quick softening of your eyes and a wider smile. Luckily, he’s so flustered he doesn’t think to approach you.

She takes a fake sip of her drink. “You and Hotch get along really well, and I haven’t managed to get on his good side once since I’ve been here. How do you do it?”

“I have no idea.” There’s a small crackle in your ear, and you know Aaron tuned into your private channel to hear you better and talk to you alone. For his benefit, you add, “I’m not sure he has a good side, if that helps.” 

You hear a scoff and have to hide your laugh in your drink. 

Jordan shakes her head. “You’re kidding, right?”

“What?”

“He definitely has a good side -” 

“Thank you,” Hotch says into your ear. You cough to hide another laugh. 

“- and you’re on it.” 

You open your mouth to reply, but catch the eye of someone who looks unfortunately familiar. “You’ve got to be joking.”

Hotch’s chuckle in your ear warms you, and you hear a crackle as he switches back to the team channel. “20 on Viper,” he says. “Keep an eye out for our unsub.” 

Emily wilts beside you, and you can’t help but laugh. You pull Jordan a little off to the side so you’re able to hear Viper, but he doesn’t feel closed in. “You always want to give guys like this an out - if they’re backed into a corner and feel trapped, they close off and get defensive.” 

A crackle in your ear. “Is that so?”

Jordan nods and you can’t reply to Hotch with any degree of subtlety, so you settle for rolling your eyes. 

“Well.” You hear Viper from over your shoulder. Jordan cringes, and your brow pulls in a question. “Lucky me.”

She answers, narrating through a squint. “He just put his finger in his mouth and pulled it out a little too slow.” 

“Ugh.” You take a fake sip of your drink. “I hate this guy.” 

“I thought you said you could handle him?” Aaron’s voice in your ear almost makes you jump, and you almost turn around to smack him before realizing he’s not even there. 

Bastard. 

Emily sends some sort of wisecrack flying over Viper’s head. She’s so charming, you can’t blame him for immediately falling head-over-dick for her. 

“...So, affection, sex, emotional committment, it’s all just for fun?”

Against your will, your thoughts wander. You’re still listening, tuned in to his linguistic profile - the pattern, the rhetoric, the cadence, sure - but your heart pulls when you hear Emily list those three things. A sigh leaves you and of course you’re thinking of Aaron. 

You’re such a child. Don’t be an idiot. 

“You okay?” 

Of course he’s asking. 

You turn away from Jordan, looking out on the rest of the club so you can answer. “I’m fine.” 

“Need a break?”

You are feeling a little boxed-in, and as long as he’s offering… “Yeah, actually. That would be great. I just need some air.” You turn back to Jordan. “I’ll be right back - stay with Emily.” 

“But wait,” she says, holding your arm with gentle fingers, “we shouldn’t split up.”

“I just need a minute outside, Jordan, I’ll be alright.” You smile at her, small and warm, and escape her grasp. Slipping out one of the side doors, you prop it with a doorstop and lean against the wall. Your eyes fall closed, and you take a minute to breathe in the cold air. 

You hear your name in your ear, and you yank your earwig out. It's still close enough for you to hear the team if anyone needed you, but Aaron’s voice in your ear at this very moment isn’t helping with the whole “take a minute” thing. 

“Hey, I’m talking to you.” 

I thought I took that damn thing out - oh. 

Aaron rounds the corner and leans on the wall beside you. “You okay?”

You nod. “Fine. My shoulder’s just bugging me a little.” 

“Any more lies you want to share before I call you on them?” 

“No.” In fairness, your shoulder was bothering you, but it wasn’t the thing bothering you. That thing, in fact, was standing beside you with his kevlar on, waiting patiently for you to continue. “I’m just out of shape, is all.” You tilt your head a little. “And my shoulder really does hurt.” 

He guides you off the wall so you’re standing in front of him, your back to him. “What have you been doing in PT?”

“Muscle work, mostly. Keeping things loose so it heals without limiting my mobility.” You roll your shoulder, ignoring the flood of pain that zings down your fingertips. 

Warm hands find their way to your shoulder over the fabric of your dress. You picked something long-sleeved and high-necked, figuring the angry scarring from your still-healing gunshot wound would adversely affect your objective. You take deep breaths as he works at the muscle, releasing the little knots that built up through the day. He finds a bit of scar tissue, and a little yelp leaves you before you can stop it. 

His hands soften, but don’t stop. “Hang in there. Just a little more and it’ll take some pressure off the nerve.” He trades his thumbs for the tips of his fingers, walking over the knots with a methodical practicality that pulls at your chest.

You nod, knowing he’s right. Lo and behold, a few seconds later, the knot releases, sending a flood of warmth, followed by pins and needles down your arm. You flex and contract your hand in and out of a fist a couple of times, hoping to rid yourself of the sensation. 

“It’ll stop in a second.” He rubs his hands together, warming them up with the friction before passing over the back of your shoulder with a firm, steady pressure, all the way down your arm to your fingers. The heat of his hands really does help - your nerves calm almost immediately, and you can feel your pinkie for the first time in days. 

A little laugh leaves you. “I dunno why I keep going to PT when you’re right here.” You turn and offer him a soft smile. “Thank you.”

“Feeling better?”

No. 

“Much.” 

He offers you a small smile in return. “Good.” 

+++

You’re changing back into your work clothes with Emily and Jordan, pleased to find them full of laughter. 

“When you asked him if he practices his routine on a sex doll, I almost lost it.” Jordan looks over her shoulder at Emily as she clips her holster back onto her belt. 

“I did lose it, are you kidding?” You laugh. “I can’t believe I missed it!” 

Emily shakes her head, smiling. “You know, as much as I hate what that guy stands for, I still read ‘five ways to get noticed’ in Cosmo magazine.”

“Because it makes sense.” You look at Jordan, waiting for an explanation. She redeemed herself tonight, and you’re actually looking forward to hearing what she has to say. Though she doesn’t explain what she means, she does thank you both for vouching for her. 

