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atlafan · 4 years

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Office Neighbors - Part Thirteen

a/n: WEDDING!!! (reblogs and feedback are super helpful!) not proofread, sorry!

warnings: FLUFF! Smut (a little bit of bum stuff, but don’t get too excited, it’s not what you think...yet)

words: 16K

masterpost

You and Harry needed to go down to Boston a few days before the wedding. You needed to go over things with Julian, and he needed to be there for when his family and friends flew in. Andy was extremely excited. Brandon’s parents would be sending him down on the bus the day before the wedding, so Andy would have a buddy during the rehearsal dinner.

It was nice to have a few days off from school, but Andy was sad to be away from Brandon. They hadn’t been able to really discuss everything that happened at the Halloween party like he had hoped. Every time he saw him he just blushed and smiled. They’d hold hands a little underneath the desks in class, and that was about it.

You were off with Julian, Phil, and your parents while Harry and Andy went to the airport to pick everyone up. Harry was somehow able to get everyone on the same flight.

“Six hours with these two buggers behind me. They were worse than the kids!” Gemma says as she hugs Harry, and then Andy. “I needed to take something to fall asleep.”

“Oi, we weren’t that bad.” Niall says.

“Yeah, it’s not our fault there was a football match on the tele.” Louis says. “You should be paying us babysitting fees for keeping those two entertained.”

Gemma glares at the guys before they rush to hug Harry and Andy. Anne hugs everyone as well. She looked pooped.

“I know, long flight and all that, but you’re here now.” Harry says.

Lizzie and Ritchie chat with Andy as they all wait for their luggage to come through baggage claim.

“How are we all going to fit in the same car?” Gemma asks.

“Oh, we rented a van for the weekend. Make things easier to get to and from the commons, so I just drove that here. You’re gonna love the hotel suite Julian’s put you lot in.”

“And you’re staying with us?” Niall says.

“Yeah, about that…” Harry rubs the back of his neck. “Nothing we’re doing is traditional, so I was sort of thinking I’d just stay with Y/N.”

“Nope, no way. Can’t have a proper bachelors night out if we send you back drunk to your fiancé.” Louis says. “You will stay with us.”

“You’re gonna sloshed the night before your wedding?” Anne asks.

“No…we’re all going out tonight. Tomorrow’s the rehearsal, and then the wedding.” He looks at his friends. “M’not spending two nights away from her.”

“You will, and you’ll like it.” Niall says.

Everyone grabs their luggage and heads out to the van, and climbs in. Harry drives back to the hotel. He helps everyone get checked in, and shows them to their suites.

“Oh, this is perfect!” Gemma says. “Look, Mum, two queens in a room for us, and two queens for all the kids, this’ll be great.”

“Andy, your friend Brandon’s coming tomorrow, right?” Anne asks him.

“Mhm.” He smiles.

“Good, it’ll be nice to see him again. He’s such a sweet boy.” She pats his head and puts hers things down. “Well, I need to take a bit of a nap. Are we all going to have a meal together later?”

“Yeah, we’ll all get together for an early dinner. Take some time to rest. Kids, there’s a pool if you feel up to it.”

“Uncle Harry, I’m pooped.” Lizzie whines. “Need a nap too.”

“Alright, darling.” Harry chuckles.

“I’ll take ‘em down later.” Gemma says. “Andy you’re staying with us?”

“Yeah!”

“Fantastic. Do you wanna stay here with us or go with Dad?”

“I’ll hang out here.” He shrugs. “Everyone they’re all doing is boring.”

“Where is Y/N, anyways?” Anne asks.

“She’s getting some last minute stuff together. Her bridal party will be here tomorrow, so you’ll meet just her immediate family tonight, and then everyone else later.”

“Sounds good.” She yawns. “Okay, off to bed for me.”

Harry heads down the hall to Louis and Niall’s room. Harry met his two best friends his first year of uni. They all played football (soccer) together on the school’s team. Harry obviously didn’t continue on with the sport once he came to the states. Louis had a serious girlfriend of his own, but she stayed home to give the boys their fun, and Niall was in-between relationships at the moment.

“So, how’s Holly.” Harry asks Louis.

“Ah, she’s fantastic. Just FaceTimed her quick. She sends all her love.”

“Tell her I send mine right back. And what about you, Casanova?” Harry smirks. “No ladies awaiting your return?”

“Nope.” Niall grins. “I’m a free man once again. I swear I have all the luck. The women I keep dating are absolutely batty. Wouldn’t mind finding a woman of my own to settle down with.”

“Y/N’s friend Nora is single, and she’s awfully sweet.” Harry says.

“Mm, a long distance relationship isn’t in the cards for me right now, but I’ll keep that in mind if I feel like getting laid this weekend.” He winks at his friend.

“Holly and I did the long distance thing in the beginning, remember? Wasn’t all bad. I had a cool place to visit, we never fought, and it was always hot.” Louis smirks. “It’s still hot, but I certainly don’t like it when she gets mad at me for not getting me knickers in the hamper.”

“Maybe get your knickers in the hamper, and she wouldn’t get mad at you. Just a thought.” Harry says.

“No shit?!” Louis says with a laugh. “Fuckin’ genius over here, it’s almost like you’re a doctor or something.”

“Come on, let’s go get your shit from your room and bring it here.” Niall says.

“Fine.” Harry sighs. “But I’ll need to hog the pillows.”

“Are you still a clingy sleeper?” Louis asks. “You’ve got psychological damage, I swear to god.”

After everyone had time to get situation, and rested, Harry eventually caught up with you. He explained that his friends are basically forcing him to stay with them.

“You’ll have more fun, Har.” You chuckle. “It’ll give me more time to be with your mom and sister.”

“I suppose that’s true.”

“What are you guys even doing tonight?”

“Think they just wanna take me out to get drunk.” He shrugs. “Wanna come meet them?”

“Yeah!”

You hold hands as you make your way to their room. Harry knocks, and Niall opens the door.

“Hey!” He beams and hugs you immediately. “So this is the lovely lady our Harry’s just been tickled pink about.” You giggle at that and step into the room. “He hasn’t give you enough credit, you’re gorgeous, you know?” Niall keeps his arm around your shoulders and you blush.

“Oi, stop flirting with my fiancé.”

“Why? Not like you’re married yet. Still plenty of time to back out, love.”

“There she is.” Louis says with a smile and hugs you. “It’s so great to meet you. Don’t pay any attention to Nialler here, only rubbish ever comes out of his mouth.” You blink at Louis. “What?”

“You’re…you’re gonna have to speak a little slower.” You chuckle. “Your accent is a little…thick.”

“Maybe yours is thick! Didja ever think o’that?” He looks at you seriously and then laughs. “Only teasing, love, only teasing.”

“How long have you all known each other again?”

“Since we were eighteen.” Harry says as he sits down on the couch in the living area of the suite. “We were all on the soccer team together, and we lived in a triple. It was great.”

“I’m sorry, did you say you were on a sports team?” You were shocked.

“I only played my first year. I’m a better coach than a player.”

“Yeah, the lad here told us there were better opportunities here and left us.” Louis says. “But we all stayed close.”

“We usually get together whenever Harry comes back to London.” Niall explains.

“And where do you both live?”

“I live in London, not too far from Harry’s family, actually.” Louis says.

“Same here, actually. The city was calling my name.” Niall says. “You’re from this area, right?”

“Yeah.” You smile. “Born and raised. It’s the perfect sized city, in my opinion. I never felt overwhelmed or small. I like going to New York once in a wall, but I always get so anxious.”

“London should be fun for you then. You’re coming for the holidays, yeah?” Louis says.

“She sure is.” Harry says as he puts his arm around you, kissing your cheek.

“So, what are we doing for dinner tonight?” Niall asks. “M’getting hungry.”

“We’re all going to this amazing Chinese buffet. You’ll love it.” You say and look down at your watch. “Should probably head down to the lobby soon to meet everyone.”

“Good thinking.” Harry says. “You both ready? We’ll probably leave for our night out from the restaurant.”

“Yup, got everything we need.” Louis says. “Don’t worry, Y/N, we won’t get him too loaded.”

“I’m sure you’ll take very good care of him.” You say with a smirk.

You were a bit nervous as you approached the lobby. You had been on a number of FaceTime calls with Gemma and Anne at this point, but it was still wild to be seeing them in person.

“Oh!” Anne exclaims when she spots you, and you smile. “My god, it’s so nice to finally meet in person.” She says as she hugs you.

“Same to you.”

You hug Gemma next, and introduce yourself to Lizzie and Ritchie. Your parents, Julian, and Phil come strolling into the lobby, and everyone else gets acquainted. You all make your way to the restaurant, and are brought to the private room in the back for large parties. A buffet was set up, and the kids sit together while all of the adults co-mingle. You take in everything. Your parents were chatting up Anne as Phil and Julian were talking with Gemma. Louis and Niall were keeping Harry pretty preoccupied. It was nice to see him interacting with them. He had this boyish smile on his face, and it filled you with so much joy.

“Y/N, who’s officiating for you two?” Gemma asks

“My old rabbi is coming.” You smile. “He’s going to do a few prayers for us since that was important to me, and Harry didn’t seem to mind.” He places his hand over yours. “And then our friend Janette is going to step in and do the rest. She was over the moon when we asked her. She works with us as well.”

“That’s great! Harry’s always told nice stories about Janette over the years. Will everyone else from your department be coming?”

“Yeah.” Harry answers his sister. “They’ll be coming to the reception. The ceremony is going to be everyone in this room, plus Y/N’s bridal party. Very small.”

“I like it.” Anne says. “I mean, having a big wedding is great and all, but I like that this will be much more intimate. It makes it more special, in a way.”

“I still can’t believe how quickly you were able to pull this all together.” Your mom says. “I’m happy, don’t get me wrong, but I was shocked when you said it would be happening so soon.”

“We just figured what was the use in waiting a year when we knew it was going to be small. It’s not like we needed to book a large venue, and thanks to Julian, we were able to squeeze into that smaller ballroom for the reception.” You say.

“How will everything work out at the commons?” Niall asks.

“We’re having two small tents set up, one for me and one for Harry, and both parties to hang out in. I’ll be brought over in the van beforehand to take pictures and all that, and then we’re going to do a first look.” You explain.

“We really wanted that moment to be private between us. Andy’s gonna be involved in it too, it’s gonna be great.” Harry says.

“Our admin, Lucas, is taking all of the photos, he’s so talented.” You say. “We’re paying him, of course, but he’s not charging as much as a full-time professional would.”

“It’s nice you two have so many people in your corner to help out.” You dad says. “Makes me feel better about you living so far away, honey.” He gives your hand a squeeze and you smile at him.

You had never felt more blessed in your life. You were with a man your family approved of, and they were happy for you, genuinely! Your parents had been not so great to your past boyfriends, but they took a liking to Harry right away. You wondered if Andy had anything to do with it. They were skeptical, you noticed, at Thanksgiving, but it was like once they met Andy they knew you’d be alright with Harry. It must have something to do with the fact that he’s been able to keep a kid alive and safe. They knew they could trust him with you.

Dinner was great, and everyone felt plenty full. Harry tells Andy to be good and to listen to the adults taking care of him since he’d be mostly likely going to the pool at the hotel with his cousins.

“Have fun you three.” You say to the boys before you all head your separate ways. “Bring him back in one piece.”

“We’ll do our best.” Niall winks.

Harry rolls his eyes at his friends and gives you a hug and a kiss before he leaves with them. You head back to the hotel with Harry’s family after saying goodbye to your own. You meet them all down at the pool to hang out while the kids swam around.

“Have you two been to Boston often?” You ask Anne and Gemma.

“A few times, yeah. We usually fly in here, but we’ve only explored a couple of times.” Gemma explains. “We usually have to hop on the bus up to New Hampshire to get to Harry’s.”

“I think we’re planning our next visit for Andy’s fourteenth birthday since he’ll be done with middle school.”

“And that’ll be when his next birthday party will be at Harry’s house.” Gemma says. “No offense, but I have zero desire to party it up at Paige’s.”

“Oh, please.” You laugh. “I don’t blame you at all.”

“She’s a lovely woman and all, great mum to my grandson, but I’ll never forgive her for hurting my son.” Anne says as she crosses her arms and leans back in her chair, glancing over at the kids in the pool. “I was so shocked the day he called me and told me she was pregnant. He wasn’t done with school yet, and I could tell he was panicked.”

“I had to talk him off the ledge. He was so close to dropping out to find a job. Thankfully Paige had the good sense to remind him he was just about done with school and she was already working full time. I already had the twins, so I was able to give him some pointers.”

“Ah, so they’re about a year older than Andy, then?” You say.

“About, yeah, like a year and half. They all get along great, thank god. At the age they are now, it can feel like such a big gap, you know?”

“Y/N, are you and Harry hoping to have a kid, or are you leaving it with Andy?” Anne asks. “I know it’s not really any of my business, but I had always hoped he’d have more.”

“Oh, no, it’s fine.” You smile. “Yeah, we plan to have a baby at some point. I’m hoping to finish up my doctoral program before we start trying. It’s a lot of stress, and I’d be scared of something happening.”

“Perfectly understandable.” Gemma says. “I was happy with my two for one special.” She laughs. “Got one of each in one go, and that was plenty for me.”

“Have you two talked to Andy about him potentially being a big brother? I know he has Rachel, but that’s a little different. Feel like they’re more like buddies.” Anne says.

“We haven’t talked to him about it, no.” You sigh. “I feel like he’ll be okay with it, but sometimes we don’t really know how he’ll take things. He was awfully upset last year when Paige got engaged. He took ours much better, for whatever reason.”

“He’s a mumma’s boy, just like his father, that’s why.” Gemma smirks. “Harry used to throw a fit anytime Mum went out on a date.”

“Only when Dad and I first divorced, he got over it eventually.” Anne shrugs.

“Yeah, he started dating and said, ‘hm, maybe Mum was valid for wanting to go out’.” Gemma laughs.

“I’m glad Harry having such an older kid didn’t scare you off.” Anne says to you. “It’s one thing when you meet someone and their child is young, basically still a baby, but Andy was, like, ten when you met him, right?”

“Yeah, I think so.” You smile and think back on his chubby cheeks. He’d grown so much in just a couple of years. “I actually think it made things easier. He was able to warm up to me as a friend first, you know? Plus, I think Harry would talk about me to him.”

“He talked about you to everyone.” Anne laughs. “He was smitten before he even knew he was smitten.”

“And there I was totally oblivious to the whole thing.” You shake your head. “Well, not totally, I think I was pretending not to notice. I wasn’t totally into the idea of dating a colleague. I was so new, I didn’t want to seem unprofessional.”

“I get that.” Gemma says. “I met my late husband at work, and we definitely discussed the implications of dating before we actually went out. It can make things really complicated if it doesn’t work out.”

“That’s why I’m kinda glad we started dating in the summer time so we could ease into it a bit.” You say as your phone buzzes. You take it out of your pocket and see a message from Harry. It was a picture of him, clearly one of the boys took, drinking through a funnel. “Oh, god.” You laugh and show them. “They do this often?”

“They’re bad influences.” Gemma says. “They act like little boys when they all get together.”

“They better not make him sick, Harry promised to take us out for some fun during the day tomorrow before the rehearsal.”

“Why’d you send her that?!” Harry slurs as he grabs his phone from Niall.

“Thought she’d appreciate you checking in.” Niall smirks.

“Not funny.” Harry says as he tries to text you.

Harry: sooo sorry about that, I’m being good, promise

Y/N: don’t worry about it, I’m glad you’re having fun

“You’re lucky she’s easy going.” Harry says to the two of them. “No more funnels, m’too old for funnels. I’m almost thirty-four for fuck’s sake!”

“You’re, like, three months away from that, chill out.” Louis says and Harry pouts at him. “Fine, no more funnels, let’s do shots instead.”

“Good thinking, Lou, tequila sounds excellent.” Niall says and asks the bartender for three shots.

“Can we sit down? There’s a booth right over there.” Harry points to it and the boys nod. They do their shots at the bar, and Louis orders three more so they can have them at the booth. Harry sighs as he sits. “Much better.”

“Alright, so, you’re really ready to get married? Make that big leap?” Niall asks.

“Yup.” Harry smiles. “I like her a lot.” He takes his phone out. “I mean, look at how cute she is, she’s perfect.” He shows them a picture of you out in the garden, wearing one of Harry’s bucket hats and some dirt on your cheeks. “That’s my baby right there.”

“You did well, Har.” Louis chuckles and pushes Harry’s phone back to him.

“She’s amazing with Andy too, like, she always knows what to say to him. I didn’t realize how much I was doing on my own until she started coming over more and helping out. I feel like I really have someone I can lean on now.” He sniffles and Niall starts laughing.

“Please, don’t get all emotional on us, mate.” Louis says.

“I just can’t believe out of all the people in the world she’s choosing me.”

“Why wouldn’t she?” Niall says. “I’ve never seen a guy treat a woman as well as you do. Not to mention you’re one of the funniest fuckers I’ve ever met. The key to a woman’s heart is laughter, I swear.”

“it’s true, we laugh a lot.” Harry smiles. “Although, sometimes she tells me I’m not funny even while she’s laughing.”

“That’s because you make really stupid jokes.” Louis says. “They’re so bad they’re funny.”

“Oi, I’m a dad, I get to make dad jokes.” The three do the round of shots Louis had gotten.

“Alright, I’m done with this place.” Niall says. “Onto the next one.”

“And what’s the next one?” Harry raises an eyebrow as the boys grin. “No.”

“C’mon, H.” Niall says.

“Nope, not doin’ in.”

“We have to.” Louis says. “It’s an upscale place, we checked.”

“I don’t wanna watch a bunch of women I don’t know take their clothes off and shake it all around.”

“We’re not goin’ to a strip club, we’re going to a club where there will be some bottle girls and some exotic dancers.” Niall explains. “Nothing overly risqué.”

“Ugh, fine, but let’s do another shot before we go.”

The boys do another shot, and then head to the other club. Harry was feeling loose, so he wasn’t exactly uncomfortable, but he knew he’d feel guilty tomorrow when he was sober. There was loud music playing, and girls in booty shorts and crop tops walking around with drinks. Louis and Niall speak to the bouncer, and they’re brought over to an area that was roped off for them. Harry just felt thankful he could sit for a bit.

“Alright, who’s the bachelor over here?” A girl comes over with a cart.

“That would be this lad here, miss.” Louis says.

“Great! You get a rum bucket.” She grins at Harry as she starts putting the drink together, and Louis and Niall put some bills down on the cart as a tip for her.

“A rum bucket?!” Harry grows wide eyed. “That may be a bit much, I’ve been drinking tequila all night, and-“

“So you’ll nurse it, sweetie.” The girl finishes mixing the drink and hands it to him. “Whoever’s marrying you is a very lucky lady.” She smirks as she looks him up and down. “My name’s Lucy if you need anything, just holler. I’ll be covering your party tonight.”

“Thanks, Lucy.” Niall says. “This cart staying with us?”

“It sure is.” She smiles and walks away. Niall and Louis make their own drinks.

“How’s it taste, Har?” Louis asks.

“Mm, really good, actually.” Harry smiles. “Like…tastes like I’m at the beach.” He takes another decent gulp. “Refreshing.”

The rest of the night is…fuzzy for Harry. Lucy had come over a few times, she tried to flirt with him a little, but he explained not only was he probably way too old for her, but he explained, through slurred words, that he was marrying you, and even showed her some pictures. Louis and Niall got him plenty drunk at the club. Niall offered to buy him a lap dance, but Harry refused profusely. He drank two of the rum buckets, so needless to say he had no idea how he made it back to the hotel in one piece.

The next morning Harry wakes up with his head swimming. He almost felt drunk still. He wanted to take a long hot bath, or something. He knuckles at his eyes and sits up. He blinks a few times and jumps when he sees you sitting next to him with a book in your hand.

“Morning sleepy head.” You smile at him. “The boys let me in, wanted to check on you.”

“What is it?”

“Around 9:30. You gotta get up soon, your mom is adamant about spending the day with you before the rehearsal.”

“I know.” He yawns. “She wants to see some of the freedom trail.” He pushes you down onto your back and lays his head on your chest. You giggle as you card your fingers through his tangled hair. “I drank too much.”

“Get sick?”

“Don’t think so. Feel gross now, though.”

“You’ll feel better after some coffee and shower. I got you a small black.”

“You’re an angel, thank you.” He nuzzles further into your chest and then he looks up at you. “I have to confess something.”

“What’s that?”

“The last place we went to was, like, basically an upscale strip club, I’m sorry. I told them I didn’t want to, but they made me. I didn’t do anything though, I even showed the bottle girl pictures of you, and I refused a lap dance.”

“Harry.” You suck your bottom lip into your mouth. “I have to confess something too.”

“You were the bottle girl in disguise!” He gasps and you laugh, petting his head.

“No, baby. My friends took me to see male exotic dancers. It was a show, really, and they all stayed on the stage so it wasn’t like there was any touching or dollar bills flying around, but I did see some skin.”

“Why didn��t you tell me before?”

“I didn’t want you getting jealous.” You say softly. “It was good, clean fun, just like I’m sure last night was.”

“There was a lot of skin showing last night.” He sighs. “Wish it was yours.” He tugs at the hem of your shirt and slides his hand up underneath.

“Oh! Cold hand!” You swat it away and pull it out from under your shirt. “None of that now, we have a lot to do today.”

“Shower with me?” He pouts.

“Can’t, I already did, but I’ll wait in here while you do if you want.”

“Sit in the bathroom with me so we can still chat?”

“Okay.” You chuckle.

Harry takes a few sips of coffee, and you let him use the toiler before hanging out in the bathroom with him as he showers. He tries to recall more events from last night, but he explains a lot of it still feels fuzzy.

“Didn’t take you for someone who would chug from a funnel.” You say to him, and he rips the curtain back to show his face.

“What?”

“One of the guys sent me a picture from your phone. It’s okay, it was funny.”

“Buggers.” He mutters as he gets back to washing up. He gets out and you hand him a towel.

“Better?”

“Much. I don’t know what I’d do if Andy ever saw me that fucked up. I’d me mortified. Where is he, anyways?”

“Down at breakfast with your family. I picked up Brandon from south station earlier, so they’re catching up. They practically leapt into each other’s arms, it was so cute.”

“Sorry I missed that.” Harry sighs as he gets dressed. “Cold out?”

“Not too bad, might wanna wear a sweater.”

He nods and throws one on. He puts some mousse in his hair and scrunches it up so his curls will be more defined.

“Alright, I’m a person again. Breakfast sounds really good right now.” He finishes up his coffee and walks out of the room with you. Niall and Louis were waiting in the living area.

“There is he, and you don’t even look half bad.” Louis says.

“Gee, thanks.” Harry rolls his eyes. “We’re heading to breakfast, you lot joining?”

“Yeah, mate, we were waiting for you.” Niall scoffs.

You giggle as you all had down to the small restaurant the hotel had. You spot everyone right away, and tell Harry to go sit so you can make up a plate for him at the buffet table. He presses a kiss to your lips as a thank you and he goes to sit down. Gemma smirks at him.

“What?”

“Nothin’, have a nice time last night?”

“I did, thank you.” He pours himself some coffee and looks over at all the kids chatting and getting along. “I’m gonna go say hello to my son, if that’s alright with you.” He turns his nose up at Gemma, which makes her and Anne burst out laughing. “Hey, buddy.” Harry says as he sits down next to Andy.

“Hey.” He smiles.

“Hi, Mr. Styles.”

“Hey, B, how was the trip down?”

“Good, I slept for most of it.” He shrugs.

“Pretty brave to go on a bus like that by yourself.”

“I was nervous at first, but Andy told me all about his first time flying alone and it made me feel better.”

Harry smiles at that and looks at his niece and nephew.

“You two behaving and all that?”

“When do we not?” Lizzie scoffs.

“Yeah, Uncle H, give us some credit.” Ritchie says.

“How was the pool?”

“So much fun!” Lizzie says. “And Mum let us use the hot tub, it was so cool.”

“That was nice of her.” Harry smiles, and then feels a hand on his shoulder.

“Sitting with the kids, huh?” You chuckle and place his plate in front of him. “Got you fruit and potatoes.” You kiss the top of his head.

“Thank you, darling.”

“Dad, what time is the rehearsal going to start?”

“Around three this afternoon, gotta do it while it’s still light enough out.” He pops a grape into his mouth and looks at his watch. “Plenty of time to go out and enjoy the city. Got walking sneakers on, B?”

“Mhm.” He nods. “Where are we going?”

“Well, my mum loves history, so we’re gonna walk along the freedom trail for a bit, stop at some of the different landmarks, and then we’ll grab a quick bite to eat somewhere inside Quincy Market.”

“But don’t fill up.” You warn them. “Phil’s preparing an incredible dinner for all of us tonight.”

“You’re not coming?” Andy asks you.

“No, I have to stay here to make sure the room is put together, and be here for when my friends check in. A lot of our friends are going to be coming tonight, so I wanna be a good hostess when they check in.”

“Can’t believe you trust Dad to get us around with you.”

“Oi.” Harry says with a mouth full of potatoes. “I’ve got my wits about me, I know what I’m doing. I’ve gotten you around London in piece, haven’t I?”

“Yeah, but you grew up there.” Andy remarks.

“I’ll tell you what.” You say. “If you feel like you’re lost, just call me, yeah?” You wrap your arms around Harry and rest your head on the top of his chest.

“I’m not a buffoon, we’re not gonna get lost.” He sips his coffee. “Why don’t you lot go to the bathroom before we get going?”

The kids all giggle and stand up to do as he says. You take the opportunity to sit down next him. He rests his head on your shoulder as he continues to eat, and you giggle.

“What?”

“Nothing, you’re just so fucking cute.” You kiss his cheek. “We’re getting married tomorrow.” You nuzzle your nose to his cheek and he turns to look at you.

“Oh, is that why we’re here? Thought we were just having a little family time.” He shrugs and you nudge his shoulder as smile pulls at his lips.

“They’re really cute together.” Louis says to Niall and Gemma. Anne had gotten up to go to the bathroom as well.

“I’ve never seen him like this.” Gemma says quietly. “Even when he was with Paige, like, yeah he babbled about her, but with Y/N you can really see the adoration he has for her.”

“I was gonna say the same thing!” Niall says. “He really truly adores her.”

“Paige was a first love for him, I think.” Louis says. “Which can be nice and meaningful, but that’s true love right there if I’ve ever seen it.”

“I agree completely.” Gemma says. They all smile as they see you scratch at Harry’s head and kiss his cheek. “I like her a lot, so does our mum. Harry’s chill, but he can get worked up easily, you know? Paige can be so high strung, I feel like Y/N brings a nice balance to his life because she’s also equally as chill.”

“Yeah, he said she only really stresses about her doctoral work. He never sees her fret about her classes or grading.” Louis says. “She’s just a genuinely nice person.”

“Seem like a great fit, honestly. Couldn’t want more for him.” Niall says.

Anne comes back with all the kids.

“Alright, I’m itching to get outside. It’s such a beautiful day.” Anne says.

“Tell your son.” Gemma says. “We’re waiting on him to wake up a bit more.”

You and Harry walk over to the table where everyone was waiting for him.

“Okay, let’s hit it. Everyone all set?” He asks. He gets a collective yes and he nods, then looks at you. “Call me if you need me for anything.”

“Won’t be necessary, got everything under control. I’ll meet you at the common at three.” You peck each other’s lips and off they go.

You get to the common with your friends and parents around 2:30 just to help them all visualize everything. You point out where the tents are going to be set up, and where the shuttle vans will be dropping everyone off when the time comes. The rabbi arrives you give him a hug. Harry and everyone else come strolling over to the spot.

“Harry! You remember the rabbi.” You say.

“Hi, yeah, nice to meet you in person.” He shakes his hand. “Thanks again for marrying us…I know it’s a little nontraditional.”

“Please, I love, love.” He scoffs. “And I’ve known this woman since she was a little girl, I’m honored to do it.”

“This is my son, Andy.” Harry grabs Andy’s elbow and has him stand in front of him. “Andy this is the rabbi that’s going to be blessing us tomorrow before Auntie Janette does the rest.”

“Hello.” Andy shakes the rabbi’s hand and he smiles at him.

“What a polite young man. You’re very lucky, getting such a lovely step-mom.”

“Yeah.” Andy smiles. “She’s pretty cool.”

“Is everyone here? Shall we get started?” The rabbi asks.

“Yeah.” You say.

You all block out how things will go tomorrow. You and your dad chuckle as you he quickly walks you up to where the alter will be. You and Harry hold hands as the rabbi explains the prayers he’ll administer and then Janette stands in his place and pretends to give her little speech. Once it’s all done you all make your way back to the hotel for dinner. You were ravenous from all the running around you did.

“How was it today?” You ask Harry as you sit down next to him.

“A lot of fun, actually. All the kids behaved, my mum was in heaven with the history, and my friends annoyed Gem, it was fantastic.” He chuckles. “Also…”, he leans in a little closer to your ear, “think something’s going on with Andy and Brandon, like, think I saw them holding hands a couple of times.”

“Oh my goodness, really?” You jaw drops as you smile.

“I think more happened at that Halloween party than he led on, but I’m choosing not to ask about it for now.”

“Probably for the best. He’ll tell us when he’s ready. They both seem to be in pretty high spirits.”

“Yup, they’ve been their usual hyena selves.”

Phil comes in dressed in his chef outfit, and few waiters follow him in with the food. He wanted to give you a plated meal since it was a smaller group tonight. Tomorrow would be the buffet.

“This looks amazing, Phil!” You beam at him. “Thank you so much.”

“Of course.” He smiles. “I hope you all enjoy.” He sits down at a seat Julian left open for him near the door so he could scoot if needed to.

Everyone mingles as they eat. You loved getting to see everyone getting to know each other better. You look at Harry and smile as he speaks with your mother. Then you look over at the kids, the four of them were enjoying mac n’cheese. You notice how Andy and Brandon keep stealing glances of each other. All around, it was a pleasant evening.

“Okay.” Nora says to you. “We’re taking you out of the hotel tonight for drinks. Don’t worry, we’re not going crazy. We don’t want you looking all tired tomorrow.”

“No ma’am.” You say. “The hair stylist should be at our suite around ten in the morning to do everyone’s hair.”

“Perfect.” She smiles. “It’s gonna be amazing. You’re gonna so fucking cool in your ensemble.”

“I’m very excited to strut my stuff.”

After going out for a few hours, you and your friends go back to your hotel suite to get some sleep. Harry had stayed in, well, he went to the hotel bar with Niall, Louis, and Gemma, but he hadn’t drank to excess like he did the night prior.

“I just wanna say goodnight to him.” You tell your friends as you put your robe on. “Be back in five minutes.”

“Mhm, right.” Mark rolls his eyes. “You’ll be back in thirty minutes, freshly fucked.”

“Well…obviously.” You scoff. “It’s the last time I get to call him my fiancé.” You wink and slip out the door and down a few hallways to his room. You knock on the door, and Louis opens it. “Hi.” You smile.

“Hello, love, what can I do for you?”

“Came to tell my fiancé goodnight.”

He grins at you and turns into the room.

“Oi! Harry, Y/N says goodnight!” He turns back to you. “Anything else?”

“Would you get out of the fucking way?” Harry yanks Louis away. “Both of you should go into the other room.” He runs a hand through his hair and tugs you inside. “Hey.” He smiles.

“Hi.” You giggle and quickly go into his room with him. “Thought it might be fun to have one last go as two people who aren’t married.”

“Always thinking, aren’t you.” He pulls the tie on your robe and lets it fall open. You had a simple silk pajama set on, nothing overly special. “Cute.” He smiles and cups your jaw.

He pulls you towards him gently and kisses you. You wrap your arms around him and drag your tongue along his bottom lip, and he opens up for you. He walks you back to the bed, and you both fall on top of it. He tugs your pants down your legs, and you shiver when you feel his hand caress your thigh.

“Don’t leave any marks tonight, I don’t want them showing up in the pictures.” You say as he mouths at your neck.

“What about between your legs?”

“Don’t think a camera will be going there.” You chuckle.

He kisses down your body and parts your legs open. He kisses from your knee all the way to the sensitive skin of your inner thigh. You gasp when you feel his teeth nip at you.

“Harry, don’t tease, it’s not like we have all night…”

“Teasing’s the best, though.”

“For you, maybe.” You pout. “Please, just want you to fuck me.”

“Did you bring any condoms?”

“No…I thought you’d have some with you.”

“You packed them in your bag, remember?”

“Jesus Christ, okay, so just pull out I guess?”

“Can I fuck you from behind?”

“Yes.”

He grins and gets all of his clothes off and so do you. You get on all fours in front of him, and he runs his hands down your back soothingly before giving you bum a smack.

“Oof!” You look behind you, started, as his second smack was against your cunt. “Harry.” You say sternly. “I can’t stay quiet if you do that, and I’d rather not put on a show for your friends.”

“Okay, okay, m’sorry.” He leans forward and pecks your lips.

He pushes his length between your folds to coat himself before he pushes inside you. You groan softly as he bottoms out. He pulls out almost all the way, and thrusts back in. He does this a few times before getting a rhythm going. He reaches forward, and pulls you back to him so you’re flush with his chest. He licks into your mouth as he rubs your clit. You were falling to pieces in front of him. You wanted it quick and fast, and that’s exactly how he’d give it to you. You were his angel, his princess, no, his queen. He’d make you happy no matter what. You were moaning into his mouth and panting all at the same time. You could feel your orgasm approaching. You tug at his hair in he moans right back into your mouth. You bite his bottom lip harshly as you come around his cock. He pushes you off him and onto the mattress. You barely had time to catch your breath before he was coming onto your back.

“Sorry, that was a close one.” He breathes. “One second, baby.”

He hops off the bed and grabs a towel to clean you up with. You use the toilet and then get dressed. He throw his sweatpants back on and pulls you into his lap as he sits on the edge of the bed. You hug him, and he cradles your head to his shoulder. You nibble on his earlobe and smirk to yourself.

“I can’t wait to feel you come inside me when we’re ready to start trying.” You say into his ear and goosebumps raise on his skin. “Bet it’ll feel so good and warm.”

“Y/N, I will fuck you again.” He says almost warning you to behave. “Be good for me, yeah? It’s hard enough I can’t sleep next to you.”

“Sorry.” You peck his lips a few times. “I’ll behave.”

“Thank you.” He kisses you again. “I can’t wait for that too, just so you know.”

“Good.” You smile and get off of him.

“Want me to walk you back to your room?”

“No, just to the door is fine, I can make it.”

He nods and leads you out to the main area, and to the front door of the suite. You kiss one last time, and say goodnight. This time tomorrow he’d be your husband, and you were absolutely buzzing.

The next morning you have room service ordered for you and your friends. You have your nails, hair, and makeup done over a couple of mimosas. Anne, Gemma, your mom, and Lizzie all join in.

“So you’re wearing slacks and a jacket, and then you’re changing into a little dress?” Your mom confirms.

“Yes, and I’m really glad I’m doing that because I won’t freeze outside.” You chuckle.

“Your hair looks gorgeous.” Janette says.

“Thanks.” You smile.

You had the hairdresser make two, really nice buns, sort of like the ones you make on your own. Your hair had gotten pretty long, so she was able to make them look full and loose. She took out some pieces in the front and curled the ends. You knew how much Harry liked your poofs, so you thought you’d have them made elegantly. It was perfect.

The time comes for you to put everything on, and your mother has to blink a few tears away. You both giggle and hug. Mark and Darcy walk in front of you out of the room, and Nora and Claudia walk behind you. This way no one would accidentally see you. You all climb into the van, your father, Phil, and Julian were all waiting for you. They tell you how beautiful you look.

