#makes week or month long plans to fuck people over and my brother has on multiple occasions asked me why the fuck i bother. so he wouldn't

[bitegore]

Man.... I gotta have a talk with my subconscious. Genuinely what's its fucking problem

[itneverendshere]

erase all of my memories without you - rafe cameron.

part 2 of can't remember anything before you.

pairing: rafe cameron x thornton!reader; brother's best friend! trope or best friend's sister! trope ; fem!reader.

“rafe, i told you, no hickeys!”

“can you blame me?” he has that mischievous gleam in his eyes, like he's testing just how far he can push your boundaries. “you’re just so pretty, baby.”

you roll your eyes, trying to maintain a serious tone despite the playful grin pulling at your lips. “shut up.” 

being with rafe cameron was not on your yearly plans, but every single day, you thank your lucky stars for finally doing something right. he's a total game-changer, your personal slice of heaven. 

who would have thought the universe had that kind of surprise up its sleeve? 

he leans in closer, breath warm against your ear, arms wrapped securely around your waist, and you feel a shiver run down your spine. "i should visit more often if that’s how you’re going to greet me each time.”

you can't help but lean back into his embrace, savoring every moment of closeness.

"you should." you reply, your voice barely above a whisper, your fingers gently tracing circles on his hand. “wouldn't mind that at all."

you’d been together ever since that fateful night in your garden, months ago. 

sneaking around had its thrills, especially with your brother always lurking nearby, but nothing compared to the challenge of a long-distance relationship. late-night calls, stolen moments of intimacy over video chats, and endless messages are your lifelines. 

so when rafe finally stepped through the door of your new york apartment last night, after weeks apart, it was no surprise that you couldn't help but pounce on him, eager to make up for lost time. his slutty grey sweatpants, his choice of comfortable for a flight, were imprinted into your brain. 

“so, so pretty." he murmurs, lips brushing against your earlobe, “y'know i can't resist leaving my mark on you."

you playfully swat at him, a grin spreading across your face despite your half-hearted protest, “topper would kill you."

rafe snorts, the sound traveling through your body as he presses a kiss to your temple, “he can try.”

you can't help but feel a twinge of guilt at the thought of keeping your relationship with rafe under wraps. it’s not like you don’t want to make it official, god, you do. but you’ve spent the last four months having him all to yourself, you don’t want other people to butt in and ruin everything with their unsolicited opinions. 

being with him feels right. he's your rock, your constant in a world that's always changing. 

“can we go back to bed now?” rafe’s warm breath tickles your ear as he speaks, his voice laced with a hint of grogginess, sleep still clouding his brain, “it’s fucking freezing.”

you chuckle quietly at his sleepy request, the sound mixing with the gentle hum of the heater as it struggles to combat the winter chill.

“course." you murmur, unwrapping yourself from his arms to press a tender kiss to his cheek, "let's get you warmed up."

his fingers don’t let you move an inch away, circling your wrist to pull you closer against his chest again, big cheeky smile on his face as he looks down at you. “you gonna warm me up, peach?”

"i might." you reply with a sly smirk, trailing a finger down his shirtless chest. "but you might have to work for it a little."

rafe's eyes widen with mock surprise. "is that so?" he asks, his voice low and husky as he pulls you closer. “well, lucky for you, i’m up for a challenge."

you’d never felt butterflies in your tummy until you started dating this man. he has you wrapped around his fingers, and you don’t want out. it physically hurts you to even think about a time when you didn’t have rafe like this.

you can't imagine being anywhere else but here, wrapped in his embrace.

with a playful giggle, you give him a knowing look. "’m counting on it," you murmur, as you pull him closer. you stand on your barefoot tiptoes, arms lacing around his neck. “really missed you.”

rafe's arms tighten around you as he pulls you impossibly close, his warmth enveloping you like a cozy blanket. his gaze softens, filled with a tenderness that makes your heart flutter even faster.

