#love these gay fictional dads

[freddycartr]

headcanon that simon and hugh cook nova filipino food weekly and she helps them. after supernova when she lives with them, and adrain, and they cook picadillo, lumpia, pandesal, or bistek or find new recipes. and it's a great bonding experience for them (adrain also joins in because he feels left out) and its a like them asking like forgiveness from nova and welcoming her into their family. they also sit down and have a really hard conversation(s) about the guilt that hugh and simon both feel for failing her family, particularly hugh, the first conversation they have ends with hugh breaking down in tears because he failed the girl in front of him and simon comforting him, which then it ultimately ends up as a group hug between nova, simon, hugh and adrian.

[nonbinarylesbianherb]

Well as the people have suggested I shall begin my journey through the ASOIAF series

Maybe not immediately because I still have many assignments/work/studying I should focus on, but I will start reading eventually

[inky-toons]

The comically sappy urge to randomly reach out to him and ask to fall asleep on call again cos even tho that stuff scares me it's soothing when it's with him

Idk I used to have a very specific way of seeing things until he pranced along omfg..HE MADE ME LIKE CHRISTMAS he already knows I kinda like Christmas but I liked it even more after last Christmas. I was making a gingerbread house and he INSISTED on seeing it but I wanted it to be just right and at that time I wos with my mum and she bought SOME SHITTY BRAND AND IT ALL FELL APART SO I THREW IT OUT AND HE STILL WONT LET IT GO?? He also used to make daily hot chocolates and he'd show me like. That's now a holiday I look forward to. Wtf. It's also foreign for me to like certain things about myself but he makes me genuinely like myself and love myself onfg. I sent him a picture of the day I got my bass and I was holding it AND ACCORDING TO HIM HE FOUND IT CUTE HOW I "Stood there like I wasn't trying to look proud but I definetly was" HOW DO YOU TELL THAT FROM A PICTURE I NEED HIM DEAD. I was proud though that bass is my life

Idk we've had our ups and downs and I can tell it's all true love cos we always come back with a strong I love you.

Shakes my head..only thing is im not actually dating him, not rn anyway cos my mental health is wavered with where I'm living so now I have to wait for college and really jump in and woo him. I'm gonna adjust to college, figure out some life stuff then try and ask him out TWHEHEH 😝‼️ He'll say yes cos we're both in love so I'm just...heh...that good..

[app1es0uce]

Oooooh I can’t wait to unpack and write up some Telemachus trauma

[chatdae]

The Great Gatsby (1974) au where Gatsby doesn't die and instead Nick takes on the no-paying job of trying to get Jay to move on from Daisy.

Bad ending is Gatsby never does & he and the Buchanans become a never-ending shitshow. Good ending is Jay moves on. Super special bonus ending is Jay and Nick fall in love (toxicity optional)

[sharpbutsoft]

putting my complex feelings on morality & fic aside for a sec, I still think it was hilarious that by the time s4 rolled around the writers were so done with w*ncest that they let jackles stare down the camera and call them disgusting to their faces

[sak-supernatural]

Ok I did something I probably shouldn’t have, I introduced my parents to ao3. My Mum is really not interested because she doesn’t really care about movies/tv shows ect, but I dread to think what my Dad might do with the information. He is the one I get my passion for movies and tv from, and he can be quite obsessive about the things he likes and is well acquainted with many different things, but for him everything ends where canon ends, good or bad, weather he likes it or not. And now I have given him the power to expand upon those stories. You might be thinking that’s great! Congrats for him! But the problem lies in that my Dad can be a little bit passively homophonic and with the vast amounts on M/M on AO3 I worry about what he might come across, not to mention the smut. Also the fact that I’m sure he’d be unwilling to learn how to actually filter using tags 🙄. I have now reached the next level of crazy 😜, advertising ao3 to ‘the normals’.

[newtdoods]

My dndads Sona (don‘t know if bard or warlock fits better)

[anxious-fandom-bean]

nobody is ever surprised and they all even tell me about characters they think i would go for

having such an obvious favorite character trope is life ruining bro

[edgarallennope]

Cecil Gershwin Palmer, character of all time. He's gay. He has lyme disease. He's a PTA uncle. He's terrified of mirrors and for good reason. He's a cat dad. He's a DAD dad. He fell in love with his husband the first time he laid eyes on him. He got a barber run out of town. He regularly leaks classified police and government information on his radio show but kept his adopted son secret for ages. He has a complicated and tumultuous relationship with his mother. He's a gossipy bitch. He's in love with the job he was destined and cursed to have. He wears fanny packs. He's cried on air as many times as he's laughed. He has a true crime podcast. He calls his husband Kittycake. He has been a my fictional friend for over ten years.