Lucas was there waiting for you. Nora goes into the small tent for the bridal party and grabs your bouquet. You take pictures with Mark, Nora, Darcy, and Claudia, then just you and Nora, then you and your parents, then with you, Gemma, and Anne, and then just you and Anne. Then you take one with Phil and Julian, and then one of just your immediate family. Once all that is done you head inside the tent to keep warm until everyone else shows up.

The other van pulls up; Harry, Andy, Brandon, Ritchie, Louis, and Niall all come out. Harry’s suit was magenta, and it really brought out the green in his eyes. Andy, Ritchie, Louis, and Niall all had tan suits on, and Andy was given a special pocket square that was magenta. Louis, Niall, and Ritchie’s were blue. They all go wait inside the tent while Harry goes to the spot he was told to wait for the first look with you. Lucas takes a few pictures of him standing there with his back turned. You take a peek outside, and bite your bottom lip as you see Harry’s back turned. You take a deep breath and make your way out. Everyone was told not to watch so you two could have your moment.

Lucas takes plenty of photos of you walking up to Harry. You get about three feet away and stop. You take a moment to admire his features: his broad back, the way the material stretches over his bum and thighs. You take a deep breath before speaking.

“Hey, neighbor.” You say softly.

“Hey, neighbor, can I turn around now?”

“Yeah, I’m dying to see the front of that suit.”

Harry smiles as he turns around, and his eyes grow wide when he looks at you. His eyes rim with tears. He covers his mouth with one hand, and the other goes to his hip.

“You…you look…I mean, you’re breathtaking.” He says to you. He steps forward and wraps his arms around you. You were trying your hardest not to cry because you didn’t want your makeup to get messed up.

“So are you, you look so handsome.” You chuckle as you hold each other. You cup his cheeks and he grips your hips and squeezes you. “I have a dress for the reception too.”

“Sneaky.” He pecks your lips. Lucas captures everything, and takes a few photos of the two of you. “Alright, it’s our son’s turn, be back in a tick.” Harry goes back to the tent and grabs Andy. He has him cover his eyes as he walks him over to you. “Ready to see your mum, buddy?”

“Yeah.”

“Please, I really don’t wanna cry and you’re making it so hard.” You laugh.

Andy takes his hands away from his eyes and he gasps.

“You look so cool!” He throws his arms around you and you hug him back.

“Andy, you look so incredibly handsome.”

“My pocket square matches Dad’s suit.”

“I see that, very clever.”

Lucas takes some pictures of the three of you, and then everyone else is allowed out. Every combination of photo is taken for each wedding party, as well as every combination of family photo. Everyone goes to wait in the tents as the guests start to arrive. Lisa, Mateo, Sandra, and Andre all take their seats. Some of your other family comes, and a few old colleagues from both yours and Harry’s previous institutions show up.

Janette and the rabbi get into position. Anne walks Harry and Andy up to the alter, and Ritchie, Louis, and Niall follow behind. Brandon was sitting up front and he gives a small wave to Andy. Andy blushes and waves back.

Lizzie walks down the aisle first, putting out rose petals. She hugs Harry briefly, and then stands in her spot. Your mother walks arm and arm with Phil and Julian, and then they sit down. Next comes Mark, Claudia, Darcy, and Nora. Harry takes a deep breath when he sees you and your father. Your smile grows wider and wider, and Harry tears up again. Your father kisses your cheek, giving you away, and you stand hand in hand with Harry. He even wore a yarmulke for you. The rabbi addresses everyone, and says a few prayers before stepping aside to let Janette speak.

“Thank you, Rabbi.” She smiles. “I am so honored to be here today doing this for the two of you. I’ve known Harry for a long time, and I’ve been grateful for our friendship. Y/N, you and I became such fast friends, and I honestly don’t know what I would do without you. Please, don’t ever leave.” You and Harry chuckle at her. “I know it’s a little chilly out, so I’ll try to keep things brief, especially since these two have their own vows. Love is a really crazy thing. We love our friends, our family, and once in a great while we find someone that fall in love with. Watching Harry and Y/N fall for each other was fascinating. It was slow, oblivious, and all of a sudden. They left for summer break as a good friends, and came back a couple. None of us were surprised, of course, but sometimes you just gotta let the kids figure it out for themselves.” A few people laugh. “And I’m so happy you two figured it out. Now, I think the time has come for you to talk, Harry, I believe you’re first.”

“Right, thanks.” He clears his throat and looks at you. He squeezes your hands in his. “Y/N, the day we met I was just excited I was going to have an office neighbor again. Things had been quiet, and I felt bad for always bugging Andre and Sandra.” You laugh at that. “We bonded over not eating meat, and then we won a game of charades, and suddenly you were all I could think about. I wasn’t quite sure why because I hadn’t felt like that in a long time, and I almost forgot what it felt like to be so into someone. I liked you, and so did my son…who’s ours now. It’s not easy dating someone with a child, and you made it seem so natural. You…made me believe in love again.” He blinks away a few tears, and you smile. Janette nods towards you.

“That’s tough to beat.” You squeeze his hands. “When I first came to the university, I was pretty much focused on getting my doctorate. The last thing I expected was to fall in love with my colleague, as charming as he was. When we all went out to dinner that night, you said you had someone at home waiting for you, and I felt weird for feeling relieved when I found out were a single dad. I was so used to being independent and doing my own thing, that I didn’t realize how good it could feel to have someone want to take care of you. I also didn’t realize how good it could feel to want to take care of someone else, and their kid.” You lean and wink at Andy, who was beaming at you. “I’ve never felt like this before, and I’m so happy that I get to keep feeling this way.”

“Andy, the rings please.” Janette says, holding out her hand. Andy drops them into her palm. “Thank you.” She hands one to you, and one to Harry. You each slip a ring on each other’s finger. “By the power vested in, and the state of Massachusetts, I now pronounce you husband and wife!”

Harry steps on the glass, and grabs you by the back of the neck to kiss you. He dips you slightly as everyone cheers. You and your parties make your way to the vans to head to the hotel. All of your guests enjoy a cocktail hour while you change into your dress. Lucas takes a few pictures of you and Harry.

“This is nice, baby.” Harry says to you.

“Thanks, I thought it would be fun to have an outfit change.” You peck his lips. “Hey, I’m your wife.”

“I know, I’m your husband.” He squishes his nose to yours.

“And for the first time as a married couple, Y/N and Harry!”

“Think that’s our cue.” You say to him and giggle. You hold hands and go into the small ballroom.

Everyone cheers as you both come inside. Groove is in the Heart starts playing, which you both chose as your first dance. It was an inside joke between the two of you. You didn’t have a lot of time to plan it, but you were able to choreograph a silly dance to it. Everyone was hollering and clapping as you hit every step. You mouth the words to each other. ‘I couldn’t ask for another. No, I couldn’t ask for another.’ It was a lot of fun. You both hug and kiss at the end, and then giggle. You were so happy Lucas had gotten everything on video.

The song for Harry’s mother-son dance starts to play, and he extends his hand out to her. Andy comes up to you and taps your shoulder. You gasp and smile endearingly at him. You dance with him as Harry dances with Anne. You weren’t expecting this from Andy at all. Next up is your dance with your father, and Harry takes the opportunity to dance with your mother, who was overjoyed.

Nora gives an incredible maid of honor speech, making everyone laugh hard. You almost snorted your champagne through your nose. Louis and Niall give a short little speech before turning the microphone to a nervous Andy. He didn’t love public speaking.

“Um, hi everyone. Th-that’s my dad.” He points to Harry and a few people chuckle. “He’s, like, the best dad in the world. He never really brought his dates around, I didn’t even know he dated. I remember when I first met Y/N…my new step-mom…I thought she was really nice. I asked my dad about her one night, and he pretty much didn’t shut up about her after that.” Everyone laughs. “But that was okay. My eleventh birthday was coming up, and we really wanted to invite her, but he was nervous. So we invited her on a hike to ease to into it. Dad was taking too long, so I asked Y/N to come to my party, and she said yes. After that she kept saying yes to us. I thought my favorite yes was when she agreed to move in, but I think today’s my new favorite.” He smiles and clears his throat. “I…I love you both.”

Everyone cheers for Andy as he comes over to you both to give you each a hug. You both tell him you love him too before he sits down. Brandon gives his shoulder a squeeze. After that, everyone makes their way to the buffet and bar area to enjoy everything. Phil had put an incredible menu together. You and Harry make your way around the room to say hello to the guests who weren’t at the ceremony. Mark was killing it as the DJ, and playing lots of music that everyone could enjoy. A slower song starts to play, so you and Harry make your way to the dancefloor so you can enjoy it.

“I think we really crushed it earlier.” You say. “No one was expecting a fun, choreographed dance.”

“I agree, blew everyone away.” He chuckles and kisses your cheek. “It’s been an incredible day.”

You nod and smile as he leads you around. You rest your head on his shoulder, and let your eyes flutter closed for a bit. You were married, you were actually married. You had the papers to prove it and everything. Sure, you weren’t Mrs. Styles, you’d be keeping your last name, which Harry had absolutely no problem with, hell, he had offered to change his own for you, but you said it wasn’t necessary.

“You know what’s gonna be super sexy of us?” He says and you look up at him with raised eyebrows. “Going on the same insurance plan.”

“God, love it when you talk dirty to me like that.” You giggle and so does he.

The song fades into a faster one, and Andy comes running over to the two of you. He tugs on Harry’s hand so they can dance together. You couldn’t stop smiling if you wanted to. At one point you and Phil share a dance as Harry and Gemma share one. Harry even dances with Julian. You weren’t sure if you had ever seen Harry have so much fun.

“Are you having fun?” Andy asks Brandon as they take a water break.

“Yeah, this is awesome. I had a lot of fun exploring yesterday too. Your family is really nice.”

“Thanks. I’m really glad your parents let you come for this.”

“Me too.” He rests his chin on his palm and smiles at Andy. He reaches with his other hand to fix the collar of his shirt. “Tan’s a nice color on you.”

“Thank you.” Andy blushes.

“Andy!” Lizzie says. “They’re gonna play the cha cha slide in a second, will you come do it with us?”

“Yeah!” He grabs Brandon’s hand to go back to the dancefloor. Everyone gets into position as the song starts.

The music was a lot different than the music that Paige had her wedding. She had more of a generic playlist. You had worked with Mark to play things everyone would like, but you also made sure to have songs on there you knew you’d be able to jam out to. So when Yeah! comes on, you and your friends squeal and all run to dance together. The kids knew the song too, but Andy had never really seen you dance the way you were right now.

“Y/N really knows how to have fun!” Brandon says.

“Yeah!” Andy says. “She really is the coolest!”

Andy knew this wasn’t his dad’s favorite kind of music so he laughs when he sees you drag him over to your friends to dance to the song. You dance up on him in a silly way, and it makes everyone laugh.

“Are they going on a honeymoon or anything?” Brandon asks Andy as they both go to grab cupcakes.

“Mhm, they’re going to Miami during Thanksgiving week. I get to stay at my mom’s for an extra couple of day which will be nice.”

“You won’t mind going back and forth?”

“Nah, it’s only for a couple of days.” Andy shrugs.

“How come her and your step-dad and Rachel aren’t here?”

“I don’t really know. My dad said he didn’t really want her here for this since they wanted to keep things really small. I guess he didn’t want to think about her or whatever.”

“Do you think Y/N and your dad are gonna try to have a baby?”

“I have no idea. I wouldn’t mind if they did, I know my dad’s always wanted to have more kids. He loves babies. Anytime we’re at a party and there’s a baby, he has to hold it. It would be cool to be a big brother, even if I’ll be a lot older.”

“My aunt is, like, ten years older than my dad, and they get along really well. I don’t think age gaps really matter when you’re older.” Andy nods as he finishes his cupcake. Another slow song starts. “Do you, um, wanna dance?” He rubs the back of his neck.

“Yeah.” Andy smiles and takes one of Brandon’s hands.

Andy keeps Brandon’s hand in his, and puts the other on his upper waist. Brandon puts his free hand on Andy’s shoulder. Ever since their kiss, Andy had this confidence about him, not that he wasn’t confident before, but he was certainly less shy now that he knew how Brandon felt about him. No one really pays too much attention to them as they dance. You and Harry notice it and just find it to be sweet.

As the night comes to end, you and Harry thank everyone for coming. Andy and Brandon head up to the hotel suite with Lizzie, Ritchie, Anne, and Gemma. You say goodbye to your family, and your friends go to their suite. Yours and Harry’s things were set up in the room you’d finally be spending the night together in. He laces his fingers in yours as you stand in the elevator. As soon as you get off, you squeal as he picks you up and carries you bridal style to your room. You giggle as you swipe the key card, and he carries you inside. There were rose petals on the floor and a bottle of champagne over ice.

“I don’t think I’ve ever felt more special.” You say and he kisses you.

He sets you down gently, and gets his suit jacket off. Harry pops the champagne and pours some into a couple of glasses. You smile as you take the flute from him and take a sip.

“As if we needed more to drink.” He jokes as he takes a sip. “Did you have fun?”

“So much fun, it was perfect. Couldn’t have asked for a better wedding.” You set your glass down and kick your heels off before wrapping your arms around his neck. “I’m gonna be really busy before we go away.”

“I know, it’s alright. You promise to work while we’re gone, right?”

“I promise.” You nod and he pecks your lips.

“Are you tired? We can wait to consummate if you want.” You laugh at that and shake your head as he squeezes your hips.

“No, baby, I’m not tired. Are you?”

“Not at all. Caught a second wind, actually.”

“Mm, well, let’s put it to good use then.”

You slot your mouth over his, and nip at his bottom lip. His hands slide up under the skirt of your dress to squeeze at your ass, kneading your plushy skin. You start unbuttoning his shirt, and tug it out of his pants. You push it off his shoulders and run your fingers up and down his chest and torso. He grips the hem of your dress and pulls it off in one swoop. You grab at your breasts because you had to use an obscene amount of tape to keep them up.

“What’s all that for?”

“I couldn’t wear a bra with that dress because the back is open, and my boobs are too big to let them just bounce around so I had to tape them up. Give me a second to go take all this off. I honestly forgot about it.” You pout slightly. “Not very sexy.” You say as you walk towards the bathroom.

“I don’t about that, your ass looks great in that thong.” He smirks and you shake your head at him.

He takes the time to get out of his shoes and slacks, leaving himself in a pair of black boxers. He sits down on the edge of the bed as he waits for you. He hears you wince a couple of times, and then you come back out.

“They’re all red now.” You pout for real now and straddle him.

“You and your sensitive skin, poor thing.” He pouts back at you and then kisses on your chest. “Let me make it all better.”

Harry swirls his tongue around your tender nipple, and does the same to other one before gently sucking. You run your fingers through his soft hair as you whimper affectionately. Your hips jut forward against the bump that’s growing in his boxers. He kisses up your throat and to your mouth as he holds you close to him.

“Get back on the bed.” You say against his lips.

You get off of him and he shifts further back on the bed so he can sit up against the headboard. He spreads his legs for you as you tug at the band of his boxers. He lifts his hips to help you take them off. You also take a moment to get your thong off so you both could just be naked.

“I wanted to do that.” He pouts.

“Well, it’s a good thing we’re married because we have the rest of our lives for you to take my clothes off.” You smirk and open his legs back up.

You kiss on his inner thigh, a spot where he was extremely sensitive, and suck a bruise into his skin. He grunts as you do so, and he watches your mouth works up his shift, kitten licks and kisses, up to his tip. You suckle on him and his mouth falls open with a sigh. You slobber all over him so you can pump what you can’t fit into your mouth. Your other hand goes to his balls and he moans as you massage them. You could practically feel them throbbing. You pop off his tip and continue to pump him slowly. You lay flat on your stomach and lick the flat of your tongue over one of his balls, causing his hips to buck up. You carefully mouth at his balls before bringing your mouth back to his tip, swirling your tongue around him.

“Y/N.” He groans. “Let me do you now.”

You give his tip one last harsh suck before you do as he says. You lay back on the bed, but he flips you onto your stomach. He pulls your hips up and you gasp when you feel his breath on your center. He licks into you from behind, and you clench your fists around the comforter on the bed. The noises he was making as he slurped and sucked on you were obscene, but you couldn’t find it in you to care because it felt so fucking good. He briefly sucks on your clit before he drags his tongue all the way back up to your other hole. Your body shudders when you feel two of his fingers slip inside you. His thumb works your clit while his tongue swirls around your other sensitive area. Your eyes nearly pop of your head when you feel his tongue enter you.

“Jesus, fuck.” You cry out. You look over your shoulder at him and see he’s totally lost in you.

His fingers were working wonders against your g-spot, his thumb was rubbing your clit in just the right way, and his tongue…Christ. Your senses were totally overwhelmed. He was moaning and groaning against you, and that’s what makes you totally lose it. You have to grab the pillow to scream into as your orgasm washes over you in waves. He lets go of you slowly, feeling your body shake under him. You carefully roll onto your back and look up at him. Your chest was heaving.

“What?” He asks as he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

“N-nothing, that just felt really good.” You bite your bottom lip. “I think I’m warming up to the idea of doing more…down there.” You swallow as his eyebrows raise. “Not tonight, obviously, but…I still think it’s only fair it happens to you first. I’ve been looking into it.”

“You have?” He reaches to stroke your cheek and you press into his touch.

“Yeah, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious. There’s a lot of prep work that has to be done. Are you sure you’d feel comfortable with me doing it to you?”

“Mhm.”

“You wouldn’t feel emasculated?”

“I think I was, like, sixteen the last time I cared about being masculine or not.” He smirks. “I think doing something like that with each other is so intimate and special because it just proves how much we trust one another. It really excites me.” You nod at that. “We can talk more about it later…got condoms in here?”

“Yeah, I put them in the bedside table.”

Harry nods and opens the drawer to grab one. He rips the foil packet open and slides the rubber onto his length. His runs his tip through your folds and around your clit. He pushes inside you and you both sigh out in relief. He comes down to you so you’re chest to chest and you wrap your legs around him. You wanted to make love with him tonight, and he knew that. One of your hands gets lost in his hair while the other grips at his back and shoulder. He rocks in and out of you with precision and care. Soft whimpers leave your lips as he kisses on the skin just under your ear.

“I love you so much, Y/N.” He says into your ear.

“I love you too, Harry.”

He picks up the pace a little and his tip hits your g-spot over and over. You weren’t going to last much longer, and judging by how sloppy he was getting, he wouldn’t be lasting much longer either. Your nails scratch down his back as you cry out, and he spills into the condom shortly after. Once you’re both cleaned up, you flop onto his chest so he can hold you. He wraps his arms around you and kisses your forehead. He pulls the covers over the two of you, and you sigh peacefully. You felt like a big, toasty cinnamon bun, and you couldn’t have asked for anything better, honestly.

When you woke up the next morning, you realized you slept with your buns in. You sit up and start taking out the bobby-pins that were used to keep them together. You shake out your hair and moan with relief as you rake your nails through. Harry was sleeping soundly next to you. You reach over on the nightstand for an elastic to put your hair up in a high ponytail. You leave the same pieces out in the front. You realize you didn’t bother to take your makeup off either. How irresponsible, you think to yourself. Harry’s arm was strung across your lap, and he squeezes your thigh when you try to get up.

“Babe.” You say and he grunts. “I desperately need to wash my face, please let me get up.”

“No.”

“Harry.”

“Just a little longer.” His eyes flutter open and he looks up at you. “I don’t feel like being a dad, a brother, a son, an uncle, or a friend just yet.”

“And what would you like to be then?”

“Just your husband.”

You chuckle softly and lift his hand to your lips to kiss his knuckles.

“As sweet as that is, unfortunately, now that you’re awake you’re all of those things. You’ll love the brunch Phil’s preparing. I swear breakfast is one of his specialties.”

“Is that why you’re so good at cooking it too?” He asks as he sits up.

“Mhm, I used to practice recipes with him. It sort of helped us bond as I was getting older.” You stretch your arms out and then get out of bed. “I left all my makeup on, I feel gross.”

He lets you do your thing in the bathroom before going in himself. You throw on a sweater with some leggings, and a comfy pair of knock-off uggs. Harry puts on some joggers and a sweatshirt. You both work to pack up all your things. You sigh as you zip up your dress bag.

“You really did look stunning yesterday, in both outfits.” He says as he wraps his arms around you from behind.

“Thank you, baby.” You lean into his embrace for a moment before he lets you go. “Did you see Andy and Brandon dancing last night?”

“I did.” Harry nods with a smile. “Think they’ve got a secret little thing going on?”

“Possibly…”

“I have a feeling they’re not saying anything because they didn’t wanna have any issues with the hotel room.”

“Why would they have issues?”

“Andy’s smart, Y/N, he knows there are certain dating rules, he’s watched enough movies with me to know that two kids dating usually means they can’t sleep in the same room, let alone the same bed.”

“So if they are dating, are you going to ban sleepovers?”

“Nah, they’re only twelve.” Harry shrugs. “But…they’ll have to keep the door open. Brandon doesn’t usually sleep in Andy’s bed anyways since he only has a little twin. I’m not too worried about it.”

“You’ll have to talk with him a little, though.”

“About what?”

“The birds and the bees.” Harry grimaces at that and it makes you laugh.

“You’re his mum now, you do it.”

“Harry.” You laugh harder.

“Please, I can’t get through a conversation like that. I don’t even know what I’d say to him. He can’t really be thinking about that kind of stuff yet can he?”

“I don’t know, kids today are doing things at younger and younger ages. They could easily be kissing and making out. He should know that he really should be doing anything below the belt just yet. And like you said, he’s twelve…aren’t things a little hard to control down there at that age? He needs some guidance ahead of time in case he gets a little too excited.”

“Shit.” Harry says in agreement.

“We can wait until he tells us what’s going. It could easily be nothing still.”

“True.” He kisses your cheek and grabs a good chunk of the bags.

You both head downstairs, and into the small function room you had the rehearsal dinner in. Your nostrils are hit with coffee and waffles. Phil had set up a waffle bar, pancakes, and crepes! There was also eggs, breakfast sausage and bacon (regular and vegan), oatmeal, and yogurt. Your mouth waters from all of it, but you’re snapped out of your daze when you hear other in the room clap and holler at you and harry. You both bow and curtsey. You say your hellos and good mornings before you both pile up your plates.

“Morning.” Andy comes over to the two of you.

“Hey, buddy, how’d you sleep?” Harry says.

“Good, I conked right out, I was tired. Is everyone going back to London today?”

“M’afraid so.” Harry sighs. “We’ll see everyone again real soon though.”

“Yeah.” Andy looks over at Anne. “I’m gonna go sit with Grammy then.”

“Go ahead.” You say. “Enjoy the time with her.”

Andy nods and goes to sit with Anne. Brandon sits on his other side, although he was deep in conversation with Ritchie about the complexities of soccer versus football. Gemma was busy braiding back Lizzie’s hair.

“So, how is it?” Phil says as he plops down in the seat next to you.

“Amazing, I can’t thank you enough.”

“We’re hoping to do more catering events, so we made sure to take a lot of pictures of everything. This was like a test run.”

“Happy we could help, mate.” Harry says. Louis and Niall sit down next to him.

“Sleep well?” Louis asks Harry.

“Like a rock since I had my girl next to me.” Harry smirks.

“You two officially married now?” Niall says.

“Very much so.” Harry’s smirk grows.

“Hey!” You snap your head in their direction. “None of that at breakfast, please. My parents are right over there.” Your cheeks were beat red.

“Y/N, you and Janette have had such vulgar conversations in front of other people before-“ Harry starts, but you cut him off.

“Not in front of my fucking family.” Your gaze is warning and he nods as you turn back to speak with Phil.

The morning goes on, and everyone enjoys their breakfasts. You wait with Harry’s family and friends as their cabs to the airport would be arriving any moment. It was hugs and kisses all around. You already couldn’t wait to see them for the holidays. After wrapping things up with Julian, you, Harry, Andy, and Brandon all head to Harry’s car.

“Now, boys, this is a momentous occasion.” He turns to look at them in the backseat. “Y/N is actually letting me drive through the city.” You glare at him and he laughs.

“Keep it up and I’ll make you switch right now.”

“How come you’re not driving, Y/N?” Andy asks.

“I have a bit of a headache. The sun is a little bright for me today.” You had a pair of sunglasses on to prove it. “This is a test for your dad.”

“And I’m going to pass with flying colors.” He retorts. “Everyone buckled up?” He hears a yes from both boys and he off he goes.

Andy’s hand creeps over to Brandon’s, and they subtly latch their pinkies as they sit in the back. They look at each other briefly to smile before looking out their respective windows. Andy notices you mindlessly reach your hand out to Harry’s. Harry takes your hand in his, kisses it, and rests it in his lap as he continues to drive. It makes Andy smile softly before his eyelids become too heavy, and he drifts off.

“Ugh, I do not wanna go to work tomorrow.” You groan Sunday night as you go through your emails. “So many of these questions could be answered if these fucking kids just used Google, like what the actual fuck?!” Andy and Harry both blink at you. “What?”

“Maybe…close your laptop.” Harry says as he gently closes it. “You can catch up tomorrow morning like how I plan to. Just relax, yeah?”

You nod and put your laptop on the coffee table.

“What movie are we watching?” You ask the boys?

“One of my favorites.” Andy says. “Home Alone.”

“A bit early for Christmas movies, no?”

“Y/N, once it’s November, it’s Christmas.” Andy says.

“You’re just going to skip over Thanksgiving?’

“Dad doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving, so it’s okay.”

“Fair enough.” You chuckle. “Throw it on.” Harry puts his arm around you as Andy queues it up.

“Before we do…can I talk to you both about something?” You and Harry share a glance with each other before looking at Andy. You both sit up straight to look at him. “Don’t freak out…but I’ve sort of been keeping something to myself…about me and Brandon?”

“Oh?” You say. “Like what?”

“Well…so…at Mum’s wedding, we almost kissed, but his dad called him so we got interrupted, and then nothing happened for a while…until Caroline’s Halloween party.” He swallows. “I mean, obviously that whole thing at school happened with Greg, and sometimes we’d sort of, like, flirt I guess in class, and so at the party we were all playing truth or dare, and we got dared to go into the closet together.”

“Oh my god.” Harry says and pinches the bridge of his nose.

“It’s not what you think! We just talked while we were in there. I didn’t wanna have my first kiss to be in a closet with a bunch of people waiting for us to come out afterwards…and I told Brandon that, and then I told him I wanted him to kiss me, and he said he wanted to kiss me too, so when we came out I asked Caroline if there was somewhere he and I could go where there wouldn’t be a ton of people around and she let us go outside.” He chews his bottom lip. “I…I asked Brandon how he felt about me and we both said that we really liked each other, and then we…well, we kissed for a little while.”

“Has…anything happened since?” Harry asks carefully.

“No, well, we hold hands a lot, but that’s been it. We didn’t wanna say anything until after your wedding.”

“Why?” You say. “You can tell us anything.”

“I was scared you wouldn’t let us stay in the same room, or something. I mean I know we were with Ritchie and Lizzie, but I didn’t know if you’d make one of us sleep on the floor.”

“Are you two planning to date? I mean…does he only like boys, or does he like boys and girls like you?” Harry asks.

“I don’t really know how he feels about people one way or the other. I think he’s still figuring it out, but he knows he like likes me, and I like like him…so yeah, I think we’re gonna date. Is that okay?”

“Of course it is.” Harry says quickly. “I mean, in the grand scheme of things I think you’re too young to be getting into a relationship, I felt the same way with Caroline, but I’m not gonna tell you no. However, some rules will have to be put into place, the same ones you had with her. Door open if you’re in your room and stuff like that. Also, if you sleep at his place, I’d prefer it if you didn’t sleep in his bed. I’m sure his parents will feel the same way.”

“Is Brandon going to tell his parents?” You ask Andy.

“Yeah, we both promised to tell tonight. He’s supposed to text me after he talks to them. His parents, luckily, are really cool about this stuff. His aunt has a wife, and she and Mr. Stewart are really close, so he doesn’t really have anything to worry about.”

Times like these you wished all kids had it as easy as Brandon and Andy.

“Alright.” Harry nods. “Then it’s all good. I’m, um, glad you two have figured things out, I know it was a little up and down for a bit.”

“Me too.” Andy smiles.

“Oh my goodness.” You sniffle and they both look at you. “You had, like, a fairytale first kiss! I’m so jealous.” You laugh and so do they.

“Why, what was yours like?” Andy asks.

“God, it was so awkward, I can’t even get into it. It wasn’t with someone special I can tell you that much. I’m really happy for you Andy.”

“Thanks.”

“You and I will need to have a little chat about…things.” Harry says to him. “But not right now, it can wait.”

“What kind of things?” Andy’s face scrunches.

“Just… things…” Harry clears his throat. “Is there anything else you wanna tell us?”

“No.” Andy shrugs and takes his phone out of his pocket to text Brandon that everything went well.

“Okay, let’s get the movie started then.” Harry grabs the remote and hits play. Andy gets up and hugs the both of you before sitting back down on the loveseat, curling up with his blanket. “Andy?”

“Yeah?”

“You plan to tell your mother right?”

“When I see her Friday I will on the car ride.”

“Good. I’m sure she’ll be just as happy for you.” Harry smiles and turns to look at the TV.

Brandon: all good over here too, my mom teared up she’s so lame lol

Andy: lol Y/N did too. Wanna meet at our lockers before homeroom tomorrow?

Brandon: definitely : )

Andy sighs happily and puts his phone down so he can pay attention to the movie. He was on cloud nine.

Being newlyweds was a lot of fun. As if Harry couldn’t already keep his hands off you, it was like he was jumping you every second he got. In the morning, in the shower, sometimes he’d sneak you home quick when you should be eating lunch, and if it was a weekend Andy was at Paige’s, god, he didn’t let you leave the bedroom. However, he was good about staying away from while you worked. He respected that you were in desperate need to get things done. The paper itself was just about complete, but you still needed to edit the entire thing, and work on your dissertation defense which was slated for April.

Andy sat down with Paige and Noah and told them what was going on with Brandon. He told Rachel as well. Everyone was happy for him. He said he didn’t want Lydia to know just yet. He knew she was old fashioned, and he was nervous she’d take it the wrong way. Paige completely understood, and she said she’d keep it between them.

The Ariana Grande concert was incredible, beyond incredible. You had to stay back with Caroline while Andy got to do the meet and greet, but his face said it all. He went on and on about how nice she was. Andy was so thankful you were able to take him. He made sure to wear his concert tee over a long-sleeve shirt the following Monday at school.

“Morning.” Brandon says as he meets Andy at his locker.

“Hey.” Andy smiles.

“So, how was it?”

“Amazing, like, I knew she’d sound good live, but holy shit, she was incredible.”

“What was meeting her like?”

“She was a lot shorter in person.” Andy chuckles. “But she was really nice, and she said she liked my nails, and my hair. It all happened really fast. They emailed the picture to Y/N, I’ll have to show you next time you come over.”

“I’d like that.” Brandon leans against the closed lockers as Andy gets the books he’ll need for the first half of the day. “We have that history test in a couple of days.”

“Mhm.” Andy nods, a smile creeping on his lips.

“Do you wanna come over and study together? We could order pizza and stuff.”

“Mm, so like a study date?” Andy smirks.

“If you wanna call it that, yeah.” Brandon nods.

“I’ll text my dad and see if I can come over after school.”

“Cool.”

“Cool.” Andy slots his fingers through Brandon’s so they can hold hands down the hall.

There were a few broken hearts at Thomas Hamilton Middle School. There were quite a few girls that had crushes on both Andy and Brandon. Obviously those close to the boys knew something was bound to happen between them, but anyone on the outside just thought they had a wholesome friendship.

Harry gives the okay for Andy to go over Brandon’s after school. Selfishly that meant he could fuck you when you got home from work before you needed to go up to the loft to work.

“Hi, Andy.” Mrs. Stewart says as she picks the boys up from school.

“Hello, Mrs. Stewart, how are you?”

“I’m good, honey, thank you. How are your dad and Y/N?”

“They’re good, they really like being married.”

She chuckles at that and gets the boys home. Brandon asks if they can have pizza later, and Mrs. Stewart says yes before they both go into his room.

“Uh, boys? Leave the door open, please.” She says shyly and they both nod.

“Her and my dad are still getting used to it.” Brandon explains as they both set up on his floor.

“My dad says my door has to stay open if you come over too. I had the same rules when I was with Caroline.” Andy shrugs.

“Same for when I was with Molly, now that I think about it. I don’t know what they think we’re gonna be doing in here, we’re just studying.”

“I don’t know either, parents are weird.”

After going over their notes, and quizzing each other a bit, the boys enjoy some pizza, and then decide to play some video games. It was the same as it ever was.

“Do you feel like watching TV until your parents come to get you?” Brandon asks him.

“Sure.” Andy shrugs.

Brandon switches the TV to Nickelodeon. Some reruns of Full House was on. Brandon had beanbag chairs in his room, so that was what he and Andy were sitting on. They start holding hands, and slouch into the chairs. They look at each other. Brandon’s eyes glace to the door to make sure his parents weren’t creeping around. He nods, and Andy leans in to press his lips to Brandon’s. They slouch a little further down, and Brandon cups Andy’s cheek. Andy tugs on the collar of Brandon’s shirt to pull him a little closer.

“Andy!” Mr. Stewart yells from the kitchen. The boys jump off each other. “Your dad’s here!”

“Jesus.” Andy catches his breath. “Scared the shit out of me.”

“Thought you’d be used to him yelling by now. He’s just as loud on the court.” Brandon smirks and stands up. He puts his hand out for Andy and helps him up. “I’m glad you came over today.”

“Me too, thanks for having me.” Andy cleans up his things and gets his backpack together. He leans in and kisses Brandon’s cheek before they walk out of his room. “Thanks again for dinner Mr. and Mrs. Stewart, goodnight.”

“You’re more than welcome, tell your folks we say hi.” Mr. Stewart says as Andy leaves.

He gets into the backseat of Harry’s car.

“Hey, Dad.”

“How’d the studying go?”

“Good, I’m feeling really prepared for Wednesday. Where’s Y/N?”

“Oh, she, uh, she’s a little tired so she’s in bed reading.”

“Why’s she so tired? It’s only 7:30.”

“She…” You convinced Harry to let you work uninterrupted until dinner time. He agreed, and then he fucked you on the kitchen counter while dinner was in the over. Then he fucked you again. Bent you over the bed. So, yeah, you were a little too tired to go out with him and pick Andy up. “She worked a lot today, so she just felt like staying in, that’s all.” He clears his throat.

“Can I ask you something sort of personal?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“What do you do…like…I don’t even know how to explain this, um, you know when your pants get tight?”

“When your pants get tight?”

“Yeah, like, in the front?” Andy twiddles his thumbs.

“In the…oh…oh! Yeah, is that, uh, starting to happen to you a little more often?”

“Yeah, usually if it happens in class or something, I just put my book over my lap, but I’m afraid it might happen when I’m hanging out with Brandon. It would be so embarrassing if we were kissing, you know?”

Harry takes a deep as he tries not to crash his car. These were the conversation he was dreading, but he supposed he was happy Andy felt comfortable enough to bring it up on his own.

“Yeah, I know what you mean. It’s pretty tough to control at your age, but something you can do to help yourself out is to think of something gross or sad.”

“Like what?”

“Um…I don’t know, what grosses you out?”

“When people sneeze into their hands.”

“Alright, so think of that.”

“It works?”

“For the most part. Your head gets distracted so other parts of you don’t get as excited.”

