#locked in in front of my computer for three hours i need to move

[maeumverse]

WHAT, LIKE IT'S HARD? — AN OVERVIEW OF (SOME OF) THE UNIVERSITY ATTENDEES OF THE MAEUMVERSE

[ittybittyfanblog]

Error 404: (Self-Aware!AU, Sylus Edition)

Summary: A LADS self-aware!AU featuring Sylus (+ maybe the other MLs!) and an oblivious player. That’s it, that’s the plot. Tags: player!reader x sylus, fem!reader x sylus, reader x lads, maybe some suggestive language?? will add more tags as the story progresses A/N: This is gonna be a multi-chapter fic! I’m still not sure whether to do the boys in rotation, or just focus on one ML per series. Don’t take my word for it atp tho – I’m not even sure if I can actually finish a series lol.  Also, I’ve had the creative liberty of changing stuff from the actual gameplay here and there. (Except for the self-awareness. That’s most definitely real.) Hope you enjoy~!

Pt. 1 - Pt. 2 - Pt. 3 - Pt. 4 - Pt. 5 - Pt. 6 - Pt. 7 - Pt. 8 - Pt. 9

It’s a quarter past eight and you’re still on your desk working overtime on a Friday night. 

You let out a big sigh, leaning back on your office chair after an unhealthy duration of bad posture from hours of slouching down in front of your computer. There’s nothing ergonomic about the way this job is killing you, and the ache in your lower back can attest to that. 

An irate orange tabby plops himself in front of you, blocking your view of the glaring screen and you figure that it’s time for a break. 

“Me-oow.”

“I know, I know,” You answer tiredly, standing up to dodge a stray paw clawing your way and you hear cracks in three different places that are honestly unbecoming of a woman your age. You haven’t even reached thirty yet, for god’s sake. “I’m a bad mother. But mom also had to skip dinner to make it to the seven PM meeting, so cut me some slack, okay?” 

A high-pitched “meooowr!” is the only response you get; it seems like there’s no excusing late dinner time this time around. 

As much as you’d like to hem and haw and complain, the main reason why you’re still keeping this job is because you can work remotely. If it weren’t for the fact that you’re stuck most days at home working hours past your regular nine to five, having to be on-call around the clock at all times, and that you’ve consumed more sodium than a nitrite victim with the way you live off cup ramen, then, really, it beats working in an office where you’d physically have to clock in and out from exactly nine to five. 

Your right eye twitches. No, I have not fallen in love with the system that exploits me, thank you very much. 

“Here is your Fancy Feast, your highness,” you tell the hungry feline who’s already ignoring the hand that feeds for the bowl full of white fish paté. He eats healthier than you, sure, but you work like this for him to eat like this. The life of a single mom is an uphill battle, but extremely rewarding. 

You raise your hand to pat your son’s head lovingly, aborting the gesture halfway when you hear a warning growl. Alright, tough crowd. 

After nuking a half-eaten takeout box in the microwave and grabbing a cold Bundaberg from the fridge, you hunker down on the “chaise lounge” (see: an old wingback and a rattan ottoman you’ve refurbished as a makeshift seat a few weeks back when you had guests over) for a late meal. 

You barely register the taste of lukewarm rice on your tongue, mouth moving mechanically while your mind runs on autopilot about everything and nothing at the same time. 

Maybe it’s time to check Jobstreet again

Is there like a laundromat near the area that’s open twenty four seven

Eugh, I hate cold peas

What do we feel about Chromakopia? 

I will… die alone

I really need to stock on some fresh produce this weekend—

Ping! 

A notification from your phone pulls you out of your thoughts—and like a well-trained dog pavlov’d into responding, you visibly perk up at the sight of your lock screen lighting up and the familiar banner you’ve already memorized by heart. 

Your Galaxy Explorer rewards are here. Did you put my hotel’s address as the shipping address? 

Ah, just like clockwork. 

You press on it with a quiet, bubbling anticipation, chewing on the plastic spork as you wait impatiently for the silly mobile game that’s been your short respite at intervals—for more than you’d care to admit—to boot up. 

Offhandedly, you wish that the devs would add more variations to the game’s push notifications; more random, personalized stuff like maybe a reminder to drink water, or a fun update about their day. What you’d give–pay–for a: "Less on the overtime, kitten. I miss you,” dialogue from a certain character, but you digress. 

Oh, well. Probably better this way, lest you dig yourself deeper into delusion. 

The game greets you with the usual picturesque view of a silver-haired man sitting cross-legged on a chair, looking all the bit at ease in his signature crimson and white button up. The warm ambience of the Destiny Café at night draws you in, already pulling your attention away from the never-ending stream of thoughts in your brain. 

“Before seeing you, I thought today would be another dull day,“ Sylus comments airily. The way he drawls out the words in that deep timbre of his voice never fails to make your heart flutter – just a teeeensy bit.

“Ever the charmer,” you sigh happily in return, situating yourself more comfortably on the sofa, almost horizontal from how far you’re leaning back on the cushion. “You’re looking awfully normal tonight. What, no pineapple glasses for your favorite girl?” 

Having bypassed the initial cringe of talking to yourself after literal months of gameplay, it almost comes off natural, the banter. You’ve already accepted the fact that you’re crazy about a fictional, pixelated man—what’s pretending to have actual conversations with him gonna do? It’s not as if he actually hears you yap your nonsense; there are worse things in the world than a parasocial attachment to an otome game character. 

Your little jab at the sometimes random addition to his choice of attire earns you a laugh from the man itself—or at least it looks as though it does, making you blink momentarily in surprise. Happy coincidence, I guess.

You shake your head, cracking a smile, then proceed to do the routine of completing the daily agenda and then some. 

It’s tedious business, sure. You’ve dedicated hours upon hours on this game and you’re honestly starting to feel pretty bored with some of the gameplay elements, but you *do* like the ritualistic nature of ticking off the tasks one by one. It’s almost ironic— the way you dutifully do one thing after the other in this game, just to avoid the pile of work that’s waiting for you in real life. 

It’s not as if anything, or anyone’s relying on you to do your daily log-ins, so you suppose it’s due to that lack of pressure as well. 

Pulling yourself away from the five-star Xavier memory card you’ve grinded to level seventy, you stare despondently at the sad little 2 on your remaining energy. The embarrassing amount of materials you lack to ascend the card seem to mock you, even as you exit the Memories window. Another goal for another day, perhaps.

All tasks on the daily agenda are complete, except for one that you’ve always saved for last.

You’re met with a standing Sylus on the game’s home screen, arms crossed and wearing an expression you’d almost describe as impatient, if you didn’t know any better. The sight makes you grin. 

Cheekily, you poke his crotch.

You’re looking forward to getting a playful remark, or if you’re lucky, a blush along with an embarrassed retort about your shamelessness. 

 What you get, however, is a resounding scoff. Your eyes snap back to his face – from, ahem, your prolonged staring at the area below his waist – and you do see the familiar tinge of pink on his cheeks, but what he says in response catches you off-guard.

“You spend that much resource for a card that isn’t mine?” Sylus tsks, both his voice and expression coming across as… affronted? “Kitten, I’m actually hurt.” 

Huh?

You haven’t heard that line from him before. Was there a recent update you weren’t aware of? The man in question then appears to look amused, from the way you’ve been rendered speechless by the unexpected dialogue. 

All at once, you gasp when you realize what the new response means. 

“That’s so smart,” you say giddily. You see Sylus cock his head to the side, synchronously quirking an eyebrow—expectant. “They actually added a feature that lets them know which memory I’ve upgraded last, and make you react to it. Oh, that’s so cool!” 

If you weren’t too busy being excited over what you think is a new update from the game,  you’d see the chagrined look on Sylus’ face. But when you glance back at him, all trace of the emotion is gone before you could notice anything different. 

“Don’t worry, Crow Man. You’re still my favorite,” you assure him, making his mouth tick upwards in a semblance of a smile. He looks pleased all of the sudden, his demeanor shifting into something more relaxed.

Then a pout forms on your face. You crinkle your nose in frustration as you complain, “It’s just really hard to level your cards up at this point. It takes ages and a shit ton of energy just to level you up past seventy five.” Sighing, you add, kind of bitterly, “And I’m too broke to be spending money on growth packs.” 

Checking the time on your phone, you see that you’ve already spent more than an hour on your self-imposed break time and you know that you ought to get back to work soon. With a groan, you pull yourself to sit upright, savoring the last few minutes of free time before you slave off for the rest of the night. 

You’re about to clean up what’s left of dinner when you notice the oddly thoughtful look on Sylus’ face. 

There’s a deep furrow in his brows as he brings a hand up to cover his mouth. He closes his eyes shut for a few seconds. He's never done that gesture before... Ugh, he looks really hot–

Suddenly, you see a flicker— then a weird, sort of graphic distortion happening in the background. Uh, what??

A beat; then a glitch on the screen. “Ah, shit.” 

The game crashes.

You exhale loudly as the game’s interface goes back to the loading screen, tapping your thumb impatiently as the bar slowly loads to 15%... 50%..... 81%....... 

“Maybe make sure to patch up first before releasing an update next time, jeez— Huh?” 

For a quick second, nothing seems to be amiss. But then the first thing you see on the home screen is Sylus’ figure standing before you, wearing an expression one could only describe as a cat that ate the proverbial canary. 

He speaks— and it’s another intro you haven’t heard him say, ever. 

“You should’ve told me sooner, sweetie,” he almost coos the words out, making your eyes bug out in shock. 

“Now, why don’t you go check your–” he pauses, and his mouth moves as if he’s rolling the word out, testing it. “Inventory?” 

Sylus slides his gaze towards the upper left corner of the screen, a coy smirk still ever-present on his face. 

There, you see something you haven’t noticed earlier: two notification badges. One on your mailbox, and another on the Hunter’s Info tab. Bewildered, you press on the mail icon first, despite the insistence for you to start with the latter. 

You see a new message: [For You]

A small gift, to bridge our worlds closer. – S 

Nothing is attached to it. You read it twice, perplexed.  

“You’re quite the contradictorian, aren’t you?” Sylus tuts as soon as you return back to the home screen, his gaze boring into you even when he tilts his head sideways in mock exasperation. “Mmm, I suppose it doesn’t matter. Take all the time you need, sweetheart.” 

Helplessly, you open your inventory next. 

Your jaw drops. 

“What. The fuck,” You whisper to yourself, voice wavering in disbelief at what you’re seeing, and the sheer amount of what you’re seeing. “This– this can’t be real.” 

You see that all the materials you own, from the bottle of wishes to the ascension crystal boxes, have been multiplied a hundred times over.

And on top of that–

Ninety nine thousand red dias????

You cannot believe how this—this recent… update (or is it a bug? Infold sure isn’t this generous) didn't make the news. Even as someone as uninvolved as you are with the community and the game’s latest releases, something like this for sure would’ve made headlines on Twitter (X), at least. But you haven’t heard anything. Nada. 

Holy shit. 

You feel a little light-headed, both from incredulity and excitement. Needing a moment to calm yourself down, you exit the Inventory tab in a daze.

You stare at Sylus. He stares back at you with what looks to be mirth in his eyes. 

Skeptically, you mutter, “did–did I get hacked or something?” 

Anticipating another unexpected dialogue to prompt up, you wait for a full minute without saying anything else. And for a moment, the man in front of you looks indecisive, contemplative. 

There’s something very odd, very… human in the way he’s looking at you. He looks as if– as if he’s—

His face falls back into a neutral expression. Not unlike how his idle animation usually looks. 

..

…

….. It doesn’t seem like he’s going to initiate a conversation any time soon, so you hesitantly poke him on the nose. 

“Even in the worst-case scenario, there’s no need to panic.”

You’ve heard that one before.

So he’s back to normal now. You temper the small disappointment that blooms in your gut. 

Shaking your head slowly, you try to make sense of all the stuff that just happened, but a sharp bite on your ankle pulls you out of your reverie. 

“Ow–!” The sight of your cat flopping near your feet reminds you of the time. More importantly, the backlogs waiting for you at your desk. 

“Wait, shit– I gotta get back to work.” This… unbelievable stroke of good luck (?) is gonna have to take a backseat for now.

You grab the carton box and the half-empty bottle of sparkling peach as you stand up. Making quick work of throwing the container in the trash and gulping down the rest of your drink, you rush into your room and back in front of your PC. 

Cracking your knuckles, you gingerly set your phone against the monitor. Setting the timer to one hour in Quality Time, knowing fully-well that you’re going to have to keep extending it until the wee hours of the morning—or until your battery dies, whichever comes first—you give Sylus one last look, letting out a long exhale before locking in.

“Just keep me company for the night, alright? I’ll figure out what’s going on once my shift’s over.” 

-

It could just be your overactive imagination, but you swear you hear a quiet chuckle from the man polishing his gun in your peripheral.

[trippinsorrows]

ltye: before the fall

authors note: this is part a requested/suggested short as well as something else. takes place between chapters six and seven of the story.

warnings: none

suggested listening: can't help falling in love by kina grannis (def recommend listening to this one towards the middle of this and onward)

words: 3.5k

**gif belongs to @romanreigns

There’s a lot of thought that goes into it. Too much. Textbook overthinking. But all so necessary. 

She’s never done it before. Always resulted to texting to communicate with him when he’s in there. His office. Door closed. The place he’s been for the past two hours.

But unlike previous times, he hasn’t acknowledged her text. A text she sent almost half an hour ago. Something that wouldn’t be a major issue but not for the fact her message is….time sensitive. 

Meaning, she’s on the 6th hour of the eight hour limit one has with tampons, and no other remaining ones in the box. It’s a stupid, silly thing she keeps mentally berating herself over. How she could forget to pick up another box at her last grocery store visit? But berating herself doesn’t do anything to help the problem. She needs to go out, needs to buy some more. 

However, without Roman responding to her text letting her know if she can leave out or not, it’s hard to do. 

Impossible, even.

Which is why she’s left with only one choice.

A deep breath, a quiet prayer, and a big risk.

Solana has only knocked, quietly, three times when his deep voice barks from the other side, “what!”

Eyes shut, she winces but manages to answer, “it’s—it’s me.”

A noticeable pause followed by a quieter, slightly calmer, “come in.”

Slight hesitation followed by acquiescence. Immediately, Solana readies her apologies for interrupting him, but is interrupted herself when her eyes land on him.

As expected, he’s sitting at his desk, laptop open in front of him, stacks of manilla folders and paperwork surrounding it and him. But, what’s unexpected are the black rimmed glasses that sit perfectly on the bridge of his nose as well as his hair, so black, silky and beautiful, free and hanging, not in the typical neat bun he sports majority of the time.

And Solana can’t bring it in her to look away, too stunned by the almost….normalcy of it all. In this moment, he looks nothing like the man whose name strikes fear among most. He just looks like….a man.

A beautiful man, but a man, nonetheless.

“Yes?”

His deep voice, still surprisingly calm, finally pulls her from her trance. Looking away, her body suddenly much warmer than she recalls, she answers, “I’m—I’m sorry to bother you. You just—you didn’t reply to my text—” Realizing how accusatory that could sound, she moves to damage control. “I just mean—”

“You text me?” A glance at Roman reveals furrowed brows. She watches him grab his phone, eyes surveying the lock screen that most likely holds her unread message. “Shit, I’m sorry. Been busy.”

His apology feels unnecessary and also takes her back. Why should he apologize to her? It doesn’t make any sense.

“Where the hell do you need to go this late at night?”

Despite the wording, the tone of his question is more curious than annoyed. It doesn’t stop her from nervously fiddling with the cotton of her sweatpants. 

“I—I need to go to the store.”

Roman looks at her, brow raised, repeating. “You need to go to the store?” He glances at his computer screen. “Solana, it’s almost midnight. What the hell do you need from the store that can’t wait unt—” He stops, clearly noticing how her eyes shut, her face turned up in pain as she moves her hand over her stomach. “What’s wrong?”

Shaking her head, she waits for the sharp pain to, somewhat, subside, before answering. “I just—I don’t feel good.”

His eyes narrow, studying her. “Then you shouldn’t be going out.”

It’s a logical response that doesn’t necessarily apply to this situation. 

Solana does her best to hide the pain and discomfort she’s in, subtly rubbing her stomach. “I—I have to—”

“Do you want me to call the doctor?” His question causes her eyes to widen. She shakes her head, ready to protest when he continues, “you’re obviously sick, so—”

“No, I’m—it’s not…it’s not like that.”

Wrong answer. 

She watches his face shift into something of a scowl, his irritation undeniable as he demands. “Solana, would you just tell me what the hell is wrong with y—”

“I got my period.”

Oh.

Solana immediately regrets it the moment it's thrown out there. She slaps her hand over her mouth, eyes widened in horror. 

Shit.

“I’m sorry, I—I didn’t mean—”

Roman clears his throat, also clearly caught off guard by her answer, even if an answer was what he was wanting. “So you need stuff for….that.”

Her cheeks must be a reddish, ruddy mess. “Y–yes.” Desperate and eager to be past this conversation, she bargains, “I won’t be lon—”

“No.”

Silence.

Speaking continues to be a battle that Solana is, so far, not losing but not excelling at either. “I’m—sorry?”

Roman shakes his head, leaning back in the chair. “It’s too late for you to be out the house.”

She doesn’t necessarily disagree, but given the situation, she doesn’t see how she has much of a choice. “I—I’ll have security with m—”

“I’ll go.” 

More silence.

“You?” It’s a whisper, her voice weighed down with shock and some shade of embarrassment. “No, no, you—you can’t—you’re working.”