[freddycartr]

headcanon that simon helps hugh shave and they make out in the bathroom daily

[the-royal-blue-network]

Waiting For David

Patients isn’t something that comes natural to Parker Jones. Even something as simple as waiting in line for a movie ticket will have Parker hopping from one leg to the other. But today, Parker’s patients is extremely bad because in just a few hours, a new member of the Jones family will be arriving, and Parker has been waiting what feels like a lifetime for this moment.

[shtposterdrk]

You unironically deserve hollywood, no sane person even on this hellsite types like this

I just want a pansexual John Wick.

I just want an assassin, who's dated so many assassins that it's super awkward when he takes on hits because there is literally no one he hasn't fucked.

I want it to be like, he flirts with them a little, just out of awkwardness, or maybe because he's secretly hoping to rekindle something, and they're like, would you just fucking die?

and he's like baby i can change, and then he has to duck because in typical John Wick style, someone is throwing a knife at his face.

That's why I wrote 7 Deadly Habits of the Modern Demon Summoner, available here.

Because it has all of that...but with demons because I'm a hoe for demons like that.

And John Wick would fuck a demon.

Trust me. I asked Keanu. He told he would. Don't tell him I said it, though. I couldn't look him in the eye.

[lizziesribbons]

Part 1 | seeing her for the first time

PAIRING: BEST FRIEND'S MOM! WANDA X FEM! READER

summary: you had no idea visiting your college bestfriend's hometown for the first time would put a women in your life that would either ruin your life or be the love of your life. Stay tuned to find out.

warnings: ****MINORS DNI***** *****MEN DNI***** ****CONTAINS SMUT LOTS OF SMUT****** fluff, legal age difference (r is 21, Wanda is 42), angst, homophobia, wanda is religious, church visits alot of them with Wanda, Wanda is divorced because I absolutely hate cheating it disgusts me I hate vision but I hate cheating more. Mentions of domestic abuse, mommy issues, parental control and alot of family issues.

Author's note: this is the first chapter so it might be a bit of everything idk I need a good base uh anyways y'all know my first language isn't English so bear with me ALSO half of this is projecting I'm literally writing what happened to me irl the only part fictional is me meeting an older women unfortunately that wasn't the case but I absolutely love my bestfriend's mom she's such a sweetheart I miss her alot :( I haven't met her ever since me and my bsf grew apart been a year I think

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Going to your best friend's hometown for the summer wasn't your first option but you didn't really have a choice since your family disowned you after you came out to them during last year summer after your first year at college, it was your second year now and you've still been in no contact with them you occasionally talk to your sister every once in a while since she's the only one who accepts the fact that being gay isn't anything out of the ordinary

So here you were driving in your old ass jeep your grandparents gifted you on your birthday behind your parent's back, you loved it alot even though you were the only person who were able to drive it since anyone else couldn't figure it out even if they wanted to save their life.

"my mom just called she's excited to see you, says she's glad I'm bringing a friend she has been bored alot" your bestfriend carlee says pulling you out of your thoughts. "Oh" you say breathing out and shaking your head to pull yourself out of the trance you were apparently in, "uh yeah I'm excited to see her too. What did you say her name was? I didn't catch it" you ask her your eyes still on the road "Wanda" carlee says with her mouth full of potato chips, "Wanda? That's pretty- carlee I swear to god if you drop any chips in here." you say with concern "I won't! See I'm not a little kid" she says in defence "just be careful." you drive in silence, carlee's mouth sounds the only sound in the car.

"why is your name carlee" you ask after a few minutes "what the fuck is that supposed to mean" she says her eyebrows furrowing and you chuckle and say, "I mean why and who named you there must be a meaning cuz your name makes 0 sense with Wanda's", "I'm still confuse on what that means but anyways my mom didn't name me my dad did he didn't really give mom an option to name me, says it was his first love's name and he wants to cherish her" she says softly, "Oh what a dick" your face in disgust as carlee laughs loudly "he was, I mean he is he still is I'm glad mom divorced him" she says sighing "yeah? I bet he was" you say to her sadly "well atleast we can bond over our crazy insane dads you know" carlee chuckles lighting the mood as you laugh with her, "hey you want something there's a cafe coming up I think" you ask Carlee "yeah sure I can enjoy a coffee right now" she says as you pull over "no coffee carlee we're still 4 hours away and you will eat my brain if I let you stay up just eat something and go to sleep besides you've already had 4 cups of coffee and it's literally only 2PM." you hear carlee groan as you talk "You're not my mom you know" she says throwing draggers at you "Oh sure like I literally don't make you breakfast every morning" you roll your eyes at her "Oh shutup" carlee throws her head back as you get out of the car and shout lightly "I'll bring you something to eat just wait here okay" with that you head off inside after 19 minutes you come back inside the car with a paper bag in your hand, you drop it in carlee's lap "here eat please all you've had all day is potato chips and coffee" you say with obvious concern, carlee smiles at you "god you're so sweet it's sickening sometimes I love you" carlee says rummaging through the bag as you start driving again "yeah sure" you say laughing after eating your snacks and lots of laugh and talks carlee falls asleep as you peacefully drive, the car ride after that didn't feel that long you reached her hometown at 6:37 you wake her up so she can guide you to her house after a 10 minute drive you pull up at a beautiful house, calling it a house would be an understatement it was more of a villa even though it wasn't even that big it was just built so beautifully. You knew carlee was rich even though she never showed off or bragged about it, it was obvious, she was the kind of person who's help you could recieve gladly without feeling small because she never made you feel small you were always an equal to her "your house is gorgeous" you say breathing out "yeah? My mom got an eye for architecture she made the blueprint herself" carlee says clearly proud of her mom, you say with shock getting out of the car after parking it in a respectful setting "your mom? That's impressive" you say looking at the house in awe "wait till you see the inside girl cuz I was flabbergasted too." carlee says chuckling as you walk up to the front door