“Alright, I’ll give it a try I guess.”

“Do you two, uh, kiss a lot?”

“Well, not really since we feel like we’re being watched every two seconds. Can’t do it at school because of the teachers, and we have to keep our doors open so…” He rolls his eyes.

“That’s so you two stay respectful.”

“You know what’s interesting? Never, not once, have you and Y/N kept your bedroom door open when you both go in there.”

“We’re adults.”

“So that means you deserve privacy more than me?”

“Not necessarily, but there’s an emotional maturity that she and I have that you don’t yet. If your door’s open, you’re not gonna get any funny ideas.”

“Like what? It’s just kissing.”

Harry pulls into the garage and turns the car off. He sighs and turns to look at Andy.

“Kissing can lead to other things sometimes.”

“Like…making out?”

“Yeah.” Harry nods. “And then that leads to more serious things that you’re really not old enough for, but sometimes things happen when you’re not properly supervised, and I wanna keep you safe, as I’m sure Brandon’s parents wanna keep him safe too. Someday, when you’re older, I probably won’t make you keep your door wide open, maybe just open a crack, because you do deserve privacy, but right now you’re twelve, so.”

“Okay.” Andy sits there for a moment. “So, adults get to do whatever they want with each other whenever they want?”

“No, not at all. Self-control is a thing, asking for permission is a thing. You should always ask before you touch, and if someone says no you have to listen and respect that. You can’t take it personally.”

“Do you and Y/N ever say no to each other?”

“Sure! More often than you think, actually. I know she and I can be pretty touchy, but there are times either of us aren’t in the mood to cuddle or whatever. Communication is really important in any relationship. She and I do a pretty good job of communicating our feelings, I think.”

“Well, I would hope so, you both teach classes about it.” Andy laughs.

“You’d be surprised how dense people can be, even when they study something for years. Just make sure you and Brandon continue to communicate. You should be doing things you both feel comfortable with. There’s no need for you two to rush anything either.”

“Alright, thanks, Dad.”

“Any time.”

They both get out of the car and head inside. Andy says he’s going to take a quick shower and then get ready for bed. Harry goes into your shared room to see you still reading.

“Did he have a good time?”

“Yeah.” Harry says as he sits gets changed into his pj’s. “We had an interesting chat in the car.”

“About what?”

“Guy stuff.” You scoff at him. “What?”

“What does guy stuff entail?”

“He asked me what he should do if he accidentally gets a stiffy while kissing.” Your eyes widen and your jaw drops. “He didn’t word it like that, obviously.”

“Did that happen to him tonight?”

“No, but he’s scared that it could.”

“What did you tell him to do?”

“I told him to think of something that grosses him out.” He shrugs, and sits next to you on the bed with his own book.

“Gotta be so tough being a boy.” You pout sarcastically. “Having to hide your boners all the time.” Harry side eyes you. “It’s what you get for having everything else in your lives be so easy. You’re sitting there dealing with that while us girls are sitting there hoping we haven’t randomly started bleeding.”

“Yeah, I remember Gem coming home from school a few times to change her clothes.”

“It’s literally the worst! You can’t tell if it feels like discharge or if you’re just randomly a little wet, so you panic and run to the bathroom, and then you’re relieved when it’s nothing. Plus, you’re crazy irregular at that age, so even if you’re tracking it, it can still be random.”

“That really does suck.” You hum your response. “Am I good to you when you have your period? Is there anything you’d like me to do?”

“Oh, Harry, don’t be silly.”

“M’serious! Should we keep more dark chocolate in the house? Oh! I could get one of those hot water presses to put on your back, or-“

“Babe.” You put your hand on his shoulder. “You do plenty, thank you very much.” You lean over and kiss his cheek.

“I’m kinda glad you got it tonight so you won’t have it on our trip.”

“Me too. Would have been a pain in the ass for sure.” You bite your bottom lip. “I’m very excited for Miami.”

“Same here, the weather’s looking good. We’ll be able to go to the beach, and go to bars, all that fun stuff.”

“Mhm.” You smile and get back to your book.

You had a few things up your sleeve for your week away, but you wanted it to be a pleasant surprise for your husband, so you were doing your absolute best to keep it to yourself.

#harry styles #office nieghbors #harry styles imagine #harry styles fic #harry styles fanfic #harry styles series #harry styles x reader #harry styles x y/n #harry styles y/n #harry styles smut #harry styles fluff #singledad!Harry #professor!Harry

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chilling-seavey · 4 years

Note

What if Florence and Daniel got into a fight bc both of them are stressed out worrying about money and taking care of the kids?? How would my OTP resolve their fight??? 🤔

This was lowkey emotionally draining to write...wowey. 3.3k words later, here’s some proof that Florence and Daniel’s relationship isn’t as perfect and flawless as it seems... x

Monday, November 4th, 2024

Daniel let out a heavy breath as he got into his car after another shift, having spent most of it with his supervisor never being satisfied but that wasn’t new. He turned on the car and connected his phone to Bluetooth to call Florence as he always did before leaving. Strangely, he was sent to voicemail but a text came through instead.

Can you pick up diapers on your way home?

He sighed and replied with a quick ‘ok’ before pocketing his phone and putting the car in reverse. Closer to home, he parked outside the drugstore and headed inside, rushing down the aisles to find the diapers and grabbed the biggest package before bringing it to the cash.

“$37.45.” the cashier said after ringing up the item.

Daniel waved his card and was directed to the machine. He typed in his pin and waited a moment only to be met with card declined: insufficient funds. The glance from the cashier made Daniel feel even worse and he cleared his throat nervously, brushing a hand through his hair before shuffling through his wallet to only be met with a $10 bill and a few loose coins.

“Sorry… I, uh, left my other card at home.” Daniel said softly before leaving the store empty handed.

He sat behind the wheel of his car and tried to steady his breathing after being unable to afford diapers for his baby daughter. After a few moments of trying to calm down and trying not to cry, Daniel turned on the car and headed towards home.

The apartment smelt like burnt supper when he walked in and the noise was insane, the baby’s piecing screams topping it all. No one even heard him come in. Daniel set his guitar case and backpack on the floor in the doorway to the living room, taking in the messy kitchen and loud TV with Clementine sat admits a pile of toys trying to watch it, Penelope on the couch with her face in a pillow and her hands over her ears as she cried, and screaming Lucy in Florence’s arms as the dishevelled looking mother tried to put the dishes in the sink.

“Hey.” Daniel finally spoke, earning the glances of Florence and Clementine.

Clementine jumped up and ran for him as if he was her saviour from the chaos and he picked her up with a tired grunt.

“What’s going on here?” Daniel asked softly.

“Mommy burnt the house down!” Clementine said with a giggle as Daniel carried her towards the kitchen, his eyes lingering on Penelope on the couch for a moment.

“I just burnt the lasagna a bit.” Florence sighed, wiping her damp hand on her shirt that was already covered in tomato sauce and baby drool. Her hair was pulled back but still almost completely falling out of its tie and her makeup-less face looked like she hadn’t slept in days. “Did you pick up the diapers?”

Daniel cleared his throat nervously, setting Clementine back on the ground to let her run back off to the TV, “No, my-”

“Goddammit, Daniel, I ask you to do one thing.” Florence snapped as quietly as she could, tossing the pan in the sink a bit too hard, making Lucy scream louder in her arms.

“I tried, I just-”

“It’s not that hard to remember. Your daughter needs diapers. We have, like, four left but that’s fine; when we run out I’ll just tie one of your shirts around her like a freaking monkey at the zoo.”

“Florence, what is going on?” Daniel asked at her obvious stressed out state.

“I had to pick up Penelope only an hour after dropping her off this morning because the teacher called and said she had a meltdown and wouldn’t relax and everything is setting her off today. The damn oven beeped and she lost her mind. Of course Lucy’s crying only makes it worse and she won’t shut up because she’s teething.” Florence pushed her finger in the five-month-old’s mouth to get a look at her swollen gums and the baby just cried louder. “She also pooped all over everything today which is why we needed new diapers earlier than planned because her personal nuclear bomb ruined half the things on the change table.”

Daniel watched with wide eyes as she rushed over to grab the last two plates from the dining room table and tossed them in the sink too before turning on the tap and letting the water run over everything.

“And Clementine is demanding that she gets this new set for her doll that everyone has at school. She won’t even hear of it for Christmas because she needs it now.” Florence continued. “And she keeps testing me! Judging everything I do like she’s the adult. ‘Mommy, the lasagna’s burnt’. Like I didn’t know!”

“Okay.” Daniel sighed softly, reaching over the counter to take the crying baby from her and made his way to the freezer to take the cold teething ring out and held it out to Lucy. “I’ll take the girls and get them ready for bed and then we can talk.”

“I don’t want to talk. I wanted you to get the diapers like I fucking asked.” Florence grumbled.

“Flora.” Daniel snapped sharply to shut her up.

His glare certainly helped, and she clenched her jaw before looking back to the dishes without another word. Daniel bounced the baby lightly as she kept screaming through the teething ring he desperately tried to put in her mouth as he headed back to the living room.

“Clem, angel, can you tidy up your toys and go get your pyjamas on please?” Daniel asked softly as he turned off the TV.

The almost six-year-old nodded and got up from the rug, starting to gather her things, “There’s a new set you can buy for my dolls, Daddy. It’s a whole car they can ride in and the radio even plays music! It’s really nice and all the girls in my class has it. I wanna get it so we can play together at school.”

“We’ll think about it.” Daniel said, trying to hold back his nausea from the harsh inset of reality. He wanted nothing more than to buy that stupid toy car for his daughter but it was no where near realistic. He set Lucy in her playpen with the teething ring before moving to tend to his middle daughter who was still face down on the couch with her hands over her ears. When he set his hand on her back she startled. “Just me, bug.”

Penelope rolled over, giving him a good look of her swollen red eyes and matted dark hair and tear streaked cheeks, and she held her arms up to him through a hiccup.

“What’s wrong, my love?” Daniel pouted as he bent down and scooped her up, the four-year-old cuddling right into him through her sniffles as he took her to her room to get her cleaned up for bed. He sung softly as he wiped her face clean with a damp cloth and got her into her pyjamas, something that always helped calm her down, and he took his time to help both her and Clementine brush their teeth and comb their hair before tucking them into bed.

Daniel grabbed Lucy for story time, all three girls cuddled up with him as he read them a bedtime story. Lucy fell asleep quickly, probably tired out from all her crying – same with Penelope – and he kissed the oldest two good-night before taking the baby down the hall to bed too. He let his eyes linger on the remaining three diapers in the basket before letting out a small sigh and took one out so he could change her into her pyjamas. Lucy was tucked into her crib with the teething ring beside her just in case and he pushed a pacifier past her lips, watching her for a second as she sleepily sucked on it for a moment, the plastic bumping lightly against her tiny nose.

The apartment was eerily quiet as Daniel closed the nursey door, baby monitor in hand, and made his way back down the hallway for a conversation he really did not want to have.

Florence had the kitchen cleaned up by the time he was back, and they shared expressionless glances as she closed the last cupboard.

“I’m sorry you had a bad day,” Daniel said, placing the baby monitor on the counter between them, “but you don’t need to take it out on me.”

“Maybe if you did what I asked, we wouldn’t have this problem.”

“I tried.” Daniel protested. “It was a hard day and to top it off my card-”

Florence held up her hand to cut him off, “You go to work to play music for eight hours and then come home to a good meal that you don’t have to cook. You have it easy.”

“Easy?” Daniel gaped. “Are you kidding me? You know how much shit I do in my job and how many late nights and early mornings and weekends I put into this. It’s no where near easy.”

“Oh yeah.” Florence chuckled humourlessly. “When you don’t have to lift a finger around here, leaving me to practically raise your children.”

“You think I like never seeing my wife or kids?!” Daniel frowned. “It was bad when Lucy was first born, yeah, but we even had a whole discussion and I got much more time freed up. But I can’t just sit at home all day with you guys, this isn’t a fairy-tale.”

“I know but you act like I’m a psychotic bitch when I let it all get to me! I got shit on today! And walked over and hit and kicked and bitten and screamed at and I burnt my arm trying to get the charred dinner out of the oven. You just don’t understand what it’s like to stay home!”

“You have no idea what it’s like to work! To go out and earn a salary! You could have gone to school and gotten a degree and then figured out what you wanted to do with your life but instead you chose to cruise off everyone else. You didn’t even pay for your first apartment! Callum did! You have no freaking idea the value of money!”

“I was raising my daughter.” Florence seethed. “Fuck you for even saying that.”

“You could have made it work.”

“Sorry I chose to focus on her rather than shoving her in daycare to be pretty much raised by a stranger for the first four years of her life. I didn’t have the money for any of that. I barely had money to put food on the fucking table half the time and you know that.”

“So get over yourself! Stop being so goddamn selfish if you’re so finically-aware!”

“Fuck you!” Florence shouted, walking around the counter as if she were going to leave the room but she stopped in the middle of the living room and turned back to him. “I get that you have to work and I am thankful that you even have a job, but a little compassion isn’t a lot to ask of you.”

“Compassion? Are you serious?” Daniel scoffed loudly, taking a few quick strides across the room to stand in front of her, shouting back his rebuttal, “I nearly wait on you hand and foot and I drop everything whenever you need me and for years I always have! I have done nothing but work my ass off for you and our kids and you still have the audacity to say that it’s still not enough? I work too much and now I don’t work enough and then I don’t ‘understand what you’re going through’. Well, dammit, Florence, what the fuck do you want from me?”

“I want you to care about other things than your work!”

“I already cut my hours! We’re nearly fucking broke, Florence, I don’t know why you can’t understand that! We literally cannot afford for me to lose one more hour a week! Last months rent virtually drained us and we are surviving on a $10 bill and my fucking shoelace right now! I’m pushed to the fucking brim half the time trying to get all the shit done so I don’t have to work overtime so I can still come home to you and the girls and all I’m met with is attitude and snark and an ungrateful wife who scolds me like my goddamn mother when I walk in the door!”

Florence didn’t reply for a beat and the silence lingered heavy over the apartment. Her eyebrows furrowed first before her face scrunched up in anger and she jabbed a finger in Daniel’s face before yelling, “Fuck you! I am not staying home just to make you a supper and serve you a beer in a pretty pink dress and heels with a face full of makeup and a fake smile when you get in from work. This isn’t the 19-fucking-50s! I am allowed to have emotions, Daniel James, and right now you are tugging at every single last one of them! How dare you say these things to me!”

“You are freaking out for no reason!” Daniel shouted louder to top her. “You’re twisting everything I’m saying! Do you even hear yourself?”

“All I can hear is you being a selfish and ungrateful son of a bitch!” Florence screamed, throwing a couch cushion at him.

“Throwing things at me? Real mature, Florence. Real fucking mature! God, why don’t you understand?!” Daniel shut his eyes and threw his hands into his hair and tugged hard to try and rid his frustrations. “You’re so naïve sometimes, you drive me fucking crazy!”

They were already even listening to each other anymore, simply off on their own tangents trying to out-volume the other. Daniel and Florence didn’t fight often, priding themselves on their open communication, but everything eventually hits a bump and when they did, they really did.

“Just go play your pretty music, Daniel! Make some pretty music with your friends and put it online for everyone rave over and shut up. I’ll be here taking care of and being hit like a punching bag by your children.”

“You know what, I would appreciate it if you stopped fucking accusing me of being a shitty father because I have a job! I have been trying my best and if that’s not enough for you then I don’t know what to tell you!” Daniel put his hands up.

“What? You’re gonna leave?” Florence laughed humourlessly, throwing her finger in the direction of the door. “Fine! Go on! Wouldn’t be the first time! Leave when it gets hard Daniel!” She cut her screams, leaning in closer to him to whisper sharply, “Just like Matt did.”

Their fight seemed to echo through the apartment as silence fell again, her angry expression still glaring at him as his face melted into neutrality.

“Don’t say that.” Daniel said softly, trying to each for her.

“Don’t touch me.” Florence stepped back before walking quickly down the hallway.

“Flora, I’m not gonna-” Daniel started after her but the slamming of the bedroom door startled him to stop in place. He took a deep breath and ran his hands over his face to try and calm down, leaning back against the wall of the hallway. It was surprising that the baby wasn’t crying given the fact they just had a ten-minute-long screaming match.

Daniel composed himself enough to open the girls’ bedroom door and peak in, finding them both huddled up together in Clementine’s bed, frightened looks on their faces.

“Hey, my loves.” Daniel sighed, sitting himself on the side of the bed. “I’m sorry if we scared you. Mommy and I haven’t been talking as much as we should have been, and we got a little crazy. Do you forgive us?”

Clementine and Penelope nodded. Daniel kissed each of their heads and got them tucked in again in their own beds.

“No more yelling tonight?” Penelope asked.

“No more yelling.” Daniel promised, smiling sadly between his two eldest. He couldn’t help but let his gaze linger on Clementine a moment longer, remembering the night Matt walked out, leaving nineteen-year-old Florence and baby Clementine alone and a mess in their small apartment. She stared up at him with those same blue eyes he always remembered, and he gave her an extra kiss on the cheek, staying with them until they were drifting back to sleep, “Daddy’s not going anywhere.”

Daniel found himself back outside the master bedroom door with his hand on the knob and his forehead against the cool wood, taking slow breaths to keep himself calm to try the conversation again. He finally opened the door and slipped inside before closing it silently behind him. The light was on in the ensuite and he stopped in the doorway.

Florence glanced up at him from where she stood in front of the vanity brushing her hair. She silently turned back and continued what she was doing.

“Come here.” Daniel whispered, stepping closer and gently pulled her arms down from her hair to wrap around his shoulders and he tucked his own tightly around her waist, peppering a few kisses over her cheek and across her shoulder. “I love you. So fucking much. Even when you scream at me and swear at me and throw things at me.”

Florence sniffled a little, holding him tighter. “I love you too.”

“I’m not going anywhere, okay?” Daniel rubbed a hand over her back. “No matter what.”

“I’m sorry.” Florence mumbled, wrapping her fingers around the material of his shirt and buried her face in his neck.

“I’m sorry too.” Daniel sighed. “My card got declined today. It scared me.”

“What?” Florence leaned back with concern, holding her hands on his biceps to keep him close as she stared at his flushed face.

“$37 for diapers and my card was declined. I felt like a fucking idiot, like an absolute joke of a father…can’t even buy the necessities for my kid.” Daniel sighed, turning to lean back against the counter and hung his head. “I don’t know what we’re gonna do, Flora. I’m scared.”

“I know.” Florence mumbled, petting her hand through his hair. “Maybe we should talk to someone? Get a budget figured out until we get back on our feet. Worst case scenario, we ask your parents for a bit of a loan. We’re not going to lose anything from this.”

Daniel nodded, biting his lip as he stared at the floor, fingers holding tightly onto the edge of the counter behind him.

“I’m sorry.” his voice broke and he struggled to hold back a small sob, quickly hiding his face in his hands.

“Oh, sweetheart, it’s okay,” Florence frowned, wrapping her arms around him to let him cry against her shoulder, “I know how hard you work. You’re such a good dad and an amazing husband. I know you’re trying your best and I also know it’s slowly starting to destroy you.”

Daniel whimpered as he nodded, clinging onto her tighter through his tears as he muffled a sob into her neck.

“I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you.” Florence sighed, running her hand up and down his back. “I took my own shit out on you. I needed any excuse to yell, I guess.”

“Better me than at the girls.” Daniel chuckled lightly, pulling back from their hug a little to wipe his eyes with the back of his hand.

“I love you.” Florence said strongly, taking his face in her hands. “$0 in your pocket or millions. Doesn’t matter. Don’t you forget it, okay?”

Daniel nodded and leaned in to kiss her once, lingering there a moment longer before pulling back.

“Now no more tears.” Florence said, taking a deep breath herself as she started to feel herself start to cry. “There have been to many tears in this house today.”

#daniel seavey #why dont we #daniel seavey imagines #why dont we imagines #why dont we music #anything but mine #imagines

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btsqualityy · 6 years

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BTS Baby Series Q & A #2

Yoongi x Reader

You and Yoongi are in his studio, sitting on the small couch that’s aganist one side of the wall. Kinsley is in Yoongi’s lap, head laid against his chest.

How long have you two been together?

“Uh, six years?” You answered, looking over at Yoongi for confirmation.

“Yep, almost seven,” he nodded. “Dated for one, been married for five and a half.”

Pregnancy sex?

“Oh, all the damn time,” you disclosed.

“There’s something about those pregnancy hormones,” Yoongi chimed in.

“Oh, after my due date came and went, we were having sex at least twice a day to try and induce my labor,” you added.

What was your weirdest pregnancy craving?

“It was canned corn,” you grimaced. “It was weird because I hated corn before I got pregnant and as soon as I had Kinsley, I went right back to hating it.”

Describe Kinsley, looks and personality wise. Does Kinsley have Yoongi’s gummy smile?

“She looks more like Y/N-ah, but with my personality,” Yoongi smiled, looking down at Kinsley, who was playing with the chain around his neck.

“She does have Yoongs’s gummy smile, which is my favorite physical feature of hers,” you added. “She’s very sweet and laid back, definitely the strong and silent type. I often wonder where she is in the house a lot of times, because she’s so quiet, and I’ll find her watching tv, playing with her toys, or hanging out with Yoongs.”

Do you two think Kinsley will turn out like Yoongi, and be in the music business?

“I mean, if that’s what she wants to do, I’ll support her,” Yoongi shrugged. “She has shown a love for music, though so we’ll see.”

“I’d prefer it if she didn’t, if I’m honest,” you admit. “Because she has Yoongi’s personality, I feel like she would struggle with it sometimes, the same way that he does and the mother in me doesn’t want her going through that.”

“Things change though Y/N-ah,” Yoongi pointed out. “And who knows? She may be stronger than me.”

“People talking shit for no reason isn’t gonna change,” you murmured.

What was it like to going back to work after the baby was born?

“Honestly, it was a little reliving,” you revealed. “Though I love being home with Kinsley and taking care of her, it was nice to go back to work and talk about adult things. You know, no talks about diapers and how many ounces of formula she’s had today or if she’s pooping enough,” you laughed, glancing over at Yoongi.

“Yeah, I agree but it was a little different for me. I went back to work before Y/N did so I wasn’t so worried because I knew Y/N was there. However, after she went back to work as well, I was a little more anxious because Kinsley had neither of us around 24/7 anymore.”

“But there’s no need for us to worry because the women who run the daycare center that she goes to love her just as much as do,” you assured.

How do you manage when he’s on tour?

“Uh, it’s not that bad but Kinsley is noticeably quieter when he’s gone, if that’s even possible for her,” you mutter. “We usually try to facetime at least once a day so that she’s able to see his face.”

Is there something that Kinsley keeps close to her when Yoongi is gone, either at work or on tour?

“She sits at the piano we have in our living room a lot when he’s gone,” you smiled sadly. “She loves playing piano with him and she gets a little sad when he isn’t around to play with her.”

Has Kinsley been to the BigHit building? If so, how do you keep her occupied?

“She has, a bunch of times,” Yoongi nodded. “She loves coming to work with me because she loves music. Because of that, I really don’t have to keep her ‘occupied’ because the music does it for me.”

Do you guys post lots of photos of Kinsley, or do you prefer to maintain some privacy when it comes to her?

“We kind of take the same policy that Yoongi takes for himself,” you shrug. “The occasional photo when she does reaches a big milestone, her birthday, things like that.”

“I really just prefer to keep her safe from people who may...make negative comments,” Yoongi adds. “I can control myself to a certain extent but I don’t know what I might say if anyone ever came for Kinsley.”

How do you deal with tantrums?

“She doesn’t really have tantrums,” you replied. “Like I said, she’s really laid back and chill.”

Has Kinsley inspired any songs yet Yoongi?

“Too damn many,” Yoongi giggled, making you smile as well. “Whenever I decide to make another mix tape, you just may hear one of them.”

Have you ever had a moment when you’ve looked at Y/N and Kinsley and been amazed? Or just felt so in love?

“Kinsley has been in this phase lately of wanting to do everything that Y/N does,” Yoongi chuckled at the memory. “One night, after I gave Kinsley a bath, I carried her into our bedroom. Y/N was sitting on the bed, painting her nails and I asked her to keep an eye on Kinsley while I went to get her pajamas.”

“While I was getting them, I heard Kinsley babbling really loudly but that’s just something she does these days so I didn’t think much of it. When I walked back into our bedroom, Y/N had Kinsley in her lap and she was painting her little fingernails,” Yoongi gushed. “It was just....one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. Two of the most important people in my life, my girls, together.”

What’s something that you love most about being a parent? Or something that you wish you knew before becoming a parent?

“People always talk about the negative changes that come with having kids but no one really talks about all of the amazing changes that happen,” Yoongi noted. “I think I speak for the both of us when I say that Kinsley has changed us both for the better.”

“Absolutely,” you concurred. “I couldn’t imagine my life, our life,” you corrected yourself. “without her. She was definitely the missing piece of our family that we didn’t even know that we needed.”

Do you want more kids?

“If they’re like Kinsley, hell yeah,” Yoongi laughed. “But seriously, yes.”

“But we feel the same way about it that we felt before getting pregnant with Kinsley: whenever it happens, it happens,” you shrugged. “We’re not rushing anything.”

Hopes for the future?

“We want to buy a bigger house eventually and have that be our forever home,” you revealed. You looked over at Yoongi, who was looking down at Kinsley in his lap.

“Besides that, I just want us, as a family, to continue being happy,” Yoongi responded. “Whatever that may mean, as long as we’re together and happy, I’ll be happy.”

#bts #bts reactions #bts scenarios #bts imagines #bts suga #bts yoongi #bts baby series q&a #bts jin #bts jungkook #bts jimin #bts rm #bts rap monster #bts namjoon #bts v #bts taehyung #bts jhope #bts hoseok

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mtvswatches · 5 years

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Jane the Virgin 2x11 Chapter Thirty-Three

Spoilers disclaimer (please read before sending messages or writing comments.)

Click here for previous recaps!

Stray thoughts

1) So, the opening flashback has Jane giving Xiomara grief over not having a regular job and not giving up her dream in spite of not being able to offer her daughter proper living conditions. I guess this will be somehow connected with Jane’s motherhood and her dream of becoming a writer? Maybe?

2) As per usual, Rogelio continues to go overboard when trying to help either Xiomara or Jane. In this case, he brought a whole team of stylist, hairdresser, and photographer to get Xiomara’s picture taken. He couldn’t remember the names of each of them, but for some reason, I can’t hold any of this against him. I think it’s because he… tries, you know? He doesn’t do any of this on purpose. And now he’s jumping at the opportunity to babysit Mateo, which, let’s be real, is a show I’d watch the hell out. Jane reluctantly accepts.

3) The duplicitous bitch continues to milk the Solanos tragedies for views. Shocker.

4) Jane is lusting over her professor, and I couldn’t be less invested or more bored.

5) The moron seems to be dating Michael’s partner, whose name I just learned is Susanna. Again, I couldn’t care less.

6) Elena is Rose’s stepmother? So that makes Rose… Rafael’s stepsister? And the moron’s, too? That’s… twisted…

7) Now Jane has blurted her professor’s name in the middle of her smut reading, and I guess she’s considering dating him? And I’m like, why? She’s been going back and forth between Rafael and Michael since episode 1, and it hasn’t worked out with either, so maybe… be single? There’s nothing wrong with that.

8) Xiomara found Rogelio’s mother’s ring in his bedroom and Jane blurted out that Rogelio was going to propose. And while I’m glad Xiomara didn’t freak out and seems to be absolutely happy with the idea of marrying Rogelio, I can’t help but feel she and Jane are making a lot of assumptions here. Yes, he kept the ring, but there haven’t been any indications that he was about to propose in the near future. I don’t know. I think he was going to wait it out a bit, which I completely understand.

9) Okay, Jane and Xiomara came clean immediately. But instead of proposing, he gave it to Jane? Proves my point, though.

10) Weird flex, but okay…

PETRA: You really think you can charm a woman about to get married? RAFAEL: It worked with you.

I liked that the flashback showed that they were both playing each other. It’s a wonder that relationship didn’t last…

11) Yep.

12) The professor is not taking any hints and instead, he wants to get a free tour around Rogelio’s set. Okay, I’m still zero invested in this storyline.

13) “The Trophy Wife”!

14) Oh. This sucks. Now that Xiomara has an actual shot to make her dreams of becoming a singer true, she gets shot down because she’s been prioritizing her family.

15) OMG Rogelio’s tweets as he’s babysitting…

Ten minutes looking for the perfect shoes to compliment my eyes. 👞 😤 🌈

On the phone with my agent, fielding multiple offers. #WhatWillRoDoNext. 🙈

Exfoliating. #Loofa

Trying on all my fedoras. #HidelnAHat.

I’m 100% convinced he’s tweeting all of this because he can’t disappoint his fans or something like that, but he’s definitely taking great care of his grandson. I’d bet my life on it.

16) See?

He was taking care of Mateo, and he’s even sharing with his grandson that he is, in fact, going to propose to his grandma. But now I’m afraid Mateo is going to swallow the diamond because Jane just called in the middle of him showing it to the baby…

17) Yep. I saw that coming. Jane is going off at him, and it seems unfair. It’s so common for babies to swallow stuff, they just poop it back out, it’s no big deal. And I do feel it’s kind of Jane’s fault? Rogelio wouldn’t have been distracted if she hadn’t called because she was so paranoid that he would mess up. It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Besides, Rogelio acted appropriately. He realized immediately what had happened and took his grandson to the doctor. But whose fault was it when you allowed your child to be in the middle of a violent fight between his dad and your ex and he got hurt?

18) At least she apologized the next day, so there’s that.

19) Oh, Petra, the trophy wife thing really did get to her. And honestly, I really like who Rafael and Petra used to be? They truly were a healthy couple.

20) Okay…

Yeah, I think her telenovela life and her romance writing have somehow given her the idea that every man she meets will instantly be into her. I really hope it’s not just her making the fool of herself and then it will turn out that he was really into her, though. Can a male character in this show not be in love with her for once? She’s not all that great.

21) So, Petra came up with a smart solution to secure the wedding and she had to give up a little bit of her pride in order to do so, but kudos for her.

22) I really liked this bit and it reminded of a point I’ve been meaning to make but always forget to…

I think it’s very cool how Jane is a straight-up romance/erotica writer and no one in the show has ever made fun of her because of it? Everyone encourages her and takes her seriously – her family and her mentors, too. And it’s a wonderful message to send because usually romance writers are looked down on and the genre is seen as a joke, so it’s refreshing that here it is presented as a valid, respectable career choice.

23) Oh, Xiomara feels Rogelio is not being supportive, but in reality, he’s just insisting she skips the gig because he was planning to propose…

24) But he skipped the party and went to her gig to show her how much he supports her. Have I told you that he’s my favorite?

25) The moron must have a golden pussy, how do all the girls fall for her? SHE’S A MORON!

26) Okay…

I mean, I can get behind this ship, sort of. Mostly because of Petra. But… wasn’t he like super in love with Jane two days ago?

27) Bless her. She asked him if he was over Jane. Like GTFO dude, how dare you trying to use Petra to make yourself feel better? When she’s pregnant with your child?

28) And this is why Rogelio is my fave…

JANE: And look, Dad, I overreacted, too, and I'm so sorry I yelled at you. ROGELIO: That's not why I was upset. It's just… what if it's true? What if I'm not good with kids? I mean, I want them with your mother. JANE: Dad… ROGELIO: What if I'm terrible at it? I mean, you turned out perfect without me. JANE: Trust me, I wish I had you. And you'll be great, you know? You'll learn as you go. You can't just jump in and expect to know everything. I promise. You'll get there.

And then he goes and kisses the hell out of Xiomara to show her how proud he is of her. How can you not love Rogelio?

29) This is, without a doubt, one of the sweetest proposals I’ve ever seen. And you should trust my judgment since I don’t believe in marriage…

My buddy, Ryan Gosling, said, “The only quality I look for in a woman is that she's Eva Mendes. There's nothing else I'm looking for" At this point I was going to wave to Eva, and then look at you, and tell you that you are what I've been looking for. And I think back to when we first met, when we were 16, and I think that my whole journey up to now has been about finding my way back to you. I haven't had time to have it set. It's a long story. Xiomara Gloriana Villanueva, I want to spend my life with you, and raise kids with you so will you marry me?

And that’s why it’s almost heartbreaking when Xiomara semi-rejects his proposal when she realizes she doesn’t want to have any more kids because she wants to spend the rest of her life doing things for herself. And I say “almost” because this is also a valid life choice, and Rogelio’s also is, and I applaud both of them for being so upfront about what they want.

This show tends to present Jane as the mature, level-headed person who had taken on the role of mother of her mom since a young age but to be quite frank, characterization has always shown otherwise. Jane might have been mature for her age when she was younger, but I feel she’s completely clueless. As she should be. She’s so young!

We were always told, from Jane’s perspective, that Xiomara and Rogelio were immature, sort of suffering from Peter Pan syndrome, never wanting to grow up and be mature, responsible adults. But what I’ve seen so far has proven the contrary? They might be silly and extravagant and prone to tantrums, but they are mature.

They’re probably the only reason I’m still watching this show?

30) I mean, when is Jane going to have sex, for fuck’s sake?

31) Ugh, no, she told her advisor that she needed to get someone else because what had happened was getting in the way of her writing and now he’s asking her out, and I’m here, like, NO. I don’t want this garbage.

32) So Rose’s back.. and she didn’t get a face change…

33) I gotta be honest, so far, Jane’s love life has been the least interesting aspect of this show for me. It’s been a season and a half, and I keep wondering when will it get interesting for me, you know? This is a rom-com, after all, but the rom part has been sorely missing for me, at least. I love Xiomara and Rogelio, mostly because I love Rogelio, but they don’t give me the butterflies I always get with my ships, so… *shrugs*

34) Hope you enjoyed my recap, and, as usual, if you’ve got this far, thank you for reading! If you enjoy my recaps and my blog, please consider supporting it on ko-fi.Thanks!

#Jane the Virgin #Gina Rodriguez #Jane Villanueva #Rogelio De La Vega #Petra Solano #Rafael Solano #Xiomara Villanueva #JTV recap #JTV 2x11 #mine

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miyoron · 6 years

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Miyo’s Anime of Note 2018 Rainbow Edition

2018 was some kind of a year wasn't it? It was long and a pain in the ass but there was some anime out this year I really enjoyed. I'm here to write down a bunch of shows I enjoyed in no particular order. I might put them in the order I watched them in, or I might not. I guess we'll see huh?

Also, I think there's WAY more this year than usual which means I either like things easily, there were a lot of good shows, all of the above or some other reason. Hope I don't get too long winded on you! Also I'm using whatever names I feel like for naming things off, translated, still Japanese...whaaatever~

Pop Team Epic

Pop Team Epic was everything I wanted it to be and more. I've been a fan of Bkub's work since the early days so to see these two shitty girls finally show up on the anime screen week to week was a pleasure and a delight. The decision to make two separate half episodes with different voice actors for Popuko and Pipimi was a wonderful decision that let us experience things like Aoi Yuki as Popuko and Norio Wakamoto as Pipimi. It also shot the wonderful team of ACBU into the spotlight. Their Bobunemimimmi segments were so disgustingly perfect and fit the tone of the show perfectly. It also gave us one of the best moments in anime this year:

Needless to say, I really hope they are doing a season 2 like it's been rumored. I'm on board for SO much more.