 “missed you too, more than you know." he murmurs, his breath mingling with yours as he leans in to press a docile kiss to your lips.

“always thinking about my girl.” 

as his lips meet yours, a wave of warmth washes over you, melting away any lingering traces of cold or distance. fuck, you’re in love with him and if he keeps kissing you like this, you might confess earlier. you’re way in over your head.

you sigh contentedly against his lips, savoring the feeling of being so close to him after being apart for so long. his touch, his scent, his presence—all of it feels like home to you. breaking the kiss reluctantly, you rest your forehead against his.

“stop staring at me like that peach.” he scolds, but there’s no bite to his tone as his fingertips brush your cheek lightly. “gonna end up buying this fucking building if you keep that up.”

you smile again, that’s all you seem to do around him anyway, as his beautiful eyes sweep up from your lips to meet your own. “rafe cameron living in new york? i’d pay to see that.”

rafe chuckles, the sound rumbling through his chest and sending pleasant vibrations through your body. his fingers trace lazy patterns along your cheek, his touch sweet and affectionate.

“you'd pay to see it, huh?" he teases, a playful glint in his face as he leans in closer to you, his breath warm against your skin. “’m that good of an investment?”

you can't help but laugh at his playful banter, shaking your head. you love that you get to see this side of him, how soft he is with you, only you.

“you’re alright cameron.”

"jus’ alright?" he feigns offense, his hand moving to rest over his heart in an exaggerated manner. "take it back.”

“nop.”

rafe lets out a dramatic sigh, pretending to be wounded. "no?” 

you can't help but giggle at his theatrics, finding it endearing how he always manages to lighten the mood.

"you big baby." you tease, poking him playfully in the side.

“oh, i’ll show you big.”

before you can even wrap your brain around his innuendo, you’re being thrown over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. he does it so effortlessly you almost swoon. 

you squeal in surprise, the sudden movement catching you off guard. "rafe, what the fuck?" you laugh, squirming slightly as he carries you effortlessly across the room. “what are you doing—hey!”

his palm smacks against one of your cheeks, covered by nothing except a pair of his ralph lauren boxers. “taking you to bed, where you belong.”

you play along, pretending to protest even as you secretly enjoy the attention. 

"and what if i don't want to go to bed?" you retort, trying to sound defiant.

rafe stops in his tracks, his grip tightening around your legs. "oh, trust me, peach," he says, his tone turning serious for a moment, "you definitely want to go to bed."

“hmm, not sure.”

“it’s okay brat, you’ll be sure soon enough." he teases, deep voice making you want to do the most immoral things on every single surface of your apartment.

a repeat of last night. 

you play along, feigning uncertainty as he deposits you gently onto the queen-sized bed, his stare burning with desire as he hovers over you, thick arms caging you in. one of your hands wraps around his bicep, nails grazing the skin as you glance up at him, head tilted to the side.

rafe’s eyes instantly move to your neck as your hair slips behind, tongue poking out to wet his lips, "i don't know, baby, might have to convince me."

he leans in closer, his breath warm against your skin. "consider it my pleasure." he murmurs, his lips brushing against yours in a tantalizingly gentle kiss.

you feel a shiver run down your back as rafe's lips meet yours, his kiss sending a surge of electricity through your body. you’ll never get used to this. his touch is both tender and assertive, his lips moving against yours with a practiced finesse that leaves you breathless. 

it's like every nerve in your being wakes up, responding eagerly to his touch.

as he deepens the kiss, his hands roam over your body, tracing the curves of your waist and hips with a possessive urgency, with a sense of familiarity as if committing every curve to memory. his fingers tangle in your hair, pulling you closer as he deepens the kiss even further, his tongue tracing the seam of your lips before delving into your mouth in a hungry, desperate kiss. you melt against him, surrendering. 

you feel a surge of heat pooling in the pit of your stomach, your breath catching in your throat as he explores you with a hunger that leaves you trembling.