Carlee rings the bell and you hear footsteps approaching the door, you had to hold your breath so you couldn't scream as you see Wanda walk out her face beaming with happiness as she saw carlee and hug her. She was perfect actually. Angelic even you could she was an angel herself. Before you could process it she hugs you and you melt in her arms "you must be y/n carlee has been speaking about you non stop" you can carlee became friends after your family disowned you she saw you crying outside of your class one day and approached you, ever since then she have been your ride or die. "yeah uh I I am nice to meet you miss maximoff" you say softly and nervously fidgeting with your shirt, you were sure you were sweating right now and hoped to god carlee and Wanda don't notice.

"well come in darlings I've been waiting for you I thought y'all were coming yesterday" Wanda says rushing you both into the house, you were in awe when you saw the inside it just felt like home it was so beautiful and gorgeous it was like walking into a warm embrace "yeah mom we had some work to-" you cut carlee off and look at Wanda "your house is beautiful miss maximoff" "Oh please it's Wanda no need for formalities and thankyou I'm glad you like it" she says, her arm around Carrey as she looks at you softly smiling "mom I'm really really really tired do you mind if we rest a bit?" carlee says looking up at Wanda, carlee was short even shorter than you, Wanda was probably a feet taller than carlee and atleast 6 inches from you. "sure sweetheart go on your room is all ready I made the bed first thing when I woke up and y/n your room is beside carlee's I set up the guest room as carlee told me you'd like but it's okay if you wanna sleep in carlee's room too" she says patting your shoulder, you could've sworn she looked you up and down and checked you out but you just shrugged it off as you being tired "you didn't have to miss maxi- Wanda but thankyou so much" you say looking up and softly smiling "I'll unload the bags from the car just give me the keys you both go and rest" she says already taking the keys from your hand "wait I can help" you say walking behind "no worries you just go and rest okay?" she pushed you towards the already sleepy carlee and go outside, you grab carlee's hand and ask her to lead you to the room "Oh come on you're so ridiculous you slept for 4 hours already" you say laughing at her as she acts sleepwalking "so what sleeping is fun" she says lazily "just show me my room and I'll get off your ass ho" you say to her as she guides you to the room "thankyou" you say rushing to the room and dropping on the bed you let out a huge breath you didn't know you were holding. God Wanda is beautiful you thought to yourself how can someone be this pretty? Is it wrong to find your bestfriend's mom this gorgeous and attractive but you couldn't help yourself she's just so perfect, you slept thinking of her.

After 2 hours there's a knock on your door, you stir awake "yeah?" you say in a sleepy voice "hey sweetheart it's Wanda can I come in?" you were wide awake now. "yeah come in" you quickly fix yourself and sit up in the bed "hey I just woke carlee up, fresh up dinner is ready carlee is downstairs just freshen up and come down okay?" she says in that angelic voice of hers, god you could listen to her for hours- no, y/n don't do that don't think about it that's wrong but she looks so sexy right now in just simple jeans and button up shirt "yeah I'll be down in 5 minutes Wanda" you say quickly covering up your nervous state you rush to the bathroom.

After 5 minutes you come downstairs and see Wanda and carlee on the dinner table waiting for you, how will you survive 3 months if you can't even walk straight infront of her?.

To be continued

[luvergirl-866]

something like love

part - 1

pairing - paige bueckers x azzi fudd

word count - 4.1k

c/w - language

a/n - hi!! i am so so excited to be posting my first ever pazzi fic (and also my first post on tumblr!) she’s a cute little fake-dating rom-com for yall, and i hope you enjoy reading it as much i enjoyed writing it! updates will probably be inconsistent but im gonna do my best lol. lmk what yall think!! (edit: side note, this is obviously all fiction! i’m sure paige’s mom and step-dad are perfectly good people irl, lol)

“Will you go out with me?”

When Paige asks this question during their weekly lunch date, Azzi is so taken aback that she almost chokes on her Chipotle.

“Shit, you good?” Paige asks, concerned, handing Azzi a napkin to cough into.