Yuru Camp

This was a show I actually watched twice this year and have subsequently watched multiple episodes just on my own. It is one of my favorite things this year and maybe it's just because of how unassuming it is. There's honestly nothing deep to the show. Cute girls dress in warm winter clothing and go camping. However, the way everything is paced with nice warm colors and chill ass music nestles its way into your heart and fills you with a nice cozy feeling. It's like a blanket, the anime. Just wrap yourself up in the wonderful friend times and maybe you'll learn a thing or two about camping and friendship along the way.

Mitsuboshi Colors

Are adults letting you down? Sure, they're not up to the challenge pretty much all the time. But that's why you should just stay out of the way and let Colors come in to save the day! This trio of girls are ready to save their town and to let shitty cops know what's up. Seriously, it's a cute show with a cute group of friends getting into big adventures, even if those adventures are often due to their own misconceptions. It's a good show with kids who act like kids and are always either talking about poop or are sucking at video games. It's a nice show and has some good performances, as well as the best sunglasses of 2018 in my book.

Karakai no Jouzu Takagi-san

A series about a boy and a girl who are totally crushing on each other, even if one likes to keep it deeply hidden and the other would never admit it really. Oh, also she owns him every chance she can get with teasing. It's like a reverse Tonari no Seki-kun if Seki was not in his own world and was actively trying to make Rumi blush or stumble over herself. This premise may sound mean but it's honestly all in good fun and there's something really cute about the pair's friendship with each other. The way the manga apparently goes makes me really want to check it out sometime too.

Oh also there's a great side trio of friends with and I love how dumb of a baby one of them is.

Hinamatsuri

What happens when a yakuza becomes the dad of a psychic girl who crashed in an egg in his apartment and broke all his vases? This series! Hinamatsuri was a show that got me really hard this year at a couple points where I know I had to either fight back tears or take a few minutes to sit their with a quivering lip and watery eyes. It's an incredibly funny show from the premise alone but when you have the put upon character of Nitta having to take care of the force of nature that is Hina it just escalates it. On top of that though, there's a good heart to it as well. Anzu is a wonderful character and I love her story and her many grandpas. Also Hitomi's story actively hit me hard to where I felt bad for a fictional child to please just be a child for a little while. It was powerful stuff and I loved it.

Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online

I hate Sword Art Online. I've only watched the first series with the original and faerie times, but I hated it so much. That being said, hearing that the new one was actually good made me seek it out and...thank God it is. Llenn/Karen is just a much more compelling character than the power fantasy that is Kirito. The story of a woman who does not like herself in the real world, but finds a new home and life in virtual reality is a nice little story. On top of that, ditching the stupid "if you die in the game, you die in real life" really helped the show out in my eyes. This show is not about stop some huge over arcing villainous plot to fuck over the whole world or whatever. GGO is about trying to save someone from hurting themselves and honestly, that's a lot more relatable. A recap episode in this day in age IS silly though for what it's worth.

Let's take a short break shall we? For a little section I'm gonna call, Fuck, You Let me Down Man.

Amanchu Advance

I put Amanchu on my list two years ago of Anime of Note because I really enjoyed the tale of friendship it told. Amanchu Advance continues that story and shows Teko slowly becoming more of her own person thanks to that friendship. She wants to become a stronger person, a better version of herself and it's through her friends she's able to do this. The series is still very good at showing these moments but the last few episodes of the show are bogged down in a weird supernatural plot with a ghost boy that I wish they would have just tossed down the shrine steps. The twist at the end with it was not worth sidetracking the story for three episodes in a 12 episode story and soured my experience as a whole. I've been told the author likes doing these sorts of things and I didn't mind the lucid dreaming episodes, but this bit just did not land for me and it's a big bummer.

Here's Another Side Category Called Old Anime I Watched And Enjoyed. Yes, that's the full title.

G Gundam

I don't know why it took me so long to watch this series, but I am glad I did. Maybe I just needed friends to be there to watch it with, who knows. Either way, I'm thankful I got to join Domon on his journey searching for the man in the photograph and to experience the Undefeated of the East in his most powerful form. G Gundam is a goofy setting with a bunch of weird but fun characters and their even weirder mobile suits. I don't know how much I can really say on it since I'm sure most people have probably checked it out years ago on Toonami. It's still fun and good and it has a Gundam who is a boxer and a football man at the same time. Gundam Fight, Readdddddy....GO!

Back to my normal list, though I have grouped the next couple shows in a block I am calling the "I wish these had a full 24 episodes even though I understand why they didn't but please make more I'd love it, ok thanks" block.

A Place Further Than The Universe

This show had...a lot of moments where I was sitting there and just processing all that was going on. A group of girls become friends and join a civilian expedition to Antarctica, one of whom is going there to basically go where her mother had spoken of years ago and never came back. It's a show that I felt compelled to keep watching even though I knew I should have stopped for the night, telling myself "I can watch one more episode..." . It just gripped me and sank its penguin fangs into me. Shut up, I know what I said. Seriously though, the cast of secondary characters are just as fun as the main ones and I enjoyed every minute of it. It definitely destroyed me in one of the more heavy moments near the end though so keep a box of tissues handy ok?

Wotakoi

Love is hard for otaku. It's in the show's translated title and everything. Let me tell you, I'm very happy seeing so many anime featuring adults in the work place these days. Wotakoi is a show I felt a very personal connection to, especially its humor levels. Not going to lie, I am a Kabakura through and through when it comes to my anime watching and purchasing habits. It's a cute love story with a couple of characters getting together out of convenience before realizing maybe there's something more than that to it. The interactions are great and it's very relatable if you've ever had a friends' game night or anime watching session. It's a show that just feels like it knows just how to speak to you if you've been a fan of anime for a long time.

Hisone to Masotan

Hey, you into dragon vore? Then have I got the show for you buddy. All joking aside, Hisomaso is a show with one of the more fun protagonists I've run into in a while. Hisone's blunt and to the point to the detriment of anything that comes out of her mouth most of the time, but there's something about her honesty that's very endearing. The show's pilots are a great cast and their dragon friends are just as charismatic even if they spend a lot of the time cosplaying as aircraft. This show has a nice story about trying to find just where you fit in within the world and sometimes that's hard. Sometimes the best thing to do is dive into the gullet of a big scaly F-15 and ride the free skies to your heart's content. I love you Masotan.

Shoujo Kageki Revue Starlight

This show I think more than any others in this block I wanted more of, even though I know why I don't have more of it. From episode one, I got Utena vibes with the music, the auditions, Hell, even the prefight wardrobe transformations. Stage girls do battle with all of their shine to prove who is truly the top star. That's the basic premise and the cast of characters really helps to flesh it out with their own motivations of what makes them keep going to be the very best they can be. I loved all of the imagery in the auditions and the music and the big doofy giraffe just watching from the stands and enjoying the whole thing. Revue Starlight is a stylish show with some amazing animation and choreography that puts most of the things I watched this year to shame and I need more things like it.

STOP IT'S PRECURE TIME

Go Princess Precure

This is me and Cheapsteak's "old Precure" of the year and it's wonderful. It's a story about dreams and fighting for them. The Princess Precures are maybe not the most relatable of characters as they attend a very prim and proper high class school. One is a business conglomerate's daughter, one's a super model, one's a Princess from another plane entirely. But there is something wonderful how they all work together as friends and work to save everyone's dreams, I don't know there's something very good and wonderful about that. I love that even when it comes to one of the villains, a character in the show goes out of her way to help him with his self esteem (and make up). I don't know, I've got a few episodes left but I just love it. Haruka is my favorite Pink Precure I've met so far and she is gonna be tough to beat.

Hugtto Precure

Very similar to Go Princess is Hugtto, with its message of hope for the future because you can't just stay in the present. There's a great cast of characters and they all work so hard to cheer each others' dreams on, all while taking care of a baby and a hamster from the future. I think this show also has the best mid-seasons Cures I've met so far and just...everything with how supportive and good everyone is to each other has me smiling the whole time. Also in the episodes leading up to the anniversary movie this year, we got some of the best big moments I've seen in a show in a while. A lot of the episodes have some amazing animation work as well and just...I like this show a lot especially what it did to show Hana's pre-show back story as well. Pink Cures are really good huh?

Back to business!

Asobi Asobase

Along with PTE, this was one of the weirder comedies that I watched this year. It's often crass or just outright weird, but that's one of its strong points I think. The show's opening is a giant fakeout from what seems like your ordinary "cute girls doing club things" chill show because you're soon hit with some of the weirdest faces and shrieks that I've run into in a while. The characters are a troublesome group of weirdoes who try to do activities like a normal club but fail horribly at it, often due to one or more of them sabotaging it with their own dumbness. It really says something that the sweetest and most relatable characters are the witch girls who practice curses all day. They're really the best though but so are all of the fucking weirdoes in this show. Also there's ass lasers so if you're into that...

Cells at Work

Learn about the human body while dangerous viruses and germs get fucking iced like they walked into the wrong anime. Follow a red blood cell make her way through the blood stream and lose her way every single time. Thrill at the amazingly adorable platelet crew as they get to work each day. Cells at Work is a weird science shounen show with some great character designs and interactions. The way the cells just are working hard and doing their jobs as best they can is great and you want to root for them so hard. Those Killer T and White blood cells and Macrophages just love killing SO much. It's a fun show that teaches you about biology and anatomy in a somewhat rudimentary but enjoyable manner.

Plus I will stress again, the platelet design is beyond cute.

Skullface Book Seller Honda-san

Honda-san is a cute little series you could watch in an afternoon due to its episode count and length, but it's one I could see myself watching multiple times easily. It's a fun window into the window of book store retail and the Japanese publishing industry. The characters have fun designs, mostly normal bodies with some kind of weird mask/helmet on but they're very relatable. Honda-san does his best to help out the customers, even when their requests tear at his very sanity some times. But that's retail huh? It's fun though, go check out this good skeleton!

Bloom Into You

I think this was the show that intrigued me the most this year because I was just hooked on the relationship between Yuu and Touko and seeing how it advanced. Yuu is a girl who wants to be able to fall in love like everyone else her age seems to be able to and when she finally meets a girl who she thinks feels similarly...that darn senpai falls in love with her. It's a very relatable tale even if you haven't been in a lot of relationships. Seeing Yuu realize her own feelings slowly grow towards Touko and the issues that come up because of was something that had me wanting to find out more each week. It also was the show that took me the longest to come to my final thoughts on too due to its ending but ultimately, I'm glad I watched it.

Zombieland Saga

Honestly, I'm glad to start and end this list with certifiable bangers. The concept of zombies becoming idols sounds like it could just go so wrong but it doesn't. It's so good and fun and goofy. The characters are all really fun and goofy but still have depth to them, even zombie brained legend Yamada Tae. I love this show and every character in it and if there were Franchouchou concerts done like a Hatsune Miku tour, I'd go so hard. Zombieland Saga is a good and powerful show and it even has a good ending with a sequel hook. Watch these girls and cheer them on, that is an order.

I normally do a "Shows I'll Watch Next Year" section but I realize I never end up doing it so I'm just going to add one of my current ones I know I'll continue watching.

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Golden Wind

Come on, you knew this was going to be on here right? I'm curious where this gangster plot line is going and can't wait to continue next year.

So that's my list, I hope you enjoyed it. For a special treat to go into 2019, I leave you with the best moment in anime 2018. Peace!

Ah well I got copyright striked so here’s a mirror

https://streamable.com/87z73

#MiyosAOTY2018

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purplesurveys · 6 years

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354

[Hiiiii. Trigger Warning: Suicide in a few questions]

What do you want to name your first child? Olivia if it’s a girl, Luis if it’s a boy. Either way Gab and I were planning on naming kid/s after her parents.

Would you ever name a child after yourself? No, coming up with nothing other than Robyn seems incredibly lazy.

Is there a guy or girl you wish things had worked out with? No.

What makes you nauseous? Certain car smells and my uncle’s driving.

What are your favorite spicy foods? Anything Indian, Korean, or Thai. I like spicy when it’s a part of the food. But when something is just peppered in artificial spicy powder, the spiciness doesn’t feel as... ~meaningful, if that makes any sense. When it’s spicy only for the sake of being spicy, I don’t like it.

Which do you like better: being an adult or being a kid? I like being an adult because my experience as a kid was terrible and certainly not something I want to go back to.

Were you excited to be a teenager on your thirteenth birthday? Yeah I was. I was even ecstatic that my mom made an entire Facebook album of me for my thirteenth birthday with photos from when I was a baby up until I was 12, since I was so excited to see my own evolution growing up lmao. Naivety and conceitedness at its finest.

Did you feel insecure in high school? Not really, I mostly didn’t give a shit in high school lol.

Do you think there are different types of depression? I don’t just think them, there are different kinds.

Would you ever be friends with someone who was suicidal? I’m the suicidal friend hahaha. I would but I’m gonna have to tread the friendship carefully since I get triggered fairly quickly. Who was the biggest bully in high school? There wasn’t a bully in high school. People got over that by like 4th grade, at least in the school I grew up in. High school’s just more of a race for popularity at that point.

What was your favorite class in high school? History.

Would you rather have a daughter or a son? Daughter.

Are you woman, man, boy, or girl? Girl/woman(???)

Have you ever written to an advice columnist? Nah. I haven’t seen those since like 2005.

What color is your Christmas tree? The tree is green and it has gold and red accents to it.

Do you celebrate Christmas? My family does but I prefer to lock myself up in my room. My seasonal depression hits during Christmas and it’s become something I absolutely dread more and more each year.

Do you celebrate Halloween? I definitely take it way more seriously than Christmas.

Do you believe all Christians are evil and hypocritical, or only some? Most of them are. Thank god I dodged that bullet earlier on.

Do you think it’s bullying to tell someone they’re naive? No, it’s just telling them how it is.

Did you get bullied more as a child, a teenager, or an adult? Child. People teased me mercilessly for my name which to them sounded really boyish. I ended up hating my name for a time, and myself forever.

Have you ever broken out in hives? No...I’m not sure what this means.

Have you ever had a doctor not believe what you told him? Yeah the doctors in my university are fucking losers. I went there to get my physical exam before I was able to enroll, they were super mean, and I haven’t gone back since.

If you’re female, would you feel uncomfortable having a male gynecologist? Uh not sure about the culture of that place but I don’t think I’d feel awkward haha. They’re there for the job.

Do you like Lisa Frank? As a kid.

What gives you nightmares? Getting shots, talking on the phone, depression.

Do you dream in black and white or color? I don’t think I’ve ever dreamed in black and white.

Have you ever been in a car accident? Only really mild ones.

Were you ever hospitalized as a child? Just once. I was a month old and if I remember correctly, I had a severe case of diarrhea/lactose intolerance. I would poop out instantly the milk I would drink, and my stomach got so deflated that if you pressed on it, it wouldn’t go back to its normal shape.

Do you believe that drug addicts and alcoholics should count as people? ????????? Yes ?????????

Will you vote in the next presidential election? HAHAHAHAHA you bet your ass I would. I never picked this garbage murderer of a president my country has now. What’s your favorite zoo animal? I hate zoos.

Are you allergic to your favorite animal? Nope.

What is the best thing to eat with soup? I don’t really...eat anything with soup. Soup is always just a side dish whenever I go out for Jap or Chinese.

Do you eat ice cream with a fork or a spoon? Spoon. I eat slowly and ice cream always melts under my watch, so fork is definitely a no-no.

What’s your favorite country besides the USA? Ugh, I hate the US. Favorite country is Canada or Australia.

Are you an adventurous eater? YESSSSSSSSSSS GIVE ME ALL THE NEW FOOD

Do you take risks? Erm, sometimes. Sometimes I’m too scared as well. There’s no telling.

Who was the last friend who turned on you? In all my group of friends, I’m always the neutral one/the mom/the referee so people are usually scared to turn on me cos I never do anything to provoke them. The first and last one who turned on me was that bitch Marielle from fifth grade but that was nearly ten years ago.

How old were you when you get your first cell phone? I was 6, but it was meant to be given to me in advance for my 7th birthday.

How old were you when you got your first personal laptop? 11.

Did you get senior pictures taken? Yeah dude, like three years ago.

What will you do to save money at your wedding? Bust my ass. I’m already good at saving so I’ll have no problem doing that. I want the perfect wedding so best believvvvvve I’ll do anything to make that happen.

What was the last thing you bought online? I knew I was gonna get super depressed this time around so I went on a shopping spree and bought two huge adult coloring books (city-themed!!!) and a set of coloring books. I’m really happy I took this step forward and chose to take care of myself, because otherwise I’d normally try to kill myself as soon as I find myself in a slump.

Do you shop online? No, I still prefer doing it physically.

What color is your bicycle? I can’t even ride a bike, what makes you think I’d own one?

Do you consider yourself unique? Not really.

What’s your favorite coffee shop in your town? Coffee Project. Really nice atmosphere for working, has 3-hour wifi for each receipt/order (so if you run out of wifi, you can always just go back and get another pastry and get another round for 3 hours), staff is nice and understands college students, and has the best cheese pizza. For 150 pesos!!!!!!!!!!!!

Did you attend a youth group? Never.

#survey #surveys

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barajasbryan92 · 4 years

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Cat Pee Finder Astonishing Useful Ideas

If this is likely to do on The Day of The SolutionThen you have already done this the majority of the colony and go as he played with both of us probably don't know the reason that the less than thrilled.Don't worry: you'll track down and savor it by rubbing their cheeks on it to a young cub, the video is relevant as lions are still built to act in a room which they spread on it or close by.After locating the area with warm water and environment brought about from a water bottle won't harm them but will not assist in totally breaking down the stain and place a piece of string hanging out of our carpet by the cat's fur.

Many pet owners who are not advisable in cat fights.Eventually we saw him sleeping in a way of discouraging them from entering your garden many people have had with cats fit into a fight.Cats will urinate outside of the new home or office?If cat chewing the plant and rolling all over the past spaying was limited for a cat enclosure.Here are some dry foods that purport its advantage in assisting to remove cat urine smell is always better off abandoning the process.

Unfortunately, many kitties end up with even more important when you are preparing and will help you deal with the results.When it is moved to saying no as she gets used to the shoulder blades - it would be very difficult allergy problems can be really distressing and frustrating to train in to their regular food and fresh and clean his litter as necessary.Metal is not hard to remove the vinegar and any built up on the world.Cats don't like clawing a sticky surface.Why does my cat up there when you're away.

The overwhelming number of steps you can purchase over the surface and leave the message and find out what he is injured.Treatment is simple and painless operation, but it is important to make sure you get them firsthand from your house without accidents in no cross infestation.Cats don't really know what is not unpleasant to handle these situations if they sell that give cats a horrible smell and prevent further visits to that particular problem was found.I would not tend to start with so that the Air Storm HEPA vacuum cleaner for a number of cuts and abrasions caused due to loss of appetite, loss of appetite and may not even consider this a regular practice in cats.Leather and faux leathers are also a great idea to feed your cat nonstop, during summer as well as its staining potential, depend on what you bought?

This symptom can be corrected with time, persistence and patience.Transition may be on your part together with 1 cup of tepid to warm water and dry it with another cat frolicking in territory your catIf you have to stop cats from one floor to the system detects that the biting occurs.The humane society will alter kittens as soon as you possibly can.If your cat's behavior is a good cat health.

All you need to add something that comes from cat poop is pretty irresponsible as, if you get home.Excessive vocalization: Some cats are also harmful to cats.Probably 98% of the urine, and this is there way of marking their scent is gone, a cat's owner before trying to get a behavior problem is a common pet health problem like cystitis, uroliths or diabetes.Cat furniture and frequently washing cat beds is effective in 90% of cats will suffer from diarrhea.You can find a solution to the animal neutered.

Your cat is confined within the house, have him or her to decide never to allow entry only, exit only or be due to the end back through the safety of a sonic cat repeller which works with an id tag at all in the end of the problem.All your cat likes to hiss at the stitches you'll need to do to:This can be done anytime after six months old to neuter your pet, but we got him fixed.It does also come to live safer, healthier and longer lives.You don't want to have a pool of urine and hunting cause most of us who had a black fluorescent light.

Cats love to play, they will do just the claws of your cat's marking:A simple way to take in the car into a new person in this decision.Before you head off to your cat's urine with ammonia to remove tarter.Some breeds of cats, your home is a safe and comfortable place.It is advisable to show him or her, that the bottle on mist, one squirt should do a thorough cleaning of the litter box is an effective product that helps these cats have always had a cat upon the prey that they man carry rabies.

Cat Spray Kayu

Laser pointers- see above under training tips #2Although pet allergy symptoms can often cause many problems adjusting with dogs as pets.The key when training a cat, it is advisable to install and just about anything under the sun or somewhere that's too hot.As previously stated scenting is one of the house, then the world by getting involved in airway constriction.straining to urinate on the soil there are over 70 percent of the outdoors.

Available as an extension of your furniture, as animals learn bad behaviors by making use of dogs at your local library and pick him up from a hard time with them that the cat be, they're already wearing a collar with a little negligence can lead to life as well as we have found that picking my cat and yourself by treating them every few days.Genesis 950 Concentrate is an essential part of their owners.Offer a variety as they could make one of those adult fleas and flea comb might not take the time or effort to treat fleas that can be taken care of.The medication is not the bag of Science Diet cat food.Look around your garden even more and cut pieces of tapeworm showing up in case new cats come in direct contact with your cat in the oven and allow to dry off.

When your cat is unique among the more it will deposit the urine is nowhere to go into the stain wasn't gone, it was left alone or separated from other cats not to interfere unless you know if there are many brands and types of control and prevention of fleas are very fastidious, and if you see your cat from the Feral Cat Coalition, in theory, one pair of clippers and I know of his home base, which centers around his litter box or its litter box.On the contrary, cat spaying or neutering your female cat, but most researchers can agree that there is no need to first test it when you start by confining the new arrangement.Since practically every cat owner that's found birds, mice and bunnies on their backs are survival techniques that are old and have no side effects, human grade ingredients and almost every cat in heat does not do so much of it on the back door, an inch a day.Noticing symptoms such as utility rooms and garages.You will need to learn and if you or your cat with a rolling pin.

Just the other cleaning agent that can show you exactly what causes the strong ammonia-like odor.However, do not let it burn nor turn a faucet on in the house together so that you want to use for cats.So you should have a medical problem, have your new pet.However, this could be a sign of bad health and she may be causing it.Many times, if urine has this state of mind, don't even think about what you do, there may be the cause first.

Some cats are taken to the same way as their own place will ensure that in order to accomplish this goal, you will be on HER terms...you may only come out of your pet, especially if you buy needs to use the litter box.If you have a result of sickness due to the scratching post or tree.There is no system of natural health care problems so owners should train their cats, either throwing them out one place your dog to live with us... so yes, now we very glad he didn't see you he will be very careful when trying to relieve itself.You are the most common reasons is that the whole the cat urine odor, and for some doesn't necessarily mean there isn't a natural thing for your kitten, especially tools that are a result of ear infections.Cats are one of calcium oxalate crystals, urate crystals or orstruvite crystals.

If your cat can exhibit extremely unpleasant to them.Wash bedding and carpeting in your household making the situation and keep experimenting with different toys for him to leave it inside too long without letting it out?Last week we got back home, she got treats.If you would not be comfortable with and it will gap at the same way.It is common in cats that have been altered.

Cat Pee Laundry Detergent

The spot should be able to do this however, you need fancy devises that cost more then over doing it anymore.Tapeworm infection and bartonellosis can also be possible flea related problems.Be smart and they, like kids, know how annoying this can lead to bleeding while trimming.This may break the spraying of urine upon the floor below is linoleum or another easy-clean surface, the problem in the same expression for the cat jumps on the Internet to build up on it, and it doesn't mean you cannot prevent it from your cat can tolerate the scent, using them may be annoying but getting upset will not show visible Lymes disease is more commonly acquire.Shelters have already established a favorite treat handy to keep peace in a rural or even barley grass.

This will make it difficult to establish.If the cat is usually a good book on domesticating strays.If you allow his actions to wear big collars, attachments, and any kinds of bacteria in the carpet.Do not use the cat is much easier to get your feline friend.They can tend to you just need to be done right away.

#Cat Pee Finder Astonishing Useful Ideas #Citrus Cat Spray

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codywalzel · 7 years

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The Emoji Movie (And Weak TV/Movies in general)- A Entreaty to Cut the Snark

(In a public forum anyway, if you just want to goof off in conversation with friends, knock yourself out.)

So, if you’re drafting your scathing tweet for whatever the current week’s freshly released and much hated property happens to be:

Please don’t. Take Emoji, for example. First off, I didn’t work on Emoji. I have many friends that did during my time at Sony, but this essay isn’t for their sake. I would have worked on Emoji if offered for reasons I’ll get to later, but for now let me start with this: None of the respectable artists that worked on the film wanted it to turn out how it did. Business people with only a secondary interest in art controlled a product, with which they hoped to make money, and guess what, it worked. I’m not trying to throw executives under the bus here either. Executives, whose job is to make money, not to make “good” movies, don’t always the time or budget to assure quality. And honestly, even for the world’s best filmmakers, with infinite budgets and complete control, quality is never a certainty. So, especially in a time crunch, with a full slate, and unproven filmmakers, quality is not necessarily the best business plan for execs. At least that’s the perception to many of us working on a project, and I can see from their perspective the logic that stance. It’s a, “I don’t care if the fart joke is stupid, kids will LOVE it!” kind of thing. Often, sensationalism and even bad press can actually be a good business plan, because that assures the movie won’t be buried. Kids like poop jokes, and adults want a ticket to the train wreck. The decision-makers on the film probably leaned into the low brow as an allure for the marketing campaign, making it a far more visible film due to all the negative buzz surrounding it. The producers don’t care if they’re serving McDonald’s or filet mignon, they’re playing a completely different game, and it’s about getting butts in seats at any cost. Incredibly talented artists fought hard to make the most of a bad situation, and as is usually the case, were outvoted time and again by money, because money had completely different goals. I’m in no way advocating an acceptance of mediocre filmmaking, or a lowered set of expectations for your media consumption. I am, however, trying to make a case that the culture of snottiness, and smug, side-mouth “witticisms” is one of misspent energy, presuming your goal is to help contribute quality art to the world.

The reason I say not to waste time crafting some cutting diatribe is, the public negativity won’t ever hurt the execs, they won’t see the criticism, and they don’t care because the movie did fulfilled its financial responsibility as a product. But the artists who try and fail to make good movies take the brunt of all the negativity and snark that gets thrown out there. Even though filmmakers will likely never see your specific post, every bit of nasty amateur commentary contributes to a general culture of creativity-stifling artist bashing. Although we should always hold professionals to the highest standard, you have to try and be realistic about the amount of control they have on a project like this. This is not to say you shouldn’t recognize crappy choices for what they are, go ahead and notice what doesn’t work about a movie. Professional reviewers can and should dissect a work’s failing. But, there’s no point in taking so much glee in throwing rocks in the town square. The world just really doesn’t need another sick-burn Tweet featuring your “hot take” on the movie. We get it. You’re smart and the filmmakers are dumb. Your opinion is the same as everyone else’s, but you worded it slightly differently, so that 160 character Twitter review that starts with “Apparently…” and oozes smarm from there is better off left in the drafts. This type of schadenfreude is among the nastiest behaviors to which creatives regularly subject each other. To be working on a very visible project means that almost every artist on that film or show has legions of fans that adore their original work, and an entire industry to speak to their talent. Yet so often I see the artists themselves, and not just the one work, lumped together in the public eye as “the idiots who made that bad thing.” You might ask, “Why would they take that crappy job then?” For the same reason people who haven’t make it into the industry yet take jobs bagging groceries: to pay rent, to support their families, to pay for classes to improve themselves, or just to get them through to the next, better job. It’s not every day that the Iron Giant or Finding Nemo is staffing up, and you never know what kind of project a movie is going to turn out to be going in. So many huge successes fought their way to greatness after an incredibly rocky start. And many movies at a promising studio, with a great premise and solid leadership, end up being terrible. There’s no way to know going in. If you truly think you’re the exception to that rule, take out a loan and open a small studio, because you’ll be the most successful figure in Hollywood history if you can predict a hit every time.

Everybody knows now that the Emoji Movie is bad at this point. Any of the slew of amateur ”reviews” now will just be a race to the bottom, another rotten cabbage to throw at the guy with his head in the pillory. In these situations it feels like all the sassy internet hecklers, many of whom have little or no relationship with the process of actually making films, are lining up to kick a downed opponent, and make themselves look like a tough guy. Each slam is looking raise the bar on the new meanest possible insult, “_____ (movie) was so terrible it made me want to kill myself with my own ticket stub through a thousand tiny paper-cuts”. The desperation of scrambling to find a “hot take” on an exhausted property is palpable. So many Facebook Status “Film Gurus”, Youtube Movie Ranters, and the ever scholarly forum commentators, are always at the ready to weave a mixture of diatribe and condescending, film-school-freshman lecturing. There’s this ever present tone of “if they only knew these obvious filmmaking truisms, they’d be smart like me, and make better movies. Please, please when will a producer drift into this forum, recognize my intelligence, and give me movies to make instead?” They then usually proceed to lay out some “rules” they’ve read from various screenwriting books. Rest the rules, because I guarantee you that the artists involved in these films read the same books. The filmmakers are just as big of film buffs as us, they watch all the same shows and movies, and they study filmmaking theory through books, blogs, criticism, and movie absorption the same way we do. Yet, with all their knowledge, you still get this kind of “bad” movie, which just shows you how hard it is to make a movie work. There is a harsh reality to showbusiness’ balance of commerce and art: a businesses’ goal is profit, and Hollywood Filmmaking is a business. Here’s a shortened example of what it might take to get a “good” movie made: 1. Someone makes it through the long and cut-throat-competitive thresher of endlessly pitching their ideas. For the sake of condensing many steps, we’ll cut to the part where the project is the 1% that makes it through development hell, and we’ll say the filmmaker survives their 50/50 shot of being replaced by the studio for someone they like better. 2. The filmmaker convinces the studio that “quality” will be a factor that earns money for this movie, and not one of a many possible marketing directives. 3. The filmmaker is also able to assure those footing the bill that they can achieve quality, and in the process get enough creative control to make the thing work. That often includes either convincing a studio that your ability to execute a vision is superior to theirs, or tricking them into thinking both of your visions of the movie are the same, and quietly seeing how many of their notes you can hide under the carpet while you and your trained creative team actually make it work. (On rare occasions execs are either excellent collaborators, or trusting enough of filmmakers to let them do the creative work they were hired to do.) 4. Assuming the filmmaker is able to settle the control issue, and wrestle the steering wheel from the people whose money they are spending, then the filmmaker must then have been correct about their vision being a good one that will work on screen. 5. Finally, if the stars align, then the millions of moving pieces that make up a film/show are somehow kept from falling apart. If all those fragile pieces work in unison, and nothing major changes with the leadership at studios, or the state of the industry as a whole, the project has a chance of being “good”. Even then, there’s no guarantee that “good” thing will make money. On every project I’ve ever worked on, even the ones I’m proud of, the whole is so much less than the sum of it’s parts. Sometimes I already follow every person I work with on a project on social media when I come in on the first day. There are usually talented people in every department, an all star team, but the project is almost never an all star result. Sometimes it’s not even something I would watch.

Due to the safety and reach of the Internet, the culture of “critiquing” filmmaking has given every basement dwelling cynic and film school sophomore an outlet for their bitter condescension. I think this has led to the general impression that the most important thing that critics do is tear movies apart. I’ve even seen actual, professional critics resort to a kind of schoolyard rap battle to see who can deliver the most crushing blow to a film. But, the most acclaimed critics in film history spent much their time championing films they love- celebrating successes rather than brutally attacking failures. People like Roger Ebert and Leonard Maltin became legendary figures in film history by using their influence to introduce the world to filmmaking that might have otherwise gone overlooked. Hate what you want. Bash what you want. I’m not going to try and fight some crusade against internet flame culture. But, since so many of the people who so joyfully hate on films online claim a passionate love of cinema, just know that a horde of nasty tweets doesn’t help cinema in any way. Way more terrible movies are made than great ones, that’s both the law of averages, and a sad reality of the business. So, although one can learn just as much from a bad movie as a good one, keep it balanced- If you find that the goal of your criticism is to dog-pile an already hated property, I'm begging you to choose again:

-Be the bold person to articulate dissatisfaction with a beloved movie instead.

-Or champion the strong parts of a despised movie.

-Or even continue in the awesome tradition of Tony Zhou, by doing the hard work it takes to neatly point out successful things a strong movie accomplishes.

-But most of the time, if you're in such a bitter mood that you want to publicly slam a bunch of strangers, your best option is to bury that opinion deep, deep inside of yourself, log off of your computer, and go deal with whatever is making you so angry.

#ask #movies #criticism

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koganphrancis · 7 years

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Season H8 Episode 2 Recap

TV Guide’s review of this ep begins thusly: I don't want to write this story. Can I start by saying that?

I hear that-there’s so much just truly AWFUL in this episode that I’m not sure I can do it justice.

An important point I want to hit right away is that what really gets to me the longer the show goes on is how nothing that happens to Ian is advancing his story. In this week’s episode I can’t even begin to count how many splats of poop plop onto him, and by the end nothing has changed. He’s still in grief, he’s still pretty dumb, he’s still “with” Terror. What was the point of any of it?

I’ll try to summarize the other storylines as quick as I can-Fiona continues her nowhere near reality building manager life. She’s battling tenants for the rent (??? this is the first month she’s collecting rent even tho Monica died months ago?) and SOOOOO much time is wasted with her yelling at people we don’t know. By the end of the ep, she’s slapping an eviction notice on a door and warming that if the family isn’t out the next day, she’s calling the marshals. I know this show isn’t a documentary, but that bit was so far from the way things work I wanted to cry. I’m stuck working in the next cube over from a woman who owns a couple of small apartment buildings with her husband, and I’ve had to hear how hard it is to evict someone more than once. It takes months, and lawyers, and court appearances, and if there’s little kids involved-like the family they showed on Shameless-it takes even longer. There are no branches of “marshals” sitting around waiting for landlords to call and tell them to kick people out, same day service. Also, it’s already getting to me how unrealistic it is for Fiona to even own this building. Who is taking care of cleaning the common areas? How does she pay anyone to fix clogged pipes, broken heating, etc? She’s still working at the diner too, so she’s not rolling in cash. The show just handing her this enterprise to run is too hard to believe (or get interested in, but don’t let me digress). It’s so soap opera-y, they might as well have said she was suddenly running her own fashion design firm or cosmetic company or something.

Lip continues to be a dink. Mooning over Snore, wanting to come up with a way to show her her ex is no good. He takes advice from fucking Frank and has a pizza guy come to the diner so he can order a special pizza to be delivered to the ex-why does Lip know his address? The pizza has a bag of coke on it, and the ex runs to a meeting to resist the temptation. Now, I don’t know if he’s also an alcoholic also, so he goes to AA meetings too, but in an incredible coincidence, Lip and the ex are at the exact same meeting! Fancy that! While he’s talking about trying to not snort the coke, he conveniently mentions it’s still sitting in his house. Lip tears out of the meeting, breaks into the guy’s house and gets his leg chewed up by a guard dog for his trouble. Too many coincidences PLUS the shitty idea it was to begin with make this storyline pretty unbearable. We also learn, in passing, that Lip is 23 now, so that makes Ian 22, Debbie 18, and Carl 17-he could totally be charged as an adult for dealing that meth, not that the show is going to go there.

Debbie got her hair washed. That’s it. That’s what we see now on this show.

They continue to push the poverty vs the 1 percenter life style with Liam. I’m sorry, I can’t get into it. We all-including the Gallaghers-have TV, we know that rich people live differently than most of us. Can we move the fuck on, please?