“Absolutely.” Emily looks past Jordan, at you, and you nod in agreement. 

“Of course.” 

A knock sounds, and Aaron’s voice shoots around the corner. “I need you all out here, the unsub’s kidnapped another victim.” 

Shit. 

+++

You’re on Aaron’s six, waiting for the go. He calls the first team into position and holds up his hand. When he drops it, you fall into step, just off his right shoulder. Derek breaches first, tackling the unsub to the floor. 

Aaron kicks down the front door, and you breach from the other side of the house. There’s shouting everywhere, but Aaron’s presence centers you, giving you a mission and a focus. 

Keep him safe. 

He releases you with a wave, and you drop down next to Spencer on the floor. You cut the tape holding Austin’s hands together. She falls into Spencer, still terrified and sobbing. He looks at you and you nod, spotting her as he helps her to her feet. 

Tracking back to Aaron, you shadow Rossi as they finish clearing the rest of the house. You hover by the final door as Dave and Aaron reassure the unsub’s mother that she’ll be taken care of as they clear the room for hidden threats. 

In fact, there’s nothing except a sick woman and the machine keeping her alive.

“It’s a dialysis pump...It was issued ten months ago.” Dave looks back at you, and your lips press into a thin line. 

You look at Aaron. “Our secondary trigger.” 

+++

Jordan climbs the stairs to Aaron’s office, and you attempt to hide your interest as she knocks on the door and steps in. Of course, you can’t hear them, but you watch him call her back after she hands in her report. 

You recognize the look on his face - it's an expression you’re rewarded with when you’ve done something right. In fairness, it doesn't look much different from the one you get when you’ve done something wrong, but you’ve learned to pick up on the subtle differences.

Jordan leaves his office with a little smile. When she passes you, you offer her a, “Well done,” as you stand and climb the stairs yourself. 

With a knock on Aaron’s door, he beckons you in without looking. You stand a respectable distance away from his desk, waiting for him to finish whatever he’s working on. He knows it’s you, and has no issue keeping you waiting.

The composition of his desk has changed in the months since the divorce. Haley no longer smiles at him from the frame by his pen cup. That frame sits on the low shelf by his law volumes, the white veil over Haley’s face unable to mask her joy even from across the room. 

There are more pictures of Jack than before, both old and new. 

Eventually, he looks up, and you hand him your report. A smile plays at your lips, and another dances around the corner of his eyes. 

“That was kind of you, Hotch.” 

He shrugs. “You vouched for her work.” 

“Is that all it takes to win your approval, these days? My good word?” Your voice is laden with fond amusement. He rises to it, and if you didn’t know better you’d think he wasn’t smiling. When he answers, his tone is light, almost playful. 

“Yes.”

+++

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[justcourttee]

Call It What You Want-One Shot Song Prompt

So, I recently saw @marimacaron​ post this song prompt fic for daminette and I absolutely loved it and knew I had to try and write it! I hope it’s close to what you imagined :)

Marinette’s eyes fell to the glittering rock on her left hand, a small smile tugging at the corner of her lips as she hit post on her computer. Within seconds, hundreds of comments and likes flooded her Instagram from fans and friends alike, most wishing her well for her engagement, a few earning a chuckle at their distress that she was now ‘off the market’.

She reached forward to shut her laptop when one comment in particular caught her eye.

@alyabloglyfe: Why are you still vying for attention? We all know @queenlyla is engaged to Damian Wayne, I mean, why would he be interested in a liar and bully like you?

Already, twenty fans were fighting the girl’s comment, dissing Alya and defending Marinette’s honor, but it didn’t seem to help the punch to the gut she was experiencing. Her fingers lingered over the keyboard, the room seeming to blur around her.

All of a sudden, she felt fifteen again, trapped in her bedroom only being able to scroll through the hate mail that flooded her inbox from all of her former friends. She thought that begging her parents to allow her to pull out of school and switch to an online platform would deter them from attacking her so often, but it only made things worse as they became more confident and vile in their bullying as they could hide behind a screen.

Every night, Marinette would cry herself to sleep wondering what she did so wrong to deserve all of this until one day she decided it would be enough. She deleted all of her social media, even taking down her MDC commissions page, asking her clients to meet her in person or via phone call to schedule fittings and commissions. And it worked, at least for a little while, until they started to vandalize her parent’s bakery, breaking windows and spray painting signs, the cops never seeming to catch them.

Her fingers tapped out the first sentence of her response, her eyes absentmindedly glazed over as she wrote a paragraph, then two, all directed to Alya. She was about to hit send when she felt a pair of arms snake around her shoulders, warm breath tickling the back of her ears.

“How’d your fans take the news?” his deep voice felt like a lifeline as she slammed her laptop shut, blinking away the empty feeling Alya had brought.

He let out a low whistle as he unwinded himself, allowing her to stand up from the desk and fall into his outstretched arms.

“That good, huh?”

She forced out a dry laugh as she buried her face into his chest.

“Just a few people upset that I’m officially a taken woman.”

It was his turn to laugh as she pulled back, taking in the sight of his carefree face. It was always so beautiful, so much peace that he held, all reserved for her.

“Do you have any plans tonight? You know Richard will want to host an exaggerant engagement feast.” He rolled his eyes, but his smile gave him away. She knew he secretly loved being the center of attention, especially when it came to his family.

“I’ll make sure to have everything done by 5 today, promise.”

Ducking under his arms, she slung her purse over her head, making a beeline for the door.

“Do you need Alfred to escort you?” he called after her retreating figure but it was too late, she was gone.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Exiting the fabric store, Marinette made her way down Gotham’s winding streets, her head in another place as she tried to recall anything she could’ve missed.

“This is why you should’ve brought your list with you Marinette!” Tikki popped their head out of her purse, their arms crossed in a scolding manner.

“I would have Tikki, but you know how overprotective he is. He would’ve insisted I waited for Alfred to come down to the apartment to drive me and no offense to Alfred, but sometimes a girl just wants to be alone.”