Azzi waves her off, swallows, and croaks, “What?”

“Hm?” Paige is staring at her nonchalantly, like she didn’t just ask what Azzi heard her ask. “Oh, that. Yeah, will you?”

“I don’t—“ Azzi shakes her head. Is she being messed with? It feels a lot like she’s being messed with. “Paige, you’re my best friend.”

“Exactly.”

“I didn’t know you…had, like, feelings for me.”

“Huh? No!” Wide-eyed, Paige shakes her head violently. “No, ‘course I don’t.”

Azzi’s stomach clenches—not in the good way it sometimes does around Paige—and she thinks Paige could’ve bothered to sound less disgusted by the notion of her having feelings for Azzi. “Funny, P.”

“I’m for real.”

Azzi frowns. “Actually?” Paige nods and Azzi wrinkles her brow, confused. “So you wanna go out with me but you don’t feel…like that about me.”

“Were you even listening earlier?” Paige playfully rolls her eyes, sitting all casually in her seat with her legs spread like she has the biggest dick on campus. Azzi usually loves it when she sits like that, but now she’s too annoyed and confused to appreciate it. “I was talking about my mom.”

“Oh.” To be fair, Azzi stopped listening a while ago, when Paige was still talking about the hot electrician that fixed her leaky sink the other day. She wasn’t aware the conversation had taken a more serious tone. “Sorry, I spaced. What were you saying?”

“I was saying she and her fuckass husband invited me home for a few weeks this summer…” Paige waits, but it doesn’t ring any bells, so she sighs and continues. “They told me to bring Josh.”

Azzi scrunches her nose. “Eww, why?”

“Because…I haven’t really, like, you know…” Paige tips her head to the side, “told them we ended things.”

“Paige,” Azzi sighs.

“I know! I know. Just, I dunno.” Paige sighs, and Azzi knows she’s trying to act chill about it even though she likely laid awake last night thinking about it. “It’s hard, y’know? They’re not like my dad’s side, they’re not like your parents. You know what they did after I told them…” Paige glances surreptitiously around the restaurant, even though they’re far away from campus and not very likely to be recognized, “everything. And if I told them about Josh and they suspected something, I don’t think they’d let me see Ryan and Lauren again.” Her eyes are wide, now, and she’s doing that thing she does when she gets mad, pinching her bottom lip between her fingers.

Paige and Josh were never actually a thing, by the way. Paige doesn’t swing that way and she’s known it for a long time. But she came out to her mom over the new year, and that phone call had ended in a seething Paige at Azzi’s door, yelling and cursing while Azzi listened, and a broken one in her bed that night, crying herself to sleep while Azzi stroked her hair.

So a couple months later Paige recruited their closeted gay friend, Josh. And they became each other’s beards, pleasing her mom enough that she could stay in contact with her younger siblings. That is, until Josh found a nice boyfriend and Paige was left hanging.

Azzi tries to come up with something to say, something comforting, but she’s not sure there is anything to say.

“And I hate them for that,” Paige goes on. “But as long as Ryan and Lauren are still kids, my parents can still keep them from me. And it sucks they’re holding that over my head but there’s not a lot I can do about it.”

Azzi offers a sad little smile, letting her silence urge Paige to go on, even though she can tell it’s hard for her.

“So, anyway,” Paige sighs, sitting back in her seat, “when Josh ended it, I didn’t wanna tell them, because I knew the calls would stop coming, the support. And so whenever they asked about him, I’d be all, oh, yeah, he’s doing great, just busy. Just bullshitting my way through it.”

“And you’ve been doing this for the past two months?”

“Umm…” Paige looks down at her fingers, counting on them, then furrows her eyebrows. “Pretty much, yeah.”

“Okay…” Azzi leans forward on her elbows. “So how does your weird question come into all this?”

“Don’t say no right away,” Paige says, giving her this knowing look she hates.

Azzi narrows her eyes at her. “We’ll see.”

Paige reaches over to whack her and misses. “Lemme explain, damn. So, when they called me last night and invited me to come home with Josh, I was like, oh, shit. And I thought of ways I could handle it.”

“Uh-huh…” Azzi watches with wary eyes as Paige bends to rummage through her book bag. “Paige, tell me you’re not—”

“Let me introduce you to…” Paige keys up her laptop and then turns the screen toward Azzi with a wide smile, “Boom!”

“Oh my fucking god.” Azzi buries her head in her hands.

“No, bro, listen! It’s lowkey impressive!” Paige taps the screen. “It’s titled Game Plan for my Summer Visit to my Fuckass Parents, featuring Azzi Fudd. By Paige Bueckers.”

“Good Lord,” Azzi says, taking a peek at the PowerPoint in front of her. When has Paige ever gone to such lengths as to create a PowerPoint before? This must really be serious to her.