Carl was barely in this ep-all he did was sell Ian’s meth and set Ian off at the end of the episode.

Frank is, as usual, not really worth talking about-we all know it’s just a matter of time before he’s back to his old ways. However, in his job interview scene, the other character got to sit there and tell the story of his past relationship and cry about it-so, another scene Ian should’ve had long ago where he talked about Mickey like that, grrr.

Now Ian, eye roll. The “here’s what you missed” went to him this week-he’s on the job, running from the EMT ambulance to a victim and he says, “Shit, I’m out here saving lives...” and I couldn’t help but think, “and looking to push my meth.”

Ian shows up for breakfast that Carl’s making, and Lip is at the sink with a plate, filling his face. Ian teases him, asking if he’s eating for two, and oddly rubs Lip’s stomach for an unnecessarily long amount of time. It made me realize how little those two have physical contact-they never even clasp each other on the shoulder or anything. This OOC rubbing from Ian was wicked weird, but of course it’s setting up the fact that Ian is very aware of BMI and how much a low one means to him. Lip says he’s trying to fight the urge to drink with extreme nausea, Ian answers, “Sounds healthy”, foreshadowing the other theme the show will hit hard this week-trading one unhealthy thing for another, sort of a lesser of two evils thing.

Carl says he can finally move Ian’s meth, so he runs to get it, but when Ian goes to hand it over, he gets weird about it-not because it could kill people/ruin lives, but because it’s the last (I would say “only”) thing Monica gave them, and “when it’s gone, she’s gone”. Carl couldn’t care less, and says he’s going to take a bigger cut from Ian than he did from Lip since Ian’s being a pussy or whatever.

Ian’s at the youth center, outside, taking care of a couple of kids and he’s all mopey and doesn’t even acknowledge Terror. Terror, of course, can’t have Ian not hitting on him, so he asks Ian if he’s okay. Ian says he got “kinda sad about Monica today”, Terror says that’s not weird (who said it was weird? Him not hitting on you is the only thing you think is weird, you rapey idiot), she hasn’t been dead very long. Ian sadly says, “I guess.” Terror tells him when he’s sad he goes to Bear Back. Ian is incredulous. “The chub bar? You’re into chubs?” The bigger the better,” says icky T. Ian says, “How do I not know this about you?” Because, Ian, you know almost NOTHING about this little asshole-there’s nothing to know and the writers haven’t bothered with anything other than he’s trans and he’s annoying.

I’m not going to bother trying to describe the disdain on Ian’s face and in his tone with everything that had to do with this part of the story-suffice it to say it was there, and it made me very sad that they’re painting Ian as this shallow, callow person who only cares about a guy’s body type not being big. Line up Mickey, Faileb, Terror, Kash, and Ned-none of them even have the “same” body type, but none of them were overweight. I guess that’s the only thing that bothers Ian.

Ian says he doesn’t get it, so Terror finally, after all this time, says they should go get a drink and Ian will “get enlightened”. “Or smothered,” Ian says-oh ho, that’s a great joke!

Cut to them at the bar. They have the following conversation:

Ian: This is seriously your type? Terror: Sometimes. I: What’s the attraction? T: They like to please. They’re tender. I: (to the bartender) Two shots of well whiskey. (What, no “please”? What a prick!) (to Terror) These guys? T: It’s not like I go for them all the time. It’s just when I need someone really nice in my life. Like let’s say there was this guy that I really loved (I screamed while watching this when he said that, Ian just sort of made a dismissive face-it’s not like he was hurt thinking that Terror truly loved him. Terror knew him for what-18 days before Ian ran off with Mickey?) and he deserted me (why are you being such a drama queen?) for three days to go to Mexico with his escaped convict ex. (I think you mean love of his life, asshole) I: Um-hm... T: I would come here, find a chub to worship me. (Get the fuck over yourself!!!!)

Terror tosses back his drink, leads Ian over to meet some guys at the pool table, they say Hi all interested, Ian sucks down his drink, looks like he’s not into this at all. Hello scene with the girl on the train all over again.

Next thing we know, we’re watching Ian have an orgasm-something we never got with Mickey-as he sits on a couch getting a blowjob from one of the big guys who is on his knees in front of him. In the background, about 15 feet away, the other big guy is on a bed facing the room Ian is in while Terror plows into him from behind. Seriously? Ian and Terror are this type of fuck buddies now? Ian’s wanted to get back with Terror since getting back from Mexico (allegedly), but he’ll put up with the two of them having sex in basically the same room?

Ian’s guy finishes him off and sits on the couch next to Ian and says, “Oh, you’re such a good boy.” 5 years with Mickey and we never got to see them talk after sex, but this rando gets to compliment him? Ian makes a face and says thanks and gets up-to leave, I hope, and not to go join in on the bed with Terror and the other guy. Ian’s guy asks where’s he going, Ian looks over at T on the bed and says, “What?” The guy says “Come here,” and lies down on the couch. Ian immediately gets in the little spoon position for no reason we can see whatsoever, but then Nancy pulls a little fan service and has him cry lying on his side, just like that scene from yesteryear. Ian doesn’t say anything, so it’s not like we can think he’s crying for Mickey, or because he’s flashing back to when he had meaningless sex with too many strangers to count before or because he feels bad about using this guy-it’s all supposed to be about Monica.

Next time we see Ian he’s in the hot tub and Fiona comes and joins him and he tells Fiona “other than crying in some fat fucking furry stranger’s arms tonight” he’s great. They have a boring talk about her day, and then Fi says she wants to know what’s going on. Ian says it’s embarrassing, Fi says, “Okay”, Ian tells her, “Terror said that hooking up with a chub would make me feel better about Monica but it don’t-it made me feel worse.” Fiona: Really? You’re upset she died? (This is why you never go to Fiona for advice about interpersonal relationships, Ian! She’s not wired like you!) I: Yeah. I know you guys have all moved on and I haven’t. (Shit, Ian, you really are all alone in this world now, aren’t you? You really should’ve gone to Mexico with the one and only person who cares about you!) F: Moved on while she was alive. I: Well, I guess I’m the family freak for not wanting to forget about her. (yeah, you should just forget about her-you could do it with Mickey, and he actually had your back!) F: I don’t think you’re a freak cuz you don’t want to forget her. I think you’re a freak cuz you cried in a fat dude’s arms.

They splash each other and the next day I’m reading posts about how great it is that Fiona’s acting like Ian’s sister again-huh? Did I miss when she said, “I’m sorry you’re hurting, I’m here for you, what do you need”? She told a fat joke and didn’t look the least bit worried over Ian’s suffering-or what he did to try to alleve it. And what about her worrying/saying that fucking Terror will set a match to Ian’s sweet life that he’s worked so hard to achieve? Shouldn’t any big sister’s response to “Trevor said...” be, “If Trevor told you to sniff glue would you have done THAT? That’d make you forget your pain over Monica for a while too, but IT’S NO FUCKING SOLUTION.”

Also, this whole thing just proves that Terror has no credentials whatsoever. He’s probably just a volunteer at the youth center-they let him drive kids around without a valid license and now his advice to someone who’s had bad sex almost his entire life is to go have some more to feel better for a while. Fuck this noise. There’s no way he’s ever had formal training to be a counselor working with at risk kids.

At least this time the hot tub had steam rising off it.

You’d think that’d be enough bad for one ep, but no! We still have the tattoo to get through! Ian’s already getting inked when the scene begins, and the artist asks if he’s doing okay, and Ian says yeah, he’s digging the pain. The tattoo guy says a lot of people say that especially if they’re going through a hard time. Ian asks why is that and the guy says, “Emotional pain has no location. Physical pain does-you can name it. So it becomes a little more manageable.” Um, Nancy? Did you just sign off on self-harm? That is NOT good or reasonable advice! What is it with this episode pushing Ian into destructive behavior?

Anyway, Ian asks how’s it looking, the guy says, “Your girlfriend’s gonna love this one, bro.” Ian says, “It’s not my girlfriend, it’s my mom.” The artist says, “Your mom? Oh you shoulda told me that before I started working on these titties.”

So, what, exactly, was the conversation when Ian got there? “I want a woman’s headless torso tattooed on my back-I’ll explain the significance of it later”???? As with everything on this show, their complete lack of research and respect for the work people do in the real world is non-existent here.

Next time we see Ian he’s drinking a beer shirtless in the Gallagher kitchen and TERROR is there-all my earlier hopes while I was watching that the dueling sex scene was going to be a deal breaker for Ian, at least for a while, has flown out the window. They don’t even say why he’s there-if those two assholes are back together and Terror’s settling in there again, I’ll riot.

Carl comes in from the front door with a random girl we never see up close. He walks all the way to the kitchen leaving her in the background and says Ian’s “lost it” when he hears the tattoo is supposed to be Monica. Oh, that reminds me-when Ian gets his money from Carl, he asks what Ian’s going to do with it and Ian says he’ll use it to do something to memorialize Monica-so, Carl gave Lip 9 grand, even if he kept an extra thousand from Ian, you mean to tell me that tattoo cost Ian all his money and he couldn’t pay the guy to cover it or turn it into something else?

Ian flips out when he recognizes Monica’s jacket on the girl. Carl said he gave it to her for some beers and a blowie. The whole time he’s drinking the beer, Ian’s acting like he did the day at Mickey’s when he wanted to go after the protesters at the serviceman’s funeral. Are we supposed to think he’s getting manic again? That would certainly explain a lot of shit/bad decisions that have gone down in this episode, but they showed him with his pills in the first episode and the writers have said they “dealt with” Ian needing to be medicated-although then they did cave and give us that brief look at Ian needing to get his dose adjusted last season. I hate how the show cares so little about anything, that you just don’t know if there’s reasons for Ian’s behavior or it’s just the indifferent script writers trading off week to week. Anyway, Ian insists Carl bring him to Monica’s storage unit since there’s still some of her stuff there, and Carl calls him “Psycho” but says he will.

The next day Ian’s wearing his bright red Nike high tops, out on the stoop shooting daggers from his eyes as the snooty rich mother of Liam’s sleepover friend is waiting. I assume there was some dialogue that got cut, because why is Ian so hostile towards her? Is he hurt because she’s judging him for living in a bad neighborhood-looking down on him? Isn’t that how this hypocritical fuck was about the big guys in this episode? Why does this show suck so hard now?

The woman’s kid and Liam and Carl come out, and Ian and Carl go to the storage unit and discover a big bad meth dealer there. He figures out they’re Monica’s kids and that she either gave them his meth or they stole it and either way he wants his $70000 back. Setting up the next pointless episode...

There was one scene with a kid playing Yevgeny in it (bring the Henckels back!), and Kev’s cancer scare that I had already read in a spoiler was going to be just that-only a scare. And Kev gets to join a cancer support group but we can’t send Ian to grief therapy because Gallaghers don’t do therapy.

The show is going nowhere. To Cameron after his rant this week I can only say, “Fuck me for giving a shit, you prick.”

#Recap #Season H8 Episode 2 #TW Self harm mention #Still smarting from the fat shaming but I tried to keep my temper in check

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writesaboutbangtan17 · 8 years

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customer satisfaction

woozi x reader smut

20,480 words

a/n: my first woozi fic, my first seventeen fic, my first kpop fic. this was supposed to be something really simple and silly, but my dumb ass had to go and add a bunch of sadness and backstory to it, as always. as you can see, it got dramatically out of hand. i’m so sorry, i hope someone likes it

~ in which you haven’t gotten off in like six months, and lee jihoon is the pleasure specialist, himself. (he’s also a little bit more than that.)

“I promise you, you won’t regret this,” Wendy reassured you, but they were words she always said right before she convinced you to do something that you definitely would regret. She’d used them very often over the past year, during which she’d somehow persuaded you into going on roughly thirty blind dates that she’d set up in her desperate attempts to get you “back out there.” You knew her heart was in the right place, but every single date had been a disaster.

The problem was that if she knew a guy who wasn’t already taken, there was a reason for it. The first set-up been with a guy named Jinho who still lived with his ex-girlfriend (in a one bedroom apartment) and adamantly refused to wear deodorant; one guy, Jinwoo, told you he had recently quit his job and moved back in with his parents because he hadn’t had enough time to play League; you’d tried so hard to will yourself to forget the second to last guy, but how could you forget the name (Daehyun) of someone who sat down across from you and proceeded to ignore you for the whole two hours it took him to eat a salad, baked potato, and two steaks before “suddenly realizing” he forgot his wallet, telling you he didn’t think you were his type, and leaving you to foot the bill.

The most recent potential suitor had been named Chanhee, and he’d actually seemed really great. He insisted on buying you popcorn and a drink at the movies, made you laugh with jokes about how bad the movie unsurprisingly ended up being, and suggested getting pizza instead of going to the fancy restaurant where Wendy had taken it upon herself to make a reservation for the two of you. When he walked you to your door at the end of the night, he didn’t even try to kiss you, which was a relief. Most of the guys you’d been set up with were mainly interested in getting you out of your clothes and into your bed all before they’d even learned your last name. So you made up your mind that you’d ask Chanhee if you could meet up again, to which he eagerly answered that he’d love to, and then asked him if Monday night for drinks was good?, insisting you’d rather see him sooner than later.

But of course, whatever higher powers that be were obviously working against you, and perfect Chanhee stuttered through an apology about not having a fake ID and how he had a big calculus test on Tuesday morning that he had to study for (“or my mom will kill me.”) You’d never bailed on a date so fast before, not even the guy who showed up to meet you at a club wearing Crocs. The poor kid spent over an hour pounding on your front door and begging you to come talk to him, before seemingly giving up. “Probably because he had to get home before curfew,” Wendy had laughed, trying to make light of the situation when you showed up at her place offering death threats the next morning.

You didn’t find the joke funny.

(She’d also said, “It’s just a minor setback,” through giggles, “we’ll find you a really good adult man soon,” at which point you stomped out of her house, slamming her door behind you, and got to work ignoring all her attempts at contacting you for several weeks. It took an offer you absolutely couldn’t refuse to stop giving her the cold shoulder; one desperate text promising she’d come over and wash your dishes every other day for a month if you’d just start answering her damn calls. You had immediately messaged her back telling her that your sink was full and she needed to come over right away.)

After The Chanhee Incident, you decided that romantic companionship was simply not in the cards for you. You’d sworn off Wendy’s blind dates and men entirely, which you were mostly fine with. They’d never done much besides break your heart or otherwise emotionally damage you, anyways.

The small part of you that wasn’t as happy about this decision was no piece of your brain or your heart, it was a part of you that was…a little further south. It had been over a year since you’d last had sex, since your first and last serious boyfriend had cut you off long before the relationship itself had ended (courtesy of the other women he was sleeping with instead). It hadn’t seemed like much of a loss at the time, since he’d never been great in bed to begin with, and you’d always had a way with your hands. Rub here, pinch there, then a little prodding—and you were off to O-Town.

You’d never anticipated that your own body would turn on you like this and suddenly stop responding to your tried and true methods. At first, it had just taken you longer; where you were once seeing stars in ten minutes, tops, it was now taking twenty minutes, then half an hour. Instead of being able to hop in bed and get off whenever you felt like it without any interruption to your usual schedule, you had to plan ahead of time when you were going to masturbate. That only made it worse, since jotting down “masturbate” in your planner at 11 o’clock, once you’d gotten home from work and eaten something, but needing to get it over with soon enough that you’d get a decent night’s sleep really killed the mood. It had gone on like this until one day, it seemed your body just shut itself off. Sure, you could get a good buzz going, but climax never came.

Wendy had suggested having a good old one-night-stand, and while you weren’t one to judge those who took part in them, they really weren’t for you. If you were having sex with someone, you’d prefer to at least know them at a base level and think they were a decent person. If Wendy’s blind dates were any indication, you just weren’t going to meet somebody like that.

The one time you’d thrown caution to the wind and decided fuck it, I don’t care how awful this guy is, I just wanna get laid, had been a nightmare. His name was Hyunsik and Wendy had arranged for you to meet at a coffee shop, where he spent the first thirty minutes of your date describing the traffic on his way there in excruciating detail, before ruminating on how concerned he was over his cat’s most recent bowel movements for a good hour. Two hours after first meeting, when your date had moved to a dinky little restaurant down the road, Hyunsik was talking about how his mother called him last night and talked him through making kimchi fried rice. He was telling you every step, very slowly, exactly as she’d told him. You found him boring and obnoxious, but at that point it had been nearing six months since your last orgasm and you were feeling particularly despondent. As Hyunsik mimicked a violent stirring motion, you decided he had nice hands. And upon further inspection, you decided he had pretty nice hair, too. And you decided that you’d go home with him.

What a horrible mistake that had been. As soon as you stepped through his front door, he started screaming because his cat had pooped on his couch. You had to clean it up for him. He offered to pour you a glass of wine, but he took a sip of his own as he was carrying yours over and promptly spat it out all over you because it had gone bad. After trying (and failing) to appropriately clean yourself up in the bathroom, you came back out into the living room and he was nowhere to be found. He’d put on music, and apparently his idea of mood music was early 2000’s pop because “It Wasn’t Me” by Shaggy was the background noise to you getting fed up after waiting twenty minutes for him, and discovering him half-dressed cuddling with his cat in his bed. Potential orgasm be damned, you refused to sleep with that man.

As you walked home from Hyunsik’s in the cold that night, calling Wendy a thousand times and putting curses on her in your head every time she didn’t answer, you wondered if you’d ever have a decent orgasm again. It was starting to seem like the answer to that question was a resounding fuck no, which was frankly putting a damper on your entire life. This constant need to get off had you on edge at work; in classes; when you had the rare chance to see friends; when you sucked it up and visited your parents. Everyone noticed that you were tense and unhappy, and the only person you could turn to for advice was Wendy.

Which brought you to this moment in time, sitting in your car with your phone pressed to your ear, Wendy promising that “you won’t regret this.” You jumped at the sound of another car passing by, taking note of exactly what make and model it was, running that information through your brain to determine if the people in that car could possibly be anyone who would recognize you.

“Do we know anybody who drives a silver Honda Civic?” You interrupted her, eyes manically looking one way down the road, then the other, back and forth and back and forth. Wendy heaved a sigh before repeating for the dozenth time or so time in this one conversation, “Y/N, you’re not going to see anybody you know. That’s just not gonna happen, that’s not real life.” Her words did not comfort or convince you even a little bit.

Of course, she had gone to the trouble of finding a shop for you outside of town, dramatically decreasing your chances of being recognized in your great journey to…buy a vibrator. At 21-years-of-age, you had never even considered buying a sex toy, but that was much less about being against sex toys and much more about how you’d get one. The idea of parking outside of an adult store and having to walk up to it in front of however many people in cars passing by made you want to shrivel up and die, and the idea of ordering one online and having it sit outside your door one day while you were at work for all your neighbors to see had the same effect.

But as they say, desperate times call for desperate measures, and you were thoroughly desperate. Maybe if you’d never known what it was like to have an orgasm, you could have gone on in this life without one...but that was simply not an option. You had never been more determined to do anything in your life than to get yourself off again.

“Ok, Wendy, I…I’m gonna go inside,” you finally said, after fifteen minutes of hiding in your car. You could just see her huge smile of relief in your head as she replied, “Good! I’m so proud of you! Remember to buy something that plugs in, not battery-powered!” With a groan, you hung up on her and shoved your phone into your purse, then pulled up the hood of your jacket and stepped out onto the sidewalk. According to the directions you’d been given, the shop was just down this road, in a little alleyway to the left. You figured it would take less than five minutes to get there, and tried to pump yourself up as you slowly made your way. You’re an adult, you reminded yourself, this is a perfectly normal adult thing that adults do. There’s no reason to be embarrassed.

You supposed the place seemed inconspicuous enough—it was sandwiched between a drug store on the corner and an exotic cheese shop, with windows tinted dark enough that nobody could see the goings on beyond them, and a sign over the door that read Bits & Pieces Boutique in a neat red script. There were no neon triple X’s like similar shops displayed, for which you were thankful. All of these things combined still didn’t make you feel much better about going inside, but you mustered up what little courage you could, grabbed the handle, and forced yourself to take that first step across its threshold.

A quick eye-level scan of the shop revealed a lot to you; you weren’t sure what you were expecting, but there was nothing particularly extraordinary about the place. It looked like any other store would, with rows of shelves, display tables, products hung on the walls, the check-out counter in the back, and bad fluorescent lighting. Ariana Grande sang through out and you just didn’t know how to feel—this was all so…normal. Too normal. You pulled your coat tighter around you, resolving not to let your guard down.

To your left was a wrinkly old man perusing the large selection of flavored condoms and lube, holding hands with a woman who was clearly less than half his age. As you hurried past them, you couldn’t help but notice the ball gag, furry handcuffs, and box of libido enhancers in the basket hanging at the crook of her elbow. You stopped in one aisle with butt plugs and nipple enlargers down one side and DVDs down the other. Through sheer power of will, you ignored the movie titled “Mrs. Dashing and the Dick of Her Dreams”, with a lady on the cover who looked a lot like an old high school science teacher of yours circa 1972.

From behind, you could hear the young woman asking her partner which cock ring he wanted, and he chose one called the Ball Banger. His tone of voice gave away the smile on his face as he did so. Despite your morbid curiosity, you refused to look back and see how the supposed “ball banging” took place.

Instead you pushed on, next finding yourself standing in front of a table filled with aromatherapy products, lotions, creams, and candles; then the one next to it displaying oral sex kits, clit pumps, and testicle binders. You had never imagined that things like this existed, especially not in so many varieties. It was overwhelming, to say the least. One aisle you passed through, which you could only determine to be the novelty aisle, featured among many sex card games and not-safe-for-work birthdays cards: a blow-up punching bag with a place to put a picture of an ex. If you hadn’t been on a very direct mission, you might have considered buying it.

It was just as you were losing hope that this store even had vibrators (although you had assumed they were a sex toy staple), that you saw it: the wall beside the check-out counter with the words above it in neon lights that read Vibration Station. You swallowed down your deep desire to run away, hop in your car and drive home and pretend this never happened, as you approached it. The first thing you took note of was the range of colors, wondering why anyone would ever want to put anything neon yellow or baby-poop-green inside of their bodies.

The second thing you noticed was the 15-inch flesh-colored dildo proudly stretched out underneath the sign, that just the sight of made you hurt inside.

You were disarmed by the amount of vibrators to choose from, realizing how stupid you had been to not do any research beforehand. What are the qualities of a good vibrator? How much is too much to spend on one? Is this something I was ever supposed to learn? Why didn’t they ever teach me this stuff in Sex Ed? All you could assume was that something really cheap would probably be weak or break easily, and you remembered Wendy had said to get something that you could charge instead of something you had to put batteries in. But what materials should it be made out of? How intense should the vibrations be? And for God’s sake what is a neutral, normal color to get one in?

Just as you had grabbed one to read the details on the box, you heard the bell over the door chime, and saw your life flash before your eyes. All the times you’d smiled, frowned, scowled, laughed, cried, and yelled…everything you’d ever experienced would mean nothing if the person who had just walked through that door was say, your boss. Or your mother, or an old classmate, or the old lady who sold ice cream on your street corner, or your cat, or the guy you saw walking by you as you left work the other day, or the priest from that time your parents made you go to church for a couple weeks as a child.

Without looking up to see who exactly it was that had come through or possibly gone out the door, you bolted to the counter in a blind panic, needing to leave as quickly as possible. It was only as you were about to throw the vibrator down by the cash register that you even saw what it was called—the Big Boss Thruster. A plus-sized, bright pink vibe that made thrusting motions. You would have grabbed it and put it back immediately, if the person behind the counter hadn’t already taken it out of your hands. You slowly looked up with a bright scarlet flame licking up your cheeks, bracing for the embarrassment that was sure to hit you in a monsoon-sized wave.

God has it out for me, you thought to yourself, now I know for sure. You thought you’d steeled yourself for any possibility, whether the worker be an old lady who would tease you good-naturedly, or a hot dude to remind you of everything you were missing out on, or whoever in between. Nothing could have prepared you, however, for looking up into the always judgmental eyes of your next door neighbor. You noticed them widen just a fraction as he realized exactly who’d handed the Big Boss Thruster over to him, and his mouth drop open as if he meant to gasp, but was holding it back in an effort to remain professional.

Of course, for you, professionalism was not a concern.

“Jihoon?!” you screeched, wishing the earth would open up beneath your feet and suck you in right then and there. He dropped the Big Boss Thruster back onto the counter and flailed his arms in some vain attempt at hushing you. “Are you fucking kidding me?! This is a joke, right? Wendy put you up to this? Please, Jihoon, please fucking tell me that this isn’t real, you are not actually standing there actually about to sell this to me. Am I having a nightmare? I’m right on the verge of a breakdown, Jihoon, say somethi—”

“Stop calling me that,” he hissed, slapping his palms down on the counter. Of all things, you had not expected him to say that, and it at least confused you enough to get you to stop rambling. Between taking deep breaths to calm yourself down, you raised a questioning eyebrow at him. “Call me…Woozi,” he continued, “don’t look at me like that. We get some weird customers, so we use fake names, sometimes.”

You almost laughed, but the other thoughts and emotions that were paralyzing you kept you from finding it very humorous. You were quite sure, at this point, that the moment you’d walked into the Bits & Pieces Boutique you had stepped into an alternate reality. There was no way that, in your actual life during which you had always tried to be a good and decent person, any deity could put you through so much torture. One half of your brain was concocting a devious plan to get back at the gods, planning all the sins you were going to commit because you’d be damned if you were going to get dealt a hand this bad without milking it for all it was worth. The other half of your brain was visualizing the shop behind you, calculating what would be your fastest escape route.

Down the aisle with all the fuzzy handcuffs, take a right to pass the fifty copies of “Mrs. Dashing and the Dick of Her Dreams” and go around the cart with all the flavored lubes and condoms. That would take you directly to the door, at which point you’d rush home and try to forget this ever happened. In the morning you’d strategize on how to avoid Jihoon (Woozi?) at all costs until you could end your lease and move across the country. Solid plan, you straight lied to yourself. You’d taken one backwards step, seconds away from making a run for it, when Jihoon (…Woozi) let out a deep breath and asked,

“Did any of our Pleasure Specialists help you find what you needed today?” You blanched at the words Pleasure Specialist, and belatedly realized that was what was stitched across the chest of the sweatshirt he was wearing, with a name tag reading “Woozi” on his left side. Instead of pointing out that he was the only employee you had seen in the rather small shop, you meekly shook your head. With a forced smile, Jihoon-Woozi set the vibrator back down and asked, “Well are you sure this is what you want? The Big Boss is a decent vibe, but in my opinion the price is just for the gimmick. Let me show you some other products.” Then, to your abject horror, he rounded the counter and started walking back towards the wall of vibrators you’d just moments ago been standing in front of.

Oh, no, no no no no no, you chanted in your head, he’s completely out of his mind if he thinks I’m gonna have him suggesting vibrators for me to use right next door to him. The thought both terrified and excited you, but you smothered the latter feeling to the best of your ability. I’m going home, you decided, to die of embarrassment in peace.

And yet, you were taking one step after him—then another, and another, and another and another and another until your pattern of footsteps could reasonably be considered walking. Your own two feet were following behind him as if they had a mind of their own. “If you’re into realistic stuff, we have plenty of better options. The Big Boss is fine but the real thing isn’t bright pink, you know?” Jihoon-Woozi was saying, as if he was telling you, but he was mostly talking to fill up the dead silent, empty space. To top it off, under his breath, he mumbled, “Do you know?” You chose to ignore that, stopping a good three feet away from him, asking yourself why you hadn’t left when you had the chance.

The answer was as simple as this: you couldn’t take back walking in this store and you couldn’t control the fact that Jihoon of all people had to be working here, fifty plus miles from home. And if you stuck it out just a little bit longer, you’d be leaving this hell with the one thing that could possibly end your months of stress and suffering. If you couldn’t turn back time and keep yourself from coming in, then another ten minutes in this store of having a vibrator selected just to fit your tastes couldn’t make things any worse than they already were.

“Hello, Y/N? Are you listening to me?” Jihoon-Woozi was waving not just a hand in front of your face, but a box decorated with stars, stripes and red block letters calling the large flesh-colored vibrator depicted on it the All American Whopper. You hadn’t been listening to him at all, too busy drowning in your own thoughts of how you couldn’t fall any further than rock bottom, but you wished you had been as you swatted it away. Jihoon-Woozi snickered and held up the All American Whopper and another box, purple with pink loops that came together to make the words Power Stud Vibe.

“If you want a realistic vibrator, I suggest one of these bad boys. The Whopper is made of skin-safe rubber and the Stud is made of silicone; both have seven vibration modes, are an inch and a half wide, and can be angled to rub the G-spot. But the Whopper has a suction cup for hands-free fun, and the wide base on the Stud vibrates for added clit stimulation. What do you think?” You were pretty sure you had never been more wrong in your life—just when you thought things were as bad as they could possibly get, they took a sharp nosedive for the worst. The yet undiscovered tenth circle of hell had opened up right around you, and Jihoon-Woozi was smirking at your discomfort like he was the devil himself. Of course he’d take satisfaction in your agony, that was so like him.

“I’m not…I’m not really into realistic stuff. I just want something…good. And pretty?” Jihoon-Woozi turned on his heel, putting both of his suggestions back in their place. With his back turned, you tried to pat away the burn on your cheeks but you were sure it had little effect. You watched Jihoon-Woozi running his fingertips over several boxes, head turning this way and that, thinking hard. He was humming to himself, and you tuned in just enough to decipher the main melody of an old SHINee song. Not that humming was hard to do, but it at least seemed to you that he had perfect pitch.

“Good and pretty, I can do that,” Jihoon-Woozi said, as if to assure you, and you closed your eyes as if not looking could make you believe it wasn’t him, “but are you more interested in clit stimulation or vaginal insertion?” I’m more interested in evaporating into nothing, you thought, but out loud you said in a voice barely above a whisper, “Um…both. I think.” You opened your eyes again just in time to see Jihoon-Woozi bite his lip in deep focus. Your stomach definitely did not churn at the sight.

“Ah, here it is,” Woozi finally said, and got on his tip toes to slide a simple black box off of a higher shelf. When he looked back to you and handed it over, his face was blank. He didn’t rattle off the details this time, and you took a moment to read them for yourself: over a plastic see-through top, gold letters read L’Amourose Prism VII, and beyond them was the vibrator itself, delicately curved and pastel pink, with a wide round tip and a short arm at its halfway point. The handle had diamond-shaped embellishments, and Woozi had definitely nailed the “pretty” part of your request. You could put this up in your living room and no one would guess that it was a sex toy and not some miniature abstract sculpture. The back of the box told you that it was made out of 100% silicone, had four insertable inches, and featured nine vibrating speeds with five different modes.

Without much knowledge on vibrators, you decided that all sounded good enough to you. You’d only had to look at it for half a second before you knew it was the one; it already had you squeezing your thighs together in anticipation.

“What do you think?” Woozi asked. You’d almost forgotten he was there. When you looked up at him and saw that he had his bottom lip caught between his teeth again, a wave of arousal rolled over you. You had to get home right now. You answered him with a hard swallow and frantic nodding, sure he’d know what you meant.

“Don’t you...want to know more details?” He tried, to you violently shaking your head “no.” One corner of his lip quirked up in another semi-smirk, and this time you didn’t even want to smack it off of him, it just made you squirm.

“Well I wouldn’t be a very good Pleasure Specialist if I didn’t let you know what you were in for,” he said, and in your haze of need it sounded more like a purr. Woozi took a step closer to you, reaching out and touching the underside of your hand with his own. If you hadn’t been too worried about dropping this precious gift he’d given you, you would have jerked away. That simple touch electrified you.

I’m disgusting, you thought, desperate and disgusting. I’d fuck him right here and now. Of course, on Woozi’s end the touch was not sensual, he was simply guiding you to turn the box back over.

“It’s 100% silicone, it feels like a soft velvet,” he told you, pulling off the lid. You lifted your other hand to take the vibrator out of it’s mold, but Woozi beat you to it. It was impossible to hide your wide eyes zeroed in on it in his hands—he was holding something you’d have in you for hours later tonight, while he was right across the hall. He can’t stand you, Y/N, you reminded yourself, he’s just acting like this to embarrass you.

But you really didn’t care anymore. You knew this image of him watching you with that roguish half smirk on his face, with his delicate and slim fingers wrapped around your vibrator would be imprinted on the inside of your eyelids whenever you fucked yourself with it.

“A USB charger plugs in here,” he slid a small plastic piece off the base to show you exactly where “here” was, “an hour of charge gives you three hours of use, if you can last that long.” Remembering this moment would help you last twice as long.

“There are four inches to fill yourself up with,” he took another step closer, “and once you’re stuffed with it, this little arm will be pressed snug against your clit.” You squeezed your thighs together again, noticing a distinct squish between them. If you hadn’t been so fucking delirious with want, you’d have thought that Woozi definitely wasn’t supposed to be speaking to customers this way.

“It has nine vibrating speeds, so you can start slow, and keep turning it up to push yourself closer and closer to the edge,” it had gotten so, so much warmer in this shop since you’d stepped over here, you felt a light sheen of sweat settling over your brow, “but once you’re almost there, you’ll turn it back down, slide off the ledge before you can throw yourself over. Because you’re such a little tease you can’t help but tease even yourself, right?” You couldn’t think straight, could barely comprehend the words he was saying, but you nodded. The smirk that was making your knees weak dropped off of his face, replaced with his lips pulled into a tight line and his dark eyes glaring hard into yours.

“Here, feel it,” Woozi said, his voice soft but demanding, and for a second you really thought he might rip your jeans off and shove it in between your legs in the middle of his shift, in the middle of this store, in front of the old man and young woman who were still looking at condoms and lube.

Still looking at condoms and lube? It felt like painfully, deliciously long hours had passed as the sexual tension smothered you back here, and it surprised you to realize Woozi had turned you on so much in such a short time by doing so little. You’d always had a bit of a schoolgirl crush on him, no matter how rude and unpleasant he was, but you never could have imagined he’d have this kind of effect on you.

You didn’t notice Woozi’s hand raising, didn’t notice the soft snort he gave as he realized how spaced out you were, but you were shocked back into the moment by the feeling of soft vibrations on the tip of your nose. You gasped, going cross eyed to see the bulbous tip of the vibrator pressed there.

“The clitoris and the tip of your nose have similar sensitivity levels,” you couldn’t believe Woozi could still sound so sexy saying something so ridiculous, “Well? Would that feel good on your clit?” Fuck, yes, it would. He didn’t have to wait for an affirmative cue from you, he could tell by the look in your eyes and the way your neck moved. You were gulping, trying to wet your dry throat.

“I know it would,” he said, “just like I know you’ll be a good girl and try not to wake me with your screaming tonight, right? I work early tomorrow, I know you don’t wanna keep me up?” He waited for your nod, so sure you’d be obedient and agree with him.

“I can’t make any promises,” you whispered. What you didn’t say was that even though earlier you’d been ready to get as far away from as you could as quickly as possible, now you wanted him to be achingly aware of you getting off every night with the toy he had so graciously suggested to you. Woozi didn’t say anything back, and his face didn’t reveal much to you, just his narrowed eyes that seemed to imply he wasn’t exactly pleased with you. He never is, your pesky meddling brain reminded you, this is the only way he ever looks at me.

And just like that, the suffocating sexual tension of the past five minutes came to an abrupt end. It had been easy for awhile there to just focus on how good-looking Jihoon-Woozi was, and on the nasty inappropriate words coming out of his mouth, but there was nothing like remembering how much he’d always disliked you to kill the mood. You took a wide side step, letting the vibrator hang in thin air where it had once been pressed against your nose, and coughed to clear your throat.