“I’m always working,” is his easy counter. Standing up, Solana watches him roll his shoulders. “Better me than you. You don’t feel good.” 

And she doesn’t feel any better knowing that she’s most definitely bothering him. “It’s fi—”

“Solana.” Something tells her this is a good point to stop protesting—and pushing—him. “I said I’ll go.” 

His voice reeks of finality, and the fear of upsetting him is enough to silence her. “O–okay.”

He nods, walking over and tasking her. “Just text me what you need.”

Solana also nods, nervously pushing back some of her hair. She’s an embarrassed, flushed mess, offering, “umm, I can send pictures of…of the…the product, if that…if that’s easier.”

He shakes his head, objecting, almost politely. “I don’t need all that.” And now she feels both an inconvenience and a nuisance for unintentionally insinuating he’s incapable of picking up a single item from the store. “Just text it. That’ll be enough.”

—-------

Turns out texting was not, in fact, enough.

It’s not very often, far and few in between, but something that can happen. Is happening as Roman stands in the feminine products aisle confused as all the outdoors. He does his best to match the words from Solana’s text to the words on the boxes, but the shit all looks the fucking same.

“Why is everything fucking pink?” He asks no one but himself, growing more and more annoyed by every second that passes.

For a brief moment, he’s annoyed with Solana. Annoyed that she even has him out there. But, that irritation is shoved away when he remembers the look of pain on her face, the discomfort she was poorly trying to hide. It would be wrong to send her out when she obviously isn’t feeling well.

Not to mention, like he said, a safety thing. With them still being essentially newlyweds, that target on her head is nice and fresh. He won’t take any chances.

Which is why he’s standing in the fucking drugstore at midnight looking like a dumbass. 

Feeling it, too.

Roman’s just about to go against his better judgment and call Solana when irritating humming hits his ears. Looking to his right, he sees a sales associate, a female sales associate approaching him. 

A tiny little redhead, smaller than even Solana, wearing an undeniably flirty smile. Any other time, he’d tell her to fuck off. But, this is one of those rare occasions where Roman is out of his league and could benefit from assistance.

She’s close enough to fall in the hearing distance range, green eyes scanning him up and down. “Can I help you with—”

“I need this,” he cuts her off. Roman shows her his phone that has the texts from Solana pulled up. The texts that must be girl speak or something, because Annie takes his phone and nods to herself with an immediate sense of knowing. “Do ya’ll have it or not?”

Her eyes flicker up, a surprisingly friendly and annoyingly cheerful, “yup” leaving her mouth as she hands him back his phone.

Roman watches in silence as she grabs two boxes off the shelf, boxes he never even fucking looked at, and walks toward him. “Is it her first night?”

Again, a strange experience that he doesn’t know how to handle. “I—I guess. I don’t fucking know. She just needs shit.”

The girl, who Roman realizes can’t be over 21 seems undeterred by his harshness and even his refusal to acknowledge to obvious flirty eyes she was trying to send his way. Good. Let her focus on her fucking job.

“I was just gonna ask if she has a heating pad. They help a ton with cramps—”

“She has those,” he cuts in. Finally. Something he knows. "Cramps."

She nods, asking, “so does she have one already?”

And there goes the fucking knowledge. “I don’t know. I’ll just buy one.” Because even if she has one, it’s probably not new, therefore it might not be as effective. So, it only makes sense he replaces it. and since she's already here, clearly able to offer the assistance he won't outwardly admit he needs, Roman decides to take full advantage of it. “You’re a woman.” Green eyes gives him a strange look before he asks, almost awkwardly. “What—what else does she need?”

—--------

Solana expected Roman to come back with a single box of tampons. 

What she receives, however, is more than just a box of tampons.

That’s included, yes. Included amongst three bags of various items ranging from tampons, pads, chocolates, over the counter pain pills, bubble bath, bath bombs, a heating pad, and more. 

Her jaw is dropped the entire time she’s going through the bags he’s laid out on the kitchen counter for her. 

“This…..” She’s truly at a loss for words. “Roman, this is—”

He shrugs, explaining, “I told the woman there to tell me what you might need.” Solana glances at all the items. Need is certainly a subjective word. Clearly.

“Thank you, but—” She shakes her head. “You didn’t—you didn’t have to spend so much money—I can pay you back.”

“Solana.” His deep voice cuts her off and demands her attention. “I’ve tipped more than what I spent on this. It’s fine. I don’t need your money.”

She nods, still quiet. It’s understandable. Roman Reigns seems like a man who doesn’t need much of anything from anybody, to be honest.

Still, she's not used to people doing things for her.

Especially men.

Roman studies her, asking almost skeptically, “so, are you good now?”

It takes a moment for her to answer. It takes her a second, because she’s overwhelmed. Countless times she’s been in pain before, struggled with horrific cramps and heavy bleeding, and not once did her dad or brother ask about how she was feeling. Did they even care.

They just wanted their dinner fixed.

And now, here’s her husband. Roman Reigns, of all people, leaving out late at night to pick up essentials for her. Beyond that, because the majority of the items he didn’t even need to get.

He didn't need to do it. Any of it, but he did, and she’s immensely grateful. 

Overwhelmed, slightly, too.

“Solana?” 

Breaking from her thoughts, and her emotions, she manages to answer. “Y–yes.” She clears her throat, holding and hugging the box of tampons to her chest. “Th—thank you, Roman.”

There’s something in his eyes as he looks at her. Something she doesn’t recognize but something that makes her feel something just as foreign and uncomfortable. 

Safe.

“You’re welcome, Solana.”

—---------

At nearly 3 o’clock in the morning, Roman expected to leave his office to silence and darkness. And both of those are partially true. There is some element of silence and darkness, but it’s not holistic. It’s not holistic, because Roman walks into the living room to find his wife still awake, sitting on the sofa, watching TV, her puppy sleeping peacefully on the floor next to her. 

That part isn’t surprising. 

All that damn dog does is sleep, eat, and piss/shit.

What a fucking life. 

Solana is smiling, an almost unfamiliar sight, at whatever is on the television when she notices him and sits up. Roman is unsure why he feels some sort of way watching her smile disappear. 

“I’m sorry, is the TV too loud?”

He shakes his head, disliking seeing and hearing the fear in her voice and on her face. “No.” Roman asks the real, relevant question. “Why are you still up?”

He starts to ask if she's still not feeling well, but then he sees the flash in her eyes, the sadness, and something deeper, something he knows all too well, he knows exactly why she's up.

“Couldn’t sleep,” is the quiet answer she settles on. One he’ll accept.

And suddenly, he feels slightly bad. Bad for making her revisit whatever it was that kept her up.

Clearing his throat, he gestures to the TV. “What are you watching?”

He’s pleased to see her smile return. Just a bit. But still, it’s there. “Pretty Little Liars.” His nonverbal response must give away his obliviousness. “You—you’ve never heard of it?”

Unintentionally, he gives her a look that screams, ‘does it look like i’ve heard of it?” and he feels bad all over again, especially seeing how she looks embarrassed almost. 

“What’s it about?” He asks, taking a spot on the opposite side of the same sofa where she sits, mindful of the distance between them, wanting to keep it at a respectful length. For her sake. He’s also relieved to see the embarrassment waning away.

“It’s….it’s kind of hard to explain, but….” Solana sits up, playing with her fingers, trying her best to explain an incredibly complex show. And she does the best she can, gesturing to TV at certain points, somehow pressing play for Roman to see for himself. From there, it ends up being less her explaining and more him watching. With her.

And it’s a newfound experience, sitting with him watching a show she’s certain he wouldn’t dare entertain in any other scenario. But, he is. With her. Without any protest.

It’s definitely strange but also….nice.

“So wait.” Her smile is already forming. He’s, understandably, had questions throughout, questions she’s enjoyed answering. It’ll probably be the first and last time someone is explaining something to Roman Reigns, because she has no doubt he’s used to it being the other way around. “I thought he was her teacher?”

Solana chuckles, answering. “He is.”

“He is?" Roman looks between her and the TV. “So they was both messing with the teacher?” His eyes are widened slightly, clearly taken back by this information. “And he knew one of them was underage?”

Solana nods, biting on her bottom lip. “Yeah.”

He scoffs, his next question more than valid. “Where the hell are the parents on this damn show?”

Solana giggles. Roman being unintentionally funny is an experience she could certainly get used to. “They don’t really find out about everything and start to get involved until later seasons.”

Roman's focus is on her, watching her adjust the blanket covering her body that slightly spills over into his lap. “How many seasons was it?”

She has to think for a second. “Seven, I believe.”

“Seven?” Solana laughs again. Roman’s surprise and borderline horror at just a tip of the iceberg of information is hilarious. “You watched seven seasons of this just to find out who B was?”

“A,” she corrects, hand over her mouth to cover her smile.

“Close enough,” he dismisses. Shaking his head, Roman seems to watch as she uses the remote to navigate to something else as they've reached the end of the episode. “You feeling better?”

His question takes her off guard and reignites that strange warm feeling from earlier. “Y–yes.” A rushed, quiet, “thank you” follows as she shifts on the sofa and finds herself asking, “have—have you ever seen Crazy Rich Asians?”

He gives her a look that’s equally puzzled as it is quietly amused. “Crazy Rich Asians?”

The way he almost punctuates each word makes her laugh quietly. “I know….I know the title is kind of off-putting, but it’s—it’s one of my favorite movies.” And where this comes from, she hasn’t the slightest clue because it makes no sense from any angle, but she’s asking him nonetheless. “Do—do you want to watch it with me?”

Solana immediately regrets it the moment it leaves her mouth for a lot of reasons. The main one being he’s already sat here and watched almost 45 minutes of a show he clearly has no interest in. Not to mention that it’s the middle of the night, and he has to be exhausted. 

The man has early mornings and late nights almost every day. She truly doesn’t know just when he sleeps.

And her asking him to stay up with her to watch a damn rom-com is just—

“Sure.”

Solana is certain she’s staring, certain she looks just as caught off guard as she feels. “Wh–what?” She sits up a little, noticing that Dulce continues to sleep away peacefully. Despite minimal anxiety, her smile is small, revealing Solana's inherent satisfaction at his answer. “R–really?”

And if Roman is at all annoyed or feeling upset at being asked to stay up later than he already is, he does a damn good job at hiding it. His big shoulders lift for a shrug. “I’m not really tired anyway.”

A part of her wonders if he’s just saying that to save face. The other part of her feels a sense of excitement, regardless.

“Okay….”

Solana doesn’t waste any time in starting said movie, and as much as she enjoys the film, it’s a bit more difficult than she anticipated to focus on the TV with the man sitting so close besides her. And not even for the reasons of attraction, maybe to some extent, sure, but she’s more engaged and almost moved by the small smiles, quiet chuckles, and even light laughter at certain scenes.

She studies him, unable to look away. Not wanting to. Because this man, almost relaxed, is such a stark contrast from who she’s used to.

Who the world is used to. 

He just seems so at ease, and selfishly, she soaks and absorbs it all in. Appreciates it. Wants it to last for as long as it can. 

Especially because it’s certainly an anomaly. Come morning, even after the conclusion of the movie, the same, stoic, unreadable Roman Reigns will return.

Because at the core, that is who he is. 

It’s truly only when one of Solana’s favorite cinematic moments occurs that she’s fully invested in the movie her husband has been more invested in than she has. 

“I love this part,” she sighs in awe. Roman turns to see his wife is now sitting up on the sofa, head tilted slightly, eyes glued to the TV.

He doesn’t allow himself to think about how much closer she suddenly is to him in this new position. 

He instead also follows her line of vision, watching as the wedding scene finally arrives, the tone almost completely shifting as music plays.

Wise men say

Only fools, only fools rush in

Oh, but I, but I, I can't help falling in love with you

Roman recognizes the song as an old Elvis tune, covered by the singer in the movie whose soft voice, soothing almost, reminds him of the woman next to him. The woman whose side profile is suddenly something he can’t seem to turn or look away from. A sight that’s significantly more exquisite than he realized. Solana has always been beautiful to him, objectively and subjectively. 

But in this space, where she’s doing nothing more than existing, he finds that beauty immensely captivating, alluring, hypnotizing almost. 

Shall I stay?

Would it be, would it be a sin?

If I can't help falling in love with you

Solana has seen this movie at least a dozen times. This scene in particular even more than that, and each time never fails to bring unshed tears to her eyes. The layout of the wedding, the bewitching voice of the singer, the love practically felt between Rachel and Nick, it’s all been so overwhelming in the best way.

But, there’s something different about this viewing. Something that feels a lot more personal than she’s ever experienced. 

A lot more real. 

Like a river flows

Surely to the sea

Darling, so it goes

Some things, you know, are meant to be

Emotion betrays her, Solana unable to keep her comment to herself. She shares, voice barely above a whisper. “It’s so beautiful….”

Roman continues to focus on her, on this woman who both confuses and intrigues him in ways he can’t understand. A woman whose kindness so starkly contrasts all of the dark edges that make him who he is. And he too is captivated. 

Just not by the scene.

His eyes never leave her, his focus never so keenly devoted to a sole person than in this very moment. 

“O oe….”

Take my hand

Take my whole life too

For I can"t help falling in love with you

—----------

Translations:

"O oe...." = "You are...."

[silentscrying]

🎸 out of my mind ! 💿 track three: something about a beat

guitarist!ino x drummer!reader

summary: it's the annual battle of the bands at the fix, your college campus's iconic live music bar, and this year you're taking the stage as the drummer for indie rock group cursed technique. you know the competition is strong, but no part of you is ready for lead singer and guitarist takuma ino. you lock eyes at the edge of the stage, and something starts—something that might make you feel alive even more than the beat of the drums.

warnings: language, hopeless stupid pining, alcohol, mentions of deceased parent, maki is Fed Up, anxiety, unbearably cute dogs. || sfw. 9k words.

“OKAY, IT’S UP,” Nobara says, grinning at you over her laptop. You’re sprawled across the living room at Takuma’s place, surrounded by a random combination of your band and his while others are in classes. After spending last night mixing the single, Takuma helped Nobara set up an artist profile for the band, and now your music is available on streaming services. Just like that.

“That’s so weird,” you say, grinning as you pull up Spotify on your phone. Next Fix by Cursed Technique. Strange to see your face on there, a photo taken of all of you by some freshman when you last performed at The Fix. Nobara sends the link in your group chat, and Toge responds within seconds.

freak no. 1: FAME freak no. 1: FORTUNE freak no. 1: wait it’s not opening freak no. 1: nvm i’m just stupid

“Does he ever pay attention in class?” Nobara mutters. Maki snorts.

Yuta is also in class, but that means he’s locked in, all his devices on Do Not Disturb. You don’t think Toge’s turned DND on a single time in his life.

“I’m going to Kinji’s!” Kirara shouts from the front entryway, and Yuji leaps to his feet and disappears down the hall, barreling back out of his room seconds later.

“Wait! Can you give this to Panda while you’re there?” He hands her a drive, and Kirara rolls her eyes and takes it.

“You need to slow down every once in a while,” she says, ruffling Yuji’s hair. “Okay, bye. I’ll be back in a few hours.” The dogs follow her to the door and return the living room when she’s gone, curling up on either side of Megumi, who’s busy writing some paper in the corner.

“What was that?” Nobara asks.

“Demo drive for the radio station,” Takuma says. “Panda plays our stuff sometimes. I bet he’d play yours, too.”

“That’d be sick,” Nobara says approvingly. She turns to bother Megumi, poking at him until he takes his headphones off and talks to her, and Yuji strolls into the room and flops down directly on the floor.

“Comfy?” you ask, poking him with a socked foot.

“Mm. Yeah.”

“Ah, look what you did, Kugisaki,” Megumi says, and you look up to see Shiro trotting toward you with her tail wagging, having abandoned her post at her owner’s side.

“That was not my fault! You’re the one who moved.”

“Because you kept poking me!”

You immediately slide off the couch onto the floor, letting Shiro sit in your lap. “Um, excuse me,” Takuma says, offended. You crane your neck to look up at him behind you on the couch. His face is lit up by his computer as he works on a string of code he tried (and failed) to explain to you, and there’s laughter in his eyes despite the affronted tone of his voice.

“Favorite,” you inform him with a wide, cheeky smile. He very maturely sticks his tongue out at you.

“Toge message,” Nobara informs you all, reading off her phone. “He says omg we have four listeners do you think they’re writing slutty fanfiction about us already.” She glances at you. “Petition to remove him from the chat—oh, look, he started sending the wolf memes again.”

Hanging out like this has become natural so quickly you almost forget you haven’t been friends with Shibuya Incident for ages. You feel almost as much at home in the tapestry-covered living room here as you do in the plant-filled kitchen of your own house down the street.

Maki checks her watch, sighing. “We should get going soon. The guys will be back in half an hour.” Then you have rehearsal, even though you’re not one of the three bands performing tomorrow night. When you do take the stage next week, you want to be ready.

Nobara is trying to read Megumi’s texts over his shoulder, which isn’t working out well for her, and he tells Maki, “Yes, please, take your invasive little gremlin home.” He puts his hand right on Nobara’s face and pushes her away, and she screeches and tries to tackle him, but he’s already sitting in a beanbag chair in the corner, so it doesn’t really do much except make Kuro jump on top of them both.

You glance up at Takuma again, still stroking Shiro’s fur while the others start to stand, ready to head home. “You rehearsing today too?”

“I’d hope so,” he shrugs.