“So, listen carefully.” Paige taps the screen again; it changes from the title slide to one labeled ‘First (and worst) Option’. “I put the worst part because it’s true, but it’s also a lil rhyming moment.”

“Right, okay. Just keep going, please.”

“So, this is the first option that came to mind,” Paige starts, glancing down at the screen. “This is the option where I ghost my parents and refuse to come see them at all.” She taps the screen to a pros and cons slide. “As you can see, I mostly only came up with cons.”

“Yeah, because it’s a terrible idea.”

“I know. So then we have option two.” The next slide is labeled ‘Option Two (mid)’. “I put the mid part because—“

“I get it.”

Paige shoots her a look. Azzi playfully kicks her under the table. “Go on.”

“Okay.” Paige nudges Azzi’s foot with her own, but her attention is back to the laptop. “This is the scenario where I let my parents think that Josh and I are still together by telling them that I can come to Montana, but that Josh can’t. It’d be pretty easy, and as you can see here…” she clicks the screen, “there’s an even ratio of pros to cons.”

Azzi nods sagely. Sometimes, her best friend takes a while to get to the point, and Azzi learned a long time ago that waiting it out is the best way to go.

“But there is this one big con: I can’t keep lying to my parents forever. So this option is pretty much a way to procrastinate on telling them the truth. Which takes us to the last option.”

This slide is titled ‘Third Option (THE BEST)’ along with a few muscle emojis tacked to the end. A headache forms at the base of Azzi’s skull.

“This is where my awesome idea comes in.” Paige gives her a very self-satisfied smile. “Instead of Josh, I take you with me to Montana and we pretend you’re my girlfriend for two weeks. Literally a genius idea.” She leans back in her seat, nodding assuredly to herself, and Azzi can’t help but smile because she really loves this girl. Despite how bat-shit crazy she is.

“P, I don’t—“

“Hear me out.” Paige clicks to the final slide. This pros and cons list is mostly pros, and Azzi spots many love-emojis sprinkled throughout. “We pretend we’ve been dating since beginning of March. They know you’re my best friend; we’ll pretend that after Josh broke up with me, you and I bonded and fell in love or some shit. My parents won’t be happy, but I’ll already be there with you so they won’t kick me out or nothing.” Paige frowns. “Probably.”

Ok, so, Azzi absolutely hates to admit it, but this does actually make some sense. Not that she’ll ever say such a thing out loud.

“And then they’ll realize we’re totally in love and I’m happy and even if they hate gay shit they just want me to be happy, because I’m their kid.” Paige says this last part less like a fact and more like something she’s trying to convince herself of. Azzi can’t help but feel bad for her.

“Okay,” Azzi says slowly, watching Paige tuck away her laptop. “That’s your plan.”

“Yep.”

“I’m seeing a few plot holes.”

Paige waves her off. “It’ll work. No plan of mine is gonna fail, trust.”

“And why should I help you?”

Paige gives her an easy smile, and Azzi sort of hates how confident she is. “Because I’m your best friend in the whole world and you love me.”

Azzi raises an eyebrow.

“C’mon, Az. What is there to lose?”

Azzi sighs and almost says something stupid like I’m in, but this isn’t just one of those things that she can help Paige with without thinking twice. It’ll be two weeks of torture, pretending to date the girl she’s secretly in love with while being surrounded by her homophobic family, and then having to come home at the end of the two weeks and pretend she never got to experience a glimpse of what it’s like to be with Paige in the way she’s always wanted.

It sounds like hell.

Azzi sighs again, ready to say no, but when she looks up Paige is staring at her with something more vulnerable than before, open in the way she bites her lip, her arm reaching across the table like she’s wearing her heart on her sleeve and waiting for Azzi to take it.

Azzi takes her hand, instinctually, and says, “Okay.”

She is so fucking gone for this girl.

————————————-

They don’t talk about it for two days after that. It’s not that they don’t get the chance, or that they don’t see each other—they go to the gym together both days—it’s just that neither of them seems to have the guts to bring it up. And why should they? It wasn’t too scary while they were having the original conversation—nothing too big or threatening or, god forbid, real—but as soon as Azzi stepped into her dorm after that lunch, she realized just how much she fucked up by saying yes to Paige’s crazy idea.

It would be an understatement to say that talking about it is the last thing Azzi wants to do at this point.

Paige, however, seems to have other plans, as she usually does. When she storms into the living room—where almost every single member of the UConn women’s basketball team is doing homework—she makes a beeline for the seat beside Azzi on the couch and whispers, “Hey.”

Nika leans up from the floor to poke Paige with her pencil. “No chit-chat, we’re working.”

Paige glares. “What, I can’t talk to my best friend?”

“Shh,” hisses Aaliyah, barely pulling her eyes from her laptop.

Paige flips her off even though Aaliyah is too immersed to notice, and then she turns her attention back to Azzi, bumping their knees together. “Can we talk later?”

Azzi pretends to be focused on studying. “Mm. About?”