Her pace slowed as a familiar landscape came into her sight.

“Oh wow Tikki, I haven’t been here in almost three years.” her voice trailed off as she scanned over the construction crew working on the new gymnasium.

“Gotham Academy! This is where you transferred to right?”

She didn’t answer the small God as she took a step forward, placing a hand on the elegant banisters leading up the school stairs. The fresh scent of cleaning supplies filled her nostrils as she closed her eyes, her mind falling back to the comment from earlier.

She was only sixteen when her parents allowed her to transfer. It was in both of their best interests as they couldn’t afford to keep repairing the bakery her former friends destroyed. She was a mere shell of a person when she entered those doors for the first time. She had already decided that she wasn’t going to make any friends this time around, after all, no friends meant no one to stab her in the back, as they all do eventually.

But then something strange happened. The student who was assigned to show her around for the first week was just as cold and calculated. His thorns were just as sharp as hers, neither opening up much to the other. She had planned for warm and inviting, the fake friends trying to pry her open, but she hadn’t planned for someone to hold her attention, someone as cold as her.

One week turned into two, and then a month passed and she dared to consider him her friend.

“Marinette? Marinette? Are you still in there?”

She slowly opened her eyes to a concerned kwami, Tikki’s small hands shaking her nose to the best of their ability.

“I’m fine Tikki, just a bit of reminiscing I suppose.”

Continuing again, Marinette soon found herself in front of her studio. The little bell rang through the place as ten heads popped up, all wearing bright smiles. Unique almost tackled her in a hug before the door had even closed.

“Marinette! We were so excited when you posted this morning! It was sooo hard keeping your relationship a secret when customers asked!”

Hannah and Brooke nodded in agreement as the girls all left their work stations to admire her ring.

“Can we help you design your wedding dress?” Hannah clasped her hands together, earning a chorus of please’s throughout the room.

Marinette chuckled as she brought the women into a big group hug.

“I wouldn’t have it any other way. Now, enough small talk, let’s get down to business, anything new?”

It was as if someone switched a flip in the room, the girls jumping from excited to serious as they all handed in folders, giving her a brief of each new commission. It was going to be a long day of work, certainly. . . . . .  . . . . . . . . . . . . . Her keys jiggled in the apartment lock as she practically fell in, all of her energy drained.

“Damian? Do we have any coffee?”

She didn’t hear an answer as she reached for the cupboard, bringing down her favorite mug. Damian had given it to her a month into them dating. Her fingers absentmindedly reached to her neck where a small D sat on an elegant gold chain.

“I don’t understand Mari-san. You wearing his initial is a statement that he owns you. How is that romantic?”

She adjusted her phone to give Kagami a better look at the necklace, smiling softly as she held the D between two fingers.

“Because Kagami it’s not like that, I don’t wear it cause he ‘owns me’. I wear it because for the first time in a while, I really feel like someone really knows me, ya feel?”

“I do not ‘feel’ but if you are happy, then it is an acceptable gift, as is the coffee mug with the picture of you two.”

The whistle from the coffee machine drew her attention back to the present as Tikki flashed her a smile from where they sat on the Keurig.

“Thank you Tikki. I’m going to need this,” she held up her steaming mug, a tired smile flashing gratefully at the God.

Downing the cup, she placed it in the sink before pulling out her phone seeing three missed texts from Damian stating he would be home soon.

“Well Tikki, at least I’m not the one running late for once.” The two shared a small laugh before they headed towards her bedroom to get dressed for the night. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Damian squeezed her hand tightly as they made their way through Wayne Manner’s garden.

“There could be a small thousand here tonight, are you ready for that Mrs Wayne?”

His smile was blinding as her heart beat rapidly at the sound of him calling her by his last name.

“I most certainly am Mr. Wayne.”

As they rounded the corner to the back of the gardens, Marinette couldn’t help but laugh at the number of people Dick had invited. Loud cheers erupted from every inch of the yard causing her entire face to flash red.

“I might’ve underestimated, I’d say at least three thousand.”

He squeezed her hand once more before he was pulled off into the crowd. She smiled at the genuine fear crossing his face as people began berating him about children so soon.

“Well, well, well, a beautiful woman in distress. Please allow me to be your stand in to ward off the power hungry tonight.”

Jason slung his arm over her shoulders earning a laugh from the smaller girl.

“I am eternally grateful for your services Monsieur Todd.”

They chatted lightly as he led her back to where her future family all stood, all practically vibrating from excitement, even Bruce.

“Mari! I’m so excited! I really thought he was going to force me to hold this a secret for forever.”

Dick pulled her into a bone crushing hug, only pulling back when Barbara and Stephanie forced him to. They each took their turns expressing their excitement for the wedding, Tim even going as far as to say he never thought it would happen.

“What? We were all thinking it! Demon spawn? Happy and smiling all the time? It’s scary!” he shuddered sending another round of laughter throughout the group.

Marinette brought up her phone, snapping a picture, posting it immediately to her Insta.

@mdcdesigns: So excited to officially be a part of this family. (not that I haven’t considered them family for years now :))

She was about to slide her phone back into her purse when something caught her attention. Almost instantly, a private message from Alya sat in her inbox. She wanted to ignore it, but the curiosity was eating her up.

@alyabloglyfe: Soo what?You don’t post for months and all of a sudden you show up with a double post about a supposed engagement to Damian Wayne?

What is this?

A publicity stunt?

A desperate cry to try and hurt Lyla even after all these years?

I demand an answer ‘bestie’

Her heart beat clenched at the last message as she felt the tears trying to pool in her eyes. So many years had passed and Alya still believed her to be the liar and failure that Lila painted her out to be.

She wanted to respond to the messages, but she wasn’t even sure what to say. Her fingers lingered over her keyboard as she looked up, trying to collect her thoughts. Then she saw him. His calm smile, his shining green eyes, the love radiating from him all directed to her. His eyes met hers as he excused himself from the person he was talking to.

“Are you alright habibti?”