“Yes, dipshit, in two hours. If you ever read the group chat,” Megumi says.

Takuma doesn’t seem fazed by Megumi’s irritation and just shrugs. “We have a new song for tomorrow.”

“You didn’t tell me!” You poke at his knee in retribution for his secrecy. “I wanna hear it!”

“You will,” he says. “Tomorrow.”

“Skipper, help, I don’t wanna walk our gremlin home by myself,” Maki calls from the door, and you reluctantly pat Shiro on the head and stand. She follows you to the entryway and sniffs at you while you cram your feet into your sneakers.

“Maki Zenin.” Nobara turns up her nose and crosses her arms over her chest. “If you hated me so much, why didn’t you just say so?”

“Bye!” Yuji shouts from the living room, and you all call out varying goodbyes and noncommittal sounds before making your way out the door and down the block, the afternoon air chilly against your cheeks.

Nobara waits all of ten seconds before spinning around and walking backward, grinning at you mischievously. “I bet Ino wrote a song about you.”

“Oh my god. Shut up,” you laugh. “He didn’t.” You can’t imagine you’ve given him all that much to work with. What would he write, that you like coffee and drums and Megumi’s dogs?

“Why else wouldn’t he show you? Don’t you guys text each other song lyrics like the little romantic fucks you are?” Your face is flaming, and you’re suddenly very grateful for the cool of the wind against your skin. The idea of him writing a song about you plants something weird in your gut—not something bad, just something unexpected and warm and blooming.

You try not to show it and your friends see right through you, Nobara turning back to skip up the drive with a satisfied grin and Maki rolling her eyes at the both of you.

“I’m gonna write a song, too,” Nobara declares, unlocking the door and pushing her way inside. “Skipper and Ino, sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S—”

This time, you and Maki speak in tandem. “Shut up!”

—

“There’s a joke here,” Gojo says, tapping both of his index fingers together while he thinks. “About being a drummer and a journalist. Something about a beat.”

You laugh, jotting another note on the lined paper of your small spiral notebook. “I hate to tell you, but I’ve heard that one before.”

You’re not sure features qualifies as a specific beat, more of a broad category, but your staff isn’t nearly large enough to assign people to smaller specialties. Plus, it’s a college publication, designed for experimentation and growth. Nobody wants to be boxed in yet. That’ll come later, out in the monotony of the real world, and you’ll be confined to some hyperspecific beat like neighborhood crime or high school basketball.

“No!” Gojo cries, dragging his hands down his face like it’s the end of the world. “I can’t believe somebody plagiarized me before I even said it.”

“That’s not how that works,” Utahime cuts in dryly, sliding three shots across the counter to the waiting group of sophomores and then effortlessly throwing together another cocktail.

Gojo leans toward you, shadowing out your notes, and stage-whispers, “You see what I have to put up with?”

You do, actually, see what Utahime has to put up with. She long ago put down a line of blue painter’s tape to divide her side of the bar from Gojo’s, and she preaches frequently that there will be dire consequences if he crosses it.

Of course, he crosses it at every opportunity, and here he is, still.

It’s also just how the two bartenders split up the work, the customers, and you write that down too, that it’s an effective division of labor. “Don’t read my notes,” you tell Gojo as he squints at your writing upside down. “It’ll wreck the journalistic integrity.” He sticks out his bottom lip in a pout that reminds you violently of Toge, who’s taking photos of Utahime as she works.

You glance over to the stage, where Angel is performing the last number of her set, a bouncy, belty song that you recognize from a video she posted earlier this week. The crowd loves it, dancing around and singing along, but still, you think she’ll have a tougher time making it through as the only solo artist remaining in the competition.

You whoop and cheer as she hits her last note, holding it for an ungodly amount of time, and Gojo eventually has to abandon his teasing to do his job. When Toge thinks he’s got enough photos, the two of you slip back into the crowd, Panda commentating on the change of artist as you catch up to your friends.

“And now, here’s your alt rock duo, your boys, the Kamos,” he says as you come to a stop beside Yuta. “Give it up!”

Nobara very loudly gives it up.

“Hi.” Yuta nudges you. “How’s the reporting going?”

“Good.” Noritoshi and Choso settle in on stage, tuning their guitar and bass and making girls swoon in the front row but somehow remaining entirely oblivious to it. “You’re not going home tomorrow, right?”

Yuta shakes his head. This weekend is fall break, which just means that there were no classes today. You spent the first day of your three-day weekend cramming for midterms.

Toge’s heading out after this and Nobara will leave early in the morning, but Maki and Yuta will be here for the weekend. You wonder about Takuma and his band, but you can’t ask right now—they’re all backstage, waiting to go on after the Kamos.

The boys in question, when they’re not doing covers, have incredibly nonsensical song names that have little to nothing to do with their lyrics. The first track of theirs you ever heard was called Song About the Time My Dog Got Lost for Three Hours.

“Okay,” Choso says after their cover of a song by The Smiths. “This one’s called Please Don’t Tell Your Mom I Was At Your House Past Curfew.”

He and Noritoshi then proceed to play the most upbeat, energizing alt rock shit you’ve ever heard. You love these guys, and the crowd does too, the way they don’t take themselves too seriously but they’re genuinely talented. But it’s making you nervous for Takuma and his band, because only one group goes on tonight. Only one.

No, you think, shrugging it off. They got this.

When Shibuya Incident finally walks on stage, the ensuing roar of applause before they even do anything eases whatever worries you might have had. They were slotted at the end of tonight’s set for a reason. Everyone loves them.

Without prelude, they launch into a song you recognize from their EP, a fast-paced track with a pretty simple chord progression that gets entirely flipped on its head in the bridge. You let Yuta spin you around as you dance with the rest of the crowd, the lights and sound washing over you. Yuji’s in his element, Kirara is fucking killing it, and Megumi—as always—is the rock the band stands on, unerring tempo and steady presence keeping everyone on track.

After the song finishes with a crazy riff from Kirara, and the crowd takes a minute to freak out and then slowly wind down, Takuma grabs the mic to address the audience.

“Hi again,” he says, scanning the clusters of people from his place on the low stage. His gaze lands on you and your friends, and he smiles a little wider. “That was Godspeed. We’re gonna slow it down a bit for our next song. It’s a new one. We’re calling it Curious.”

Nobara practically launches herself over Toge to get to you and shake you by the shoulders. “What did I say?” she hisses.

“Oh my god,” you say, shoving her off. “They haven’t even started yet.” But you look back at Takuma to find he hasn’t stopped looking at you.

To your surprise, the instrumentals don’t start first. Most of Shibuya Incident’s music opens with a riff or a fill or at least four bars of introduction. But this time, Takuma leans into the mic and starts singing, just a low “ooooh,” and the rest of the band comes in one by one—Megumi, then Kirara, then Yuji. Kirara’s harmonizing on a higher note, and the effect is a slow, dissonant build that makes you lock in, all anticipation.

Then Takuma tugs the mic from the stand and sings,“I see your eyes, curious, curious, you wanna know why the sky’s so goddamn blue. I hear your voice, curious, curious, you’re asking me if I’d ever fall for you.”

And as you listen, Nobara’s smile just gets wider and wider, and Takuma keeps making fleeting eye contact with you, and you realize abruptly that she was right.

This song is about you.

Takuma’s said it to you before, in passing, how he likes the way you look at the world—through a journalist’s lens, curious about how everything works, always searching for unseen answers.

“Wish I could see my life like you do,” he and Kirara sing in unison. “Wish I could walk the streets each night… wonderin’ if the full moon sees you, but I just keep lookin’, lookin’ down at the time.”

You’re transfixed, just like the first night you saw Takuma perform live, and you couldn’t tear your eyes away from the stage if you tried. Someone should write a story about him, you think. This man could be on the cover of Rolling Stone and you wouldn’t question it.

God, you’re so far gone, aren’t you?

When the set is over, the last song finishing with a long, drawn-out chord, Takuma thanks the crowd and hands the mic off to Panda to take over. As the band disappears one by one into the backstage area, he lays out the voting process.

“The voting period will last ten minutes, assuming no technical difficulties,” he says. “QR codes, as usual, are posted around the bar. If you’re a competitor, you can’t vote. Make sure you’re logged into your .edu accounts or you won’t be able to access the form…”

Your fingers are tapping nervously at your thighs, the crowd around you already glued to their phone screens. The band isn’t back out on the floor yet—Panda will call all three artists up at the end of the voting period and announce the finalist live.

Sweat is starting to pool in the palms of your clammy hands, and you wipe it on your jeans, anxious. To you, there’s no question. But it’s not up to you.

“Relax,” Yuta says, putting a reassuring hand on your shoulder. “It won’t even be close, Skip.”

After the longest ten minutes of your life, Hana Kurusu, the Kamos, and Shibuya Incident join Panda back on stage, a dramatic spotlight bouncing between each artist as Panda draws out the announcement. “And the artist from tonight moving on to the finals in two weeks is…”

“Just say it,” Maki huffs beside you, and Yuta chuckles and nudges her with a shoulder. She tries to hide the slight upturn of her lips, but that’s not going to slide past you.

You’ll tease her later. For now—

“Shibuya Incident!”

The reaction is explosive, both on the floor and the stage. Yuji practically leaps onto Kirara’s back, and Takuma’s face goes slack in surprise before a shy smile works its way across his spotlit features, Megumi being his nonchalant, unaffected self in the midst of it all. Nobara is screaming, and you’re yelling at the top of your lungs, Toge whooping and snapping photos as the Kamos and Hana crowd the band, congratulating them on the victory.

Takuma looks out into the crowd again and you wave, smiling unabashedly, so fucking proud and excited and thinking maybe, maybe, if you make it too, you’ll be facing off against each other, and wouldn’t that be something?

Maybe you shouldn’t be so thrilled. He’s the competition, after all.

But if he wins for going up there and singing curious, curious with his eyes locked on yours, you suppose it wouldn’t be all that bad.

—

Most of Saturday passes in a barrage of classwork and inconsistent, snacky meals in between, the diet of a harried college student, ramen and chips and whatever actual food Yuta leaves for you in the fridge. He’s back from work by three, and Maki wraps up her own work around the same time you do, late afternoon creeping into evening. The three of you are curled up in the living room, the TV on while Yuta and Maki try to pretend they’re not looking at each other.

You need to get them alone.

you: are you busy takuma: not at all takuma: what’s up? you: mind if i crash your house?

You glance up and swear Yuta has somehow, in the last two seconds, moved closer to Maki on the couch.

you: i think yuta and maki need some ~ALONE TIME~ takuma: TEA takuma: sorry kirara told me to stop saying that in response to everything that happens ever takuma: it’s fun tho

“I’m going to Takuma’s,” you announce, and Maki raises a brow at you.

“Again?”

“Sue me for having friends.”

Yuta’s brows crease a bit at the word friends, but he doesn’t comment. With a furtive glance back, you grab your shoes and slip out the door, successfully leaving Maki and Yuta alone in the house for an indeterminate amount of time.

Please, you think. One of them has to make a fucking move soon.

Takuma answers the door before you can knock. “Hey.”

“No pups today?” you ask as you step past him into the entryway, kicking off your shoes.

“Sadly,” Takuma says. “Fushiguro took ‘em with him, wherever he went. Ah, man. Did you only come over for them?” His tone is teasing as he closes the front door behind you, trading the October cold for the warmth of the house. “Afraid I’m a letdown.”

“Takuma,” you scold at his self-deprecation. “You’re basically an excited puppy yourself, so—”

“Hey!” he squawks, and then thinks about it and tilts his head, conceding. “Fine. Maybe. Yeah, okay.”

“What have you been up to?” you ask as the two of you make your way to the living room.

“Procrastination. Guitar instead of homework, mostly. You?”

“Same,” you sigh. “Well, not the guitar part. But I should have been way further ahead on my homework by now.” You shrug. You’ll get it done; you always do.

You settle in easily on the couch, and the two of you boot up the Wii and play a few rounds of Mario Kart because someone left the disc in. And when you’ve both beaten each other enough times to lose count, Takuma mentions something about your single and you realize you haven’t checked the stats.

“You can see more on a computer,” he says, and you follow him up to his room, where he cedes control of the device to you. You pull up the artist profile and grin at the steady upward climb of listeners. It’s not a ton, but this only went up on Thursday.

“We haven’t even done anything to promote this,” you admit, spinning in Takuma’s desk chair to face him. “I don’t even know how people are finding it.”

He immediately looks down, which means he knows something. You nudge him with your foot. “What? What does that face mean? Takuma.”

“I maybe gave Panda a drive of the mix,” he shrugs, talking fast like the meaning of the words might elude you if he mumbles enough. “And he maybe played it at the radio station earlier today. Several times.”

A wave of affection crashes into you so fast that you jump up and throw your arms around him without thinking, laughing into his shoulder. “You didn’t have to do that!” You pull back, grinning. “That was really sweet. Thank you. Seriously.”

“Ah, it was nothin’.” He reaches up to scratch at the back of his neck, a gesture you’ve come to recognize as self-conscious.

“Not nothing,” you say softly. He smiles.

After a moment, he glances at the window and seems to come to a decision. “Hey,” he says.

“Hey yourself.”

“Wanna go out on the roof?”

You blink, processing the words, instinctively looking to his window. You’ve never really realized it before, but it opens out onto a flat expanse of shingles, a perfect lookout right outside Takuma’s bedroom.

Your grin is answer enough, and he unlatches the window and pulls it open. He glances back at you, up and down, and you feel yourself blush before you realize he’s taking in what you’re wearing. He grabs a thick jacket from the closet and tosses it to you, then shrugs one on himself and leads the way, gripping the window frame with one hand and pulling himself outside. After a moment of consideration, he reaches back in and grabs his acoustic guitar by the neck from its place against the wall, pulling it out with him.

When the window shuts behind you, you’re immediately grateful for the protection of the extra layer. Even with your hands balled in the sleeves of your hoodie, it’s chilly out here.

You’re surprised by how much of the campus you can see spread out in the distance. It’s early evening, but the days are getting shorter, the sun a misleading blaze of heat in the otherwise cold hour.

“This,” you say, “is fucking awesome.”

“Right? I called dibs on the room as soon as we toured. For this.” He grins, leaning back on his palms, legs spread out in front of him. You lie back on the roof, letting the cool surface seep through your hood, staring up at the sky.

“So Maki and Yuta,” he says, shaking his head fondly. “Are they finally a thing?”

“I don’t know, but if they’re gonna do anything about it, it’s not gonna be while anyone else is home.” You shrug, or at least do whatever approximation of shrugging you can when you’re bundled in a bulky hoodie and jacket and lying on a roof.

Honestly, Yuta and Maki are some of your favorite people on this planet, and you can’t imagine anyone else who really deserves them. They’re the de facto mom and dad of your group—as in, Yuta is the band mom and Maki’s the gruff father who won’t admit his affection for the pet he didn’t want to get but ended up loving anyway.

“Man, I’m glad I wasn’t around when Kirara and Hakari were in their pining phase,” Takuma chuckles. He pulls his legs in, sitting cross-legged, and picks up the guitar, idly tuning it as he speaks. “Then there’s Itadori, probably picks up girls everywhere he goes and has never once realized it.”

“What about Megumi?” You let your head loll to the side, looking at Takuma with the guitar settled in his lap.

“Fushiguro? I don’t know, man, he doesn’t tell us anything. He has like, resting yearning face. I’ve got no idea. I don’t even know where he is right now, just that he’s supposed to be back really late.”

“That means the dogs will be back?” you say hopefully.

Takuma shakes his head, strumming another chord, and another, fingers moving deftly across the frets. “I’m not enough for you, huh?”

“I said no such thing.”

He plucks out a happy little melody on the guitar, looking at you. “Wanna learn?”

You sit up, your hood falling back off your head in the process. “Really?”

In answer, he hands you the guitar, scooting closer to you to show you where to place your fingers. You’ve been around your bandmates enough to know the basics, but you let him teach you anyway, giggling a little when he guides you through a three-chord progression and says, “Damn, you’re a natural.”

He leans back and stares at the sky, listening to you play. Eventually you add a few other basic chords into the mix, varying your strumming patterns, already feeling the strain in your fingertips from the unfamiliar press of the strings.

“So,” you say, still idly messing around on a G chord. Takuma props himself up on his elbows, looking over at you. “What was the incident in Shibuya? Have you been to Shibuya?”

He snorts. “Nope. Honestly, it was more to make people ask the question. You know in the Marvel movies, how Hawkeye and Black Widow are always talking about Budapest?”

“And nobody knows what the hell happened there,” you say, laughing. “Ah. I see.”

“I’ve never even been to Japan,” Takuma admits. “Fushiguro has, though. Maybe he had an incident in Shibuya. Who knows?”

G, C, D. D, C, G. You play the chords over and over, strumming softly, slowly, letting your finger catch on each of the strings, then five of them, then four.

“This is a really nice guitar.”

“Yeah.” There’s a beat of silence that makes you glance up, weighted differently than the usual pauses in conversation. Takuma is sitting up now, knees pulled loosely to his chest. “Was my dad’s.”

“He taught you to play,” you remember aloud, recalling your conversation in the coffee shop. But now you’re hung up on that word: was. Part of you doesn’t want to ask, but part of you feels like his words are a sort of quiet invitation, like he wants to tell you, but doesn’t want to force it. “I… is he…?”

“He died when I was twelve,” Takuma admits, eyes fixed on the sky. “Uh, car accident. It was stupid, some issue with the other guy’s car. Couldn’t stop it.” You’ve never heard his voice like this before, taut, oddly thin. Carefully, gently, you set the guitar on the roof beside you, watching him.