“About…” Paige glances around furtively, “y’know.”

Yes, Azzi does in fact know, but she really wishes she didn’t. “What’s there to talk about?”

“Oh, I dunno,” Paige says sarcastically. “Specifics? Rules? Details? I prepared a whole new PowerPoint.”

“So that’s what you’ve been doing the past couple of days.”

“Yeah, turns out I love PowerPoint.”

Azzi finally cautions a glance up, and Paige is looking at her, completely serious. The eye contact seriously messes with her ability to make sound decisions.

“Okay,” Azzi relents. “As long as you’re quiet for the next forty minutes, we can talk.”

Paige, dutifully, doesn’t say a word for the rest of Azzi’s worktime, letting everyone study in peace. And that’s how Azzi ends up in Paige’s bedroom an hour later, perched on the edge of her bed while Paige struggles with her laptop.

“Okay, fuck this,” Paige says after extensive fiddling. “My stupid fucking PowerPoint isn’t loading. What the hell.”

Every bone in Azzi’s body wants to take this as a sign from God, the fact that this PowerPoint isn’t working, that they’re not supposed to do this. She wants to walk out of the room—and this agreement—for good. But Paige is her best friend and Azzi had always been too loyal for her own good, so she sighs and says, “How about we just talk about it? Y’know, like normal people.”

Paige frowns but closes her laptop regardless. “Okay. So.”

“So…”

“First off,” Paige says when Azzi doesn’t continue, “I just felt like I should probably say sorry for dragging you into this.” Paige scratches the back of her neck, always a little awkward when it comes to apologies. “I know it’s a lot to ask for.”

Azzi blinks, startled. “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, well…” should she back out? If she were going to, now’s her chance.

Azzi looks down at a scab on her knee. “I mean, that’s okay.”

Paige shifts in her seat, the stool creaking underneath her. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. It’s not like this is the first time I’ve had to help with one of your ridiculous plans.” Azzi goes for lighthearted but knows it falls flat under the weight of what she’s going to have to do.

“Okay.” When Azzi looks up, Paige is staring at her suspiciously. She wonders just how bad of an actress she must be for Paige, the same Paige who hasn’t yet detected Azzi’s somewhat obvious, six-years-long crush on her, to see right through her. But then she just shrugs and continues, aloof like she always is. “So then I wanted to ask you about what you think we should do about…all this.”

“…Okay?”

“I was thinking we should get into the, like. The specifics.”

Azzi rolls her eyes. “Paige, just tell me.”

Paige gnaws at her lip until it turns white and Azzi starts to worry it might bleed, but then she says, “We need a sex timeline.”

If Azzi were drinking water, she would have surely spit it out.

“A what?” she asks, sort of incredulous. Paige has said a lot of crazy things before but nothing quite like that.

“Okay, my bad, weird way to put it.” Paige grins as if all of this is funny to her. “What I mean is we need a story to tell my family, our friends. Like, why did we start dating? When was our first kiss? What’s our song? Have we, you know…gone to the penthouse and freaked it?”

Azzi throws herself back onto the bed. Paige’s bed. Which she is just now realizing is probably going to be the bed that many of these fictional events are going to take place in. “Paige.”

Paige is giggling now, which is endearing because Paige doesn’t giggle often. If only it weren’t at Azzi’s expense. “We need to figure it out, for real! People are going to ask questions.”

“People are not going to ask those kinds of questions.”

“Um, excuse me.” Paige stands and walks over until she’s at the bed, pulling Azzi’s legs off the edge playfully. “Have you met our friends? KK’s not shy with that shit.”

Azzi’s ankles instinctively go around the back of Paige’s thighs, but she’s in a certain mindset due to their current conversation and the casual gesture suddenly seems much less innocent than usual. She unwraps them, pulling her legs from Paige’s grasp as discreetly as possible. “So we’re planning on telling them we’re dating, too?”

Paige shrugs. “Yeah. You weren’t?”

“I don’t…” Azzi straightens up as Paige sits beside her, their hips touching. “We spend every day with them, P. Don’t you think it’ll be hard to keep up the act that much?”

“Yeah, probably. But that’s also why I wanna do it.” As usual, Paige sounds completely sure of herself. “We only have a couple weeks until Montana and I wanna make sure we get enough practice acting like a couple.”

Azzi still feels uneasy about the whole thing, but Paige is right—they can’t get onto a plane as best friends and get off it a convincing pair of girlfriends.

Azzi’s face heats at the term. Girlfriends. But that’s what they’ll be, isn’t it?

“I was thinking we’ll tell them next week,” Paige says. “We’ll ask them to hang out and then drop it on them that we’ve been dating since March.” Paige must recognize the look on Azzi’s face, because she puts a hand on her knee—which does absolutely nothing to help. “Is that cool with you?”