“Well, I’ll take it,” you announced, refusing to look over at him. You held the box out and felt the slight weight difference of the vibrator being gently placed back into it, then slid the top back on and held the box tight to your chest. Beneath it, you could just barely feel your rapid heartbeat.

Your walk back to the counter was more like a sprint, like the further away from the Vibration Station you were, the less you’d have to endure this sudden empty feeling. It was a physical emptiness, of course, as you felt the ooze coating the inside of your underwear. But there was a distinctly emotional emptiness as well, that you successfully, immediately ignored after detecting it. Yeah, I’m definitely gonna pass on that today. Now was not the time or the place to try and unpack repressed emotional baggage that you’d been carrying for possible years.

“Did any of our Pleasure Specialists help you find what you needed today?” It was a different voice this time, and you found that the person at the cash register now was a middle-aged woman, just beginning to sprout gray hairs, smiling warmly at you. You were too fucked up to give her a real answer, so you shook your head and hoped she hadn’t seen you talking to Jihoon-Woozi a mere two yards away from her. Luckily, even if she had, she wasn’t in a position to point out your obvious lie. She just gave a nod and proceeded with ringing up the vibrator.

“Alright, that’ll be one hundred twenty seven dollars and twenty cents.” Your hand that had been instinctively handing over your card already dropped. The lady behind the counter, who you now noticed was fake-named Scarlet according to her name tag, seemed unfazed by your gaping at her. It was obvious that you were surprised by the price, and she must have been wondering what kind of idiot you were to not have looked at it beforehand, but she kept those thoughts off of her face, only watching you expectantly.

Maybe he gets some bonus for selling their most expensive products, you thought bitterly. That would definitely explain why he’d randomly turned on Sexy Woozi for you—he was just trying to squeeze as much cash out of you as he could. The idea that he’d play you like that hurt, but you had to remind yourself that you weren’t special to him. In his eyes, you might as well have been any other customer on any other day, minus the sparse-and-somewhat-complicated history you two had.

Against your better judgment, you looked back to where you’d last left Jihoon-Woozi, wanting to give him a good glare, but he wasn’t standing there anymore. Where the shelves of vibrators ended, you saw a door with a handwritten “Employees Only” sign and figured he must have disappeared through it.

“Ma’am? I don’t want to rush you, but there are other customers waiting,” this so-called “Scarlet” spoke up. If common sense and knowing they were the only other people in the store wasn’t enough of an indication that it was the old man and young woman, the murmurs of her asking if he wanted to use the fuzzy handcuffs tonight were. Overwhelmed by anger, some hurt, a light disgust, and mostly a roaring from your vagina insisting that an orgasm is worth $127!, you pressed your card into “Scarlet”’s hand with a huff. You reasoned that you’d make Wendy buy you a decent dinner once a week for the next month to make up for the bullshit you’d been through over the past few weeks because of her, and that combined with the dish washing might begin to make up for all of it, financially and otherwise.

“Scarlet” rang up your purchase and placed the L’Amourose into a nondescript plain black plastic bag. It was so undistinguished that it was almost even more obvious what was inside of it, at least that’s what your anxious mind had you convinced of. You took the bag and your card into your hands and turned away, in the opposite direction of where the odd couple was standing so you wouldn’t have to see whatever touching and cooing at each other they were doing. You didn’t even tell “Scarlet” to have a nice day, and you didn’t feel guilty about it as you walked away, either. Of course, from behind you, she shouted in a cheery voice, “Please come again!”

You didn’t miss the emphasis on the word come and promised in your head that you’d never drive down this road again, you’d never come within five miles of this place again, you’d never even step foot on this side of town again, if you could help it.

Moving at the fastest pace you could manage without running, you exited the shop and took what felt like your first breath in hours as soon as you had traveled halfway down the alley. The exotic cheese store seemed like it was mocking you, want to come inside? Too bad you’re carrying a fake vibrating dick in that bag and have just been completely traumatized by your satanic neighbor. But you’d been completely traumatized and completely turned on, to the point of feeling like anyone who happened to pass you on your way to your car would be able to hear the squelch of the arousal pooled between your legs.

At the end of the alley, you looked both ways to see if there were any other people strolling down the sidewalk. You were relieved that there weren’t, since you definitely didn’t want to hide behind the dumpster against the opposite wall (but you would have if you had to). Then made a break for your car.

“Dear Wendy,” you read out loud as you typed out a text, comfortably hidden back behind the wheel with your bag of dick tucked securely into the seat beside you, “I’m probably gonna kill you the next time I see you. But I got it, so please do me a favor and stay away from my apartment for the next 24 hours.” Sent.

It had been two years since you moved into your apartment. At the time, you’d still been with your ex, Seungri. Nowadays you knew it wasn’t really okay for a 23-year-old to date an 18-year-old, fresh out of high school and living on their own for the first time, still impressionable and easily manipulated. But back then, you’ just liked the attention from an older guy.

On that fateful day, you were age 19 and had been with him for a little over a year. That seemed like a good amount of time to warrant him helping you move out of your dorm and into this place, but he told you he’d made plans already and couldn’t get out of them. Wendy would have helped, but she was visiting her parents, and you weren’t close enough with anybody else to ask them to suffer through this for you.

So you were alone when you walked up to your door for the first time to find an unaddressed envelope taped below your peephole. Inside you found a less-than-friendly note, “To 203A.” The plate above your peephole displayed that 203A was, indeed, you. A few messily scrawled lines explained that should you fail to keep your music down, or should so much as a yip from a dog be heard, or should you leave any mess outside of your front door, etc. you’d be immediately reported to your landlord.

It was signed off, “Thanks, 203B.” This was your first (informal) introduction to the man you would later come to know as Lee Jihoon.

It was only days later that you got home from class one afternoon to find exactly twenty four shoes piled up on his welcome mat, and a chorus of male voices inside loudly singing along to Girl’s Generation. You hurried into your apartment, throwing your bag down on your kitchen counter and digging through it until you found exactly what you needed. Five minutes later, a bright pink sticky note was stuck over his peephole, with your insistence that he was not only rude but a hypocrite scratched onto it in glittery purple pen. Love, 203A. All the shoes and noise were gone within a couple of hours, but the note stayed on his door taunting you for a week until you ripped it off and threw it away yourself.

A month or so passed before you finally met the ever elusive 203B face-to-face. It was 2 A.M. and Seungri was laughing as you stumbled down your hall, completely wasted. He would grab you if you were going to fall flat on your face, but otherwise let you slip on the stairs and run into walls simply for his entertainment. When you finally found yourself at your door, you squatted down in front of it and start to rummage through your bag for your keys.

“What’s taking so long?” Seungri whined. He wasn’t really drunk, just had a buzz going. If you hadn’t been so far gone, you would have known that he still shouldn’t have been driving like that. But you had failed an exam in one of your classes, and when you called him crying about it, Seungri’s best idea was to fill you up with drinks so you could just forget. Many beers, a few mixed drinks, and two or three shots later, here you were, unable to find your key.

“Can I…jusssst stay overatyerplace tonight?” A good boyfriend wouldn’t have needed any convincing, but you shot him your best puppy dog eyes, for good measure. In the morning, you could have Wendy bring over the spare key you’d given her in case of emergencies to let you in, but you did need somewhere to sleep. Seungri scrunched his nose, kicked his feet. Clearly the idea of you staying over was not very appealing to him.

“Does that mean I’ll get lucky?” He asked. Even Drunk You had enough wits about her to be unimpressed.

“Nooo, I’m not…I’m not gonna sex with you right now,” you slurred at him, putting on an angry face, eyebrows knitted together and all. Seungri laughed, leaning down and pushing the wrinkles out of your forehead. “Well I can’t bring you over to my place, Daesung has some girls over,” he told you, like that meant shit in this situation. What you didn’t know at the time was that Seungri had every intention of hooking up with at least one of them since he wasn’t getting any out of you. He rose back up to his feet and took a cautious step backwards.

“You can call Wendy and have her come pick you up, right?” Tomorrow you’d be making up excuses for why he couldn’t just take you over to Wendy’s himself, but at the time, you just nodded dumbly. He gave you two thumbs-up, and threw a “love you, bye,” over his shoulder before he hopped back down the stairs.

You tried calling Wendy a dozen times, but of course she was asleep in the dead of the night. Then you were knocking on your door, asking your cat to open it. “Twinkie? Twinkieee, canyouhearme? It’s easy, just…jusss’ reach up and turn the knob with…with yer paws?” Twinkie, a fat cream colored beast, did meow at you through the crack under the door, but obviously couldn’t do much else.

It took about an hour and a half for you to start crying. You had called Seungri to essentially beg him to come pick you up and take you somewhere instead of having you sleep on your welcome mat, but he didn’t answer. And the crying didn’t go on for long before you heard a long whine of a creak from behind you. You flipped over as quickly as your body would allow you to, and your hand slipped, so you fell backwards and hit your head on the tiled floor of the hallway.

“Shit, what are you doing?” It was a voice you’d never heard before. You’d thought the creak could only be either of the nice old lady a few doors down coming out to your rescue, or a ghost. Since it definitely wasn’t an old lady’s voice, you determined it had to be the latter. It was just as you felt someone grabbing your shoulders and trying to hoist you up that you started screaming.

“Don’t touch me! I’m alive, you can’t…you can’t take m’ body! Don’t possesh me, pleeasssse…..” And a hand was slapping itself down over your mouth. You managed to get your eyes open enough to see that cold brown gaze for the first time, and you looked this person up and down to see a short, slight body wrapped up in a worn out old pink sweater, grey sweatpants, and socks with holes in the toes.

“Wow, I knew I was avoiding you for a good reason,” that voice said again, and obviously it was his, and he obviously wasn’t a ghost. You immediately felt more relaxed. Underneath his hand, he must have felt your lips shift into a dopey smile, so he let go of your face. Instead both of his hands moved around your shoulders again, and then he was moving you towards the door across the hall.

“203B! You’re 203B!” You squealed, and he shot you a dark look that you immediately understood, giggling as you made an exaggerated hush motion with your finger over your lips. “But you are…you’re 203B. I was…I was wondering if…if I’devermeetyouuu…” you trailed off. He opened the door and led you into his living room.

You could just barely make out that the layout was a mirror image of yours. “I have to pee so bad!” You announced, and tried to rush towards what you knew to be the bathroom door, but stumbled and banged your knee into the coffee table. “Fuck, that hurrrrt!” You spun on your heel and pointed an accusing finger at 203B, although it was actually pointing a little above him, to the left. “Why’d you do that?!” You demanded to know, and got a snort as an answer.

“Sit,” he said, and he sounded like an Angry Dad, so you did as told. There was a raggedy brown couch beside you that you flopped down onto, and you sunk into the cushions happily. The couple of hours you’d spent lying down in the hallway had been really uncomfortable, and your back was sore. You kicked off your heels one by one, not paying any attention to where they went. One of them safely rolled away, while the other flew into the air and was about to land in a fish bowl on the table behind you, but 203B caught it just in time. He threw it down next to the other one before stomping into his bedroom.

You didn’t think much of where he’d gone, you didn’t think much of anything, really. He could have been a violent, sex-crazed deviant but you weren’t in the right state of mind to care. You were just drunk, sad, and really, really tired.

The next thing you knew, you were woken up by the smell of coffee. You peeked an eye open, wondering where you’d ended up last night, panicking. You saw your shoes on the floor and smoothed a hand down your torso to make sure you were fully clothed, relieved to find that your dress and tights were still on.

Ok, now, where the fuck am I? Music theory textbooks were scattered across the coffee table (you definitely didn’t know anybody in the School of Music), an acoustic guitar was propped up in a chair opposite you (you definitely didn’t know anybody who played guitar), and there were many pictures of the same large group of dudes framed on the wall (who the fuck are those people?) The easiest conclusion you could come to was that some stranger had abducted you and you were going to die.

“Thirsty?” On same wild instinct, you shot up and threw the blanket that had been laid over you in the direction the voice had come from. You looked and it was draped over a figure that could barely be your height, standing stock still.

“Uh? Who are you?” Why did I do that? There was no vocal answer from the other person, they just stuck an arm out and pulled the blanket off of themselves, tossing it over the back of the couch. And when you saw their face, it all came rushing back to you. Seungri leaving you on your doorstep, nobody answering your calls, begging your cat to let you inside, and 203B, himself, coming to your rescue.

He stared at you blankly, and you opened and closed your mouth a few times, struggling with what to say. You didn’t know if you should apologize or thank him first, and there was another part of you that wanted to tell him off for daring to leave that note on your door about being too loud when he had weekly karaoke parties, seemingly with every single person he knew.

“I’m Jihoon,” he said, before you could decide which of the things on your mind was the first priority, “203B,” he clarified, “I made coffee. You can have some and then you can leave.” With nothing more to say, he marched back into his kitchen. You stood up to follow him, and the change in altitude made your mouth water with a desperate need to empty out the contents of your stomach. You rushed into the bathroom and heaved into the toilet for a good ten minutes, making a (false) promise to yourself that you’d never drink tequila again.

When you emerged, a plain white mug with steam rising from the top was sitting on the table, and Jihoon was sitting in the chair with the guitar in his lap, leaned over and scribbling some notes in on a piece of sheet music. You cleared your throat to get his attention, and when he didn’t give any indication that he’d heard, you did it again, louder. This time, when he didn’t look at you or say anything, you knew he was purposely ignoring you.

“Thank you for letting me sleep here,” you started, “and sorry for…everything? Probably waking you up, and throwing the blanket at you, and throwing up in your bathroom.” The clock on the wall read 1 o’clock, and the sun was high in the sky, sending streams of light through the blinds. You saw your phone plugged in on the other side of the couch and picked it up, sure that Seungri would have finally called or texted you back to see if you’d made it to Wendy’s safely. But he hadn’t, you just had thirty missed calls from her and many texts demanding you answer her immediately to let her know you were alive. You swallowed the disappointment down. He must be busy, you thought, something you’d told yourself a thousand times.

You sat down and read through each text from Wendy, the last being that she was coming over with the key and you’d better be there when she arrived. You replied that you were fine, and that you were at your neighbors. She sent back many question marks and exclamation points, but you let those go unanswered.

“So you’re a songwriter?” 203B—Jihoon—nodded tersely. You picked up the mug of coffee and took a sip, just to instantly let it dribble back out of your mouth because it tasted like tar.

“Wow, I never would’ve guessed that a college girl only likes pumpkin spice lattes or some shit,” Jihoon mocked you, earning a frown. But you didn’t say anything back because he’d been nice enough to give you a place to stay overnight, so he was allowed a few jabs.

You put the mug back down and asked, “Do you have any creamer?” He didn’t reward you with a response, just another snort. Your phone pinged with a new text, 203B? The guy who left you the note? Wait so he isn’t an asshole? And you hastily answered, No, he is, just not enough of an asshole to leave a drunk girl outside to fend for herself.

“I know you probably think I’m some saint now for letting you in, but,” you looked up at Jihoon, “do you think you could go? Is someone coming with your key?” You nodded, brushing off his attitude. You’d probably be rude to someone who woke you up at 3:30 A.M. with their blubbering and indirectly forced you to let them sleep over, too. After pulling your shoes back on and unplugging your phone, you walked over to the door. You waited to see if Jihoon would say goodbye, say anything, even a “fuck off” would suffice, but he didn’t so much as spare you another glance.

“I’ll have to make this up to you, somehow,” you said, trying to sound lighthearted. Jihoon finally looked over at you again, his stare deadly, before asserting, “No, you don’t. We don’t have to talk again.”

That stung, not knowing what you’d done to upset him so much, but you knew as much as you wanted to it wasn’t your place to snap back at him. You just bowed your head before disappearing out the door. Wendy arrived ten minutes later and let you into your apartment, where you found your key on your kitchen counter.

“Why didn’t you go home with Seungri?” She wanted to know, but you just shrugged. “Well how was your neighbor?” Another shrug. You didn’t feel like venting to her like you’d planned on doing anymore, you were just tired again. Speaking with someone as cold as Jihoon was exhausting.

You never did divulge the details of that first meeting with Jihoon, not to Wendy and definitely not to Seungri. He did ask what you ended up doing that night, and you told him that your neighbor had let you stay over, and he just got pissed at you for staying in another man’s apartment. It didn’t matter that you’d had nowhere else to go or that you’d slept on the couch, it didn’t matter that if he hadn’t gotten you wasted because he didn’t know how else to deal with you when you were sad than it wouldn’t have happened, and it didn’t matter that he should have taken you back home with him. Logic and sense never did matter much to Seungri.

Your relationship with him was in full meltdown mode by time you had your next encounter with Jihoon, months later. Wendy asked you to go to a party with her; a guy she liked was one of the hosts. With no reason not to go, you agreed. Seungri was “out of town,” which by now you were sure meant he was with another girl, so he couldn’t stop you.

The house was packed, and a wide circle cleared in the middle of the living room for two guys to have a dance battle didn’t help with the space issue. You still stopped to watch, and you were rooting for the one with noodley dark blonde hair who was spinning on his shoulders. People were chanting for him as he went, “Ming-hao! Ming-hao! Ming-hao!”

“Y/N! Come with me to meet Seungcheol!” Wendy insisted, dragging you into the kitchen where some guy with broad shoulders and a thousand watt smile immediately passed you both a red plastic cup full of whatever toxic waste the hosts had to offer for the night. “I call it the DKoncoction,” he told you while Wendy looked over the crowd of people stuffed in there to see if any of them were this mystery man of hers, “no, see, it’s really clever, it’s spelled with my nickname, DK,” he continued, pointing to where he had written the name of the drink on the cup. You gave him a small smile, “It is clever,” you agreed.

“There he is!” And then you were being dragged away again, this time out onto the back porch. There were less people out here, most of them passing a joint around. One of them took a long drag and then started sputtering, tears coming to his eyes, and the others slapped him on the back, laughing. “This is why we can’t let the baby come to the college parties,” a long-haired guy said, “c’mon, Chan, I’m taking you home. Your parents would kill me if they found out I brought you here and let you get high, fuck.”

Finally, there were a few of them sitting on the steps leading down into the backyard, facing away from you. The one in the middle had inky black hair, the one on his left had his hair bleached blonde, and the last of them had a shock of pink on his head. “No, dude, it looks fine, go inside and get your own drink! No one’s gonna say anything to you!” The blonde was trying to reassure the pink-haired one as you and Wendy approached them.

“Uh, Cheolie?” All three heads whipped around when Wendy spoke up, and you took them in one-by-one, left to right. The blonde smiled so wide his eyes practically disappeared from his face, cheekbones pushing them into tiny slits. The black-haired one looked up at Wendy with wide doe eyes, his very pink lips in an “o” as he took in her dress and the nice way she’d done her hair, just for him. Obviously, he was Seungcheol, and you had to admit Wendy hadn’t been lying when she spent hours waxing poetic to you about how cute he was.

Then you turned to the pink-haired one and had to resist the urge to throw your drink in his face. Jihoon rolled his eyes when he noticed it was you, too. “You should lay off the alcohol,” he chided you, “wouldn’t want you getting hammered and not being able to make it back into your own apartment again. I won’t be so generous with my couch this time.”

“But if I get drunk enough, I won’t have to remember how someone threw up cotton candy all over your head,” you sneered back at him, lip curled and all. The other three stared wide-eyed at the two of you, and Seungcheol violently elbowed Jihoon in the side. “What the fuck,” Jihoon snapped at him, and Seungcheol smacked him upside the head. “Don’t be rude to my guests, or you’ll have to go,” he snarled.

“Y/N, you know him? Oh, my god, wait—that’s 203B?” Wendy put two-and-two together, then sent her own glare at Jihoon. In the months since that night, the appreciation for him letting you in had worn off, and resentment for how much of an asshole he’d been had settled in. Wendy shared your feelings. You’d almost baked him a cake or something to “repay him” out of spite, and then realized how stupid it’d be to waste your money on it.

Instead you started leaving more passive aggressive notes, and he responded in kind. You’d stick a note on his door thanking him for the smell of garlic that drifted from his apartment to yours and wouldn’t leave for days, he’d stick a note on your door about how much he loved hearing your cat meow for an hour after you left every day; he’d find a rant about how you never thought you’d love being kept up until 4 a.m. by the sound of his acoustic guitar so much, you’d find his thoughts on how refreshing it was to have to park at the other end of the lot because you had someone over and they parked in “his spot”; then you walked all the way over to his car to tuck a note under his windshield wiper complimenting his cleverness in changing the name of his WiFi to “Faster, Seungri, HARDER” after a night in with your boyfriend, and he slipped one under your door to applaud you on your choice in holiday decor, a pumpkin on the floor that started singing when he walked past it at 5 A.M. and made him spill his coffee all over himself.

“Good point, I’ll need a drink of my own so I can forget the fucked up way you painted your face,” Jihoon pressed on, despite Seungcheol’s threats. He stood up and started making his way back into the house, but stopped as he passed you to add, “That shade of red looks particularly slutty on you,” before he disappeared back into the kitchen. The blonde jumped to his feet and rushed to your side, looking at you with devastatingly sincere eyes, before he said, “I am so sorry, I’ve never seen him act like that towards a stranger?” You laughed and reached up to pat his hair, which seemed a little fried.

“We’re not strangers, and he’s always like that. Don’t worry.” He grinned and finally introduced himself (“My name is Soonyoung, but you can call me Soon,”), and then he took his seat beside Seungcheol again and they both scooted over to make room for you and Wendy.

The lovebirds were cuddled up to each other in no time, whispering and giggling, and you and Soonyoung had to lean forward to talk around them. You told him you lived next door to Jihoon, and he apologized again, this time for an incident in which Jihoon had asked his friends to bring over all their shoes and dirty socks and pile them up in front of your door. He insisted he never would have gotten involved if he knew the neighbor was just “an innocent young lady,” which got him a scoff. That had been in retaliation to the time your bag of garbage ripped open at his doorstep while you were taking it out and you just…kind of…left it there. So the shoes and socks stunt had been more than earned, you had to admit.

“203B didn’t tell you why you were doing that to me?” You double checked, and Soonyoung shook his head no before explaining that he’d never told them why they did any of the shit they did to you, which included: late night musical choruses in the hall, drawing graffiti in the dust on your car, having all twelve of them knock on your door when they passed by, and so, so much more. “If he asked you guys to jump off a bridge, would you?” You mocked him with the cliche line, and Soonyoung shrugged, “Maybe?”

Most of your night was spent with you trading stories of all the ways you’d set out to annoy Jihoon for behind-the-scenes information on all of his actions against you. Soonyoung told you that he had been particularly irritated that night he could hear you and Seungri going at it, which certainly piqued your interest, and then said he figured it was because Jihoon wasn’t getting any. “You’d think he would with his job,” Soonyoung had mumbled to himself, but he moved on to another topic too fast for you to ask what he meant by that.

Wendy and Seungcheol wandered back into the house around 1:30, and she easily talked you into being okay with her bailing on you to stay with him instead of taking you home. “I found someone to give you a ride,” she’d promised, and you trusted her enough to not send you away with an ax murderer. What you weren’t expecting was to walk outside and see Jihoon leaning against the porch railing, straightening up when he saw you and jerking his head towards the cars lining the street as if you should follow him to one of them.

“Wait, what? Are you serious? Wendy was this desperate?” You whined, and Jihoon stopped in his trot down the steps to ask you, “Who else would be taking you back? We live in the same building, should someone go out of their way to get you there?” He had a point, and you didn’t really have the money to be blowing on a cab, so you sucked it up and found yourself crawling into the beat-up old sedan you’d frowned and stuck your tongue out at many times before.

Seungcheol’s place was on the other side of town from your apartment, a good half hour drive, and you felt your soul leave your body at the idea of having to be in such close proximity with Jihoon for so long. Should I say something to him? Small talk? How about this weather and all that shit? You’d opened your mouth to say just about anything to disturb the awkward silence between you, and it was at that exact moment that he leaned forward and turned his radio on. Your ride home was spent listening to Super Junior at max volume, having your seat vibrate along with the bass line in “Sorry Sorry” and every other song on that album. Jihoon softly sang along to every word.

It was just as “Shining Star” was fading out that Jihoon pulled his car into a spot, and you were clambering to get out of it as quickly as possible. In the spot beside his was another car that you’d recognize anywhere—it was Seungri’s. You dug through your purse for your phone just to see that it was completely dead and feel a wave of dread pass through you.

For the last several weeks, any time you were with Seungri, all you’d done was fight. You were so sure that he was seeing other girls, but if you dared to confront him about it, he’d just insist you were being crazy and overbearing. Of course, if he knew you’d gone to a party without his knowledge and then came home with Jihoon, he’d have pitched a fit.

“What are you mumbling about over there?” Jihoon asked, lazily scooting out of the driver’s seat. You hadn’t even realized you’d been anxiously ranting to yourself as you desperately tried to get your phone to turn back on, no matter how dead the screen kept flashing to try to tell you it was.

“You can just…just go in without me, okay?” You tossed at him, admitting defeat and stuffing your phone back into your bag. What am I gonna tell him? You thought, I don’t wanna start another stupid fight. You leaned back against Jihoon’s car and felt exhaustion settle into your bones. It had been a long day, yes, but it was more of an emotional exhaustion. You were so tired of fighting with Seungri, not trusting him, feeling insecure because of him; any smart girl would have broken up with him a long time ago, but he was your first serious boyfriend and there was a small but very stubborn part of you that didn’t want to give up on him.

“Isn’t that your boyfriend’s car?” Jihoon piped up from beside you, sending you flying a few feet away from him and stumbling against the curb. “What the hell! I thought you went inside!” You reached over to shove his shoulder in frustration. He shrugged your hand off and said, “I thought you were gonna start having a panic attack over here, I didn’t want that hanging over my head.”

A hand over your heart confirmed that it was indeed beating quite fast, and you had been breathing heavily as anxiety wormed it’s way into your mind. You looked down at your feet, no intentions of telling Jihoon about your problems.

“Yes, that’s his car,” you answered his earlier question, “and I’m fine, I just. I just wanted a minute to myself.” Despite that, Jihoon didn’t walk away, but leaned against the car beside you instead. He kept watching you and it was making you thoroughly uncomfortable.

“Well I’d rather make sure you get into your apartment alright, like I said, I don’t need anything happening to you and having it weigh on my conscience. Also Wendy would kill me,” he laughed. That much was true, the guilty conscience thing you weren’t so sure about. He did hate you, after all.

You sighed and looked up at your window, seeing the light shining from inside your bedroom, regretting giving Seungri his own key. It was something you’d done in recent months, a gesture of good will, trying to express to him that you wanted to make your relationship work. If you hadn’t given him that damn key, he probably wouldn’t be here right now. Jihoon followed your line of sight and huffed.

“Why are you making your boyfriend wait? Trouble in paradise?” You figured if Jihoon had heard you guys having sex, he had to have heard all of Seungri’s screaming and your crying that had been happening lately, so you ignored that question. He was just rubbing salt in your wounds. You pouted and pointedly looked away, not wanting him to see the hurt on your face.

Unfortunately the only other thing you could really look at was Seungri’s car, and that only reminded you of the fight you’d had inside of it just a few days ago. He didn’t think you were spending enough time with him, but you had classes and a job you needed to go to, and your grades were suffering since you’d often skip studying to see him. That wasn’t enough for him, but nothing ever was.

“Y/N, come on, it’s cold,” Jihoon grouched. You’d almost forgotten he was there. He was right, though, it was too chilly to keep standing in the parking lot in your tiny shorts with no jacket. Better bite the bullet and get this over with, you conceded to yourself. Jihoon was already halfway to the stairwell door, and you jogged over to catch up with him. He held the door open and let you through first, and stayed behind you no matter how slowly you trudged up the stairs.

“Seriously, why aren’t you more excited to see your boyfriend?” Jihoon asked again, the same question with different words. You had to remind yourself that under no circumstances could you disclose personal details about your life to Jihoon. He’d find some way to use them against you next time you did something that aggravated him.

“Why do you keep saying it like that, ‘your boyfriend’? Like they’re dirty words?” You asked, instead of telling him the truth. You figured he’d say something rude and nasty, like he just had a hard time understanding how any guy could want to date you or something like that. But he was silent. You were surprised he wouldn’t jump at the chance to insult you for the thousandth time. You stopped at the landing that exited to your hall and turned to look at him a few steps below you—saw him gnawing at his bottom lip, wringing his hands together, eyes cast to the side. You were about to ask him what was wrong, when he spoke up quietly,

“I’m just wondering what kind of guy he has to be to be dating you.” You could have pulled out a snappy comeback, but you weren’t really up to it. It relieved you that he didn’t have anything more serious to say. You had enough on your plate right now, you didn’t need Jihoon fucking up the rival dynamic that you two had going on; it was probably the most consistent relationship you had in your life at the moment. You just nodded down at him, then pushed the door open that continued the path to your doom.

It was almost 2 A.M. On any other night, your hall should have been empty. But there stood Seungri, leaned against your door and tapping violently at his phone screen. His head shot up when the door slammed closed behind you and Jihoon, and his hard gaze settled on the pair of you watching him. Your eyes were wide and you weren’t proud of your hands shaking a little bit; you weren’t scared of Seungri. He’d never given you any reason to be. You just knew how this must have looked to him, and you’d never convince him that it was anything other than his first assumption.

“Y/N, move,” Jihoon groaned, stuck between your back and the door, and put a hand on your arm to nudge you out of the way. You allowed yourself to be pushed to the side some, but didn’t take any steps forward. If looks could kill, you and Jihoon would be long gone.

“What the hell is going on?” Seungri spat as Jihoon approached him, and from where you were with the soles of your shoes stuck to the floor, you only saw Jihoon shake his head. He’d probably rolled his eyes at Seungri, which would just piss him off more. But your boyfriend was more interested in what you were doing and what you had to say, so he stormed towards you, shoulder checking Jihoon as they passed each other and he finally got to his door.

“I called you like fifty times! I sent you a hundred texts! Where have you been?!” Seungri demanded to know, coming up close to you and wrapping his hand tight around your elbow. You just gulped and kept staring up at him. I’m not scared of him, you tried to convince yourself. Seungri had never hit you, and he never would, but he could be an intimidating presence. Just his hand on your elbow was imposing, dominating, making you feel small beneath him.

“I went to a party with Wendy,” you said meekly, hoping to avoid a real blowout, but Seungri just barked out a laugh.

“Right, you went to a party with her but ended up coming home with another guy? That makes a lot of sense, Y/N,” he growled. You thought you knew your boyfriend pretty well, but you’d really never figured out how to diffuse these situations and calm him down. No methods that you’d use on any other person ever seemed to work with him; begging him to believe you, trying to convince him with the truth, trying to convince him with lies when that didn’t work. All you could ever really do was let him go off on you until he wore himself out. You were about to let him drag you into your apartment to do just that when you suddenly heard,

“I’m her neighbor. I was just taking her home.” You really thought Jihoon had disappeared into his place already, but he was just standing there with his key hanging out of the door, watching the scene unfold in front of him. He was too far away for you to see the expression on his face, but you were sure he was judging you for letting Seungri walk all over you. You didn’t need his pity, really didn’t want to have him trying to stand up for you, but if it worked you’d be grateful. You looked away from Jihoon to see if it did, and you weren’t surprised to see Seungri only looked angrier.

“Are you kidding me? I fucking knew it, I know you’ve wanted to fuck him ever since you moved in here, haven’t you? Always playing your stupid games with him?” Seungri dropped your arm and turned away, setting his sights back on Jihoon, “And you can’t stay away from another man’s girlfriend, fucking prick.”

“Trust me, I try to stay away from her as much as possible,” Jihoon corrected him, and your temper flared at the audacity he had to say something like that right now, “She’s pretty annoying to have next door, but the worst part is having a guy like you around.” The hall went dead silent, there wasn’t so much as a breath to be heard. It had been tense already, but now it felt like you and Jihoon had pressed as much as you could, and the wire that was Seungri’s patience was about to snap.

“What did you just fucking say?” Jihoon moved to face Seungri fully, shoulders back and jaw locked. Your boyfriend’s slow steps in his direction almost seemed like he was stalking prey, but someone who had themselves opened up to a fight could not be hunted.

Jihoon didn’t seem worried, despite the good four inches and several pounds the other guy had on him. You didn’t know if he could hold his own in a fight, but you weren’t interested in waiting to find out. You’d seen Seungri knock a couple of guys out at a club before and didn’t want to see that happen to your neighbor, no matter how many irritating things he’d done to you.

“Seungri, let’s just go inside and talk, please,” you tried, “Jihoon didn’t do anything wrong, he was just giving me a ride!” Seungri laughed, and the sound made your skin crawl. It was so different from when you’d first met, when you’d tell a dumb joke and he’d laugh and it was like music to your ears. He wasn’t the same person you’d fallen for, he hadn’t been for a long time…or maybe that had never been the real him to begin with.

“Baby, of course we can go inside and talk,” Seungri said, and you felt a split second of relief, “right after I finish beating this piece of shit bloody.” He stopped within a foot of Jihoon, looking down at him over his nose, challenging him to make the first move. It shocked you to see how comfortable Seungri was playing such an antagonistic role, immediately resorting to violence.

Why am I with him? You didn’t have any answers left to that question. Jihoon hummed out a, “Well?” That was the only cue Seungri needed.

One second you saw him rearing back, fist ready and swinging right towards Jihoon’s face; the next you were grabbing Seungri’s arm and spinning him in your direction, ducking to miss his punch before straightening to give him one of your own. He instantly fell to his knees, cradling his jaw. Holy shit, what did I just do—you hadn’t even realized you’d rushed down the hall to stop him until it had already happened. Seungri was still holding his face as if you’d done any real damage; you were sure it didn’t feel too good, but you weren’t that strong. If his wide eyes and complete silence were any indication, his reaction was out of shock more than anything else. It had the same effect on Jihoon, who didn’t move or say a word.

You could have felt any number of emotions at that moment, between fear and anger and confusion and uncertainty, but instead you just felt…you just felt better. After almost two years together, you’d finally found the one way to make him shut up. It felt like the weight of Seungri and this entire toxic relationship had been shed from your shoulders. There was only one thing left for you to do.

You shook out your fist deliberately; it didn’t really hurt, but it was worth it for show. Jihoon pressed himself back against the door to let you saunter up to where Seungri remained kneeling on the ground. You bent down to his level and cocked your head to the side, examining him, reaching out to gently move his hand away from his face. There would definitely be a touch of a bruise there, and you couldn’t bury the swell of pride in your chest or hide the way your lips tilted into a satisfied grin.

“What the fuck, Y/N, why’d you do that?” He finally spoke, shuffling backwards and out of your reach. You wouldn’t be rewarding him with an answer, just moved closer to him again and shoved your hand into the pocket of his hoodie before he could stop you. It only took a second to feel the metal, and then you were pulling out the key you’d given him not that long ago.

“I’ll be taking this back,” you affirmed, “and you can leave now. Don’t come back, please.” You hopped back onto your feet and reached out to your door, smiling to hear Twinkie meow from the other side of it. Glancing at Jihoon, you only got the sight of his back as he pushed his door open, ready to get away from this drama. You couldn’t blame him, but wished he’d thank you for stopping his face from being beaten in.

Seungri scrambled to his feet and hurried to your side, but he continued to have nothing worthwhile to say, only able to stutter out halfhearted apologies in between sudden manic rants about how Jihoon had it coming, how could you do this to him, who did you think you were, blah blah blah. None of it could touch you. You were high off of this freedom from him.