“Were you…”

“In the car?” Takuma sniffs. “Ah. Yeah.”

“Oh,” you breathe, and that’s what it is, more of a breath than a word. “I—Takuma…”

When he laughs, there’s no humor in it. It’s a hollow kind of chuckle, one that says everything he can’t. “It’s why I learned to skate, actually,” he says quietly, not meeting your eyes. “I’d get everywhere that way. I didn’t—want to drive, I guess. Got my license late and everything. I think people thought I was just a slacker.”

Whatever words you might scrounge up feel inadequate for a grief this large. You don’t want to pity him, and you don’t want to dismiss him, and that’s always the problem with hard conversations, isn’t it? What a line to walk.

“You’re not a slacker,” you say eventually, and he raises a brow at you. “I mean, maybe you procrastinate coding projects to a worrying extent, but you always get it done.” You smile thinly. “You don’t give up in any way that matters, Takuma. I like that about you.”

He chuckles. “Nanami said something like that, once.” His eyes go far-away again, just for a second. “He’s kind of the closest thing… like… I don’t know. I’ve known Nanami for a really long time. He was my dad’s friend. And I guess he sort of became a father figure, after…”

He shrugs. “It’s probably a big part of why I decided to go here. That, and it’s not too far from my mom’s. I don’t know that she’d have been thrilled if I went somewhere farther.”

“You’re not home,” you say carefully, a question but not question. “For break?”

“She’s on a business trip,” he says. “So not much point. But I’ll see her at Christmas, at least.”

For a while the silence stretches out comfortably between you, like a weighted blanket. You can’t ignore it, but it isn’t unwelcome. At some point you scooted closer to him, and now you sit side by side, only the layers of your jackets separating you.

“Thank you for telling me,” you say eventually, soft, unwilling to break the quiet. He nods.

“You didn’t go home either,” he points out, an unspoken question in the spaces between words. “Is it just ‘cause you’re from so far away, or…”

“Yeah. A Friday off didn’t feel like enough of a break to warrant a flight back.” But that’s not all of it. His silence tells you he knows it, too. He’s been so candid with you all night. You can share this part of yourself, you decide.

There’s something about Takuma, anyway, that makes you want to tell him things. You want to know him, and you want him to know you—you now, here, at school, but also you there, home, in the past.

“I haven’t been home since July,” you admit, hugging your knees to your chest, mirroring him. “My town is… small. I liked it when I was little. But the older I got the more I started to feel, just—I don’t know, stifled?”

Your hometown used to feel huge, like you could explore it forever on your Razor scooter and never find all its secrets. But you grew, and the town didn’t grow with you, and suddenly you were standing outside your high school realizing you knew every corner of the self-proclaimed suburban city, every street and coffee shop and alley. You’ve always been curious. And at some point, there wasn’t anything left in that place for you to be curious about.

“I love my home. I love my parents. It’s just… I needed to get out. I don’t think they ever really understood that.”

It’s easier to admit things when you’re looking straight ahead like this, out over the lines and curves of buildings, picking out street lamps, watching a few stray cars make their way around slow corners.

“Is it what you wanted it to be?” he asks quietly. “Here, I mean.” He nods out to the vast stretch of campus, spread across the city. So many corners you’ve been here years and haven’t found them all.

Campus is weird on break, you muse, looking out over the darkness. A whole parallel world for you to explore, the shadowed version of the place. A video game map on single-player, a dead server. Hardly any lights on in the windows, no kids out on the street. Like a ghost town. But it still doesn’t feel empty to you. There’s so much promise in it.

“Yeah,” you answer after a moment, soft. “Yeah, I think it is.”

A ghost town that isn’t lonely, somehow. You could write a song about it, you think. Friends with all the dead in my ghost town. The phrase plays itself out in your head, and it sounds like something moodier than your band usually goes for. It sounds like Shibuya Incident.

You wonder if this is what it means to be in a relationship—not a romantic one, necessarily, but a friendship, or any kind of bond between two creative people. If it’s this, the sharing of intellectual property with another person to the extent that their voice and yours start to blend.

It’s in the way Nobara can finish your sentences when you’re throwing out potential verses, scrambling for rhymes. How Toge and Yuta can anticipate each other’s movements, match chord progressions without talking about them. How Maki slips into your tempo seamlessly, every single time.

And now your lyrics sound like something his band would play. Maybe Takuma’s songwriting will start sounding like yours, too.

You don’t think you’d mind.

“Can I tell you something?” Takuma murmurs after a moment, sounding hesitant.

You rest a cheek on your knees, hands clasped together in front of your shins, facing him. “Mhm.”

“That song last night,” he whispers, and he’s not looking at you, just staring out at the rapidly darkening campus. “It was about you. And how you—I don’t know, the way you look at things. Like they’re always so full of potential. I wish I could do that. You just see things and want to know more. I like… watching you, being curious.” He pauses for a beat and then quickly adds, “Not in like, a creepy way! Just—I don’t know.”

A chuckle slips through your lips against your will, the darkness hopefully hiding the color in your cheeks. Maybe you can blame it on the cold. “Watching?” you ask, teasing. “I can’t imagine I’m all that intriguing. There’s a lot of cool people around here, y’know.”

“Skip,” he murmurs, and now his eyes are locked on yours. “I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone like you.”

Every nerve in your body is hyperaware of his proximity, and his hand reaches up to cup your jaw, the touch ghosting over you, barely there, hesitant. A nonverbal question. Is this okay?

You lean into the warmth, letting his breath wash over you, mingling with your own in the space between your lips, smaller and smaller and smaller.

He’s watching you, closely, giving you a chance to pull away. So many words exchanged tonight, but you don’t need any for this.

You don’t pull away.

It’s slow at first, and soft, and hesitant. The shingles dig into the heel of your hand as you lean forward on one arm, a grainy feeling on your fingertips, in the grooved imprints left by the guitar strings. You find your free hand moving up to his shoulder, pushing, guiding him down until his back is pressed against the roof and you’re over him, lips locked with his. You look at him, and he’s so full of potential. You want to know everything about him, you want to know how he works, you want to ask questions. And you do, with your tongue along the seam of his lips, and your hand tangled in his hair, and his breath mixing with yours in the air. It’s near full dark now, feeling later than it really is, evening in autumn.

You’re not cold anymore.

He deepens the kiss, body coming up to meet yours, and you feel like maybe this roof is the top of the whole world, because how could you ever feel higher than this?

“Takuma,” you murmur, and you kiss him again, and you don’t think you’ve ever felt this way before, but you’ll do maybe anything in the world to feel this way again.

And then a sharp, deep sound makes you jump, scrambling to sit up on the shingles, breathing heavy from the kiss and the noise. Did that come from inside or out?

“What—”

“Oh, crap,” Takuma groans, pulling open the window. “Someone’s home.” He looks back at you, cheeks flushed from the cold or the kiss or both, looking a little helpless, a little apologetic, and you can’t help the small laugh that bursts from you at the absurdity of the situation. You feel like a teenager getting caught by your parents.

“We should…” He nods toward the window. You hand him the guitar, then crawl back over to the window and slip inside after him, the warmth a stark relief from the temperature you’ve gotten so used to. Your heart is a jackhammer, rapidly pecking away at the once-stable structure of yourself.

You kissed him.

You kissed Takuma.

Your phone buzzes in your pocket, and you pull it out with still-cold hands.

utah: [1 Image Attachment] utah: dinner?

Admittedly, the pasta does look amazing, and your stomach grumbles as if on cue.

“I should go,” you say awkwardly, holding up the phone for Takuma to see.

“Uh, yeah, uh—for sure, no problem, I should go see what’s up down there anyway,” he says after a beat of hesitation. “I’ll see you, uh…?”

“Around?” you finish, laughing slightly.

“Yeah,” he echoes with an amused half-smile as you make your way down the stairs. “Around.”

—

You’re freaking out.

It’s 4:31 on Monday afternoon, you’ve been listening to the same song on repeat for an hour, and you’re freaking the fuck out.

After Saturday night, you didn’t talk about it. You kissed him on the roof and your heart turned into a hummingbird and you were warm all over, and then the front door slammed and you nearly jumped out of your skin, and Megumi was back early and Takuma had no idea why, and you pet the dogs and then slipped out, wanting to give them their space.

And you haven’t talked about it. You haven’t had time. Sunday was a mess of cramming for midterms and your housemates returning from break and you threw yourself into your studies and tried not to remember, but now…

The stupid fucking switch in the back of your brain has flipped itself on and you can’t turn it off, all worry and criticism and hypothetical worst-case scenarios and you’re giving too much too fast, Skipper, you know better than this!

How many people in your tiny town fell in love young and grew to resent each other? How many of your high school friends grew up with divorced parents? How many breakups have you seen in your two and a half years at this university, how many tears and shouting matches in public halls, how many friend groups falling apart because two people fell in and out of love?

The thing is, you know you’re panicking about nothing. Takuma hasn’t asked anything of you. It was just a kiss. He is not your boyfriend. This is not a contract.

But if you talk about it, it could be, and you don’t understand why that scares you so much. Do you have commitment issues? What the fuck is your problem?

You probably wouldn’t have a problem at all, if you’d just had the time Saturday night to figure out what the kiss meant. But now that a whole day has passed and you haven’t seen him and you don’t know for sure, your mind keeps wandering down paths it should have stayed away from.

What if it’s a friends with benefits situation and you’ve just read too much into it? Maybe this is all he wants, making out, spending late nights together getting physical. Maybe that’s all. A heated makeout session on a roof doesn’t mean he feels the way you do. And do you even know how you feel? Fucking hell.

It’s the anxiety talking, the more logical part of you says, the part that sounds an awful lot like Maki. Your friends aren’t around to tell you how stupid you’re being, so the only texts you and Takuma have sent since Saturday night are playlists and song lyrics skirting around whatever truths you’re trying and failing to articulate.

Do I Wanna Know floats from the speaker on your desk, your phone next to your head on the bed, facedown and dormant. Do I wanna know if this feeling goes both ways?

Your door slams open and you jump up, whirling around to find Maki with her arms crossed, leaning on the frame. “Alright,” she says. “That’s the tenth time I’ve heard that godforsaken song. What the fuck is up with you?”

When you don’t respond, she steps inside and closes the door behind her, pauses the music, and then makes herself comfortable on the edge of your bed. “Talk to me,” she says. “You’re driving yourself crazy.” The words stall in your throat, useless, stagnant things as you avoid her knowing stare, instead staring at the popcorn ceiling until it blurs.

Maki sighs and shifts entirely onto the bed, turning herself to face you.

“I didn’t know you were home,” you say lamely.

“You’re driving me crazy, Skip,” she tries, and she knows you so fucking well, because the guilt trip is exactly what dislodges all those words built up in the back of your mouth—she breaks the dam and you spill your soul onto the quilted comforter, rambling, a rush of truths and things you thought you’d hidden from yourself but you can’t anymore. And she just listens, not looking away once.

You tell her everything: that you know you catch feelings fast, too fast. That despite your bleeding heart, you haven’t really been in a long-term relationship since high school. That you think of the future, of all the places you want to go, all the things you want to do, and there’s no guy in those dreams, and the thought of restructuring the life you’ve planned out for yourself around a boy who might be temporary is too much to even fathom. That—

“I kissed him,” you say breathlessly, bordering on hysterical, and you feel so stupid, this worked up over something so small, something that should be good. “I kissed him and now it feels real and now I’m freaking out.”

“I can see that,” Maki says calmly. “Let me ask you something. What is the worst thing that could happen, if you date him and it doesn’t last?”

“I…” You chew on your bottom lip, mind spinning through every bad outcome. “He could end up hating me, Maki. I could get some crazy job and have to leave, or he would come with me and leave his whole life behind and then he’d grow to resent me and we’d just be in some kind of hellish limbo until one of us snapped. Or he could—he could leave me, or we could try long distance and he could fall in love with somebody else, or I could, or—or—”

You flounder for a second, realizing your biggest worry is the one most immediate, the one most central to your life as it exists right now.

You’ve been sitting here thinking about big-picture things that are so far out, trying to make the feeling curdling in your gut feel like a valid reaction to a major life event. But that’s not what this is.

You’re just really, stupidly, pathetically scared that Takuma kissed you and didn’t mean it.

“Or—I guess that’s not the issue. Not really,” you admit quietly, not looking at Maki. She probably already knows. She has a way of knowing exactly what’s bothering you and just asking the right questions, getting you to talk yourself out of whatever hole your anxious mind has dug.

“I—it was just a kiss. What if he doesn’t want something serious right now, and I like him this way and he just wants something casual? I can’t do casual, Maki,” you say, raking a hand through your hair. “And it could fuck up this thing we have going. Yuji and Toge get along so well, and Nobara and the boys and Kirara, and Megumi’s your cousin, and I don’t wanna cause some weird, awkward rift, you know what I mean?”

Because it’s been so good, getting to know them. You don’t want to fuck up the dynamic just because you caught feelings too fast.

Maki leans back against your wall, humming as she thinks this over. “Okay. First of all, take a step back. Do you actually think you and Ino dating or not dating or whatever would mean I stop talking to my cousin? Or Nobara to the guys?” She raises a brow at you, unimpressed. “Seriously. I love you, Skipper, but you do not have that much power. These relationships existed before you knew Ino. Yuji is incapable of having conflict with anybody. And Toge doesn’t give a fuck about awkward relationship drama, he just wants to play Smash.”

As she speaks, you can feel your heart settling back into its home in your chest. Maki always knows what to say. Always.

“Second: Let me put it this way.” She levels you with a serious look. “You are so worked up about all these incredibly hypothetical situations. If you shut this down now, if you don’t act on what happened on Saturday, you’re still going to be worked up about hypotheticals. They’ll just be different ones. I know you, Skipper, you’re gonna drown yourself in what ifs. So you have to pick the lesser evil. There’s an unknown factor either way. Which one is gonna be worse?”

You groan, faceplanting into your bedspread. In the process, your forehead must hit play on your phone, because all of a sudden Arctic Monkeys blasts through the JBL again and Maki is grabbing your phone and saying, “Absolutely not. Nope. We are done with that.”

You look up at her helplessly. “Do I wanna know?” you choke out, half-laughing. “Because if I’m taking this out of proportion, if he doesn’t feel this way and I’m just another girl he kissed—”

“You’re not,” she says firmly. “Are you kidding me? Skip. That boy kisses the ground you walk on.” She shakes her head, some mix of fondness of exasperation flashing across her face. “You already know. The question isn’t if he likes you, or if you like him. It’s whether you’re gonna let it play out or shut it down before it has a chance to.”

Your door slams open, and Nobara strolls in and puts her hands on her hips. She glares at Maki and then at you.

“Please tell me I’m wrong,” she says, and you know you’re in for it, “but I believe you both had significant relationship developments this weekend and didn’t immediately call me? What the fuck? Spill.”

Abruptly, you feel like the worst friend in the world. Not necessarily because you haven’t filled Nobara in—she hasn’t been home—but because Maki is flushing pink, and you left her alone with Yuta on purpose, and it’s Monday, and you haven’t even asked what happened.

You look at Nobara. “Close the door.”

She does, but she doesn’t sit down, choosing instead to pace the room as she speaks. “Exhibit A: the plants have name tags and the handwriting is not Yuta’s. Exhibit B: I just came from down the street and Ino is acting weird as fuck.”

You sit straight up, suddenly on high alert. “Weird how? Did he say anything?”

“No. Like, the entire time. That’s the weird as fuck part.”

You turn to Maki, trying to read her. “Okay, what happened with Yuta? Was it when I left? Because if I wasn’t obvious enough—“

“You were very obvious, thank you,” Maki says, her blush deepening. “Uh, we made dinner. As you know.”

“It was good.”

Maki is pointedly looking everywhere but at you and Nobara, gaze darting from the ceiling to the bedspread to the door, as if she might escape the conversation. You hadn’t even noticed the plant name tags. That’s maybe the most sappy gesture that’s ever come from Maki Zenin.

“Mm. Yeah. Uh,” she says, eloquently. “We might have kissed. We might be… together.”

“Maki!” you and Nobara both scream, which results in Toge nearly breaking down your bedroom door five seconds later.

“What?” he demands. He clocks Maki’s bright red face and grins widely. “Aha! Yes. Good.”

“Wh—”

“Yuta won’t look me in the eyes, so I figured. You wanted to tell us all at once?”

Maki nods sheepishly.

“Too late!” Toge says cheerfully. “And he’s not home. So we can take this quality girls’ time to—”

“You are a man.”

“That’s the first time you’ve ever said that to me,” Toge tells Nobara, hand over his heart.

She swats at him in response and flops onto your floor, and Toge drops down beside her, you and Maki leaning over the edge of your bed to see them both.

"I ate your love pasta," you tell Maki, and she groans.

"This is why I don't tell you people things."

After the appropriate appoint of freaking out about Maki and Yuta (of course I knew, I always know, Nobara says), they make you go through the whole of Saturday night in detail.

You leave out the part about Takuma’s dad. That doesn’t feel like your story to tell.

When you get to I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone like you, Nobara blinks at you, and the innocent expression on her face means whatever she’s about to say is anything but. “So he told you you’re not like other girls?”

“Oh my god,” you groan, dragging your hands down your face.

“Oh, shit, Skipper!” Toge nearly shouts from the floor. “We have to go, like, two minutes ago.”