Azzi can’t say all of the things she’s thinking right now, so instead she settles for, “Yeah, no.” She pauses, her feet on Paige’s fuzzy carpet, and decides this will be the last time she lets herself doubt this.

“I think that’s perfect.”

————————————

One week later, three Saturdays from the end the school year, Azzi sits with a bowl of popcorn in her lap feeling like she might hurl.

“Why are you acting so weird, Fudd?” KK asks, and Azzi startles at her name, looking at the freshman who’s sitting on the floor in front of her and giving her a weird look.

“Leave her alone, Camera,” Paige says, settling into the couch next to Azzi. “What movie we watching?”

They are all crammed into a dorm, as they often are, excited for a chill team movie night in the midst of finals season. Little do the girls know, they will be getting entertainment from more than just the movie tonight.

“No, KK’s right,” Ice says, scrolling through Netflix on the TV. “Azzi’s been acting super weird.”

Azzi, somewhat offended (she thought her acting skills were pretty decent) looks around the room for help. Instead, the girls all just nod their agreement.

Paige nudges her and raises her eyebrows, and Azzi knows exactly what that look means.

“You don’t have to tell us what’s up if you don’t want,” Inês says from her place on the other side of Azzi, dipping her hand into their shared popcorn. It almost makes Azzi want to back out.

Almost.

Putting on her bravest face, Azzi nods and turns to face their friends. “Paige and I have something we’d like to tell you.”

There’s something odd about the silence that follows this, the way the girls on the floor look at each other before turning their bodies to face the couch, the stragglers sitting in the loveseat and at the dining table leaning forward almost imperceptibly.

Azzi tenses up as she is suddenly under the scrutiny of eleven other girls. How is she going to lie to them? How is this ever going to work?

Paige, through some form of best-friend-telepathy, senses Azzi’s struggle and places a comforting hand on her back. “I can say it.”

This isn’t what they practiced, but Azzi is too grateful and too distracted by the hand on her back to worry about going off-script.

“We’ve been wanting to tell y’all for a while,” Paige says. “But we also wanted to just keep it to ourselves for a little bit.”

It sounds so natural, and effortless, and Azzi can feel herself slipping into this role for the first time. She pretends the hand on her back is more than friendly, the nerves in her stomach are something other than guilt, the things Paige is about to say are true.

If one good thing is going to come out of any of this, it’ll be this feeling of contentment that Azzi will get to have, at least for a little while. And maybe she’s okay with that.

“Do you guys remember that party we went to a couple months ago?” Paige asks. Her nails scratch over Azzi’s shirt, making her shiver.

“Yeah…” Nika says at the table in the corner. Aubrey rests her chin in her palms, looking suspiciously like she’s trying not to smile. For some reason, Ice and KK are clutching each other’s hands.

“Well, when Azzi and I got home we just decided to stay together in her dorm…” Paige trails off like she’s hesitant to continue, and half the girls lean closer to them while the other half look a little too relaxed. Ice is now glaring at KK, who’s…beaming?

“Something happened between us that night.” Paige looks at Azzi now, and even though this is what they were supposed to do the look in her eyes still takes Azzi’s breath for just a moment. She has dreamed of Paige looking at her like this for years, and now it is finally happening, and Azzi thinks she would do anything to make this all real.

Paige opens her mouth to continue, but before she can, KK jumps to her feet and squeals, and Ice throws the remote on the ground with an angry, “Fuck!”

Azzi and Paige both startle, and Azzi loves the way Paige’s hand fists up her shirt in surprise, but then the notices that all the other girls don’t seem surprised or confused at all—rather, they all seem to be having similar reactions to KK. Nika and Aubrey are even singing something, and Inês has jumped up from her spot beside Azzi to join the others in what looks a lot like a celebration. Why are they all chest-bumping each other?

Finally, Azzi finds it in herself to speak. “Guys, what…?”

KK kneels to wrap her arms around a sulking Ice and looks at them both, eyes glimmering. “Whatchu mean, what?”

“I don’t…” Paige releases Azzi’s shirt, her hand falling to the seat behind her. “We haven’t even finished telling you yet.”

“Are y’all actually this dumb?” KK asks, before squealing in Ice’s ear and then throwing herself onto the couple on the couch. “Ugh! I’m so happy for you two lovebirds.”

“Lovebirds…?” Azzi asks, but the room is too raucous for her to be heard and when she looks at Paige, all she gets is an equally confused head shake in return.

“My babies are growing up,” Aubrey says, wiping an invisible tear, and Aaliyah comfortingly pats her shoulder.

“Baby,” Amari says, smiling at the both of them, “we have known.”

“Uh,” Paige says, thrown off for once in her life. “How?”

“Because y’all are the most obvious fucking couple in the country,” Ice chips in. She is still pouting, even with Ayanna patting her on the head and Jana rubbing her shoulders.

During the past week, Paige and Azzi have been dropping a few hints here and there in the hopes that they could almost ease their friends into it before telling them, to make things more believable. But obvious? Obvious enough for all of them to know? That’s a stretch.