His arm snaked around her waist, pulling her into his side. It was as if everything faded away, the only thing she could see was him. Standing on her tiptoes, she gently placed a kiss on his cheek.

“I’m doing better than I ever was.”

He smiled, seemingly satisfied with her answer as she unlocked her phone once more, her fingers moving quickly across the keyboard.

@mdcdesigns: Alya, I don’t need this from you or Lila anymore. I have a world famous business, 1.3 million followers and fans, a loving new family and a fiance who loves me like I’m brand new despite the damage you put me through.

You don’t really want to know what I call this, because you’ll only distort it to fit your fantasy that Lila painted for you so you know what?

Call it what you want :)

She moved to the top of the screen, blocking her old friend without a second thought. After all, she had her new life and it had no room for the past to ruin that. Raising her glass, she leaned forward to clink it with the rest, a new sense of relief flowing through her.

“To Damian, for finally proposing before I had to.”

They all cheered to his mock protests as they brought their flutes to their lips, celebrating the next chapter in their lives, not a single worry filling the space, only love.

Permanent Tag List:

@damianette-is-life @ash-amg @rebecarojas07

[greatbigbellies]

New commission story. This is an anonymous slice of life piece about a woman hyperpregnant with overdue decuplets. This one’s a little different from my usual stuff cause it focuses so heavily on a unique form of belly. Contains hyperpregnancy, light belly worship, extreme fetal movement, and an incredibly tight, almost shrink-wrapped style of pregnant belly. Enjoy!

Molina waved goodbye as her midwife left, the kind woman getting in her car, off to another housecall most likely. The midwife had given the heavily expectant woman a clean bill of health, despite her... unique medical challenges. Molina was indeed a special case in more ways than one, just looking at her with no medical experience at all was the proof one needed for that. 

For starters, she was gigantic, her belly stretching well past her knees when she sat down. She measured in the neighborhood of eighty inches in circumference. This was due to her extraordinary pregnancy, as she carried decuplets, and was presently 2 years past her due date. However, her belly wasn’t perfectly round like one would expect, instead looking uneven, lopsided, and in some areas, almost shrinkwrapped to her unborn babies. This was due in part to her being 33 months pregnant, and also partly because her body wouldn’t produce enough amniotic fluid. As a result, her normally plump, rounded pregnant belly was instead tight, lumpy, and left every movement on display.

And movement there was, as ten strong, overgrown fetuses would shift, kick, punch, and lurch constantly, vying for room where there was none. At times, her whole belly would writhe with fetal movement, as it did during her midwife appointment. Her belly wobbled and squirmed while the poor midwife tried to take an ultrasound with her portable doppler. The resulting images were… blurry to say the least, but she somehow got what she needed. Even now as she closed the front door and waddled inside, Molina’s brood squirmed restlessly inside her. 

“Ooomph, calm down in there, I’m going!” she chided them, which only seemed to rile them up more. She slowly waddled to the kitchen to grab a snack, something she did a lot. Due to her size, she didn’t have a lot of room in her squashed stomach to eat, but she needed the calories, so she would constantly snack throughout the day. She awkwardly grabbed some leftover pizza from the fridge, having to turn to the side to reach it past her mountainous belly. She didn’t even bother to heat it up, as the wait would require more standing. She slowly made her way to the couch, and flopped down into it, causing her belly’s contents to kick and squirm about. “Oof, guys I’m eating right now,it’s fine. There's no more ultrasound wand rubbing against my tummy, you can chill,” 

Molina rotated and propped her feet up on one armrest, and laid back to prop her head on the other. The weight of her tummy resting on her lower back, hips, and thighs. One hand delivered the pizza to her waiting mouth, and the other rubbed her uneven belly, party to calm her babies, partly to remove a little leftover ultrasound gel. She felt her overstretched skin shift under her hand as baby H and G pushed on each other for space. “Be nice you two, there’s room enough for both,”

She took another bite of pizza and felt someones foot kick directly into her palm. She pushed it back in and felt something roll deep inside her womb. She looked down and saw what was probably the top of someone’s head pushed up into the top shelf of her belly. She could never take those cute pictures most pregnant women took, using their bellies as a table. Her tummy was just too uneven and lively for that. She lovingly patted the top of the head, and just as quickly as it had sprouted up, it sank back down.

Molina sighed and finished her pizza, leaving both hands free to caress the belly. Her brood calmed slightly with the introduction of food, and the calming touch of her hands seemed to soothe them more. She reached as far as she could to try to get to the front of her tummy, but alas, baby B, the front most occupant, was out of her reach. She could feel her itchy popped navel getting pushed even further out by various kicks and shifts, but could do nothing for it. She placed her hands on the sides of her belly and squeezed it lovingly before rotating back to a sitting position. She placed her feet on the carpet and leaned forward to put her weight on them, then stood up into a standing position. Her shirt rode up, and she felt her already unbuttoned shorts unzip a little.

Her clothes, as large and maternal as they were, stood no chance against such a belly. There was a time, over two years ago, where she could cover her tummy completely, and even lean forward, but those times disappeared along with the view of her feet. She reached around to her waist and tried to zip her shorts back up, but alas, she was simply too big. Pregnancy had caused her body to change in more areas than just her belly. Her butt had plumped up significantly, almost giving her a back shelf, and her thighs had rounded out to a degree that could only be described as “thicc”.

She heard a knock at the door and waddled over, her massive belly wobbling left and right with each step. The front of her tummy nudged the door as she opened it, greeting a shocked deliveryman. “Uh… p-package for… Molina…” she poor man just stared at Molina’s massive, squirming pregnant belly. Her cargo took that moment to lurch, causing the many arms, hand, legs, and feet to be even more visible under the overstretched flesh. Molina smiled at him, somewhat used to this reaction. “Do I need to sign?” she asked. “Y-yeah… h-here…” he reached out with a small clipboard and pen. Molina took it, reaching just past her tummy to take it from him.