“Shit!” You scramble off the bed, shoving your laptop into your bag and weaving around Nobara, who has made no move to get off the floor. You and Toge have your usual Monday night class time to do field reporting, and you’re meeting up with Geto and Utahime.

The front door clicks open and closed, and you grin at Maki, who goes red. Yuta’s home. God, you wish you could stay for this.

“Hi, Yuta! Bye, Yuta!” you call on the way out the door, patting him on the head, and Toge follows suit with a much more aggressive motion that messes up Yuta’s hair.

“Oh, hi! Um. Bye?” Yuta’s startled laugh follows you out the door, and then you’re on your way.

You’re always on your way back to The Fix, eventually.

—

Utahime, notably a happier person in general when Gojo’s not around, lets Toge into the back to get some photos of the storeroom. That leaves you alone with Geto, back on the same stool as last time, phone on the counter as you watch him work, talking as he goes.

“Finished inventory,” he says, typing something rapidly on his laptop, “and now it’s budgeting. And yeah, that’s about what it looks like on the day to day. What else did you want to know?”

Geto is remarkably easy to talk to. He’s soft-spoken and articulate, a good listener, and you find yourself forgetting it’s an interview after a while, lost in conversation. You learn that he studied business in school, so opening an establishment like this wasn’t much of a stretch. He handles the finances and hiring, and he’s the one working with Panda on the Battle of the Bands. Gojo and Utahime bartend, Nanami is security, and Shoko handles everything else. It’s a small team, he says, but they work.

“I wanted to be able to be home for the girls when they were growing up, and this wound up being a great way to do that, schedule-wise,” he tells you. “And now they’re here, which is great. I wouldn’t say I ever saw myself opening a bar, back in college, but now that I’m here and Shoko and I have been running the place for a while, I’m not sure where else I ever could’ve ended up, y’know?”

You nod, head propped in your hand with your elbow on the counter. “So is this the dream? The endgame?” you ask. “Think you’ll stay a while?”

“Well,” he says, closing the laptop, “I think it comes down to doing something because you love it, not because other people love that you do it. Though right now, both of those things are true, which is fortunate for me." He leans on the bar counter, head tilted as he considers his words.

"If the work makes you happy, if the people there make you feel the same way, I think that’s worth hanging on to," he says. "If I ever stop loving the work, I suppose I’ll move on. I don’t see that happening, really, but if it does, I’ll roll with it. Whatever comes after.”

“That makes sense.” You sigh, leaning back in your chair. “Man, I wish the career thing was that clear-cut now. I know I have time, but it’s weird to think about.”

“Would you ever go further than this with the band, you think?” he asks, seeming genuinely curious. “Or is the journalism thing pretty much what your heart’s set on?”

You’ve thought about it. Drumming makes you feel alive like very few other things do, but you love writing, reporting, meeting people and telling their stories. You want to go for editor-in-chief next year when Tsumiki graduates, but the reality is that you won’t have so much time for the band if you get the job. And you love your band.

Not that it’ll be the same, anyway, without Maki and Yuta. That’s something you don’t love to think about.

“I don’t know,” you confess, sheepishly realizing you’re still recording, that you’re supposed to be the one asking the questions. “I don’t think… that the band is ever necessarily going to be a professional thing. Maki and Yuta have all these big career plans. And it’s like, how much do I invest in that now, knowing it’s not… forever? When the journalism thing, the career, might be? I don’t know.”

“You know, I don’t think it matters all that much whether it’s forever,” Geto shrugs. “If it gave you what you needed at the time, wouldn’t it be worth it?”

He glances up at you, taking in the lines of your face, the tapping of your fingers against your other arm. You kind of feel like he sees something you don’t.

“Here’s some unsolicited advice, kid. On the record. Maybe life is short, maybe not. But regardless, your heart is not a finite thing.” His eyes are soft but not sad, serious but with a sort of levity that’s wise and not regretful. You think, idly, that you would find it very hard not to trust him. “If you’ve got something, love it while you have it.”

Something tells you he’s not talking about the band anymore. Or maybe that’s just you, looking for answers where there aren’t any.

“Thanks, Geto,” you say, turning off the recording. “This has been really helpful.”

Your heart is not a finite thing. And you think you’ve made up your mind.

directory | prev. | next.

jjk taglist open: just send me a message!

@shutuppeter @mikikkoo @reactwithjan @theclassbookworm @lilactaro @bisforbuse @risararelywrites @idkidk32 @gojodickbig @stargazing-with-choso @anonymity-222

a/n: what is this? setup for the megumi spinoff i'm writing after this? oo (sorry he was a cockblock it was for the plot, this one AND his, hehe)

[literary-motif]

OK, I will wait for your original work so you can take my money and I will be your #1 fan. I want to show my appreciation to a cute, silly, and weird nerd like you. ദ്ദി(ᵔᗜᵔ)

BTW, can you please write about my sketch of Kayson? Thank you! https://ibb.co/ZN3344m

A reply to this post, if you're curious.

Strange Dreams

Kayson x Reader

You blinked your eyes open tiredly, confused that you were awake at all before you heard the lock of the front door turn. Raising your head from the soft pillows of the couch, you sat up enough to peek over the backrest and find Kayson trying to shut the door quietly. 

Just as he had eased it back into the lock without it making a sound — turning the key to lock the door for the night quietly — he leaned against it to take off his shoes. The bag he took with him to work swung against the rack of your umbrellas in his haste, and knocked it over with a loud clunk. 

“No, fuck,” he cursed, groaning in exasperation before remembering his initial intention of trying to keep quiet.

“I’m already awake,” you called out sleepily, blinking at him bleary-eyed as his head whirled around. “‘s waiting for you,” you mumbled, resting your chin on the cushions and stifling a yawn. 

You had been working on your thesis for the better part of the day, and it left you utterly exhausted. Questions you still needed to address floated through your head, the black letters of the text on your computer screen seemed etched into your vision whenever you closed your eyes. The sentences you had mulled over for ages echoed in your mind, twisting nearly into unrecognizable monstrosities of grammar and utter senselessness.

You needed to sleep. If only your mind would shut up.

Kayson slipped off his shoes, giving you a warm smile as he moved towards the couch. “I told you not to do that,” he whispered, bending down to place a kiss against your forehead. “Don’t stay up for me. Sometimes the customers justwon’t go and I’m stuck staring at them for half an hour before I can close up. It’s already well past midnight, Prefect.” 

He let his bag fall against the side of the couch before sitting next to you. Instinctively, you scooted closer. Kayson wrapped an arm around you, gently pulling you into his side. 

“You should really kick them out,” you said, leaning your head against his shoulder. Keeping your eyes open was a losing battle, but you tried your best. 

Kayson chuckled, planting a kiss against the top of your head. “It’s against company policy,” he said, nuzzling his cheek against your hair and taking a deep breath of your scent. Having you in his arms never failed to relax him, and feeling you sink against him as you slowly slipped into sleep brought a tired smile to his face.

“Miss you when you’re not here,” you mumbled, sighing deeply as you shifted a little to get more comfortable and promptly fell asleep against him. 

Your words made his heart swell with love, and Kayson could not help breaking out into a wide smile. You were adorable. “I love you, too,” he whispered, squeezing you tighter as he allowed his eyes to close. He did not even care to remove his black bowtie, blissfully falling into the land of sleep with you tucked into his side.

Both of you would regret spending the night on the couch as you felt your aching muscles in the morning. Kayson would offer to give you a massage to soothe the soreness of your neck, and you would readily accept, telling him all about the crazy stuff you had dreamed about last night. 

It was strange. You had not even researched Cerberus, but as you told Kayson about the image of his face on the three-headed dog, you realized that it was the perfect creature to offer you a link to the mythics of the past. 

How beautifully practical that you found the answers to problems in your thesis while sleeping next to Kayson.

[fishnets-fingers]

blossoms, big changes & blanket forts

a/n - @harry-on-broadway's short 'n sweet fic challenge inspired me to write a burb from the six months universe. this takes place in the future and hints at storyline(s) for future parts. it's been a while since i'd written anything, so i hope this turned out okay. word count: 2.5k (not proofread) happy reading :)

…

Every Saturday Harry’s alarm blares at five in the morning and every single Saturday he swiftly silences it before it disturbs the other occupant snoozing next to him. This morning was no different. He quietly slips out the bed and heads to the bathroom to change into his running gear. 

A dopey smile blooms across his face at the sight in front of him. A foot peeking out the sheet, a hand haphazardly dangling over the side of the bed, and a shock of dark hair obstructing her face. 

He smooths the raven locks away from her face and leans down to kiss her sleep warm cheek. A quiet grunt makes him chuckle. 

“What ungodly hour is it?” Layla asks, eyes still closed. 

“It’s the AM,” he answers diplomatically. 

She mumbles something incoherently, turning over on her stomach, face burying into the pillow. He knows better than to ask her to clarify and jolt her from the pull of slumber. He kisses the crown of her head, pulling the bed sheet in place. 

And off he goes, running down the same circuit he takes every Saturday. He enjoys this time where their neighbourhood is slowly setting up for the day - the scratches of produce filled pallets being hauled into the restaurants, the beeps of trucks pulling into the warehouses of the supermarkets, the hum of baristas as they begin to ready their spaces, and the soft grunts of runners they start with their stretches. 

He relishes this routine; the calm after five days of scrambling around with this Masters thesis, hours in the lab, typing away on his computer into the night. Saturday mornings were his reset. The hour and a half he spends running with no distractions is just what he needs to set the tone for his weekend. The same sights, smells, and sounds.  This Saturday however he spots a moving truck along with a couple carrying boxes into the lobby of a highrise apartment and is immediately transported to a wintery evening five months ago. He was lugging bags of groceries from the car when his phone chimed. Once. Twice. Thrice. Followed by a call from Layla all the way from Chennai.

“Hi bab-” He starts before getting interrupted. 

“You are speaking to the new assistant professor of San Diego State! Well not really. I still haven’t signed but I just got the email.”

“No fucking way! Really?”

“Really! I read the email three times to make sure my brain wasn’t playing tricks on me. I did just wake up, so there’s a big possibility that I’m dreaming.”

“Congratulations, Layla.”

“Aww, thanks,” she blew out a breath. “You know what this means, right?”

“No more long distance,” he smiled into the microphone.

“Can’t wait. I love you.”

“I love you too, Lails.” 

“Say it again,” she said, and he can picture her lips pulling up at the corners.

“I bloody love you, sweet girl.”

“Thanks. I needed to hear that,” she added quietly.

He felt her conflicting feelings of anger and longing miles away. She did not want to go to India after what happened during their last visit. After weeks of trying, her cousins convinced her that she was long overdue for a sleepover, pointing out that a full time job would only make flying over more complicated. “Chennai will make me feel at home, my house is just a building,” she’d insisted but Harry had seen the hurt etched on her face on their video call from she hotel she checked into. She had forgone the invite from her relatives to stay at theirs, not wanting cause any conflicts between them and her parents. He’d wanted to go with her but his schedule wouldn’t allow him and which was convenient for her with wanting him far away from her mother. “Have you told your folks? Do you want to?” He’d asked after a pregnant pause.

She sighed. “Not my parents. I called my grandparents. They were overjoyed, obviously. They wanted to meet me for lunch but I told them I’m not coming home. So, I’m meeting them at the restaurant. I explicitly told them that I would leave if Amma and Appa (Mum and Dad) showed up.

“Anyway," she said after a while, "I think my grandparents are going to give me a fat stack of cash, like they did when I got into the PhD program.” She forced a chuckle, signaling that she was done talking about it.

So he changed the topic, “when do you have to get back to them?”

“They haven’t specified anything but sooner the better right. I’ll respond by tomorrow evening” she yawned. “I'm heading over to Chitti's (aunt - mother’s younger sister) for dinner. All the cousins are attending Carom night. I’ll ask her to help me go through the contract before I sign. I’ll have to tell them that I’ll only be coming to the US next week. I think I want to negotiate my salary a little or get more PTOs. I don't want to pass it up though. They are willing to sponsor my visa and I don't have any more offers to be in the same city, so…” She prattled on. 

He’s giddy at the thought of not having to resort to scheduling visits when their calendars permit them to. To not have their coursework making them unavailable during important moments. To not have to fit their belongings into a small cabin bag and rush to the gate to catch a flight to each other a few states away. To not have to tiptoe around Layla’s housemates, who barely tolerated each other. To not have to resort to FaceTimes when they wanted to see each other. To not be next to each other - when all they wanted was to wrap the their arms around the other - to help them wind down from an exhausting day. 

“Har,” her voice snapped him out of his reverie. “Are you paying attention?”

“Yeah yeah, contracts.”

“Not even close. I was talking about apartment hunting.”

“Why would you look for apartments?” His brows knitted together. 

“I’ll need a place to live in, won’t I?” 

“You already have a place to live in.”

“No, I don’t. What are you-,” her voice cuts off as she drew in a sharp breath in realisation. “Are you- Would you like for me to- Are you sure?”

“Of course I am. I’m almost twenty six. You’re twenty seven. We’ve been together for two years now. I’m so in love with you, Layla Sathish. Never stopped for a second since I first laid eyes on you in your Uncle’s house in Apex. Never stopped in the two years we were apart. And I don’t want to waste another second. I want us together. I want to go to bed with you next to me. Kiss you goodbye when we both leave for university. I want to complain about your makeup and skincare taking up all the space in the bathroom cabinet. I want to buy you flowers when I come back home after a run. I want your paints and brushes scattered on the dining table. I want to make space in my closet for your clothes. I want your fingerprints smeared on my laptop screen. Move in with me.” 

It didn’t skip past her that he wasn’t asking her but telling her. “I mean I do have the spare key to your loft. Might as well put it to good use,” she teased. 

He laughed. “Exactly! You can be the breadwinner of the house and I can rest easy as a kept man and work on my thesis.”

She giggled. “I love it!”

Three weeks later, they were moving her belongings into the loft. He had to pinch himself every few hours to remind himself that he had unfettered access to the woman he loved. But living together posed a few adjustments, like the time she used his coffee grinder to make gunpowder from scratch and he was about ready to rip all his hair off telling her about cross-contamination of the flavour. Living together spotlighted their different cleaning ethos - he lets the mess accumulate and then do a deep clean but soon found out that Layla could not function when things piled up. The different towels and rags of Layla’s system he needed to keep track of: the ‘nice one’ for drying the dishes, the ‘yucky one’ for cleaning the kitchen countertops, the ‘microfiber’ for dusting that needed to be dampened, and the ‘soft one’ for electronic screens. They’d argued about finances and after weeks - much to Layla’s chagrin -  they’d settled on a compromise: Layla would take care of the utilities and date nights and Harry would pay for rent, and groceries. She put her foot down about being able to pay for the two of them on their future trips to India and he agreed with the condition that all other trips would be taken care of by him. Their grocery trips were different now, Layla was so focused on giving herself a spending limit since she wasn’t paying for it. This meant standing in the middle of the aisle and calculating down to the gram to figure out what brand gave her the best bang for her buck - whereas Harry just pulled things off the shelf that caught his eye. But all of their spats and differences melt away when he sees her smile up at him, from whatever she was doing, as he walked through the door after the end of the day. 

In the home stretch he slows down and walks into the florist. It was early in the day to have the pick of the freshest of flowers straight from the delivery truck. Every single week he would pick out random bunches - today it was different coloured sweet peas and tulips. He’d wake her up with the flowers held behind his back where she’d blink up at him with sleep laden eyes and gasp when he’d present them to her. She gasped every Saturday morning, even if it had become a ritual by now - watching her put together an impressive floral arrangement while he’d make breakfast for them.

He’s surprised when he keys into the loft, usually he’s met with the quiet hum of appliances, today peals of laughter bounce off the walls of the entryway. He smiles toeing off his shoes as he spots two sets of feet - one tiny and one large - sticking out. Their couch pushed back towards the wall and the four dining chairs stood in its place acting as pillars on either side with a fuzzy throw draped over the backs of the chair, cocooning the two. 

He tiptoes slowly towards their makeshift fort to find the two sprawled on a quilt on their tummies. Layla in her power rangers pyjamas, hair haphazardly thrown in a bun, rubbing the sleep away from her eyes, her head propped on her elbows, and a curly headed girl in a wrinkled nightgown giggling with her as she points at the book that’s propped against the a cushion. Vasanth and Abi had dropped Laya off with them for the fourth of July weekend and had driven up to Temecula Valley for their long overdue wedding anniversary getaway. She was a deadly combination of her parents, self-willed and mischievous.

“Your Tamil teacher has her work cut out for her,” Layla howls.

“Miss. Muga,” the four year old replies. 

“Who?”

“Miss. Muga. She’s my Tamil teacher.”

“You're going to be a pain in Miss. Muga’s bum,” Layla breaks into giggles.

Her little body twists around, eyes widening in alarm, hands coming to cover her open mouth. “You said bum!” She sputters into laughter. 

“Excuse me, ladies, where was my invite?” Harry asks, crouching down and sticking his head into the opening, making sure the flowers were concealed behind his back.

“Harry!” The girl screams in delight, crawling haphazardly towards him. 

“Someone decided to wake up at the crack of dawn with a determination to build a fort and finish her Tamil homework in it,” Layla sighs.

Harry gives their guest a sympathetic smile. “You did promise her a blanket fort last night, baby. It’s a miracle that she slept this long, reckon she might be in Eastern time.”

“What do you have?” Laya asks, pointing at the tulip sprig that peeked out from the side.