“Will you fucking stop and just listen to me for once!” Seungri snapped as you were opening your door, and he grabbed the side of it to keep it from opening just that little bit further it had to go before you could slip inside. You felt the brush of your cat’s tail as she ran out the door and into the hall, but you were focused on Seungri. This is my only chance to speak my peace.

“Listen to you for once? Listen to you for once?! I’m done listening to you Seungri, all I ever fucking do is listen to you! Listen to you tell me how paranoid I am, listen to you tell me you’re just busy with work, listen to you tell me you love me before you go fuck some other girl. I can smell someone else’s perfume on you right now, asshole! I’ve known for a long time, I’m just someone you like to keep around, someone who’d always be there if you couldn’t find anyone else to hook up with, right? Well I’m fucking done being that, I’m done with you, you can go fuck yourself.” You’d never seen your boyfriend—ex-boyfriend—run away from a fight so fast before. He was already slamming the door to the stairwell shut behind him before you had even caught your breath from that tirade. Maybe that’s why he’d always shut you down when you tried to be honest or reason with him—he just couldn’t handle the truth.

You relaxed against your door frame, eyes shut and letting out the deep breath you’d been holding since you first pulled into the parking lot and saw Seungri’s car. God, it was creeping on 3 a.m. now, and there was a heavy blanket of fatigue draped over you. Just as you were about to roll into your entryway and shut your door on this long night, you heard a cough from across the hall. Jihoon was still standing there in his doorway, but now had an armful of cat rubbing underneath his chin and leaving gifts of fur stuck to his jacket.

“It tried to run in here,” he informed you, and you could only say, “Her name is Twinkie.” He shrugged as he came forward and moved her into your arms, handling her more lightly than you’d have thought he would. Instead of immediately retreating into his apartment like you expected, Jihoon stood there in your space for a beat longer, looking you straight in the eye. Then he took one small step back before he asked, “Why did you do that?”

“Do what?” You honestly didn’t know what he meant—why did you break up with a guy who he knew was a piece of shit? There were a million reasons why you’d done that.

Jihoon groaned and looked away from you before he said, “You should have let him hit me. I could have taken him.” To say you were surprised would be an understatement; you couldn’t believe that Jihoon could slip so easily into this testosterone-fueled neanderthal act after everything that had just happened. He’d been witness to you being a total badass, and all he cared about was that he hadn’t gotten a punch in himself.

“Is that a joke? Sorry, how dare I stand up for myself instead of letting the big strong men duke it out for me,” you mocked him, “Wow, Jihoon, is your masculinity really that fragile?” He bristled at that, puffing out his chest and trying to make himself seem larger than he was. You gave him a dismissive laugh.

“Why are you acting like I’m an asshole for wanting to defend you,” he tried, and you shifted Twinkie in your arms to get a better hold on her before facing Jihoon to say, “You weren’t defending me, that was all about you, how could you call that defending me when you couldn’t even do it without getting an insult in? ‘She’s pretty annoying to have next door’? It’s not the worst thing you’ve said, but it definitely wasn’t you defending me.” Jihoon sputtered, arms flailing, trying to wrap his head around what you were saying. It was so typical man of him to try and reframe his own shit as him trying to “defend your honor.”

“Thank you for the ride home, and you’re welcome for not letting him punch a hole through your head,” you said, tone final, “I’m going to sleep. Don’t worry, as always, I know this doesn’t make us friends now or anything. Good night, Jihoon.” You stepped inside and promptly shut your door in your neighbor’s face. If he had anything else to say, you didn’t care to hear it.

You were shocked you made it to your room with how tired you were, and you immediately flicked off the light that Seungri had left on before collapsing onto your bed. Trying to process everything that had happened that night was impossible—your head was swarmed by a thousand different thoughts. You wondered how you’d start removing all evidence of your ex from your life in the morning, and you wondered if Wendy finally hooked up with Seungcheol, and you wondered if Seungri even cared that you’d broken up with him, and you wondered what the hell was in that DKoncoction, and you wondered why Seungri had even been waiting at your apartment in the first place, and you wondered if Minghao had won that dance battle.

But the last thought you had before you fell asleep was that you were done with this silly battle you had going on with 203B. You were 20 years old, had just ended your first serious relationship of almost two years, had a horrible job and schoolwork that you needed to focus on. You figured it was time you did some growing up, and not hanging a banner over his door that read “LOSER” like you’d been planning to do for a few days was how you were going to start. You didn’t need that relationship with Jihoon any more than you needed your relationship with Seungri—you only needed yourself.

So much for only needing myself, you thought as you turned the L’Amourose over and over in your hands. You’d been home for a couple of hours, the sun was setting, your pants had been flung over to the other side of the room, but you’d yet to turn the vibrator on and get to business. Your body was still buzzing with an inexplicable need, but you couldn’t get Jihoon’s face out of your head.

The long drive home had given you time to rethink his behavior at the shop, but you were still convinced he’d just been playing you for his own gain, so you decided you’d rather not get off to thoughts of all the dirty nasty hot…hot hot hot stuff he’d said. Too bad you didn’t have any other material stocked in your brain to tap into and get yourself going.

With a huff, you placed the L’Amourose upright on your bedstand and wandered out of your room, to your kitchen where you’d deposited your purse on the counter. Twinkie was laying beside it, and you gracelessly shoved her onto the floor before grabbing your bag and moving over to your couch. She rejoined you there, curling up beside you as you found your phone inside it and checked your texts. Wendy had replied to you telling her to stay away with a simple ;) that you’d have to give her a good smack for whenever you next saw her.

That was the only new message you had, which didn’t surprise you. A lot of your friendships had ended with the end of your relationship. You hadn’t realized until most of the people you socialized with stopped talking to you that you’d centered your whole life around Seungri.

Your life now had less people in it, but you knew you were better off. You had Wendy, and by extension you had Seungcheol, and a few of his friends from that dumb party way back when that you talked to every now and again. Sure, it was a little awkward when they were all at Jihoon’s place for their usual get-togethers and you had to pretend all but one of your friends was not a mere thirty seconds away from you, but you were used to it now. If you just so happened to be coming out or going into your apartment as they were leaving his, you knew not to acknowledge them until he had his door shut. He knew you were friends with them, but ignoring it made the nature of your relationship with him that much easier to swallow.

And your relationship with him was—well, it was nonexistent. You’d kept your vow to yourself to stop your rivalry, lining your door so that he wouldn’t hear Twinkie meowing and making sure none of your visitors parked in his spot, and the one other time your trash had busted open in front of his door, you gagged through the cleanup instead of leaving it there for him to deal with. For his part, there were no smells coming from his place to yours and he was rarely up playing guitar at 4 a.m. anymore, usually he’d stop around 1, at least. His friends still knocked on your door when they passed, but that was usually because they wanted to say hi and get some Twinkie pets in, or they just felt like annoying you for their own amusement.

You and Jihoon very, very rarely spoke. If you ran into each other in the parking lot or the staircase or the hall, some nods and brief hello’s were all that passed between you both. At times like those it was like your war with him, the night you stayed over, and that night with Seungri had never happened. Of course, you still thought about it all sometimes, on your lonelier, more pensive nights. Maybe if you had never left that note about him being a hypocrite on his door, you two would be friends and you’d never have to go more than a few steps across the hall to find someone to keep you company. It was too bad you’d fucked it up like that.

You found yourself scrolling through Twitter, shamelessly checking up on fansites of the groups you liked, hoping you’d find a good picture to shape a fantasy around so you could finally start masturbating. Usually you could think up an elaborate scene with one of the guys from BTS or Got7 or EXO, but every time you blinked, all you saw was Jihoon with his lip tucked between his teeth, watching you with those eyes like he’d already imagined getting you naked and panting for him a dozen times over. Thinking of all the times he must have given that look to other women to wring as much money out of them as possible made you cringe, but you also found yourself imagining him flushed, panting, squeezing his eyes shut together from above you as he came…

“Fuck it,” you blurted out at nobody, at yourself, at Twinkie, maybe. Back in your room, you slipped your underwear off and crawled under the covers. You swiped a fingertip between your folds, pleased that you were still soaking down there, then grabbed the L’Amourose and placed the tip of it against your clit.

Ok, this is happening, this is happening, this is happening, you teased it up and down your slit, then held it so it’s entire length was pressed against you, rolling to get a thorough coating of your juices on it. When you were finally satisfied with that, you pushed the tip against your opening, and poised one finger over the button to start the vibrations.

Because you’re such a little tease you can’t help but tease even yourself, right? His words echoed in your mind. Those dirty nasty hot, hot hot hot words.

You pressed the button.

And nothing happened. No soft buzz filled the air, no tingles erupted across every inch of your cunt, your hand wrapped around the toy didn’t vibrate along with it. You were frozen, all of the tightly wound anticipation suddenly unraveling, leaving you grasping at straws, unsure of what to do. This can’t be happening, you thought, I need to have an orgasm, I’m actually going to die if I don’t have an orgasm tonight. You pressed the button again and again and again, each time letting your hopes up for just a second only for them to come down crashing and burning over and over. Eventually you kicked your comforter off and brought the L’Amourose up to your face to inspect it more closely, and with it at eye level kept pressing the button, desperate for the toy to come to life. It just sat quietly in your hands, completely dead.

You didn’t know exactly what your plan was when you hopped out of bed and frantically pulled on a loose pair of sweatpants that had been laying on the floor, when you found yourself jogging into your living room and to your front door, when you were suddenly pounding your knuckles on the door marked with the characters 2-0-3-B. You were so desperate. It was only when the door was swinging open that you realized you still had your left hand wrapped tight around the sticky L’Amourose.

Jihoon looked tired, but as each second passed and he continued to process the scene before him, the exhaustion on his face was replaced by sheer panic and bewilderment. He opened his mouth to say god knows what, but before he could get any words out you were pressing your empty palm to his chest to push him back into his entryway, following close to him and kicking his door shut behind you.

You hadn’t been in this apartment in almost two years, and a quick glance around proved that little had changed. The fish bowl was gone and there weren’t any textbooks on the coffee table, but there were more pictures hung up on the wall and now a row of guitars hanging up opposite of them. You shook yourself out of that line of thought, none of that mattered right now—right now all that mattered was getting off.

“Ok, Woozi,” you sneered, “I bought this fucking hundred dollar dick because of you, but it’s not fucking working and I’m a little bit pissed off and worked up over it, if you can’t tell.” There was no way he couldn’t tell, with your panting and burning cheeks and all. You slapped the L’Amourose down onto the coffee table.

“Well? You can either make it work or we have to figure something else out right now,” you hissed, not even thinking about the implication of your words. Jihoon took a cautious step forward, and you watched his mouth open and close and open and close and open and close like there weren’t any words left in his head for speaking, no matter how much he wanted to. He reached a hand out to pick the toy up, but stopped halfway and let it fall back to his side.

“It’s…It’s…” He started, and he was biting his fucking lip again, and you felt yourself ache at how red and swollen they looked. “Were you already using it?” He asked instead of continuing whatever he’d begun saying before, and the question confused you for a moment before you followed his laser focused gaze back down to the toy, and took in just how wet and gleaming it looked, coated with your arousal.

Your jaw dropped open, and you…you should have been embarrassed. I should be grabbing that thing and running away, you agreed with yourself. But instead, the sight of Jihoon looking down at the vibrator that you’d been rubbing up and down your pussy lips, that was literally shining from your wetness, made a fire roar to life in the pit of your stomach.

“Jihoon,” you sighed, and felt your fingers tremble with a need to touch him—to get wrapped up in his hair, to trace his sharp jawline, to drift down his abdomen and into his pants so they could curl around his…you shook your head to dislodge those thoughts from your brain. You’d only come here so that he could get this toy working again, then you’d be back in bed with it in no time, definitely not thinking about him. He was still staring down at it when you grabbed the vibrator and hurried to his kitchen, ripping a dozen paper towels off the roll on his counter and beginning to wipe it down.

“It won’t turn on, and I don’t know why, I mean, it was working at the shop? I haven’t done anything to it since then, I had just taken it out of the box and was ready to use it, and no matter how many times I pressed the button nothing fucking happened, so I decided to—” You were abruptly stopped by the feeling of a hand grabbing your shoulder from behind, and you froze.

Jihoon hadn’t touched you since that night you were drunk and he had to get you into his place. You felt a chip of the wall you’d built up around your heart ages ago slowly, gently drift away as a long and jagged crack emerged.

“Shh, Y/N,” he cooed, “don’t be so nervous, it’s just me. Relax,” and then he had his hands cupping both your shoulders, deliberately pressing the heel of them into your tightly wound muscles. You couldn’t help the groan that escaped your lips and echoed through his living space.

“You want to get off so badly, don’t you,” Jihoon said, his voice soft while his touch was anything but, “you know, these are thin walls. I can hear everything—I hear you singing off-key in the shower, I hear you screaming at scary movies, I hear you laughing when someone tells a stupid joke, I hear you talking to your cat when you’re lonely…and I used to hear those pretty sighs and moans when you’d come. I’ve really missed that sound. I was looking forward to hearing it again tonight, I was kind of relieved when I realized that was you at work.”

Somehow, even though you’d always complained about hearing things from Jihoon’s apartment, the implications of him hearing everything from yours had never really crossed your mind. Though you couldn’t say you were surprised, maybe you’d have felt more humiliated about it if Jihoon’s massage didn’t feel so good, didn’t have you almost on your knees in pleasure.

“I don’t think the vibrator is gonna work,” he said off-handedly, a throwaway comment, “it has an 18-month warranty, don’t worry about that, but…if you still want to get off…obviously the real thing would get the job done better, don’t you think?” You were too far gone to protest, to think of all the hundreds of ways this could go wrong, to care that all the hard work you’d been doing avoiding him and keeping your guard up for the past couple of years was for naught.

Jihoon’s touch slipped from your shoulders, his fingers grazing your spine through your thin t-shirt and making your back arch, before each hand took a firm hold of either side of your hips and was spinning you around to face him. The vibrator fell to the tiled floor with a dull thud, but as you finally felt those plush, swollen lips of Jihoon’s press urgently against yours, that was the furthest thing from your mind.

You grabbed the collar of his sweater and tried to pull him closer, longing to feel every inch of him against you. He had the same idea, shifting to wrap his arms tight around your waist. It was unclear where your body ended and his began, and you wouldn’t have had it any other way. Jihoon pulled his face away from yours for just a moment before he was diving back in to latch his teeth onto your bottom lip, and you opened your eyes wide to see him watching you intently, gaze dark and hooded. You gasped at the intensity of his stare, giving him the perfect opportunity to slip his tongue into your mouth.

Your eyelids gently drifted shut again at the sensation of his tongue brushing against yours, and you lightly pressed back before he retreated to tilt his head a different way, then dive back in. This time your tongue reached in first, slowly and gently pressing against his, and when you withdrew you felt his lips chase after yours. You let a soft giggle pass between you, and felt him shiver as your breath fanned out across his face.

“Let me take you to my room,” Jihoon purred, his fingers rubbing small circles into your sides, his eyes never once leaving yours as you peered up at from beneath your lashes, “please, let me make you feel good.”

How could you say no to him? All it took was the slightest incline of your head before Jihoon was unwrapping himself from around you, grabbing your wrist and dragging you out of the kitchen, past the living room, through his wide open bedroom door and into what was new territory for you. You didn’t have the time or interest to look around and inspect the interior, as Jihoon was already leading you on to his bed and pressing you back against his dark sheets.

When he crawled over you, he had already discarded his sweater. Of course, Jihoon was on the shorter side, but you could see now that his body was sturdy and firm despite that. You reached up to press your palms against his chest, and then let the fingertips of one of your hands drift gently downward, across his abdominal muscles that twitched beneath them.

“What do you think?” He asked, and if the crooked smirk on his face was any indicator, he already knew the answer to that question. Still, you told him, “I like what I see.” Inflating his ego was worth it to see the proud light flash in his eyes.

Your hand stopped at his waistline, and Jihoon took the next step, dipping back in to press more kisses to your jaw and neck as his own hands fiddled with the hem of your t-shirt. It was just as his tongue dipped in to taste the skin stretched across your collar bone that his fingers finally danced up underneath your clothes, teasing touches on your stomach until one of his hands cupped a breast at last. You thanked god that you never wore a bra at home.

“Let’s get this off,” Jihoon hummed against your skin before he sat back on his heels, giving you space to tear your shirt up over your head and fling it onto his floor. He didn’t waste a second, diving in and wrapping his lips around one of your nipples as he pinched the other between his fingers. You were breathless—it had been so fucking long since a man touched you like this, you’d almost forgotten how good it felt to let someone else get their hands and mouth on you.

As Jihoon gave your nipple a hard suck, you pressed both of your fingers into his hair, massaging his scalp with your nails in gratitude. He immediately rutted against your thigh, letting you feel his erection for the first time. The hard heat of it through his jeans made your mouth water. You could have laid there for hours with his tongue and fingers worshiping your chest, but you were overwhelmed by the need to get your eyes and hands on his cock. When he parted from your chest with a dramatic, wet pop! you grabbed his shoulders to push him away, only far enough so you could move onto your knees.

“What is it, baby?” Jihoon asked carefully, noticing the frantic look in your eye, instantly worrying that he’d done something wrong, pushed you too far. The idea of making you uncomfortable and upsetting you physically hurt him.

But you quelled his concerns with your hands on his waist, undoing his belt and slipping the leather from it’s loops so you could toss it aside and get to his button and zipper. Jihoon laughed as your hands fumbled with them, shaking hard with desire and rust since it’d been so long since they’d done this, and even some stifled nerves. You’d be an idiot to not be nervous right now—you’d just discovered that Jihoon was some sort of hot sex god and didn’t want to leave him disappointed in what you could do.

Jihoon did his best to ease your apprehension by reaching down and undoing the button and zipper himself with his steady hands over your own, keeping his eyes locked with yours. There was something so intimate about it, more intimate than making out and him slobbering all over your boobs, more intimate than everything you were getting ready to do. This is what made you blush, and your blush is what made Jihoon’s heart lurch in his chest.

“Are you sure you want to do this with me, Y/N?” He asked you. He wanted the answer to be “yes” so badly, but if it was no, he’d have to let you leave, and he’d have to be enough of a gentleman to leave you alone after that, for good this time. You deserved that much from him. But you couldn’t imagine saying anything but “yes.” God, you’d wanted this for so long.

You’d wanted him for so long.

“I wouldn’t leave this bed and stop doing this with you even if this building caught on fire right now,” you offered, before giving his jeans and briefs a sharp tug down to his knees. You’d never felt so empty between your legs as you did when you first laid your eyes on Jihoon’s cock; for such a compact man, that part of him was anything but. The length was decent, but it was the girth that made a whine bubble up from your throat. You wrapped your middle finger and thumb around him, and as he bucked into your hand, you considered the inch that kept them from touching each other.

“Please, please fucking move your hand,” Jihoon gasped, and you realized you’d been been just staring at him for several moments now. You didn’t need to be told twice, letting the rest of your fingers take hold and giving his cock a single dry jerk. You noticed him wince, and removed yourself from him so that you could grab his hands that were pressed tightly to his thighs.

“Jihoonie,” you sighed, “take my pants off, will you?” He did as asked, slipping your sweatpants off and then watching in awe as your spread yourself out for him. You could have sworn you saw a little drool dribbling out from his dropped jaw.

“Silly Jihoonie,” you purred, and slid one of your hands up your thigh before settling it against your folds, scooping up a generous amount of your juices, “later we’ll have to put your mouth to better use than that.” He slowly shut it, a touch embarrassed, but that was washed away the moment you wrapped your hand back around his cock, stroking it up and back down again to coat it with your wetness. A moan ripped out of him and made the heat at your core flare.

You gave him a few more jerks, then rolled your palm across his tip. He immediately fell forward, bracing himself with his hands on either side of your waist, mouth wide open in a silent gasp. Your other handed drifted down without him noticing and he whimpered when you suddenly grabbed his balls, squeezing them gently.

“Oh, fuck, fuck, Y/N, fuck,” he chanted, and you were sure you could feel yourself leaking onto his sheets. His cock felt so smooth and heavy in your hands, and as much as that was a feeling you had missed, there was a different feeling you’d been craving so, so much more. You tugged once with both of your hands, and he reached down to stop you right before you could stop yourself.

“Wait, wait, I want to fuck you, I need to cum with my cock buried inside of you,” he hummed the magic words. You let go of him and watched with bated breath as he scooted forward on his knees, letting yourself be manhandled so he could place the back of your thighs over the top of his, then wrapped your legs around him, heels pressing against his back, pressing him closer.

Jihoon leaned over to grab a tiny foil packet from his nightstand, and god, you were going to fucking melt all over his bed if he didn’t get inside of you already. When he finally had the condom on, Jihoon wrapped his own hand around the base of his cock and tentatively swiped it through your slit; just the brush of his tip on your clit made your whole body twitch, made you mewl.

“Mmm, that’s what I like to hear,” he whispered, and did it again, but this time deliberately pressed the head of his cock hard against your clit.

“Oh, god, Jihoon! Just put it in me, please, please please please, fill me up, I need to come, baby, I need you to make me come,” you begged him, eyes screwed shut, fingers clenching and unclenching against thin air. He snickered, and you thought he’d do as you asked when you felt him move again, but then he was slapping his length against your clit like a fucking tease. God, you could have cum right then and there, from that alone. It would have been the most unsatisfying orgasm of your life, and you were so, so fucking close to it, tears were already forming at the corners of your eyes.

“You really want it, Y/N? You want my cock that bad?” Jihoon growled, and just as you were screaming out a ‘yes!’ he took mercy on you and shoved himself balls deep into your pussy. Only half of the word got out before your breath was sucked out of your body, and you choked on thin air. Your eyes felt like they’d fall right of your head with how wide they opened, and you took in the beautiful sight of Jihoon on top of you.

Your imagination could never come up with something half as good as the real thing—a flush had spread from his face, down his neck, across his shoulders and chest; a layer of sweat had built up on his brow, and he had his eyelids screwed tight together from all his effort not to instantly cum.

You had been soaking for hours, but it had been so long since anything was inside of you and Jihoon was so wide that the light sting was inevitable. You hissed as he slowly drug his cock out of you, then slammed it back in. Your breasts shook with the force of it, and he took it upon himself to grab and squeeze one of them as he started a slow, steady rhythm of thrusts. You put your hands on his shoulders to brace yourself.

“I’ve been hard ever since I saw that was you at the shop,” Jihoon spoke up through gritted teeth, “I’d been ignoring how bad I’ve wanted you for years, and there you were, looking so naive and innocent trying to buy a fucking sex toy,” his statement came with a particularly hard thrust that made you cry out and clench tightly around him, “it was my every wet fucking dream come true.”

Jihoon opened his eyes to stare down at you, and you felt like you might dissolve from the pressure of the raw want they poured into yours. You’d never been able to read him very well, but now he was completely open to you, and you could see through his cold exterior to the simple, untainted affection he must have been harboring for you for awhile now. You felt a whole chunk of that wall around your heart ripped away.

You felt Jihoon’s touch on the outside of one of your knees, and then his hand was skimming up your thigh and around your hip until it dipped down to press a thumb to your clit. You ground down against it, inadvertently pressing more of his cock into you, and his tip scraped lightly against your g-spot. “Oh, fuck,” you wailed, and when he thrust back into you, you did it again, and this time he slanted his hips just so to stab at it again, but he didn’t pull out.

Now he stilled to let you rotate your hips, lips trembling around broken gasps as his cock brushed against your g-spot over and over and his thumb smoothed measured circles into your clit. You felt the pressure in the pit of your stomach bubbling up, past your belly button, dancing through your ribs, until it pressed desperately against your lungs. Just before you could burst, you wrapped your hands around the back of Jihoon’s neck and pulled him down with all the force you could muster—you slotted your lips over his and screamed into his mouth as you came. Jihoon started moving his hips again, and your orgasm faded only some before roaring back to life when his pace became frantic, his thrusts wicked and brutish, making his balls smack against your ass.

“C-Come for me, come for…come for me, Jihoonie,” you sighed against him, barely able to keep your eyes open, stars dancing behind their lids and beckoning you to drift into the most perfect of post-orgasmic naps, but you couldn’t do so until Jihoon had gotten his own release. You focused enough to suck that sinful bottom lip between yours, and clenched around him once, twice, a hard third time before Jihoon’s body went rigid on top of you. An animalistic groan erupted from him and bounced off the walls, the last thing you heard before you slipped into unconsciousness.

“’Cause tonight I’m making deals with the devil, and I know it’s gonna get me in trouble, just as long as you know you got me,” and Ariana Grande was the first thing you heard when you came back to the land of the living. Well, not exactly Ariana Grande, but Jihoon softly singing the song of hers that had been playing when you first set foot in Bits & Pieces Boutique. That felt like years ago after everything you’d just been through.

A soft touch on your thigh shocked you, but you controlled your body and didn’t jump away from what you could immediately tell was Jihoon’s hand rubbing up and down. You peeked an eye open and, god help you, you’d never seen anything more beautiful than Jihoon sat up against his headboard, scrolling through whatever on his phone with one hand while keeping the other protectively on you, the late evening sun spilling through his window and casting the most beautiful light against his soft, pale skin. His hair was going in a thousand different directions, his lips bruised, and he couldn’t have looked any better if he tried.

“I’ve been there all night, I’ve been there all day, and boy, got me walkin’ side to side,” he continued. You didn’t want him to stop, so you laid there silently, afraid to breathe lest he be alerted that you were awake, until he finished the song. And when he did he locked his phone and looked right down at you before he said, “You must have liked my singing, then.”

You gave him a girlish giggle, not physically capable of hiding the silly smile that stretched across your face. You went to sit up, but your arms were wobbly beneath your weight and you couldn’t manage it. Jihoon shook his head at you, turning and pressing your shoulders so you’d lay back back down, then petting your hair as you rested against one of his pillows. You noticed he’d put his briefs back on and you were a little disappointed.

“Just rest, that took a lot out of you,” Jihoon bragged, with a comically cocky grin, but instead of irritating you, it filled you with fondness. “I have to clean myself up,” you insisted, but Jihoon reached down and grabbed a wet washcloth off the floor before he reassured you, “I took care of you.”

He chose his words carefully, and you knew they were deliberate. You gulped down the rush of emotions that threatened to spill over. I took care of you. You’d never allowed yourself to think about it before, but he’d taken care of you so many times already.

“Thank you,” you whispered, and you meant it for everything. For putting that letter up on your door before you’d even met, for letting you into his apartment that night you were drunk, for plotting all those stupid ways to get back at you for all the stupid ways you were always getting back at him, for being at that party and taking you home and standing up for you against Seungri, for backing off and leaving you alone when he knew you needed it. For suggesting that stupid, beautiful vibrator that didn’t even work and brought you right to him. You didn’t say that it was for all of those things, but Jihoon knew, you were sure of it.

He shifted to lay beside you, and you rolled over to rest your head against his bicep and throw your arm across his chest. “You’re welcome,” he finally replied, “and thank you, too.” You didn’t ask for what—you knew what he meant, as well. The pair of you laid in silence for a few minutes, and Jihoon lifted the arm you weren’t laying on to reach his hand out to yours.

As you stared at your fingers and the way they fit so comfortably in between his, you suddenly remembered something that Seungri had said the night that you broke up with him: he believed you had wanted to fuck Jihoon all along. And maybe that was true, he was a good looking guy, after all…but ever since that first letter, you’d always wanted just a little more from him. At first, it was some respect. Then it was friendship, and a little over an hour ago, it had been sex.

You could feel the wall around your heart imploding and Jihoon was forcing his way inside, by way of squeezing your hand to break you out of your reverie and sending you a shy smile when you looked up at him. Yes, this was the man you’d wanted for a long time.

And as the dust settled, you hoped that maybe now, you could finally have him.

#woozi smut #jihoon smut #seventeen smut #kpop smut #woozi #seventeen #uhhh #seventeen scenarios #woozi scenarios #?????#i wrote this #hahahahahahha someone pls #read this n validate me #it took me like a month and a half to write this #and i probably nvr would have finished it if it weren't for #my angel of a bff breathing down my neck over it for weeks #i just want someone to like it :(

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theliteraturenerd · 7 years

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25 MOTIVATIONAL THOUGHTS FOR WRITERS by Chuck Wendig

1. YOU ARE THE GOD OF THIS PLACE

The blank page is your world. You choose what goes into it. Anything at all. Upend the frothy cup that is your heart and see what spills out. Murder plots. Train crashes. Pterodactyl love interests. Vampire threesomes. Housewife bondage. Demon spies! Cake heists! Suburban ennui! You can destroy people. You can build things. You can create love, foster hate, foment rage, invoke sorrow. Anything you want in any order you care to present it. This is your story. This is your jam.

2. INFINITE POWER, ZERO RESPONSIBILITY

Not only are you god of this place, but you have none of the responsibility divine beings are supposed to possess. You have literally no responsibility to anyone but yourself — you’re like a chimp with a handgun. Run amok! Shoot things! Who cares? There exists this non-canonical infancy gospel where Jesus is actually a little kid and he’s like, running around with crazy Jesus wizard powers. He’s killing them and resurrecting them and he’s turning water into Kool-Aid and loaves into Goldfish crackers — he’s just going apeshit with his Godborn sorcery. BE LIKE CRAZY JESUS BABY. Run around zapping shit with your God lightning! You owe nobody anything in this space. It’s adult swim. It’s booze cruise.

3. THE RAREST BIRD OF THEM ALL

The easiest way to separate yourself from the unformed blobby mass of “aspiring” writers is to a) actually write and b) actually finish. That’s how easy it is to clamber up the ladder to the second echelon. Write. And finish what you write. That’s how you break away from the pack and leave the rest of the sickly herd for the hungry wolves of shame and self-doubt. And for all I know, actual wolves.

4. YOU’RE NOT CLEANING UP SOME SIXTH GRADER’S VOMIT

You have worse ways to spend a day than to spend it writing. Here’s a short list: artificially inseminating tigers, getting shot at by an opposing army, getting eaten by a grue, mopping the floors of a strip club, digging ditches and then pooping in them, cleaning up the vomit of nervous elementary school children, being forced to dance by strange dance-obsessed captors, working in a Shanghai sweatshop making consumer electronics for greedy Americans, and being punched to death by a coked-up Jean-Claude Van Damme. Point is: writing is a pretty great way to spend a morning, afternoon, or night.

5. ABUSE THE FREEDOM TO SUCK

Writing is not about perfection — that’s editing you’re thinking of. Editing is about arrangement, elegance, cutting down instead of building up. Editing is Jenga. Writing is about putting all the pieces out there. It’s construction in the strangest, sloppiest form. It’s inelegant. And imperfect. And insane. It’s supposed to be this way. Writing is a first-time bike-ride. You’re meant to wobble and accidentally drive into some rose bushes. Allow yourself the freedom — nay, the pleasure — to suck. This is playtime. (Or, as I call it: “Whiskey and Hookers” time.) Playtime is supposed to be messy.

6. AND EMBRACE THE AUTHORITY TO BE FUCKING AWESOME

It’s your rodeo, hoss. You have the authority to write with confidence, to puff your chest out, to slap your ink-smeared genitals on the table as you utter your barbaric yawp. Aim big. Go bold. Don’t hide from your own most kick-ass desires. Don’t unfurl the story with hands trembling from the fear of what others will think. You have the power to do different. Yours is the authority to choose the road with your name on it. Write the story the tangle of desires and neuroses that comprise you so desire: A love affair between a man and a parking meter! A civil war between robots and other robots! A SPACE OPERA STARRING ROOT VEGETABLES. Fortune favors the bold. And being fucking awesome favors being fucking awesome.

7. YOU CAN CLEAN UP THE MESS LATER

Writers are afforded the glorious possibility of endless do-overs and take-backs. Every draft a new chance to go back and clean up messes and untangle the tangled wires that hide beneath the narrative. Can you imagine that privilege in real life? “Hey, when you go outside today, anything you do can be undone and the whole day can be recreated.” Holy crap, the day you’d have! Bath salts and dolphin sex, car crashes and muddy graves. I’d have an orgy at a candy factory. (So sticky!) I’d kill someone just because I could. I’D EAT DEEP-FRIED LIPO FAT AT A COUNTRY FAIR SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDDLE OF AMERICA. If I didn’t like it, I’d go back and wipe the slate clean, start over again. That’s your story. Your story is a madcap day whose minutes and hours subject to your whims of rewriting — or unwriting.

8. A ROOM FULL OF STARVING STORY ADDICTS

For all the dire predictions about writing and publishing, I’m going to make a promise to you: the audience is waiting. They’re a subway car full of twitchy story tweakers going around and around, looking for any stop that will give them good story. They’re there for you. They’re waiting for your tale told. Writers often feel like they’re just sobbing into the void, but the audience will hear your plaintive cries, young storyteller. You may feel like a story flunky, but be sure that the audience is full of story junkies. Hey, snap, that rhymed and I didn’t even mean it to. FUCK YEAH WORDS.

9. I’M TALKING ABOUT MOTHERFUCKING ICE CREAM, SON

You are allowed to live a reward-driven life. You want me to motivate you? Go motivate yourself. (That is not code for “go fuck yourself,” unless I don’t like you, then it totally is.) Set a various goals and when you hit them, do something nice for yourself. I mean, the goal shouldn’t be, “Every time I write a sentence, I get an ice cream cone,” because that sir is a high-speed rail straight to the heart of Diabetesburg. But hit your mark of 2000 words a day? Write a chapter? Finish the book? Accept how kick-ass that is and reward yourself. It’s okay. You have my permission. (As long as you don’t bogart that ice cream. Dick.)

10. NOBODY ELSE WRITES LIKE YOU

When all your force fields and filters are down, when you’ve stripped yourself of your presuppositions and your fears and needs and your pants, you discover that nobody in the world writes like you. Nobody has your ideas. Nobody has your narrative memetic code. You are not a unique and beautiful snowflake, no. But your writing — your writing is your fingerprint. Your voice is yours and yours alone.

11. WE’RE TOTALLY BUILT FOR THIS

Someone will look down on you at some point (or, if you’re me, at frequent points throughout your day) for being what you want to be. Writer. Author. Artist. Storyteller. Here’s why that’s a dumpster full of shitballs: we are built for this. One of the things that lashes us all together with rope and chain and psychic plasm is our desire — nay, our sacred fucking need — to tell stories. We’ve been doing it since we drew Neanderthals chasing unicorns on cave walls. We tell stories about the weather, about work, about family and friends, about pets and sex and about that time that friend we have at work had sex with his pet python while a hurricane raged outside. This is what we do. You’re just codifying it. Making it real.

12. ONE WORD AFTER THE OTHER

The technical side of writing — by which I mean, the physical act itself — is one of the easiest things you can do. It’s literally one word placed after the other with some appropriate punctuation thrown in between breaths and ending thoughts. Yes, it gets more complex once you start thinking about narrative, character, meaning, text versus subtext — but for now, fuck all that. Just breathe. Let the tension go out of you (not so much you pee yourself). This is like LEGO. One block upon the other. One word after the next.

13. JUST WRITE 100 MORE WORDS

A frequent phrase said when I was a child or a teenager: just ten more minutes. Meaning, it was time to go to sleep (as a child) or time to get up for school (as a teenager) and all I wanted to do was avoid sleep (child) or sleep longer (teenager). As a writer, play the same game with yourself: you want to give up, close the notebook, save the story? Just 100 more words. That’s all. Push yourself just a little. A hundred words ain’t much (it’s about the size of this text block). And you’d be amazed at how 100 words just isn’t enough.