“You look concerned?” she teased him, signing the slip. “It’s just… you’re REALLY pregnant,” he stammered. “Does it… hurt?” he asked. “Not quite. Its far from comfortable, but’s not painful. It helps to have someone rub it though, would you?” she asked, taking a step forward. The mailman hesitated, but slowly reached out. His fingers brushed against the skin of her overly taught tummy before jolting back, and she giggled. “You won’t hurt me, just touch it!” As he reached forward again, one of her brood did a somersault in her womb and shifted her skin out, causing the belly to come to him. He blushed intensely and she just chuckled, causing more of her babies to move inside her. Her whole belly was alive with action now, as limbs and heads and even faces became visible under her skin. The mailman took his hand back and just stared.

“The package please?” she asked. The man shook his head and handed her a small parcel, before turning to leave. She smiled, having had her fun, and went back inside. Her belly actually let out an audible grown as she made her way back to the couch, tired from the effort of standing with so much weight on her aching back and feet. She flopped back down, causing a bit of sloshing from her womb, and somehow even more movement.  She opened the package to see the specially designed stretchmark cream she’d ordered online. This stuff was a lifesaver, even after almost three years of pregnancy, not a single mark could be seen on her aching, writhing belly.

She hummed a song to herself and her babies as she opened the tube of lotion, squeezing a heaping glob into her hand. She capped it shut and rubbed her hands together before working the lotion into her tight belly skin. She leaned back, closed her eyes, and just reveled in exploring her own gravid belly. Feeling every nook and cranny between the various limbs of her babies. Her belly shifted again as movement stirred within her, strong kicks pushing into her her hands as she rubbed the lotion into her constantly shifting skin. She felt baby D’s backside against the side of her bump, rubbing it gently before moving on so what was probably a leg sticking out. There were times when it was legitimately hard to tell what was where, but she made the best of it. 

In truth she just loved being pregnant, feeling the life grow in her body, feeling herself swell up with love. Its why she carried so far past term, to keep her babies close to her, and safe within her womb. She continued exploring her shrink-wrapped tummy, playing with her babies from outside. She’d push back on the little hands and feet sticking out, pat the heads that bulged out, and just generally interact with her unborn young. She jostled her tummy a little trying to reach the front to apply the lotion, and she felt several movements deep inside her pregnant gut. She worried that she’d start getting marks on the portions of her belly where she couldn’t reach, and wondered if she could talk the midwife into applying it for her at her next appointment.

She considered inviting a friend over to do it… but almost everyone in her friend group was pregnant themselves, and quite busy because of it. Except one who she admittedly hadn’t seen since she was only 3 months along… which was nearly three years ago… but it was worth a shot, Molina thought, to reconnect. And maybe get some belly rubs out of it. She pulled her phone out of her tight pocked and scrolled through her contacts until she found her… and old friend of hers, Orphea.

Orphea, somewhat nervously, walked up to the address she’d been sent, anxious to see her friend Molina again. It had been years since they had seen each other, and last time they were together Molina was 3 months pregnant with decuplets… Orphea could only imagine how chaotic it would be inside with ten toddlers running around. Still, her old friend had said she needed help with something personal, and Orphea was nothing if not loyal. Her 4 inch heels clacked against the concrete as she approached the door. 

She knocked on the door and noticed the silence, the distinct lack of rampaging children… was it nap time? “Door’s unlocked, please come in!” rang the familiar sound of Molina’s voice. Orphea slowly opened the door and started to step through, looking around for her friend. “Molina hun, are you okay? You were kinda vagu-” Orphea froze when she saw the massively overdue Molina, sprawled across the couch. She simply stared at Molina’s active, wriggling belly, taking in every limb, face, and body on display under the tightly pulled skin. “Oh my God Molina! What… happened?” she stammered, slowly stepping in and shutting the door behind her.

“I… nothing happened, I’m fine, I’m just very pregnant!” said Molina, placing her hands on her belly, as if she needed emphasis on th fact. “But… you look absolutely vacuum packed, I can see every movement in there!? Are you sure you’re okay? Is this healthy?” Orphea nearly shouted, a little freaked out at the sight of such fecundity. “I promise you, I have weekly doctors and midwife visits, everyone in here in safe and healthy,” Molinda assured her friend. Orphea shook her head in awe, unsure of what to do. “I”m sorry it’s just… you’re a sight!” she said. Molina beamed at the compliment, “Thank you! I owe it all to these little guys!” she rubber her beyond-drum-tight tummy lovingly.

“Which brings me to why I invited you here,” she stated. “I’ve gotten so big I can’t reach my whole belly, and I need someone to apply lotion to my tummy so I don’t get stretchmarks,” she explained. Orphea blinked. “You mean you want me to touch… that?” she pointed at Molinas mountain of a belly. “What? It’s just a pregnant belly!” replied Molina. Orphea blinked incredulously. “Have you never touched a pregnant woman’s belly?” Orphea blinked more. “Well… I have… just not one so… overdue. How many months past due are you?” “twenty four,” stated Molina matter of factly.

Orphea sighed. It was just a pregnant belly. Just a very large, very lumpy one. And Molina had taken care of her in the past. “Alright, sure, why not? Where’s your lotion?” she finally asked. “Heads up!” Molina tossed the tube to her friend, who caught it effortlessly. Molina shifted around on her butt, before laying down to expose as much of her pregnant belly as possible. “So like…” she gestured with her arms, painting swaths over her orb of a tummy to show where she could reach, “These areas are fine, I can reach this stuff,” She pointed toward the front hemisphere and her underbelly, “but these areas I can’t get on my own anymore. If you’ll lotion those up I’ll order takeout and feed you for your troubles,”

Orphea knelt next to her friend’s writhing tummy. “You don’t have to…” she paused as a foot stuck directly out of the womb, stretching the belly skin toward Orphea’s head. “...You like panda express?” she changed her tune. “Love panda express,” smiled Molina, whipping out her phone to place the order through an app. Orphea reached up and squeezed a heaping glob of cold lotion into the front of Molina’s titanic tummy, eliciting a shiver from her friend. “Oooh, that skin is so sensitive,” “S-sorry,” apologized Orphea. She slowly reached over, still freaked out at the tightness of the skin, and the amount of movement she could see.