“It’s a gift,” he tells her, shuffling into their cosy cocoon. “Can you cover Akka’s (older sister) eyes and close eyes?” He whispers loudly.

With a nod she clambers onto Layla’s back, using her hands to shield Layla’s view while she scrunches her eyes shut. A collective gasp echoes when he tells them to open their eyes, presenting them with his colourful selection of the day. Harry's body permeates with warmth from the radiant smiles coming from the two; the type of light that could rival the sun’s. The warmth makes him smile, feeling content at the sight in front of him, chuffed at the approval of his floral pick, and the singe of tranquillity from being inside the fort.

“Isn’t it pretty?” Layla asks, bringing the bouquet to her nose. “Mmm…Smells good too.”

“Mmmm,” Laya copies her cousin, burying her nose and nodding in agreement. “For me?” She looks up at Harry. 

“For the two of you,” he replies, inching closer to them. He twists a purple bloom and tucks it behind Laya’s ear. “A sweet pea for my sweet pea.” He declares, chuckling at the way Laya cheeks tinge with pink and the way she blinks up at him with a shy smile.

“Manners, Laya. What do you say?” Layla prompts.

“Thank you,” she says in a singsong voice, reaching over Layla's head to kiss his cheek.

“You’re welcome, love.” He dramatically clears his throat before picking up a yellow tulip and swishes it around before tapping his girlfriend's nose with the bulb. “And a tulip for my tulip.”

“Thanks. Laya, do you want to help me arrange them in the vase? We can do that while Harry makes us pancakes, okay?”

The little girl nods, clambering off her sister and barrels in the direction of the kitchen, remembering the empty vase she’d seen on the kitchen counter. “I guess homework’s not a priority anymore,” Layla mumbles.

She sits up to follow her cousin before she wreaks havoc but Harry firmly holds her in place with a pointed look. “What?”

“Manners, Layla,” he echoes her statement from earlier. 

“I thanked you.”

“Not properly.”

“Huh?”

“Guess you could learn a thing or two from Laya. No thank you is complete without a kiss.”

“Since when?” She smirks.

“Did you not get the memo from the blanket fort etiquette committee?” He teases with a toothy grin.

She rolls her eyes, rocking up on her knees to kiss his cheek. “Happy?”

“Very.” He sears his mouth on her, tongue languidly sweeping her bottom lip, teasing her with a promise of what’s to come. When they pull away, she’s breathless, looking up at him with her tired eyes. And he cannot resist pulling her back in for another, this time his fingers curl around the back of her head, pulling her closer than before. It’s hurried - teeth clanging, noses knocking, tongues caressing, breaths stuttering - never faltering in passion. 

“Layla Akka!”

“I’ve been summoned," Layla murmurs against his swollen lips. “Thank you for this,” she picks up the bouquet from her lap and brings it close to her chest. “And all the others.” She presses a quick peck on his lips and they make their out the fort and towards the kitchen.

.....

MASTERPOST (if you wanna read more of Layla and Harry)

[bowtiepastabitch]

A Messy Love Letter To TikTok (yeah, I know, hear me out)

cw: mental health mentions, ED mention, religious homophobia, Covid

It's 2020 and I am 16 and I am not allowed on the internet or social media and I've just finished the last day of classes before spring break. I've hugged my best friend and brought my bassoon home to practice and figured out a weeklong sewing project to work on.

A few days later, my mother grills me on my straightness. I deflect, tell a partial truth, tell her I'm ace. Then explain what ace means. Then explain why being ace doesn't aaaactually go against the Bible. After she goes to bed, I cry and email my friend, because my mom reads my texts, and tell her I was almost outed as queer. It's on our school hosted email, so it should be safe, right? We can't sext or trade drugs on a school monitored email. Right? I'm required to leave it in the kitchen to charge overnight as always. In the morning, she needs to pick up a grocery order and asks if I want to get out of the house. She pulls into an empty parking lot and tells me she's read my texts and when she didn't find anything she read my emails, and she knows. What does she know? Nothing specific, but it's time for me to tell her. So, after three years in the closet, I break down crying and tell her I like girls. I'm ace and I like girls and also my mental health is not the greatest (general, low level depression, I say, though it's far from the truth. it takes some of the pressure off but not enough).

Spring break is extended another week. She forces me to tell my father what I'd told her. I don't remember much of the next five months, but we can put the pieces together easy enough. School never starts back. I am locked in the house with my father who now hates me and my sisters who I'm not allowed to tell and a shitty school-owned laptop that now contains my entire world. I hang out with my friends on zoom before and after classes when I'm allowed to be in the closet-turned-office with the door shut, I write a massive research paper on why the bible doesn't ban queerness for my father (who won't listen), and I work on my sewing project. I convince my mom that youtube isn't a real social media and that sewing content poses no danger to my spiritual wellbeing and start watching a lot of youtube. Start a channel too. Hard to make friends with just a youtube account and nothing else, but there's a sense of normalcy to watching Rachel Maksy's new video the hour it drops every week, almost like having a friend, and in responding to the rare comment that finds its way to my videos. I get my own computer at some point, another shitty chromebook but it's mine, and since I'm not allowed to have it in my bedroom anyway my parents never think to disable private browsing. In June, I start getting recommended queer tiktok compilations for pride month because of my obsession with Jessica Kellgren-Fozard, and I open them in a private tab.

It reaches a point where I'm watching at least an hour or two of queer tiktok videos on youtube every day. My parents are the "representation is propaganda" type, so youtube becomes the only access I have to be reminded that it's not just me alone. I get a job at the local grocery store, becoming a "front-line worker of the pandemic" during those odd six or seven months when people pretended to care about the working class, and I meet a queer adult for the first time in my life, one of the managers at the store, a gay man in his 20s. I don't really connect well with my coworkers, but my best friend is there sometimes, and I'm good at my job.

In the fall, I watch a TikTok video in the app for the first time, on my best friend's phone. They've graduated and moved away, but they're back for the homecoming game, and they show me all the cool gender non conforming people they follow on TikTok. I am entranced. It's less filtered, more real than the stuff that makes it into compilations. They come out to me as nonbinary on that day too, at some point. It's a good day.

I am 17 and it's the spring of 2021 and I am close to graduating high school. Finally, I am allowed to make an instagram account a few weeks before graduation. I write a bio I will not change for at least four years and follow all my friends. I start watching reels, most of which are, of course, recycled TikToks, but it's close enough. There are gay people in my phone and when I leave for college there will be gay people in real life and it will be enough.

I take a gap year at the last possible minute to fix my mental health. Medical reasons, officially. I spend a month and a half in a residential treatment center for severe disordered eating and depression. The grad students who do the menial tasks of staring at us all day are really nice, and one of them does the berries and cream dance for us one day during downtime. I'm extremely fucking confused, but a couple of the girls who got there after me seem to know exactly what's going on. By the time I get out of rehab, the berries and cream trend is solidly over again and the world has moved on to sea shanties. One of the friends I made there teaches me a TikTok dance I don't remember anymore, and it's not like I can ask her now. Aminah, if you're out there, I love you.

I make a TikTok when I turn 18 a month later, and once it realizes I'm not into whatever the MrBeast of TikTok is, the shit it shows blank accounts, it starts showing me strippers, counting their money or demonstrating tricks. I'm told this is normal. It's fun, I'm having fun. Of course, it eventually starts showing me gay people. That's when shit really starts getting good. Eventually I start making videos, because I miss youtube but it was too much energy, and TikToks are easy. I'd tried reels and hated them, but TikTok's setup makes it so easy. Mostly sewing stuff, some cute trends as the mood strikes me. Lots of body positivity and ED recovery stuff too, because that's where I'm at in life, and it shows the same to me in kind. I see beautiful people of every variety and it's all lovely. I learn what doomscrolling is. I learn to doomscroll. I get exposed to leftist ideas and kinds of queer I've never seen before. I learn that maybe the psychiatrist who asked if I was autistic but never tested me was probably onto something. I learn what that means and how to understand myself as an autistic person and meet my own needs. I cry the first time triggering content pops up, and then I block the creator. I spend a lot of time parallel scrolling with my girlfriend. Scrolling replaces aggressive wall-staring as the filler for my long sleepless insomniac nights. I try not to think about gender too hard, but the harder I try not to think about it the more cool trans people my fyp shows me. Happy trans people. Alive, adult, happy trans people. I try not to think about it. I start college, I start to make new friends again, I spend less time on TikTok but never zero. I get more effective news updates from queer creators on TikTok than anywhere else, and I learn which sources I can trust. I track anti trans legislation in the US that nowhere else is thoroughly reporting on.

I am 19 and going through a breakup and my TikTok still shows me wedding dresses. I cry a lot. It starts showing me fandom content instead, eventually, edits for the gay angel/demon show I'd finally caved and watched the month prior. It makes me feel better, weirdly enough. I open the empty tumblr account I'd never been able to really get into before and start posting about my new blorbos. I learn the word blorbo. My TikTok becomes overrun with fundraising for refugees and war news I can't cope with for more than five minutes and I stop visiting for long swaths of time. I start spending more and more time on tumblr. TikTok becomes something I check in the evenings for twenty minutes or so and that's it. My best friend sends me cute cat videos, and I smile. I eventually get them into the silly gay angel/demon show and then send them almost a hundred videos in a show about it that I had been saving.

I am 20 and then I am 21. The world changes and the world stays about the same. My best friend becomes my partner. They still send me cute cat videos, sometimes accompanied by "us<3". My mileage on TikTok varies wildly. I still find myself doomscrolling sometimes, but that's life. There is still good news and bad news. I get more comfortable with transmasculinity through seeing other people live it, in online spaces and irl. Life is pretty okay, really. I think we'll be alright.

It's January 2025 now, as I write this, and TikTok went down last night only to reappear with a shiny "thank you mister trump sir" message this morning. It's just an app, but it's also not just an app. They aren't banning it because of China or because it's bad for our dopamine circuits; they're banning it because it's a form of community and communication they can't control as thoroughly as they can Meta, which also makes them loads of money. Them being the Oligarchy that is the American political powers that be. Sure, it's had some pretty nasty effects on the way we interact with content especially for kids and younger teens that have unrestricted access way too early, but don't mistake that for it having no redeeming qualities. I don't know what happens to TikTok now, if they'll find a way to stop us from criticizing the government on there. Who knows. Trump takes office tomorrow. We have bigger fish to fry. But I just want it to be remembered that TikTok did matter. What we did matters.

[anabdaniels]

Cowboytober Day 5- Overstimulation

Paring: Agent Whiskey x Female Reader

Word counting: 1.9k

Rating: 18+

Warning: Brief alcohol consumption, oral (f receiving), desk sex, fingering, swearing, use of safeword.

Masterlist

The fact that Jack’s position as the CEO of Statesman Distillery demanded a lot from him always have been clear to you. The thing is: sometimes Jack didn’t know when to stop and put the work aside, and then you decided that it’d be your job to change his mind. Most of the time, just sitting on his lap and demanding his attention was enough for him to forget about the paperwork, but there were those times when that annoying workaholic manner showed up, those times when, after coming back home around 6 pm, he’d easily remain in front of his computer and pile of files until midnight if you didn’t stop him.

Usually, this behavior used to last only for a day or two, and was easy to take Jack out of it, but on that week, it was starting to get unbearable. It started on a Sunday night when he claimed he needed to give a last check on the paperwork for the next Monday, but then, he gave you the same explanation for the following six days, and you were getting done with all that.

Saturday, after a couple of glasses of wine, you decided that your limit had been hit. Being sitting on the couch watching a movie and drinking alone at 5 p.m. on a Saturday, while your husband was locked in his office for the last three hours was almost depressing.

Deciding to put an end to that, you walked through the hallway and entered Jack’s office without even bothering to knock on the door. When he noticed your presence, you were already sitting on the edge of his desk and closing his laptop with not much delicacy. Jack looked at you with a frown, still wearing his reading glasses, and raised one eyebrow while waiting for an explanation.

“We gonna stay on this ‘till when?” you inquired while crossing your arms.

“What are you talking about, honey?” he asked clueless, placing his forearms on the armrests of his chair

“I’m talking about the fact that seems that Statesman is your wife and I’m the third wheel here.” Judging by the silence and the tip of his tongue rubbing on his upper lip, you knew that he got what was the problem.

“Fair enough.” He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes before looking at you again “But, honey, you need to understand…”

“Don’t you dare finish this sentence.” You interrupted him and rolled your eyes “Do we have any unsolved fight that I’m not aware of?”

“No, we don’t.” he sounded confused while answering.

“What’s the matter then? Middle age-crisis? Your testosterone levels are low? Are you banging your secretary? Do you want to divorce? What the fuck is happening to you, Jack?” you narrowed your eyes when he chuckled and shook his head.

“It ain’t nothing of that, sugar.” He assured, still having a smirk on his face.

“So can I have my damn husband back or it’s time for me to go to the sex shop?” Jack couldn’t hold back a chuckle.

“Your whole problem is just the fact that we’re not having sex?” he asked with that dangerously gorgeous cocky smirk.

“It’s not just that, but this is for sure a considerable part of the problem.” You shrugged.

“C’mere, sugar.” He said while patting one of his thighs and of course, you didn’t flinch before moving and getting mounted on his lap “You’re right, okay? I’ve been an ass with you these last days.” Jack passed his arms around your waist and kissed your collarbone “But I think you can forgive me, right?” he asked while kissing your neck.

“Depends.” You said while leaning your head to the side, letting your neck more exposed to him “What am I gaining for forgiving you?”

“Y’know I’m a fair man, honeybee.” Jack kissed your neck a few times before nibbling your chin and looking at you “I’ll give you exactly what you want.” You wanted so badly to make things more difficult for him, but you never have been able to resist when he looked at you with those puppy eyes, and his hands caressing your thighs for sure didn’t help you to resist.

“Fine, cowboy.” You said while approaching your face, resting your forehead on his “I think I can have mercy on you.”

“I knew my pretty lady wouldn’t be mean to me.” He bit your lower lip softly as his hands finally reached your butt under your dress, making him smile widely with the realization that you had nothing on under it. “You’re getting too naughty, Mrs. Daniels.” You chuckled and passed your arms around his neck.

“Well, why would I bother with panties when my husband wasn’t interested in taking ’em off?” you raised both of your eyebrows and knew you had pushed the right buttons when Jack moved his hand to hold the back of your neck.

“Oh honey, you’ll regret not controlling your pretty mouth.” He didn’t give you time to think and kissed you hungrily, just now realizing how much he had missed and was desperate for you.

Jack had no hesitation while moving his hands to the buttons in the front of your dress and opening them, getting you rid of the fabric in the blink of an eye. You were about to start to work on his shirt too, but he didn’t give you the chance, sitting you on his desk and moving from his chair to kneel between your legs, laying your thighs on his shoulders.

The amount of time without his touch made you even more desperate for him when he started to kiss your inner thighs and, at the very moment his mouth was just a few inches away from your cunt, you already were soaked, needing him more than ever.

“Fuck…” you whimpered with closed eyes and grabbed Jack’s hair when his tongue finally slid through your throbbing core. You were starting to get calmer and used to that sensation, but of course, your husband wouldn’t make things easy for you and his next move was cowardly lick and suck your already swollen and hipper-sensitive clit, giving you no choice but moan audibly and squeeze his head between your thighs.

Most of the time, Jack would take it easy with you, sometimes even making you beg for more, but the situation was a bit different that time. He didn’t give you a second to breathe or try to calm down, eating you relentlessly while his hands caressed your whole body, groping your curves handful. You tried with all your efforts to hold back a little more, not even noticing when your free hand crumpled a few papers that were on the desk, too carried away to care if they were important.

You moaned loudly when finally reached your orgasm, feeling your hips moving involuntarily, and sighing softly when Jack kissed your thigh. Your eyes remained closed, but the sudden touch on your sensitive clit made you open your eyes and look down, just to see Jack’s thumb rubbing your clit while his index and middle finger moved inside you, not allowing you to calm down before making you squirm and moan again. While observing you failing miserably to try to control yourself, Jack pushed everything on his desk to the side, making a few items fall on the floor, and, judging by the noise, you could swear that his laptop was among these items.

Carefully, he leaned you down, laying your torso on the wooden surface without ever interrupting his work between your legs, making you whimper and contort, not surprisingly feeling that it wouldn’t need much more for you to cum again. Jack leaned forward and braced himself in one hand to kiss your neck, aware of the effects it would have on you. The joint of the unfairly precise move of his hand and the delicious scratching of his mustache on your skin became too much in these circumstances and you gave up trying to control your body, just letting go and enjoying the feeling of another climax.

When you felt Jack pulling his fingers out of you, you were sure that now he’d give you a moment to calm down and you couldn’t be more wrong. Before you could even process that the low noise you’ve heard was Jack’s belt being undone and his fly being opened, he already was sliding his cock inside you, making you whimper and breath heavily; you were still unable to calm down the effects of all the previous stimulation and he was giving you more to deal with. With a ton of effort, you propped up on your elbows, looking at him with a pleading expression.

“Jack,” his name was moaned out of your lips “It’s too much.” The smirk on his lips just made you sure that his intention was exactly that.

“You wanted my attention, honeybee, so you’ll have it.” He mocked while passing your legs around his hips “Furthermore,” he caressed your lower lip with his thumb while speaking “I’m pretty sure my beautiful wife can take it.” You couldn’t hold back a defeated chuckle, sucking his thumb in a teasing way.

“You’re a cruel motherfucker.” you said with your breath irregular, making him laugh.