Apparently thinking the same thing, Paige laughs awkwardly, trying to regain some semblance of control over the situation. “We thought we were pretty good at hiding it.”

“Yeah, right.” Caroline flicks Azzi’s forehead good-naturedly. “KK and Ice have had a bet running for, like, six months now.”

At this, Azzi tenses up, and Paige turns to her, gives her a cautious, confused smile. “That long?”

“I started the bet, of course,” KK pipes in. “You two are so in love.” She sighs dreamily and then nudges Ice with her foot. “You owe me my five-hundy, girlypop.”

“You didn’t even actually win, this doesn’t count,” Ice grumbles. “We made the bet six months ago and they only started dating in March. And also, I thought they’d be way too pussy to tell us yet.”

Paige perks up at this, her unusual awkwardness gone as fast as it came. “Hey! I ain’t pussy about nothing!” and KK chimes in with her own protests of, “Girl, boo! It does too still count, you’re just a sore-ass loser!”

Azzi can’t bring herself to say anything, because their teammates believed Azzi and Paige gave been dating longer ago than this arrangement was even brought up. And that means they must have seen Azzi’s feelings for Paige, and whatever the other side of that is, and they don’t really act like a couple, do they?

“Anyway,” Ice continues, a little less pouty now, “I totally thought I’d have to walk in on you two fucking or something before you ever really came clean.”

Azzi squeezes her eyes shut. Paige’s fingernails dig into her back a little bit.

“I actually can’t believe none of us have walked in on them fucking yet,” Nika muses, and the room quiets down a little, everyone mumbling their assent.

“Maybe they’re celibate,” KK reasons, then fixes them with a look. “Are y’all celibate?”

Paige laughs, and then bends close to Azzi’s ear and mutters, “Told you so.”

For the rest of the night, Azzi’s neck is hot.

This might be more complicated than she thought.

[iam93percentstardust]

one of the things that i loved about barbie (2023) that i think a lot of the posts making fun of male-written reviews miss is that, though the movie presents itself as a commentary on the patriarchy and sexism, the message at the core of the film isn't actually limited to being about (cis) women. it's about anyone who is Other.

i went to go see the movie on thursday afternoon before all the big midnight premieres, and the theater was still packed. there wasn't an empty seat in the entire theater. i had a seat at the end of the row, which i had picked out in a faint (futile) hope that no one would sit next to me. thirty seconds before the trailers started, a family of about 10 black people walked in and split up, presumably because they'd only just bought their tickets and there were no longer 10 seats together. the dad and the son, who was maybe a few years younger than me in his early-20s, a good foot and a half taller than me, and who i recognized as one of the football players at the local university, ended up taking the two empty seats next to me with the linebacker in the seat right next to me. and that was pretty much the last time i thought of them until the last twenty minutes of the movie.

see, in the last twenty minutes of the movie, america ferrera makes an impassioned speech about not just the limitations that male-dominated society puts on women but the limitations that women put on themselves in order to survive in said male-dominated society. it's about the contradictions that we're subjected to--you can't be too much, but you can't be too little either. you have to lift each other up but you're also in constant competition with other women for the shredded dregs of respect that men have left over for us. you can't say yes to a man because then you're a whore but you can't say no because then you're a prude. it was passionate and bitter and furious and it had every woman in the theater, myself included, in tears.

and in the silence of the theater following america ferrera's plea for barbie not to make herself less just so that society isn't threatened by her, the linebacker sitting next to me said fervently, "i feel that."

it brought everything to a screeching halt. now i'm a white woman, and though i'm fat and nowhere near as gorgeous as margot robbie, from the very first trailer, it was obvious that this was going to be a movie for me. and if done right, it was going to be a movie for all women (and i would argue that it was). but the thing that it also did right was that though the surface of the message was about women making themselves lesser, the core was that it was for anyone who makes themselves lesser to fit in. yeah, it's for women who are trying to fit into a male-dominated society, but it's also for bipoc who are trying to fit into a white-dominated society. it's for trans people trying to fit into a cis-dominated society. it's for gay people trying to fit into a heterosexual-dominated society. it's for anyone who's been Othered and has to shrink themselves in a desperate attempt to survive.

i love the posts making fun of male-written reviews that are butthurt that this movie isn't for them just as much as the next person. but i think it's important that we don't forget that those are representative of the people in power, the people that could never understand this message. barbie is for me, yeah, but it isn't just for me. it's for my trans friend who is six feet tall and has a beard and wears pink dresses every single day because they make her feel pretty. it's for my labmate who could practically be a barbie herself and irritates me every time she talks about thinphobia but also can't find someone who wants to be with her because she's brilliant and not because she's beautiful.

it's for the black linebacker who sat next to me in the theater and felt heard when a fictional character in a movie told him not to make himself smaller just to fit society's standards.