She took a breath, steeled herself, and laid her hand on it. And… it was… fine? Uneven, sure, and warm to the touch, but it was just skin. She felt a tiny fist push up into her hand, but it didn’t really bother her. She’d felt a fetus move in a pregnant tummy before, this was the same, just stronger. She settled into small, circular movements as she worked the cream into Molina’s gravid gut, and smiled. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad. Molina sighed and visibly relaxed at her touch, settling into the couch more. Orphea’s fingers brushed over Molina’s very popped belly button, and she cooed in response, something Orphea thought was very cute.

“Mmmm, thank you again for coming over. This is really nice,” said Molina as she relaxed. Orphea added more lotion and continued massaging the glowing belly, working the smooth substance into every nook and cranny. “Yeah, anything for a friend!” she replied. Molina felt baby B do a somersault in response to all the touch, and the top of their head pushed into Orphea’s palm. “Is that… a head?” Molina nodded and smiled, brushing her black bangs out of her face as she looked over her phone.

“What do you like from Panda?” she asked. “Orange chicken please! And I can cover my own food, you don’t actually have to feed me,” Orphea offered. Molina shook her head, “Honestly it’s the least I could do since you came over on virtually no notice. We haven’t seen each other in over two years and you dropped everything just to rub my belly for me! I’m more than happy to feed you!” 

Orphea squirted even more lotion into her hands, rubbing them together, before starting work on Molina’s expansive underbelly. This portion of her tummy actually somehow felt more tightly packed than the front, Orphea assumed it was due to the constant force of gravity pulling the babies in this direction. There was less movement down here, and more indentations and bulges from the packed decuplets. Orphea couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to be THIS pregnant, and actually have this as part of her body. Molina let out a groan, causing Orphea to peek around the massive midriff to check on her friend. “If everything okay? Did I push too hard?” 

Molina’s plump lips curled into a satisfied smile, “Mmmm, nooooo, it just feels so good to have someone rub down there. I haven’t been able to reach that part of myself in over a year and the skin is so stretched, your hands feel lovely,” she explained. “Please don’t stop,” Orphea nodded and went back to work, making sure to run her finger through every divot, crevasse, and valley caused by Molina’s squirming young. She also made sure to run her hands over every lump, bump, and bulge on the expanse of pregnant flesh.

The contact seemed the rile up the lower sitting babies, as they began to stir under Orphea’s hands. The movement and contact on both sides of her skin only revved up Molina more, and she moaned and cooed at the attention she was receiving. Orphea got an impulsive idea, and sank her fingers into the bottom of Molina’s belly. Molina gasped at the sudden intrusion, and would have jolted upright if she physically could, but her belly weight kept her from doing so. 

“Oh God I’m so sorry I don’t know why I did that!” apologized Orphea as she pulled her hands back. There was an awkward pause between the two before Molina squeaked out, “Do it again,” another pause. “What?!” “Please do that again, push your fingers into the nooks and crannies, it felt really good. Really stimulating,” she blushed. Orphea did as she was told, lining up the tips of her fingers with the few soft spots on Molina’s underbelly. She, more slowly this time, pushed her fingers in, causing, somehow, even more movement inside. “Oooohh… god... “ Molina sighed. Orphea blushed a little, and went back to rubbing, taking time to poke her fingers into various indents as she found them. Molina seemed to really enjoy it, and it gave Orphea another impulsive idea.

Without putting much thought into it, she cleaned the lotion off of a small spot, leaned in, and pecked the spot of belly skin with her lips.

While the belly itself was still very much in motion, the rest of Molina seemed to freeze up at the sudden affection. Yet another long, heavy pause held the pair in social paralysis. Finally, Orphea broke the ice with a subdued, “Sorry,” She couldn’t see Molina’s face past her tummy, but could still feel her stare. “Did you just… kiss me? Down there?” “I’m sorry I’m sorry. It was dumb, I shouldn’t have done that. I don’t know why I did,” Orphea started to ramble, a rising blush painting her face pink. “Orphea, honey, it’s okay,” “No, no it really wasn’t,” “Orphea. I liked it,” One. Last. Pause.

“You… liked it? When I kissed your tummy?” she gently placed a hand back on the underbelly, feeling more strong, almost violent movements underneath. “Yeah… it… I don’t get a lot of attention like this, Orphea, I spend a lot of time cooped up,” she admitted. “I love this, being massively pregnant, I love each and every one of my babies. But for having 11 people in this house… I’m lonely,” Orphea scooted around to make herself visible to her friend, noticing her blush and averted gaze. “So… that was the first kiss you’ve had in a while, wasn’t it?” inquired Orphea. Molina nodded solemnly, trying not to let her loneliness, magnified by extreme pregnancy hormones, make her too emotional. 

Orphea leaned over and kissed the side of her belly, causing Molina to blush intensely again. She then placed both hands firmly on the uneven sides of Molina’s massive gut and began drumming her fingers. “So you love being this pregnant, huh?” asked Orphea. Molina smiled meekly, again brushing her hair out of her face, and nodded. Orphea reached around, and tried to hold as much belly as she could in her arms, before planting a long, loving kiss on Molina’s gut. She felt the constant stirring movement of Molina’s ten kids inside her, and maximized her skin contact with it. She pushed her face into the belly, and baby F pushed back with their arms.

Molina moaned and squirmed herself on the couch, her thick thighs rubbing together as she didn’t know what to do with herself. Orphea pulled her face back, “You’re a real baby factory, Molina. If you love this, I think I can learn to love it too. Maybe we should catch up, and get to know each other a bit more,” Molina nodded, biting her lip. She hadn’t had this kind of physical contact in too long, and it felt amazing.