“Maybe I am, but, judging by your state, I’m sure you like it.” He teased, referring to the fact that, once more, you were pathetically turned on and wet.

“You know I do.” You admitted with a smile, giving up on trying to argue with him.

“The answer I expected.” His cocky smile was brighter than ever “Now come here, my love.” Jack grabbed your neck and pulled you to him, sitting you again on the desk and kissing you intensely while starting to slam his hips against you, resulting in you letting out a scandalous moan. He kept one arm around your waist while kissing your neck and whispering the sweetest compliments in this world with a calm tone as if he wasn’t railing you.

His free hand moved to between your legs again, destroying the crumbs of self-control you had recovered. You allowed your body to get filled with that good sensation that was growing on your lower stomach and sank your face into the curve of his neck, passing your arms around him and pulling him closer with your legs, making him let out a hoarse moan. It was the last straw, then, once more, you felt your body succumbing to the orgasm. Jack kept his steady pace, smiling while seeing you starting to move involuntarily even more, getting overwhelmed with everything. You were feeling too much, it was too much. Even loving every piece of that moment and being unmeasurably happy for finally having your husband back, you were too sensitive and overloaded with sensation to bear more of that.

“Yellow.” You mumbled one of the safewords you two have established and Jack promptly stopped everything, looking worried at you.

“You’re okay, sugar?” he asked while making you lift your head and look at him. You nodded softly while regaining your breath and self-control.

“I just need a little break.” You said after a moment, making Jack smirk.

“Oh honey, trust me, you’ll need a few more breaks before we’re done.” He answered in his usual convinced tone and held your face gently between his hands, kissing you softly.

Cowboytober Masterlist

[ladyy-whistle-d0wn]

Billiexreader

Angst

You were an undercover spy and your job came between your situationship you and billie have been friends but didnt always act like it. It was a Monday morning you and your friends were all supposed to meet up and watch TV have fun you know normal shit.

You didn't start getting ready until about 10:00 the little meet up started at 11:00 so you'd have an hour to get ready. You finish getting ready and grab your tumbler cup and fill it with ice water. Now your on your ways to your friends house. You arrive around the same time as everybody else. You all sit on the couch talking

When you heard your boss through your earpiece(it's wasn't visible).You wore your earpiece all the time incase he needed to quickly throw you on a mission. "Agent scar, do you copy?" He heard you were in a public setting. "Agent scar, cough if you copy" you let out a light cough. To tell your boss you could hear him.

"Alright your next target Is a dark haired 5'3 female who goes by the name of billie eilish" your stomach sank "she has people with bombs all across the state she is planning to drop and wipe out the population. All you have to do is figure out a way to stop her"

you get up "i'm gonna go to the bathroom" you go to the bathroom lock the door and turn the fan on. "Are you one hundred percent sure it's this person?" You could hear him take a sip of water "yes we've ran background checks and tapped into multiple of her phone calls, all you need to do is find her and get close enough to her" You start to yell in a whisper "you have three hundred fifty other agents why the hell do you assume I out of all of them can stop a lunatic trying to wipe out the goddamn state!?!!"

He took another sip of water "why do you have such a problem with this mission" "because this bitch is sitting in the other room" you quietly exclaim. Your boss chuckled "good, and don't disappoint me scar". You flushed the toilet and wet your hands with sink water to make it seem as you went to the bathroom. You return to the living room and there's a movie on and there's snacks on the coffee table. Billie had scooted closer to you and the only thing running through you mind was how the whole states lives were in your hands

The movie ended and you guys all talked and went home. Later you got a knock at your door it was 5:36 pm. All you thought was 'who the fuck is here at this time'. You make your way to the front door and look through the peephole to see billie, flowers in hand. You unlocked the door and opened it. Your mind still racing with thoughts as she asked you to be her girlfriend, you said yes. You two hugged and then she left.

A few months later you were sitting with billie at your house " I need to tell you something really important" you had this weird feeling in your stomach "what is it?" She sighed "we- um we need to move out of the state" you act dumbfounded "what Why?" She grabbed your hands "you have to promise me you won't be mad-" you fell a gun press to the back of your head "-you can't tell anyone either"

"You remember my brother finneas right?" You nodded "he's going to make sure you don't do anything stupid.... and if you do." Finneas aimed the gun at the chandelier hanging over the sofa and a shot rang out. He finished billies sentence "you die" billie started speaking again "my plan is to blow up this goddamn state and kill everybody here, I've already booked us a flight put of here but I need to take you with me to set these bombs off" you think quick. The glasses you got when you first started as a spy.

They looked completely normal, but it was a camera connecting to your boss' computer "can I get my glasses?" She nodded and signaled finneas to follow you. You went into your bedroom dresser and grabbed the glasses and placed them on your face all while pressing the live button.

Everyone got into the car and billie began to drive, and then you heard your boss in your earpiece "these turns look familiar" he gasped "the bomb ignition is in the fucking mountains, I have agents very close to those mountains" you hear typing on his keyboard "six professional agents have been sent to dismantle the ignition"

You arrive at the mountains, you all get out of the car finneas wasted no time putting the gun to the back of your head you are following billie until she comes to a halt. "Just so you know I know exactly what the fuck your trying to do" she turns around "Agent scar" she emphasized

You had to do something, you knew if you ran you'd get shot and if you lied your get shot. Your brain racing faster than ever. You elbowed finneas in the jaw and her cocked the gun. You quickly whipped around kneeing him between the legs and grabbed the gun. Finneas grabbed you by the hair and you shot him in the foot

You started to back away "on your fucking knees now" you shouted. Finneas fell over and billie dropped to her knees. The six agents had arrived before the three of you and disarmed the bomb ignition. Finneas and billie both got cuffed up and taken to prison. As for you, well you got promoted to more dangerous missions but that just ment more money.

[edupunkn00b]

It Could Always Be Worse, Ch. 2: It Was a Bright, Cold Day in April

Butterfly universe version of Happily Ever After, Ch. 2: It Was a Bright, Cold Day in April

Prev - It Was a Bright, Cold Day in April - Next - All - [ AO3 ]

WC: 1404 - Rating: T - CW: swearing, self-deprecation, divorce, dogs

"It was a bright, cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." -George Orwell, 1984 (1949)

Logan drove slowly down the winding road, fingers still a little cold while he waited for the heater to finally start in the old minivan. As he passed each mailbox or curbside label, his eyes quickly flicked over, searching for the right house number. He got the end of the street, peering out at the sign on the intersection. He shook his head, muttering to himself in the empty minivan. "No, that's already East 67th. Fuck. I must have passed it."

Sucking in a breath, fighting against that all-too-familiar burning tightness in his chest, Logan carefully made a K-turn at the intersection, biting his lip and wincing as he came close the the curb on the opposite street. Finally, he got his old minivan turned around so he could drive back up the street he'd just come from. Logan put the van in park and pulled up the email from the PTSA treasurer for the fourth time that morning. 5923. He needed 5923. He huffed out a little puff of air, swallowing against the growing lump in his throat. There isn't a 5923.

Logan ripped his glasses off his face, tossing the frames onto the passenger side seat next to him and buried his face in his hands. He let out a long, muffled scream into his palms. He screamed and screamed and screamed. He screamed he felt his eyes might burst. He screamed until he felt glass scraping his throat. He screamed until he was completely empty.

He took another breath and muttered to himself again. "C'mon, you dumb fuck, get yourself together. Google Maps says the house exists. The Treasurer says the house exists. You're just not seeing it. Try. Again." Logan lowered his hands and replaced the frames on his face, taking a couple of deep breaths and ignoring the burning in his eyes and the fire in his throat. He licked his lips, tilted his head from one side to the other, feeling one side crack. He shifted out of park, checked his mirrors and his blind spot, and pulled back onto the road, searching again for the proper house.

After another half-hour, Logan finally spotted tiny white numerals painted on the edge of the curb. "See, it's right fucking there," he muttered to himself. "You must have driven past the place ten times." He carefully parked on the street, turning his steering wheel against the incline of the hill, and engaged the parking break. He gathered his laptop, pen case, phone, and keys, and locked the car, racing up the walkway to the house. The front door was open, the other PTSA parents in the audit sub-committee already sitting around a tastefully decorated dining room table. The hostess waved him in and he carefully toed off his shoes, leaving them just outside the door.

The moment his foot crossed the threshold, two large dogs lunged against a gate covering the hallway next to the front door, barking and snarling at him. Logan jumped backwards then froze, breath caught in his throat. Oh my god, Logan, if you have a fucking panic attack in front of the PTSA moms...

"Oh, sorry, about that, they get so excited when people come over," the hostess called out to him.

Logan nodded, pressing a smile onto his face. He forced his feet to move forward toward the table, keeping a steely grip on his computer, refusing to look toward the dogs. He pushed up the corners of his mouth, trying to brighten his smile. "Hi, Liz, Grace. Bridgett, thank you for hosting this year." He sucked in a breath, "Sorry to be so late."

"Oh, hun, it's fine. We're just glad you're here. Now we can get started."

Grace handed Logan a large, thick three-ring binder filled with paper copies of every check and cash deposit transaction for the PTSA that year. "We had a lot of small teacher grants this year, plus the graduation yard sign sale was a big success. We've got a lot of ground to cover. Bridget and Liz will reconcile the minutes and budget updates. Will you validate that each check for reimbursements and grants matches the requisition form and documentation?"

Logan nodded, "Certainly." Opening the binder, Logan pulled out the four checkbooks-worth of check duplicates and began the audit list.

Grace looked around the table and waved, "I'm not supposed to stay for the audit but you all can call me if you have questions! See y'all later!" She skipped away from the table, petting the dogs as she left.

The three worked in relative silence for a few minutes as Bridgette and Liz finalized the short report for August. Finally, Bridgette cleared her throat, "Oh, did you hear about the Petersons?," asked Liz as they compared reports for September.

"Do you mean that they're moving or that—" Logan could feel Liz' eyes on him. He kept his eyes trained down on the documents in front of him.

Bridgette hummed, leaning closer to Liz, whispering low enough that Logan couldn't make out most of the words and the few that he could hear were easy to tune out. He turned to the next page in the notebook, confirming that the check number, date, signature, and payee all appropriately matched the requisition form.

The audit sub-committee worked this way for a few hours before, finally, Bridgette and Liz had completed their notebooks, signing off on their portions of the audit list. Logan had a few more forms to check and then he could sign off, as well. Bridgette refilled their water glasses, then turned to Logan. "So, Logan, how has Kelly been doing? We haven't seen her around much lately and it's been forever since Pete and I have had the two of you over."

Logan bit down hard on the inside of his cheek to try and stop his jaw from trembling. "Kelly is doing fine, thank you." He nodded absently, eyes fixed on the forms in front of him. He turned to the next check in the book and the next form to validate.

Bridgette sounded surprised. "Oh, well, that's good to hear." He didn't look up, but could hear the little popping sounds of one of the two mouthing something to the other.

"Are you sure she's okay?" Liz pushed. "You know, we had heard that you two had gotten a divorce."

Logan sucked in a breath, staring down at the form in front of him. "Yes, yes that would be accurate."

"Oh, that's such a shame. You had such a beautiful family," Bridgette murmured, taking a sip of her water glass. "You know, Brad and I have definitely been through some rough spots, let me tell you!"

Logan quietly nodded, trying to complete the last few pages in his book without breaking. He could feel the lump in the back of his throat growing, but he was confident that if he could just concentrate on the numbers in front of him, he could get this done and get back in his car before his control slipped completely.

Liz reached out, patting his hand. "So how often do you get to visit the kids?"

Logan grit his teeth, pressing his lips together for a moment before forcibly relaxing his jaw and answering quietly, "We have a shared custody agreement. The boys spend half their time home with me and half their time at Kelly's."

"Oh," Liz said, pulling her hand back. "I'd heard, well, I'm—"

Logan finally turned the last page in the book and snapped it closed. "Well, I believe our work here is done. With the exception of the one reimbursement for more than the request amount on check 7294, everything is perfectly in order here." Logan reached for the audit report sheet and quickly signed it. He looked up at Liz and Bridgette, "It has been a pleasure, as always." He drank the last of the water in his glass, thanked Bridgette for her hospitality and left, flinching as the dogs barked at him in his retreat.

Rushing to get in his car before they could see his face, Logan started the car, carefully backing out and driving home in the waning light. When he had gotten a few blocks away, he pulled over, leaned over the steering wheel and sobbed.

[foreveralwaysanauthor]

I know I’ve been offline for a while, but this whole month has been a rollercoaster and I feel like it's finally slowing down, so I figured I would give you a small life update before finally getting around to editing part 10! I haven’t gotten to read your new post, Eleanor, but that’s because I’ve been saving it as a reward for finishing up everything in part 11 and editing part 10 haha! I can’t wait to finally read it either later tonight or tomorrow!

Onto the more serious stuff, I suppose! Well, as I said in my last post, we started this month out getting rained on by our upstairs neighbors twice in the same week and someone damaging our front door locks (presumably to break in and steal while we were out). Great way to start February, I know! Thankfully, my brother Mike - technically, he's my sister, Honey's husband, but I call him my brother since we’ve known each other for so long - came over to fix the door and help us with our ruined ceiling tiles. Then, my great-aunt (91yo) got sick with the stomach bug and, while she is still recovering, she’s feeling well enough to not need someone with her 24/7. On top of staying with her for a while, I started three jobs in the first week of February (housekeeping and dog walking for a lady in town and PCA work for a bedbound woman in the area) only to have the first lady take my housekeeping hours away because she claims her mother could do it instead. Honestly, I was glad she took those hours back because I could barely tolerate the way that she was over my shoulder the entire time I was there. She knows that I've been a housekeeper since I was 16 and that I knew what I was doing, but I’ve come to discover that she’s a bit of a control freak in all aspects of her life, so I am more than willing to let someone else handle her housekeeping 😂

Next up, my sister, Honey, and her family got a new puppy named Vanya and she is the sweetest, most loving little crackhead in our family. She loves to snuggle and gives people dirty looks if they tell her she needs to go back inside, but she has a weakness for peanut butter and listens to whatever my niece tells her to do. Vanya isn’t even a year old and they've only had her for a short time, but I will hurt anyone who dares look at her wrong because she is the fluffiest little angel and I adore her

A small, more emotional dip in things came when my Uncle Doug came over with a truckload of all of my grandparents' and Uncle John's belongings. Uncle Doug moved into their old trailer before they passed and, since the three of them have passed away, he owns the house and wanted to see if we could go through all of their belongings since he is trying to fix the place up and has no space for everything. I don't know where he thinks we have the space for everything in our apartment, but we took it all nonetheless and used our old, practically unused computer room as storage as we went through 67+ years worth of my grandparents’ things. There were a lot of emotions for me and my mom to go through and even more things that my mom didn't know her parents and brother still held onto - my great-grandmother's high school diploma and things from her business among those items - but we really loved going through the disorganized chaos that was dropped on us on a random Thursday!

Now, onto today! After all of the chaos and stress that February brought us, I feel as though things are finally coming to a point where I'm ready to keep going with the way things had been. Today, Honey and Mike came over with my old laptop, told me to set it aside for a while, and brought me out to his truck where they showed me the project they had secretly been working on for months now: an actual PC just for me! It glows and so does the keyboard and mouse they got for me, and I just can't get over how cool it is! They told me it was much deserved because of all that I do for the people in our family, but I still don't see how even though the two of them and my mom took the time to explain it. I don't do any of the things I do for recognition or gifts, so it's very hard for me to accept such an insanely expensive gift for something I do out of love for my family and those around us. I know it certainly wasn’t cheap, I’ve wanted one for ages now and done hours and hours of research trying to find a good, cheap one. I suppose I'm still reeling from it all. It will definitely take me a while to adjust to everything, especially having a mechanical keyboard in place of my old laptop's keys, but I now have an actual desk and setup that I can write at and I couldn't be more excited to start this new chapter in my writing journey. It feels like a step in a better direction, if that makes any sense at all haha!

Anyway, I hope you aren't upset with me for taking this super long break; I really hadn't intended for it to be this long of a break, but I can't say that I didn't need it with everything else going on in my life. I should have the next part up soon after I get all of the editing done and get a moodboard made up for it. I just wanted to fill you in on all that's happened during my little break from everything on the internet. I can't wait to read your new story once I get everything finished! It should be a great reward after all the work I'll be putting into everything! I hope everything has been going well for you and that you have an amazing day! 💕😊

[aliciachimera]

Family

i don't think i could ever recover from my traumas so long as i continue to live with my family. this cyclical process of controlling my finances, the inability to say No to any of them, the lingering resentment i have against my dad.

"No? Okay, you'll do it Later."

The gate they have me open Every Single Time they want to park in or leave. Their dog that they keep having me hold so my sister can pass through the backyard. The same dog that barks and chases after me whenever my mom or aunt are present. the combination of the two where i'm pulling open a gate with a dog in my arms and they park in, and all three mom aunt and sister come out of the car and then tell me there's things to unload from their car, all before walking away leaving me to do it all on my own.

The same family who'll see me doing my laundry with their machines and proclaim that i've Scared them even if i didn't know they were there. The same family who'll lock me out of the house if I go to the store and come back in 15 minutes during the daytime on our busy street. The same family who let their dog bite and kill a stray kitten who wandered into the backyard and proceeded to lock the dog in his cage and go back inside and Making me call animal service to come collect that kitten as it was too late before it bled out and died within the hour. The same family who made me clean out this garage from its previous occupant who left mold and smeared shit on the installed carpeting, also making me paint their Entire house exterior all on my own as it took weeks for me to complete with no prior experience, ad they have the gall to ask why do certain parts look uneven and splattered.