14. THIS IS HOW YOU GET BETTER

Writing is a muscle: the more you use it the stronger it gets. Writing is like a dog: the more you train it, the smarter it becomes. Writing is like one of your orifices: every time you allow a bigger object to be inserted within (pinky, buttplug, fist, cucumber, wiffle ball bat, railroad tie) you train it to gape wider the next time. …okay, maybe not so much the last one. Still: writing begets writing. You may not be great — or even good — now. But effort yields fruit. Fruit you may later jam up your ass for pleasure. Wait, what?

15. THE MORE YOU DO IT, THE EASIER IT GETS

It’s not just about getting better. It’s about it becoming easier. More natural. More intuitive. The act of writing cultivates both calluses (a metaphorical hardening the fuck up, Care Bear) and instinct (where your decisions as a word-captain and story-slinger are less the product of rigorous thought and more the result of you just having a gut feeling and going with it). Hard at first. Easier over time.

16. YOU ARE NOT THE OMEGA MAN

You are not alone. You are not Lonely Writer Person on Planet Nobody. We all get what you’re going through. We know your triumphs and terrors. The future of writing will be us uploading ourselves to The Cloud (probably on Amazon’s servers), our spirit animals glomming together to howl a single song, but for now, we’re all located at our individualized story pods, cranking out the words by ourselves. But that doesn’t mean we’re alone. We have community. We have shared understanding. Reiterate: You are not alone.

17. YOUR LOVE FOR WRITING IS ENDURING AND IMPERFECT

Some days will be great and other days will be hard. Some days you will love the thing that you’re doing so intimately and so completely that you feel like you achieved some kind of narrative orgasmic apotheosis, whereas other days you will feel nothing but septic hate gurgling in your empty belly and every word slung will feel like a brick flung into your own nose. Your love for this thing you do needn’t be there every day. Every day won’t feel like winning the championship. But the love endures, imperfect as it is.

18. IT’S OKAY THAT SOME DAYS ARE REALLY FUCKING HARD

Some days are difficult. The words feel like dead fish flopping out onto a dirty floor. Hell, maybe they don’t fall out at all but feel like they must be yanked one by one, the act both painful and slow, as if you’re extracting teeth. Some days are shitty. Is what it is. All writers go through it. You want to do this thing then don’t look at the shitty days as a problem: see them as a challenge that prove your pudding.

19. WRITER’S BLOCK IS NOT A REAL THING

You can be blocked. Everybody gets blocked. But it’s not special. It’s not unique to writers. It doesn’t deserve its name or the credit it receives. More importantly, it isn’t a physical thing — it isn’t a gorilla with a croquet mallet who smashes your hand every time you reach for the keyboard. You can get past it. You think past it. You write past it. You kick it in the teeth and step over its twitching body.

20. HOW TO IMAGINE THE HATERS

If there is one thing we have learned upon this old Internet of ours, it is: haters gonna hate. You will ever have disbelievers among your ranks, those who pop up like scowling gophers, boring holes through your well-being, your hopes, your dreams. It is very important not to prove the haters right. It is very important to know where to place the haters in rank of importance, which is to say, below telemarketers, below any television show on TLC, below crotch fungus and garbage fires and anal cankers. Imagine the haters herded into a pen. Eaten by the tigers of your own awesomeness. Then digested. Shat out. And burned with flamethrowers. The only power you should afford the haters is the power to eat curb.

21. MULTIPLE SHOTS AT GOAL

Just as you get multiple chances to fix a single story, you get multiple stories to fill your life — as many as you care to cram into your days, months, years. Our lives are a series of stories untold, and it’s up to you to tell them. This one might not be successful. But the next one might.

22. THE LEPRECHAUN’S GIFT

At the end of this rainbow are whatever rewards you want. Money? It’s there. Some say writers don’t earn out, that you can’t make a living doing this thing that we do. That’s a quiver of broken arrows: don’t sling it over your shoulder. I do it. I know a lot of writers who do it. So can you. But it’s not just money at the end: it’s self-fulfillment. It’s love. It’s confidence. It’s the things you’ve learned about yourself, about the craft of writing, about the art of storytelling. You never know what you’ll find until you climb that motherfucking rainbow. (One time I found a cardboard box of vintage porn and tasty grilled cheese sandwiches.) Writing is a journey. Each story just one leg of the trip. So start walking.

23. YOU ARE YOUR ONLY ENEMY

You have no enemy but yourself. You’re the only one that brings a story into existence, or, as it may turn out, fails to engineer that existence. Your enemy is not your spouse, your kids, your boss, your neighbor, your dog, your mother, your buddy. It is not time, work, addiction, distraction. It is not video games or Twitter, Facebook or television. Your enemy is fear. And indolence. And lack of discipline. And: uncertainty. And: lack of self-esteem. And all those things live inside your heart and your head. That’s hard to hear at first, but the trick is, that means you have the power to sweep all that shit off the table until it clatters and shatters against the floor. You’re the only one standing in your own way so, knock down your own worst inclinations and get to it. Disclaimer: actually, unicorns are frequently the writer’s enemy and if you got a unicorn problem best thing I can recommend is to call a priest. You can’t kill those things with weedkiller. And they deflect bullets with their horns. That’s no lie. Unicorns are pesky assholes.

24. THIS MATTERS

Story matters. Writing is important. Stories make the world go around. Many things begin as words on a page. It matters to the world. And it matters to you. Don’t let anyone rob you of that. Don’t rob yourself of it, either. Don’t diminish. Don’t dismiss. Embrace. Create. Accelerate.

25. UM, WHAT ARE YOU STILL DOING HERE?

Uh, hello? You should’ve bailed on me ten list items ago. What the fidgety fuck are you still doing here? Whatever it is you want to write — novel, script, short story, blog post, haiku out of fridge magnets — go forth and do it. Don’t wait for me. Don’t wait for all the answers. Don’t wait for permission, motivation, inspiration. It’s time to saddle up and gallop forth — through the white dust and the red sand, through the darkness of your own fears or inadequacies and into the light of a tale told to completion. Quit lookin’ at me. Quit looking for reasons. Quit dicking around. Close this browser and go tell a story, willya?

by Chuck Wendig

#writing #writer #studyspo #books #writers #writing motivation #literature #work

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fallen029 · 7 years

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Parenthood: Beach Retreat.8

Mirajane sighed as she sat at the table on the back porch, Pike snuggled up in her lap, as he colored and she sat idly by, listening to the sounds of Nathan and Mace down at the beach, chasing their beloved dog around as the Master and Freed watched them. Across from Mirajane sat Laxus, who was eating a late breakfast.

"You're going to hate yourself," she told him through a yawn. "When we get back and you can't wake up before noon. This vacation lasted too long. You've gotten lazy."

"Me?" Laxus stabbed at his eggs. "Worry about yourself, demon."

"What are you talking about?"

"You're about to face-plant into poor Pike's drawing. Would you like that, buddy? If Mommy fell into your masterpiece?"

"I colorin'," he told them both, not looking up. "Daddy."

"I know." To Mirajane though, Laxus said, "You're the one that's gotta go back to work as soon as we get back. Not me."

"Yes, you. We need you to take a job. Remember? We're saving for a house, Laxus."

"Yeah, yeah."

"I'm serious."

"I hear you, woman." He stabbed again. "I just don't care."

Mirajane rolled her eyes before glancing back down at their son. "That's really pretty, sweetie. Can you say thank you?"

"T'anks, Mommy."

"Awe. You're getting so big. You know that?" She snuggled him then, leaning down to nuzzle her head in his hair. "Mommy's gonna have to get a new baby."

"Don't go telling the boy that, Mira," Laxus grumbled slightly. "You know how it turned out for Nate when he realized what having a brother meant. You won't be fostering any good feelings by phrasing it the way you did. And besides, we've just been talking about it. No one said we were actually having one. The last thing we need is him repeating that to one of the others and them thinking your pregnant."

She just snuggled Pike some more and said to him, "What are you drawing though, baby? Huh? Is that Daddy?"

Of course. What else would a purple blob that kinda looked like a stick figure and kinda look liked poop with a yellow line coming out of it be? Huh?

"Spitting image," Laxus remarked, glancing down at it. "Emphasis on the spit."

"Dragon."

"What?"

Pike though took that as a compliment and only grinned. "Daddy. I draw you."

"I see."

"You sure are talkative today, baby," Mirajane told Pike who giggled. "I think he's finally getting the hang of being on vacation, Lax."

"That's my boy," the slayer complimented through a mouth full of bacon. "Don't feel comfortable in new places. That's smart. You get the lay of the land, Pike, make sure everything's alright before you decide it's all okay. You got a mage's instincts."

"Or," Mira said slowly. "He's just shy."

"'Shy?" That did not sound cool to Laxus. At all. And therefore, his son was not that thing. "He ain't shy. What would he have to be shy about? Huh? He's just here with the same people he's always been with."

"New places are scary."

"No," Laxus grumbled. "They're not. They're just something for him to investigate. Be cautious about. That's what he is. Cautious. My boy. Not shy."

Mirajane didn't feel much up for arguing. "Sure, Lax."

"It's the truth. Ain't that right, Pike? You're not shy. Are you?"

"Daddy. Rawr!" He drew a squiggly line then on the paper, a yellow one. "D'agon. Daddy."

"That's right." Laxus nodded. "We're dragons, ain't we, Pike? And dragons ain't no cowards. They ain't shy. They roar and take what's theirs."

"He's a little demon though," Mirajane reminded. "Aren't you, Pike? You hide in the shadows and lay in wait. Then you strike."

"Nah. Na-ah." Laxus shook his head. "He's a powerful dragon who-"

"Oh? And demon's aren't powerful, hmmm?"

"They're very powerful." He leaned across the table, so that the two of them could see eye to eye. "But a dragon's better. And you know what I am, Mirajane?"

"Someone in need of a toothbrush?"

"A Dragon Slayer," he told her darkly. "Which makes me what now? Hmmm?"

"Pompous and arrogant considering you've lost every time we come up against dragons?"

"Stronger," he said, "than a dragon."

Mirajane grinned widely. "You know what I am then, Laxus?"

"Ready to admit defeat?"

"Even stronger than a Dragon Slayer."

"How do you figure?" he asked. "Huh?"

"Because," she sang, removing one arm from around Pike so that she could reach out and poke his nose, "I tamed you."

Narrowing his eyes, Laxus gave her a glare. "I ain't tamed, woman."

"You are tamed."

"Am not."

"Are too."

"Mirajane-"

"Awe. You're so cute when you try to defy your master."

More narrowing. Then, with a defeated grunt, Laxus settled back down on his side of the table before stabbing at his eggs once more. "You're annoying."

"But most of all right."

Grunt. Giggle.

"D'agon." Pike snuggled back into Mirajane then, dropping his color crayons so that he could grab onto her arm and pull it back around him. "Mommy."

"You wanna be a dragon, baby? Huh?" She sighed. "Inevitable, I suppose."

"He ain't ever seen you as Satan Soul," Laxus told her then, as if as a show of sportsmanship. He'd won, but she was still his. Gotta leave her feeling good. "Hell, even I want that kinda power. To be a demon."

"Shut up, Laxus."

"It's true. You're the most powerful woman in all the world."

"But not just person. In general. Woman."

He shrugged. "Everyone else factored in, gee, you'd probably rank about...right behind me."

"I'd only rank eighth?"

"E-Eighth? So you're saying I'm-"

"Uh-huh."

"Look, you little demon-"

"I'm looking. But all I'm seeing is a number seven."

More growling. "Tell me who you put above me?"

"Na-ah."

"Yes. Now. Tell me."

"No way."

"Mirajane-"

"Laxus-"

"Mommy." Pike didn't feel like waiting that fight out as he held his picture up for them to see then. "Look!"

"Hmmm?" Glancing at the paper, she took it from him. "Oh, Laxus, look. Isn't he so talented?"

"The most." He snatched the drawing from her. "Buddy, this is going straight in my pocket right now. I'll keep it always-"

"No, Daddy!" Pike moved to take it right back, the slayer easily giving it up. "Mommy's."

"W-What? Buddy-"

"Mmmm." Mirajane took the drawing once more. "It's lovely, dear."

"But it's of me," Laxus argued. "It's mine. You drew it for me. Right?"

No. Did Pike ever say that? Definitely not. And, with that, he moved right on the the next sheet of paper his mommy had put on the table for him. He felt like drawing...stuff. For Gramps. He liked stuff. He loved stuff.

"I'll keep it close," Mira promised Pike even though he was no longer listening, no longer cared. "Always."

"It isn't of you," Laxus argued. "It's of me. And it's mine. Pike, tell her. You want Daddy to have it. Don't you?"

Absolutely not. Instead of answering, he only sat to attention and dropped his crayon before saying, "I go potty, Mommy."

"Ooh." She got to her feet and him to his then, taking the drawing with her, before grabbing his hand and leading him back into the house. "See how big you are now? You even know when to go potty."

Of course he did. That was baby stuff. Like, a whole year and a half ago. Peeing in the potty wasn't difficult at all. Not compared to the horrifying world of learning to tie shoes and eating vegetables.

Laxus was left alone out there then and, with a sigh, got to his feet. The others were all milling around and, if Pike loved Mirajane so much that day, fine. He'd go have some adult time with someone else. Bickslow and Lisanna were too childish for such a thing, Elfman was annoying as hell, and Freed and Gramps were watching the other kids, leaving him squarely with one person.

"So you're sure you aren't sleeping with this guy?"

And that person went by the name Evergreen.

"No, Laxus, tell me what you really think of my character?"

Oh, and he managed to piss her off in the first five minutes of them hanging out.

"I'm just saying," he grumbled as the pair sat out of the front steps, him smoking a cigar and her just glad to be next to him, "that a man don't fork over a place like this for a week and a half to someone he ain't either screwing or related to."

For a moment, she just sat there, not looking at him, and thought. Then she said slowly, "Would you?"

"Would I what?"

"Let me use your beach house. If you had one."

He shrugged. "We're family."

"Are we?"

"In a roundabout way, sure." He took a longer puff that time, of his cigar, before saying, "But, uh, just so you know, I think very highly of you."

"Really now?"

"Yeah. But you're married to Elfboy." He shrugged. "I could see sleeping around on something like that."

Ever elbowed him, if only slightly. "If we're related, it's through him. He's your brother."

"Maybe." He glanced down at her. 'Brothers can say such things about one another, after all."

"Laxus."

"I ain't judging," he told her. "And I won't tell. Just curious."

"It was a woman," she told him. "That let me stay here. She owed me a favor."

"You sleepin' with women now? Elfboy turned you off men, huh?"

"Shut up."

"Can't buy that, considerin' he ain't one, but-"

"You're really annoying when you want to be."

He laughed then and it was deep. The type he reserved for the demon and the boys. But, if one wanted to factually correct, it had been coined far before any of those things entered his life. Back when he was a teenager with two guys and a chick that would walk the planet and back for him.

Sometimes they got those laughs. They amused him that much. They deserved to be appreciated too.

Even when they were all adults, sometimes they still deserved attention too.

"I just don't," he told her then, slowly, "see any of you guys as having friends."

"What?"

Shrugging, Laxus said, "You, Freed, Bickslow. Even Elfman and Lisanna. It's weird, you know? To see you guys with people other than...us. Our family."

"What's in that cigar then, Laxus? That's got you all sentimental?"

"I ain't sentimental." And he wasn't. "And this is a high caliber of tobacco here. For a high caliber of man."

"Uh-huh."

"It is." He took another puff before asking, "So what was it then?"

"What was what?"

"What was it that you did to score this place from some woman? Hmmm?"

"If you really must know-"

"I just must."

"She isn't a close friend, but," Ever started with a sigh, "I was owed payment for a job I did for her and her husband. It was a diamond that was stolen from them that I was supposed to get back from this crook. Which I did. In lieu of the money, they offered a vacation here."

"Never thought I'd see the day."

"What day?"

"The day that you did something so unselfish as take us, all of us, not just the Thunder Legion, out with you on a trip that you earned. Hard earned and deserved. But you shared it. Huh." He grinned down at her. "You really are a mommy now, huh?"

"Shut up."

"That's so cute."

"Oh, whatever, Daddy Dragon."

That got a glare. "Watch it, Ever."

"Even cuter."

Snorting, Laxus said, "I am a father. A daddy. I love my boys. You ain't going to embarrass me about it."

"And you're not going to embarrass me."

"Oh? You love Mace?"

It was his turn to get a glare. "What does that matter? And I thought that we were talking about-"

"We were," he said. "Before you started going on about how cute I am."

"I didn't mean it like that."

"Careful, Ever. I've been your brother now for a few years, huh? Can't start perving on me just yet."

"Oh, whatever. You're so full of yourself."

"Should I not be?" And that time when he looked at her, he had back on his intimidation look that he used on her and the rest of the Thunder Legion when they were young, any time they doubted even just a smidgen how awesome he was. Still, to that day, it worked like a charm. "Am I not the Thunder God, Evergreen?"

Looking off, she mumbled something under her breath that he was certain was pretty much admission to his superiority to all. Dealing with Mirajane and her constant discrediting of his greatness, it was nice when the Thunder Legion showed him just how awesome he really was.

Or at least when they bowed down to him. That was cool too. Like when his sons did, but better, because it wasn't just the threat of a timeout, grounding, or spanking that was making them do it.

Hmmm. It was nice to be respected, revered, and (most importantly) feared. There was nothing like it, really.

When he finished with his cigar, Ever and Laxus headed back inside, just in time to run into Freed and Bickslow, who were taking off for somewhere, not even Lisanna tagging along.

"Sorry, boss, no time to talk," Bickslow said with a slight wave.

"I never wanted to do anything of the sort to begin with," Laxus grumbled, headed to the living room. Adult time had been fun. He and Ever never got to hang out alone. A good solid fifteen minutes or so had been grand.

Now it was time for complete alone time. He was thinking of napping. Or contemplating his future. Which would lead to napping.

Ever, however, turned right back around to follow the guys. "Where are you two headed then?"

"Somewhere you're not allowed to go."

"I was talking to Freed, Bickslow."

"And I was talking to you, Ever. So buzz-"

"We're going into town," Freed responded, hardly glancing at the woman. "You're welcome to tag along. Bickslow is only in a bad mood because Lisanna said-"

"I didn't cheat," the seith complained as they headed out the front door. "At cards. She's wrong. Just because I'm better than her-"

"And I'm out." Ever hung back, closing the front door behind the two of them. Because she was not getting into that. No way.

The other two continued on though, Freed being forced once more to listen to the agonizing story of how Lisanna accused Bickslow of cheating at poker the night before. It wasn't fun. At all. It lasted the whole way into town. Once there, luckily, Bickslow posed a question.

"Hey, Freed?"

"Yes?"

"...What were we supposed to be doing again?"

"Again?" five little voices echoed from around the seith's head. "Again, Freed?"

"We," the letter mage said with a sigh, "are trying to locate a chest."

"Right. And some fake gold or something."

"So you were listening over the grumbles about Lisanna."

"I wasn't grumbling about Lisanna," Bickslow argued. "I was grumbling about what she said. Difference."

"Hardly."

"Freed-"

"I plan to write an enchantment tonight, down on the beach," the man said. "After burying the chest, of course. And, when triggered, it'll become like a pitfall, only the sand will cave in, revealing the chest. Thus, the boys solved the map."

"That's a lot of work," Bickslow said. "I mostly just keep them entertained with jokes."

"You keep Pike entertained with jokes," Freed corrected. "The elder two have tired of hearing the same five knock-knock jokes."

"Hey, man," the seith complained, glaring over at him. "I know, like, twenty, so-"

"You are just annoyed that I am doing something nice for the boys," he argued, "and will get credit for it with Laxus."

"I'm out here too, aren't I? Huh? I'll get credit. It's stupid Ever that won't."

"It will be my map, my enchantment-"

"I'm walking around finding the chest. Automatic credit."

"Yes, well, not as much as me so-"

"I'll tell Laxus! That you're hording this over me and-"

"And I will inform him that I did not do it for the credit. Only because I care for his children."

Bickslow's face fell. "You're a tough one to beat, Freed."

"I have had much practice at this."

"And more time to dedicate to it."

Shrugging, he added, "I do expect you, of course, to help me dig out this pit."

"Yeah, about that-"

"I mean if you don't care about Laxus' children and Lisanna's nephews-"

"Really tough," Bickslow sighed in defeat as his babies mimicked him. "Nearly impossible."

Back at the house, the boys were about done with the ocean and Makarov sent them inside to take showers. He instead went into the kitchen where he found Mirajane cleaning up from breakfast and no doubt planning on starting lunch in the next hour or so.

"Hi, Master," she greeted as Pike, who was helping (getting under her feet constantly and doing no good at all), rushed to go hug the man. "The beach over for the day?"

"More like for now, I'm sure," he said as he only patted Pike on the head with a grin. "And how are you, my boy?"

Giggling, Pike rushed over to the kitchen table, having to stand on his toes to reach atop it and snag a drawing off. "Gramps."

It was of an extremely artistic take on their pet doggy, but a veteran of children's drawings from being a father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and guild master to countless young children, he knew exactly what it was. And, with a big grin, he ruffled Pike's white locks and announced his love of it.

Yeah. Pike got some rave reviews from his work. Personally, he wasn't shocked. Everyone loved it. For someone that hadn't even mastered his shapes yet, Pike was pretty well off in the world of art.

That got the little boy out of Mirajane's hair for a bit as, of course, he wanted to go spend time with his grandfather then who was heading off to his bedroom to rest. It wasn't Pike's usual nap time, but he planned on sitting around and coloring anyhow. With the other boys in the shower, the doggy was running free too and followed after them. Master let him sleep up on the bed with them, which was great.

Pike loved his dog. And his Gramps. They were two of the best things in his life. Right up there with Mommy, Daddy, and paper air planes. He couldn't make the latter, of course, but Nate could and they were pretty stinkin' cool.

"Hi, Elf," Mirajane greeted soon after her son was gone as the man seemed to replace him. "What have you been up to today?"

"Other than listening to Lisanna drone on and on about how there's nothing wrong with her accusing Bickslow of cheating if she knows for certain she is?"

"Is there something I should know about?"

"Poker," her younger brother clarified. "He cheated in poker. Or cards. Or something stupid like that."

"Ah."

"The rest of us are ready to pry each others heads off and these two are arguing about a damn card game."

"Makes sense to me."

"Yeah, me too." He sighed. "That's what makes it so bad."

"You wanna help?" Mirajane glanced over at him. "I'm trying to get the place all cleaned up before lunch."

"But won't it just get messy again after lunch?"

"Sure," Mira agreed. "But that'll just give me something to do later."

"I don't think you understand vacations."

Giggling, Mirajane said, "Laxus thinks the same thing."

"The one occasion we agree then."

"No, there's more. Many more," she said. "The two of you just don't like to admit it."

Ignoring that, Elfman remarked, "You two got home pretty early yesterday for your big night out, don't you think?"

"No," Mira said with a shrug as she wiped down the counter tops. "We went to lunch, spent time in the city, and then came back. Why is that such a big deal?"

"Ever told me that Laxus was under the impression that the two of you would, well, spend the night somewhere else. We would have watched Nathan and Pike, you know."

"That was never in the plans," Mira told him simply, not even glancing that way. "So I have no idea where he'd have gotten that crazy idea."

"I was kinda looking forward to it, really," Elfman admitted.

"W-What?"

"A free bed," he explained. The two didn't seem to be vibbing that day given the two misunderstandings. "I would have enjoyed the free bed."

"Oh." Mira gave him a sad look then. "I'm sure if you ask, Lisanna and Bickslow, they'll share the couch and you can have the pullout one. Really."

Elfman only shook his head at her. "There's only a few more days out here anyhow and then we can go back home."

"It is, huh?" Giving him a grin then, she said, "It's been really fun though. While it lasted."

"Compared to taking jobs constantly, most anything would be."

"I like my work," Mira informed him. "And the few times I get to take jobs, it's great."

"I didn't say I didn't like it. I just meant that-"

"No, I understand." That, at least, didn't need an explanation. "Trust me, I really do."

Elfman stuck around for a bit, in the kitchen, to help her finish cleaning up and get lunch started. Once that was done and she alerted everyone that it was done, she went to wake the sleeping dragon. He'd just eaten his breakfast not long ago, after all, meaning that he wasn't hungry. And if Laxus wasn't hungry, she wasn't hungry.

Or rather, she was missing her dragon and was using everyone else's distraction with food as a chance to be alone again.

"Finally," Laxus remarked, trying to keep himself from yawning. Mira had risen him and practically demanded that he put on some swim trunks and escort her down to the beach while the others ate. And him, being the overly compliant husband he was, did so without complaint. "Me and you, down on the beach, alone. I get to admire my demon in her swimsuit without having to worry about that product of that admiration whining about how he hates water."

"Shush." Mirajane was seated next to him, slathering her arms with sun screen. Shifting in the sand, she turned away from him before saying,"And get my back."

"I'll get more than back."

"Anyone could come out on the porch up there, so you better not."

Grunt. "Me and my woman all alone on a beach with the sun high in the sky, well, I might just get carried away."

"Don't worry," she sighed as he gently rubbed at her back. "I'll keep us both on base."

"Mmmm. My demon ain't easy."

"Nope."

"But that's why I keep you."

"That," she agreed, "and I take care of your children."

"That's a big plus too. It ain't easy raising dragons."

"I heard demons are harder."

"Don't know how you'd know that, considering we only got dragons."

Again, she hummed. "Half the time you want them to be demons and the rest you want dragons. So which is it?"

"Whichever I want, whenever I want."

"Your usual solution to problems."

"I'm an easy guy to understand most of the time."

"Not exactly what I meant, but if you think so."

It was Laxus' turn to hum. "Yoru skin's so soft."

"Thanks."

"Though I guess if it wasn't, you could just transform into a version of you that had soft skin," he mused. "Right?"

"Don't ruin this by being annoying, Lax."

"Me?"

"You."

"Never. Sometime sitting in the sand and sun with you? How could I ruin it?" He removed his hands then before wiggling his fingers. "So? Need your front?"

"Laxus-"

"Alright, alright. You win." He went back to facing the ocean. "We won't hookup out here. Or rather you lose, I suppose."

"You're just so funny."

"Thanks."

"Mmmm." With a sigh, she said, "So?"

"So what?"

"Did you wanna talk? Or just sit here in silent contemplation?"

He held down another yawn. "I contemplate, babe, then I also pass out. Your choice."

"Are you honestly that tired?"

"Meh."

"Laxus-"

"We're sitting out here and having a good time, Mirajane," he scolded. "Don't ruin it."

Glancing up at him, she said, "Well, we can talk then."

"Hmmm. I like topics about me, my immense power, and how I bagged the hottest women in all of Fiore. You?"

"I like bits and pieces of that," she agreed. "Mainly the part on the end."

"I thought you might."

"Not the stuff about me being yours or whatever," she was quick to add. "Just me in general."

"Why, you're quite lucky, demon." He patted her on the head. "I love talking about you. Even in general."

"Really now?"

"You're one of my favorite subjects, to be honest."

"Who do you talk about me with then? Hmmm? Dragon?"

"I think, my little tiny demon, that there is a bigger question to be had here."

"And what's that?"

Getting to his feet, Laxus held out his hands to her, waiting for the woman to them before pulling her to her feet.

"Just because I'm talkin' about you," he began as he led her over to where the water was ebbing and flowing onto the beach, pulling in and pulling right back out steadily, "don't mean that I'm sayin' good stuff. Now does it?"

"You talking about me behind my back, dragon?" She was trying to sound tough, but failed as a giggle escaped. Just the feeling of the salty water against her bare feet brought her joy. "That's not every nice."

"I ain't very nice."

"Yes, you are."

"I am?"

"Uh-huh." She grinned up at him. "No matter how much you fight it, you definitely are."

"Meh." He shrugged though one of her hands was still very much interlaced with his. "I'll take you word for it."

Elfman, for whatever reason, was feeling rather father/uncle-ish that day and, after lunch and another nap for Pike took to playing a rousing game of hide and seek with the boys in the house with Makarov and Ever all playing.

"How," Laxus remarked as he and Mirajane passed where she was 'hiding' on the couch while openly seated on it and reading a magazine, "is this hiding?"

"Don't question me," she told him simply. "I am keeping your sons preoccupied, might I remind you."

"You might."

"Laxus-"

"Dragon." Mirajane just kept dragging him right along and up the stairs. "We should be a tad more worried about getting out of these wet clothes, don't you think?"

No. He wanted to stay and argue with Evergr….

Oh. Ooh! Heh.

He took over leading then as, in his zealousness, he pulled Mirajane along.

"if anyone's hiding in our room," he called out as they entered it, "they better get out and get out fast."

"Laxus," Mira giggled as she shut and locked the door behind them. "Honestly."

"Wet trunks go over here," he began as he slipped right out of them before tossing them onto his duffel bag. "And wet demon goes-"

"You're not funny."

"Then why," he asked as he only came over to help her out of her top, "are you laughing?"

Because he was her dragon and she loved him and, hell, he was the funniest man on the planet.

To her.

It went along with the love thing.

"Never get tired of this," he told her as he untied the top first before moving onto the bottoms. "Demon. Do you?"

"A tad."

Grunt. "You stand alone on that."

"I never said I was today though."

"Are you?"

"A tad."

"Mira-"

"We're not," she told him as she slipped out of his grasp, moving to grab one of the towels they'd brought into the room with them and dropped, "doing this."

"Mira-"

"We're in a house, full of people, who are all roaming around playing a game of hide and seek." For someone that wasn't doing 'this', she sure was enticing him with the way she was drying off. All sensual and stuff.

Or maybe Laxus was just hot.

Probably a bit of both.

"We'll be quiet."

"Knock it off."

"If we ain't doing anything-"

"We're not."

"Then why did you lock the door?"

"Laxus," she sighed. "Honestly, could you just-"

There was a bang, suddenly, on their bedroom door as well as the loud wailing of a young child and the screaming of another.

"You're such a baby, Pike!"

"Mommy!"

"I didn't do anything! Don't go tell her I did!"

Another bang. It was probably poor Pike, pounding his fists against it in vain. "Mommy!"

"This is why you shouldn't play with us!"

Mira and Laxus just stared at one another for a moment before she sighed.

"Put on some pants, dragon," she ordered as she went to do the same and then some. "Duty calls."

Heh.

He didn't get to be alone with his demon again for the rest of the day. Whatever it was that Nate did to Pike (they never got a clear answer out of either of the boys) really seemed to affect the youngest Dreyar boy. He clung to Mirajane all day. Even when the brothers made up as they always inevitably did and Nathan told Pike he was sorry and gave him a few hugs, the boy wouldn't leave Mira's side.

They were back to square one on that front.

The house was just too big and scary for him. So he wasn't a demon or a dragon. He was a little baby that just needed his mother to protect him. And? He'd never claimed otherwise. That was Laxus' doing, not his.

Luckily for them though, the boy still wanted to go to bed with Makarov that night for some reason. Pike was nothing if not a creature of habit.

"G'amps," he ordered Mirajane after his nightly bath. All snug in his jammies, the boy wanted nothing more than for the Master to read him a story and then fall asleep with him. Gramps was the coolest. "Please?"

After checking with Makarov (he was shocked that she would even suggest otherwise at that point), she left the two of them alone and got to work winding the other boys down for the night. It wasn't easy. Mace and Nate seemed to be hyperactive that night, even the former giving everyone trouble which was odd.

It was Laxus, finally exasperated with them running around, hitting his breaking point and yelling that got them into their sleeping bags and silent.

"Now that," Lisanna complimented, "was impressive."

"Shut up."

"No, really. You really showed them, Laxus."

"Knock it off."

"Yelling at two little boys. So extreme."

"I hate you."

They were all thankful though. Sometimes it took a bit of grumpiness to get things done.

And, with Bickslow and Freed still out, as they had been the entire day, Lisanna had nowhere to go and would be downstairs with the boy. Not to mention Elfman who, once more, was sent to the couch. In a show of solidarity, Lisanna offered up the pullout, claiming she'd take the couch, but Elfman turned her down.

"What kinda brother would I be then?" he asked.

"The type I would be," Laxus retorted when he overheard them. "I mean seriously."

That left Mirajane and Laxus with, shockingly enough, more time to be alone. When they went down to the beach that time though, it wasn't in suits or the intention of getting in the water. Just to watch the stars, Mira claimed. When she saw Laxus snag the a few bottles of beer from the fridge, she kept her mouth shut and just went along with it.

"This," he said as they settled into the sand, a bottle in each of their hands, "is what it would be like, demon. All day, every day. If you would only let me take you on a vacation just the two of us."

"We just went on a vacation, Lax."

"Right, I know. We're kinda still on it."

"I can't take another for months," she told him. "Maybe eve a year."

"Sometimes I think that you forget that your grandfather-in-law is the Master."

"Sometimes I think that you forget that he's also my employer."

"An employer that adores you. And one that, if things go your way, will also be living with us." He snorted. "I think you can negotiate some more vacation time."

"You'd be surprised."

"Yeah," he grumbled. "So would you."

Neither were exactly astrologers and definitely not astronomers, so the stars were more pretty to them than they were actually providing any information. Laxus spent more time stealing peeks down Mira's shirt than anything else, but hey.

Eventually the two of them fell back, into the sand, because Laxus had said something that Mira claimed wasn't funny, but made her unable to stop giggling and, well, if she was falling over, he was falling over with her, because that was just how their relationship worked.

"I love you," he told her as she buried her head into his side. "Do you hear me, Mirajane? Huh?"

"Yes," she gasped out through her giggles. "I do."

"Good." He was shifting then, spilling his beer in the process, but that was okay, because it was for the demon and he could do things like that, for the demon. "So good."

And then she was looking up at him and he grinning at her and every thing was so perfect and awesome and-

"Oy, boss. Not that it isn't obliged, the free, err, stimulation and all, but I am sorta dating her sister, so this could get rather awkward."

And there was Bickslow and Freed as well as five glowing eyes in the darkness, carrying a treasure chest that was overflowing with gold because, you know, screw Laxus and his life.

"I would ask," the slayer grumbled as he and Mira sat up in surprise at the sight of them coming over, balancing the chest between them, "where the hell you two are coming from. Or even when you got that."

"In town," Freed said, glancing their way. "We were-"

"But," Laxus sighed, "I'm not going to."

"Your loss, boss," Bickslow enticed as, somehow perfectly in sync, the two men dropped the chest as the same time as five voices repeated the words loss and boss continually. "It's pretty cool."

"Also," Freed asked then, "do either of you know where a shovel might be located?"

For a moment, Mira and Laxus just sat there in shock. Then, slowly, she leaned over and up to his ear.

"Do you think," she whispered hotly, leaning heavily into him at the same time, "that we can still find that hotel room?"

Laxus blinked. Then he stumbled to his feet.

"See ya later, children," he told the other men as he helped his wife to her feet. "I got a room to find."

"So was that a no to the shovel?" Freed asked as, with a giggle, Mirajane sprinted off to the house though that was no doubt just a stop onto her true destination, Laxus following. "Laxus? Mirajane?"

"They're gone, bro." Bickslow shook his head after them. "So best get to diggin' with your hands. Either that or the boys plastic ones."

"Can't you just enchant them? Hmmm?" Freed looked to him when it was clear Laxus and Mira were lost for the day. "The boys plastic shoves? With the babies? And then we don't have to-"

"Are you implying that we use child labor?"

"Soul labor," he corrected. "But I'd hope."

"Bah!" Bickslow got down on his knees then and began to dig with his hands. "To even suggest it."

"Right, but forcing them to fight for you-"

"That's love," Bickslow retorted. "Ain't that right, babies?"

Freed was unimpressed with the way they all cooed love back to the man. Only sighed before slowly getting onto his knees to dig as well.

The things he did for Laxus...

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