Orphea stood up on her high heels, bringing her to a height of 5’7”, and leaned forward, planting a strong, loving kiss on Molina’s navel. She cooed and squirmed from new overstimulation, the skin on her belly so very sensitive. Orphea took a moment to empty the rest of the lotion tube onto the bottom of Molina’s belly, reaching down with her hand to rub it in, while continuing to plant kiss after kiss onto the front area of Molina’s squirming belly.

“Wait!” cried Molina. “What? Too much! Did I overstay my welcome?” asked Orphea. “No… this feels amazing… but first…” she tapped her phone screen twice. “Okay, we have an hour to fool around before dinner gets here,” she said a little breathlessly. She leaned back into the couch, closed her eyes, and beamed, “Now… where were we?”

[specialagentsergio]

sweater weather

summary: The weekend before Halloween finds the BAU at a local farm, and there’s a bet on who’s going to solve the corn maze first.

pairing: spencer reid x gn!reader 

category: fluff

content warnings: none

a/n: happy halloween! this is just something nice and fluffy for the fall season. i ended up researching corn mazes in virginia for this. (liberty mills is an actual farm in the area)

word count: 2.1k

song: sweater weather by the neighbourhood

masterlist

There’s three things every agent who starts working at the FBI’s Quantico office quickly learns about the Behavioral Analysis Unit.

First, the unit has the best case solve rate in the Bureau. Second, yes, they really do have their own jet. And third, everyone in it has a mean competitive streak. There’s no such thing as a casual bet with any of them.  

You’re no exception. You don’t make it onto one of the FBI’s most elite units by keeping your head down.

And it’s that competitive nature you all possess that finds you wandering through a corn maze on a chilly October afternoon with Spencer at your side.

It’s safe to say it gets away from you sometimes.

---

It started off innocently enough. Ten minutes before the end of work on Friday, JJ approaches Spencer with a question.

“Are you and (Y/N) busy this weekend?”

“Um, I didn’t have any plans,” he replies, then turns to you. “Honey?”

“Not unless sleep counts as a plan,” you say with a shrug. The team had returned from a case yesterday that had taken nearly a week to solve. You’d slept well cuddled up with Spencer last night, but still had plenty to make up for. “What’s up, JJ?”

“Well, it’s the last weekend before Halloween, and Henry’s been dying to go pick out a pumpkin,” she says. “So Will and I said we’d take him to Liberty Mills farm tomorrow to pick one out from their patch. But, he wanted me to ask Uncle Spencer if he’d come, too, to help him pick out one that’s perfect.”

Spencer’s face lights up immediately. “I’d love to.”

JJ smiles right back. “Great! He’ll be so happy.”

“You know, Liberty Mills farm has the largest corn maze in the United States this year,” he says. “On average, it takes thirty minutes to an hour for the first and second trails, and two to three hours for the third level.”  

Morgan joins the conversation. “And let me guess, pretty boy: you think you can solve it faster than that.”  

“I’m not sure, actually. I haven’t ever gone through a corn maze.”

You look at him incredulously. “Really? You, of all people, haven’t done a corn maze?”

Spencer frowns. “What do you mean?”

“You love this time of year. Corn mazes are just such a fall thing that it surprises me that you haven’t done one before,” you explain.

“I don’t love fall,” Spencer corrects. “I love Halloween.”

You raise an eyebrow. “Bold words from a man who’s ordered a pumpkin spice latte every morning for the last three weeks.”

You take a moment to enjoy the blush that paints his cheeks at your words, then speak to JJ. “What time are you guys leaving?”

“We’re aiming for around nine,” she says. “It takes about an hour to get there. We can give you a ride, of course, but I’m guessing the two of you don’t want to be crammed into the backseat of our car for that long.”

Truthfully, it wouldn’t bother you much. You know Spencer would take the middle seat so he could sit next to Henry, leaving you with the better one. But the man is made of legs, and he’d get uncomfortable quickly with them squeezed into a tight space. The last thing you want is for his knee injury to flare up and leave him in pain for the rest of the day.

“Yeah, we should drive up separately,” you say. “We can just meet there.”

“Now, hang on,” Morgan says. “Is this an open invitation for anyone? Because I’ve done corn mazes before and I don’t want to pass up the opportunity to beat Reid at something.”

“Oh, I’ll take up that bet,” Emily says. “Twenty bucks says Morgan and I get through it faster than Reid.”

Spencer frowns. “Two against one? That’s not fair.”

“Well, obviously, you’re going through it with me,” you point out, lightly swatting his arm with the back of your hand. “You’re on, Emily.”

Rossi, briefcase in one hand, jacket hooked over his shoulder, comes into the fray. “What are we betting on?”

“Whether Derek and Emily or Spence and (Y/N) can solve a corn maze faster,” JJ says. She does a good job of acting exasperated, but you know she’s just as invested as the rest of you. If it wasn’t for her desire to spend time with her son, she’d probably enter herself.

“Oh, I’ll put fifty down on the kid, easy,” Rossi says.

Hotch, descending the stairs into the bullpen, overhears this and sighs. “What have I said about office bets?”

“Technically it’s not an office bet,” Emily points out quickly. “It’s something we’re doing over the weekend on our own time.”

“Yeah, this isn’t pool,” Spencer agrees. “Twenty-five on (Y/N) and I.”

“What’s this over?” Hotch asks.

“Corn maze,” Morgan explains. “I’ll add twenty-five as well on me and Emily.”

You tear a piece of paper out of one of the notebooks on your desk and start writing. “I’m putting in thirty,” you say as you write it down. Spencer may have never been in a corn maze before, but you have, and you’re pretty great at them. “Everyone write down their bets on here.”

“What about you, Aaron?” Rossi asks as the paper makes it way through the group.

Hotch shakes his head. “I’m not getting into this.”

“You should still come,” JJ says, scribbling down her wager. “There’s a pumpkin patch you can take Jack to.”

“I did promise him we’d carve a pumpkin this weekend,” he muses.