For making me go to Mexico with my mom for two weeks straight Twice because none of our other aunts nor cousins could find the time to go help our grandma who lives on a ranch deep in the countryside, of which my mother endangered our lives as she drove a 3 day trip within Two days time, her nearly passing out at the wheel at midnight in the darkness Several times as I Felt the car jerk and shift under her hands. Her refusing to stop at a motel, or letting me (no formal driving experience) drive until we reached a safe spot to park in the darkness. For us all contracting COVID on the road and refusing to have us go to a hospital for treatment. For ignoring me time and time again when we needed to go to the bathroom and she kept driving and driving until we reached home Two hours later. and being Fine with my misery so long as they get what they want out of me.

For them demanding I pay rent like a tenant And demanding I help like a "member" of their family. For moving their dog's cage in front of my garage door for Whatever reason until I helped my mother assemble her own computer, of which my aunt moved his cage back to its original spot away from me.

For all the bitter misery they make Me apologize for, if I ever dare speak up against them.

And that's before the divorce aspects, before I talk about my older sister and father and my step-family. I wish I could be a kind person who helps people, but more often than not I need help. I've always needed help when I can't scream and I can't cry and I can't die because I refuse to die.

I am emotionally volatile and asking me to Accept that part of myself is asking me to embrace how much misanthropy I've contained in a silent bitter rage I can only express through my text or by my art but never to their deaf ears that only want to hear my compliance.

And there's no other way, if I ever want to heal from those spoken traumas and the unspoken ones, too. I don't Want to be cruel. I don't Want to hurt others. I feel like a stray animal. Lost, scared, angry, tired.

[imperfect-scrawls]

Muddy Footprints

            It had been an exhausting day dealing with problem after problem. After waking up late, I rushed to work only to be met with more and more issues. I forgot a file I needed to complete a project. The coffee pot broke in my hands as I was pouring myself a cup. My computer completely shut down and started smoking while I was working on finalizing a three-month long presentation. Things could not have been worse. To top it off, it started to pour half an hour before I got off work, and I just knew that the rest of the night would be miserable.

            That feeling only increased as I sprinted to my car after clocking out. There are times in your life where you gut just tells you something is wrong. Your stomach starts to feel strange, like its filled with bottled lightning or rabid squirrels crawling around trying to escape. Something just feels wrong. That feeling just intensified as I climbed into my car and shut the door. I didn’t know what was coming, but the unease kept creeping along my skin as I stared at the blackened sky. As lighting flashed in the distance, I felt a chill run up my spine.

            There was no use trying to plan for it now. I just needed to keep an eye out and be very careful driving home. The last thing I needed was to end up rolled over on the side of the road in the middle of the storm. The sun was starting to set as I pulled out of the parking lot, and I prepared for a slow trip back home. Twenty minutes had never seemed so long, but the rain had slowed to a slight sprinkle by the time I managed to pull into my driveway. Unease still hung over me like a cloud, and I just wanted to walk inside, lock all my doors, and sit with my lights on, a cup of tea, and a blanket nest in my living room. All that changed when I stepped out of my car.

            You hear stories about shock and fear. How some people freeze in place and other scream or run. They tell you how the blood drains from your face and you feel like you’ve been dropped into ice water. I’ve never experienced anything in my life that can compare to how it felt when I noticed the muddy footprints leading into my house.

            I think I stood and stared at the footprints for a long while. Nothing else looked different about my house. No broken windows, not scratches on the door or broken handles, but the footsteps ended at my door. and they showed no signs of leaving. Someone had gone into my home. Someone could still be in my home, and that thought finally allowed me to move.

            I stumbled back to my car and locked the doors. I scrambled to find my phone and dialed the police.

“911 what is your emergency?” the dispatcher said.

“There is someone in my house.” I whispered. I didn’t want it to be true. I wanted it to all be a bad dream, and if I had said it any louder, I would be forced to face it.

“Can you tell me where you are? Are you in the house? What happened?” the dispatcher had asked.

I once again whispered, “I’m not in my house. I just got home, but there are footprints leading to my door. I’m still sitting in my car.”

“Alright. I’m going to have you drive to a safe location and I’m going to have someone come out and look around for you,” they had said in a comforting voice. “Just stay on the line, and we’ll get everything figured out.”

I can remember sitting on that line for hours. I remember being asked to drive back home. I remember the officers telling me they didn’t find anything or anyone in my home, and that there were no footprints or mud inside my house. I remember grabbing clothes out of my closet while they were still there and going to stay at my sister’s house for a week. Then at a hotel for another. I remember finally working up the courage to go back home after the two weeks had passed. I remember my house looking the same as it always did. I can still clearly remember setting my bag on a hook in the front hallway and taking my shoes off. I remember walking into the kitchen to start making food, but the thing that I will never forget is the note I found on my kitchen table.

No one should have been in my house for the entire two weeks that I was gone. No one else even has keys. However, I read the words that will still send a shutter through my body:

Welcome back. Why haven’t you been home in a while? I missed seeing you…

[casspurrjoybell-25]

ON A NIGHT LIKE THIS - Chapter 1

*Warning Adult Content*

- Jayce -

He rubbed his forehead as he stared at the screen of his work computer.

He knew he needed to wrap up this project by the end of the day, but it was the last thing he could focus on.

Thoughts of his ex-boyfriend and the end of his apartment lease cluttered his mind.

"Jayce."

He turned, trying not to look directly at the harsh fluorescent lights above him.

His manager, Janelle, was standing at his cubicle, her arm resting on top of the beige wall.

"I need to speak with you in my office."

"Sure."

He locked his computer and followed Janelle down the hall, wondering what this was about.

Janelle checked in with everyone on a quarterly basis but he had already met with her a couple weeks ago.

When they entered Janelle's office, his mouth went dry when he saw one of the men from HR was already sitting in front of Janelle's desk.

That wasn't a good sign.

He sat down in the other chair, swallowing hard as his gaze darted between his manager and HR.

He was pretty sure he hadn't done anything wrong and last he heard there were no issues with his performance.

"As you know," Janelle began. "We're merging with one of our competitors. Unfortunately, we're not able to keep everyone. Your position has been made redundant."

An hour later, Jayce was standing outside waiting for the bus, holding a cardboard box filled with his things.

It hadn't fully sunk in yet.

He felt numb but tears began to prick his eyes and he fought to blink them back.

Redundant.

He was no longer needed at his job, just like he was no longer needed by his ex-boyfriend or by his landlord or by his family.

As the bus rambled along the streets of Seattle, he looked down at the box in his lap.

He didn't know what he was going to do about his current situation.

Even though he'd been given three months' notice that his landlord was selling the condo he was renting, he hadn't found another place yet.

He had thought he'd move in with Zach but Zach had broken up with him a week later.

"You're a nice guy, Jayce but I don't see this going anywhere."

The painful memory made him tighten his grip on the box.

He stared out the window instead, trying to distract himself.

The mountains loomed in the distance, white clouds twisting around them.

It was almost October and the rain had started again.

The idea came to him as he watched the clouds unfurl and drift, hiding one part of the mountains and then revealing another.

He could pack up his apartment, put all of his things in storage and head out to the mountains for a week.

He'd only ever been on one hike, the popular Rattlesnake Ledge but Washington was known for its scenic mountain ranges and endless hiking opportunities.

People always raved about nature and how good it was for both physical and mental health.

Maybe spending a week in nature was exactly what he needed to clear his head and start again.

After that, he could spend a few nights in a hotel while he buckled down and found a new job and a new place to live.

Three days after losing his job, all of his possessions had been moved into a storage unit and he'd completed the move-out process with his landlord.

He was now standing in the middle of the flagship REI store, looking around in amazement at the gear surrounding him.

He had no idea there'd be so many options.

He didn't have the first clue where to start.

As he looked down at his feet, he subtly nodded his head.

Boots.

He needed boots.

He'd also need hiking clothes, a backpack, a tent and a sleeping bag.

For a minute, he felt guilty about the money he was about to spend, but he convinced himself that he needed this.

A short vacation after a series of bad events was reasonable.

Picking out a couple pairs of hiking pants, shirts and a jacket was easy enough.

While looking at boots, a salesman helped him choose a pair that were sufficient for day hikes and short backpacking trips.

The tents and sleeping bags all looked the same to him.

He tried reading the information accompanying them but he quickly got overwhelmed.

He picked a lightweight tent and sleeping bag meant for backpacking and then selected a large backpack.

He didn't know anything about hiking or backpacking but he knew REI carried high quality gear so he wasn't too concerned.

Outside of the store, he placed all of his new things inside the backpack.

As he lifted it and put it on, it seemed heavy at first but after adjusting all the straps the weight lessened considerably.

He knew it would get lighter over time as he ate more of the food he'd bought.

He squared his shoulders and began walking to the bus stop.

Several hours later, he was staring up at the formidable mountain peaks in front of him.

It had been a long bus ride and then he'd had to hitch a ride the rest of the way.

He'd been dropped off at the trailhead by a friendly older man who was accustomed to giving rides to PCT hikers.

He hadn't done a ton of research online but a picture of Cutthroat Pass in the North Cascades had caught his eye.

On one side of the pass, a lake was nestled snug against the rocky mountain, evergreen trees filling the landscape around the shore of the lake.

From the top of the pass, views of mountains stretched in all directions.

That was all he needed to see to make his choice.

Since it was late in the day at this point, he knew he wasn't going to get far.

The lake was about two miles from the trailhead, so he set out with the intention of camping there for the night.

Tomorrow, he'd make his way up to the pass.

The trail was a wide dirt path with the occasional rock half buried in the dirt.

Bushes with dark red leaves lined the trail, contrasting with the forest green of the trees.

It reminded Jayce of Christmas.

Further along, some of the foliage had turned into bright oranges and yellows, with bursts of color drawing his eyes from one set of leaves to the next.

Despite how much he was enjoying the scenery, he was already a bit tired when he reached the lake.

While he definitely wouldn't consider himself out of shape, he wasn't used to hiking.

His visits to the gym three times a week only included strength training.

He found himself wishing he had done some cardio once in a while.

He set his pack down under a tree and walked out to the edge of the lake.

It wasn't huge and the shore was muddy but it had a stunning backdrop.

Rocky mountains rose high behind the lake, with green and gold trees dotting the landscape in the foreground.

It was absolutely beautiful.

Transfixed, he sat on a log near the shore.

The water was completely still and the quiet was peaceful.

After spending a half hour sitting and watching the lake, his mind clear of any of his problems, he got back up and wandered over to his pack.

Before it got dark, he needed to find a camping spot and figure out how to set up his tent.

On the way in, he had seen a sign saying camping wasn't allowed within a quarter mile of the lake, so he walked back out towards the main trail.

Once he was past the no camping signs, he found a flat spot near some trees.

He unpacked the tent and laid it out on the ground.

Fortunately, everything was color coded.

He threaded the poles through the loops on top and secured them at each corner and the tent went up easily.

Digging through his pack, he found some beef jerky and a Cliff bar.

He wolfed them down before crawling into his tent and getting in his sleeping bag.

As he lay there, he watched the sun go down, the light slowly disappearing and creating long shadows in the forest.

It didn't bother him that it was getting dark.

He felt at peace being surrounded by such a gorgeous setting, with the only noise being a faint breeze and the insects singing.

After his long day of travel and the hike to the lake, he quickly drifted off to sleep.

[song-of-the-rune]

oh my gods. Oh my god. Okay. Okay. That was a bizarre adrenaline rush. Highlights of just the combat which was only like half the session and i hadn't even prepped oh my GOD

Place is a tavern as a front for a gang. Empty barrel smashed over this random brewer's head is the start of the combat.

Fuckin. Bomber ghoul who my players never learn about and had absurd acrobatics so we just named him Green Goblin as he jumped around the brewing vats and threw acid at everyone

They pulled Green Goblin because the monk critically fumbled and shouted so loud that she deafened herself.

One of my players has Ooze lore. She did not expect this to come up at any point in the campaign and consistently jokingly asks if [insert very solid creature] is an ooze. I spent TWO HOURS saying "I am so excited for you to see what comes around this corner" because the oozes had a 10ft speed and just took that long to slither to the door.

The combat tracker was so full that it froze my computer at one point

Zombie Pied Piper and his Numerous Dogs. This Zombie buffs other zombies but he got combined with the pack of Zombie dogs. They're very hyper.

Green Goblin throws an acid flask. Crits with a natural 20. Draws a random alchemy/spell crit effect. It petrifies the paladin???

Monk, still deafened, gets blinded. Becomes one with the force apparently and hits on multiple attacks against the blinder immediately afterward despite this.

Druid casts a spell used to deduce whether an invisible enemy is in an area. Manages to get a "no" so precise that they instead deduce the exact square the invisible enemy is hiding in.

Kineticist turns the chokepoint into a mud pit just by causing so many earthquakes that it's nothing but blood and rubble.

Green Goblin goes, "oh, caster," charges kineticist, who is also a tower shield fighter, and gets knocked to the floor.

Zombie bard refuses to die. But everything he buffs dies immediately.

I started moving the bodies out of the combat area to make the field navigable. (I need them in the field to tally exp later) They kept overflowing into the combat area.

Tower shield fighter keeps trying to help her allies. Her movement speed is 15ft. She runs back and forth across the hallway for multiple entire turns.

This combat actually lasted two in-game minutes. I was reading the book as we went because I didn't even expect them to fight at this place today.

I got the paladin and the kineticist after Green Goblin and the monk and Druid locked in a room with the boss. DON'T YOU KNOOOOOW YOU NEEEVER SPLIT THE PARTY.

Paladin keeps complaining he keeps having to restore his stamina while the rest of the party barely has health left. Kineticist starts including him in AoEs. Deals paladin's first HP damage.

Multiple people went down multiple times but no one died and the party won which is the best way for combat to go.

And the session in general

Paladin critically fails his check to solve a rubiks cube and breaks it. Druid puts it back together in solved configuration.

"We're not cops. We just want to take you in for questioning. Put on these manacles."

Paid the kid selling papers an entire gold to translate puzzle hints for them.

Oh and those three players are still doing push-ups for hp damage, all three of them for each point from ANY of their characters, and "drop and give me 26" is a very fun way to say "you just critically failed your reflex save."

That was beautiful i hope it happens again next week :3

GOOD EVENING EVERYONE IT'S 1:30 AM ON A MONDAY MORNING AND WE JUST EXITED A SEVEN-AND-A-HALF HOUR COMBAT WORTH AN SECOND LEVEL UP IN THE SAME SESSION BECAUSE THESE GENIUSES COMBINED EVERY COMBAT IN THE MINIDUNGEON

WHEN THE PALADIN WENT DOWN SHUFFLE DECIDED TO PLAY ONE-WINGED ANGEL

[heartfullofleeches]

Yandere Streamer + Delivery Driver Reader Blurb

"Package!"

You bang your fist against the apartment door, lock popping open after the second beat. Music floods from its cracks, leaving you curious as to how anyone heard you when another resident on this very floor couldn't hear you from their own living room. The query fades into irrelevancy as you wheel your cart closer to the opening door. The only thing that mattered was getting the job done so you could finally head home.

"Yeah?"

"Package for a uh...." You flip through your notes. "Miller?" That was definitely a new one. You've been delivering packages to this apartment complex from a local warehouse store for a few months by now to the point you almost knew everyone's name. The home owner's tired face gains an enormous grin, but not at the mention of the name. Rather, the voice behind it.

"Yeah, that's me. Sorry, thought you might've been someone else."

"I understand. From what I have here, you ordered a new surveillance camera, a gaming chair, and a set of deadbolt locks. You also requested set up for the chair. Is that correct?"

"Sounds about right. Come on in. Bedroom's to your right. Try not to take too long, I'm going live soon." You drag the cart in as Miller shuts and secures the door; chain lock clicking into place.

You park outside of the bedroom door, carrying the needed supplies inside and adding them to a plethora of boxes already situated inside. Must've just moved in, you conclude; despite all the worn posters and furniture placed around the room. The boxes were stacked in a way that they were out of general sight of a computer set up near a bolted window. Oddly enough, there was already a chair in front of it.

"New one's for my partner." Miller answers to the question you hadn't even asked, pointing at the chair. "Couples streaming seemed like a good way to welcome them home. All this other stuff is theirs too. Don't have much from their old home and I wanted to spoil them."

"When do they move in?"

"Today."

"I see.." You trail away from the conversation as you focus all your mental energy towards assembling their chair. You never got the proper training for this part of the job, but it wasn't rock science. Miller even helped you get started before they left the room, music blaring through the other corners of the house as they work on their own tasks. Three quarters of an hour down, and you've got it done. Miller had reentered the room around the time and had been working on their computer. They usher you over to bring the chair, offering you a seat for all your hard work.

"Y'know, I should be thanking you for all your hard work. You don't know how many times I've had to reschedule my order because they kept sending your coworker instead. Made no sense, but I guess you had other deliveries. It's whatever. All that's in the past now, baby."

Before you can ask what they mean, Miller puts on their headphones and presses a button on the keyboard. Your puzzled face appears on screen, blocked partially by the bill of your hat.

"Hey, guys! I'm here with my first stream with my spouse. Told you I was taken. I know I've hyped up their arrival, it just took a while to get things settled, but now they're finally home and here to stay."