Penelope toddles in on her high heels with her bag over her shoulder. “What’s going on?” She frowns. “Am I being left out of something?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, baby girl,” Derek says, slinging his arm around her shoulders. “We’re having a family outing to some farm tomorrow—”

“Liberty Mills farm,” Spencer interjects.

Morgan rolls his eyes. “We’re going to Liberty Mills farm tomorrow. You in?”

Penelope’s face breaks into her bright, radiant smile, warming up the room just like she always does. “Of course! JJ, please tell me my beautiful little godson is coming, too.”

“You can even help him pick out a pumpkin,” JJ replies and Penelope squeals.

“This is going to be so much fun! I can’t wait!”

---

A breeze ripples the cornstalks as you navigate the maze with your boyfriend. You’re on the fourth trail, the mystery maze portion. Derek had insisted on that after learning that Spencer saw a picture of the main maze over your shoulder while you were looking up the directions online. You’d agreed that it was only fair to do the mystery section; his eidetic memory would make it too easy to get through the main portion now.

You shiver at the cold and press yourself against Spencer’s side. It’s around four PM, but the temperature has already started to drop, and it’s especially chilly away from all the people and attractions, isolated in the maze.

Spencer lets go of your hand and you open your mouth to protest, but he speaks before you can. “Hang on, I have something for you.”

Your eyes widen in surprise as he lifts the flap of his satchel and pulls out a blanket that really shouldn’t have been able to fit in there. He drapes it around your shoulders and punctuates the action with a kiss on your forehead.

“Have you been carrying this around all day?” you ask incredulously. It’s new; you haven’t seen it before. The fabric is incredibly soft and the design is made up of your favorite colors.

He nods. “You get cold faster than I do, and you get cranky when you’re cold.”

“Yeah, how does that work?” you muse, pulling the blanket around you tighter. “You’re so thin. I feel like you should get cold at least as fast as me.”

“Well, if we look at the laws of thermodynamics,” he begins and you tuck yourself into his side with a small smile. He rambles for a while and you listen patiently, nodding and giving him “uh-huh”’s every so often to affirm your interest (though honestly, a good portion of it goes over your head—most of your studies in college were focused on psychology and sociology).

“I see,” you murmur when he finishes, and it’s not a lie—you think you understand the basics. You briefly stop him from walking to press a kiss to his cheek. “Thank you for the blanket. I love you.”

It’s hardly the first time you’ve said it, but he still blushes. “Love you, too.”

“Now,” you say, taking his hand back into your grip. “Let’s win this bet.”

Sixty minutes later, a smile tugs at your lips. Spencer’s corrected you on a few turns, being able to say for certain if you’ve taken a path before, and now you’re close to the end of the maze. You can feel it. You tug on his hand, picking up your pace. “Come on. We’re close.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do.” You let go of his hand and break into a jog, recalling the hot apple cider stand you saw earlier in the day. You can’t wait to wrap your hands around a cup of it.

“(Y/N)—” he starts, and you look back just in time to see him trip over a root and almost fall face first into the dirt, just barely catching himself on his hands.

You try not the laugh, but a small giggle slips out. “Sorry,” you say, fighting a smile.

He just rolls his eyes as he pushes himself up. “Can you slow down?” he asks. “The cold is making my knee hurt.”

Your expression immediately drops. “Yeah, of course.”

Five minutes later, you’re exiting the maze. Rossi’s waiting at the end and cheers when he sees the two of you. “Ah, yes! I knew it!”

“We’re first?” Spencer asks.

“Of course we are.” You remove one arm from your blanket cocoon and place your hand on the back of his neck, pulling him towards you for a kiss. He hums happily against your lips.

He hugs you from behind as you wait for Derek and Emily, sliding his hands under the blanket and into your sweater’s pockets. They’re ten minutes behind you.

“Ah, come on, man,” Derek laments when he sees you.

“Dammit,” Emily sighs. “You two better be buying dinner tonight.”

“Oh, we’d love to,” you tease.

“How far ahead of us were you?” Morgan asks.

“Twenty minutes,” Spencer replies, and you don’t have to turn around to know the smirk he’s sporting.

You elbow him lightly. “Ten,” you correct.

The five of you meet back up with the others near the entrance of the farm. Penelope had held onto the small pumpkin you’d picked out earlier in the day and hands it to you now. You have paint back home that you’re planning to use to decorate it. Spencer had no desire to get one to carve; he can’t stand touching the pumpkin guts.

“So who won?” she asks.

“Well, going by Spence’s expression, I’m guessing he and (Y/N) did,” JJ says.

Henry lets go of his mother’s hand and approaches Spencer, lifting his arms in a request to be picked up. “We sure did,” Spencer says as he obliges. “Isn’t that right, Henry?”

You grin. “Dinner’s on us.”

---

The team’s seated at your usual table at one of the restaurants you all like to frequent. There’s smiles and laughter all around. Jack is telling his dad, Beth and Morgan about the design he wants to carve into the rather large pumpkin he picked out. Penelope, JJ, and Emily are chattering about Emily’s date tomorrow. (You’ve seen pictures of the woman and she’s gorgeous; Emily also seems completely enamored with her.) Rossi is following up with Will on a recipe he gave him to try. Henry has vacated his seat next to Spencer to sit on his lap instead, and both of you are helping him color in the picture on his placemat.

When JJ takes Henry to wash his hands, you take the opportunity to put your hand on Spencer’s knee. “How’s it feeling?” you ask.

“Better, now that it’s warm.” He pauses, then says, “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“Coming with me today. I had a lot of fun. I...” He fiddles with the corner of the placemat. “I never really got to do stuff like this when I was a kid. You know, because...”

You nod; you know what his upbringing was like. “Well, I’m happy to have been a part of it.”

Spencer leans into you, tucking one of his legs behind yours. You squeeze his knee lightly and he lets out a sigh of contentment. He stays like that until Henry returns. The food arrives shortly afterward. Before you take your first bite, you run your eyes across everyone at the table.

It’s a strange, mismatched family you and Spencer have, but you wouldn’t trade it for anything else.

---------------

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