“better than alright?” he mumbles against your lips and you find yourself unable to resist the pull of his touch, arching against him in silent invitation. his lips trail a path of fire along your jawline and down your neck, leaving a trail of kisses in their wake, “lost your voice, huh?”

he’s so addicted to sucking harshly on your skin, nibbling it playfully to drag out and elicit the sweetest sounds from your mouth. a melodic moan escapes your parted lips.

“you’re such an asshole.”

“there she is.” rafe's husky chuckle fills the air, sending pleasant vibrations through your body as he continues to pepper kisses along your neck, each one igniting a fiery trail of craving in its wake. “’m your asshole though.”

“not if you keep teasing.” 

his lips pause their trail, hovering just above your skin as he looks up at you, one of his brows raised, "teasing?”

before you can protest his lips are on yours again, hungry and demanding. his hands roam over your body with a newfound urgency, tracing every corner and eliciting a gasp of pleasure from your lips. he has the audacity to hush you when he pins you harder with his hips, clothed cock rubbing perfectly against you. 

your nails can’t help but dig into his shoulders, pulling at the skin. the way he's moving against you makes you feel like getting on your knees and letting him do whatever he wants to you, for however long he wishes to.

but then, your stupid intercom is buzzing.

you both freeze, caught in the throes of passion interrupted. rafe drops his head on your shoulder, groaning. 

"seriously?" he mutters, his voice tinged with frustration as he rolls off you, giving you space to sit up.

“it’s probably breakfast.” you’re smoothing out your rumpled clothes— if you can call an oversized tee and boxers an outfit.

rafe lets out an exaggerated sigh, flopping back onto the bed, “’m so hard it hurts.” he whines, throwing an arm over his face.

“you’ll be fine.”

“can’t even see you right now, might cum in my sweats.” he mutters, his voice muffled by the fabric of your pillows.

you stifle a laugh, shaking your head at his melodramatic response.

"you're ridiculous." you tease, moving to sit beside him on the bed.

rafe peeks out from under his arm, giving you a glare, his bottom lip jutting out in a comically exaggerated pout. “and you're making me harder, stop touching me and go get the door.”

you lean in to press a quick kiss to his cheek, feet planted on the ground as you attempt to get up, but he’s quick to pull you down again. his beefy arm wrapped around your waist, pulling you back on top of him.

“rafe.”

“gimme a kiss before you go.”

“though you didn’t want me to touch you.” you tease, leaning down to press a short kiss to his lips. it's meant to be quick, just a peck, but his hand snakes up to the back of your neck, deepening the kiss. settling on your lower lip, he draws it into his mouth, sucking lightly, pushing you even closer. he runs his hands along your sides, one stopping just below your covered breasts—

“the door,” you manage to stutter out between kisses, “behave.”

when he finally pulls away, both your lips are slightly swollen, red and you’re both breathless.

 "there," you say as you push yourself off the bed once more. but this time, rafe lets you go without protest, admiring you with a lazy smile as you make your way to the door. 

when you moved back to new york three months ago, you chose to do it independently. while your parents owned at least three penthouses in the city, you needed something smaller. what was the point in living alone in such big apartments? you’d be miserable and alone most of the time.

you chose a smaller studio, fancy enough to be your type, but cozy enough to make you feel at home, even though you were miles away. 

as you reach the door, you glance back to see rafe still lounging in your bed, arms crossed lazily behind his head. you shake your own, turn back, and open the door.

your heart immediately falls through your ass.

“topper?!”

he ignores you, pushing you aside to enter as he focuses on removing the thick scarf around his neck, struggling to get it off as he rants.

“about damn time, you know how long i was outside?! swear to god i hate this city, it’s freezing for no reason and—is that rafe fucking cameron on your bed?!”

you freeze in place, feeling a knot form in your stomach as you watch topper's reaction unfold. rafe, ever the cool customer, sits up in bed, a smirk playing at his lips as he meets your brother’s incredulous gaze head-on. you can feel a headache forming in the back of your head. 

"hey, top." rafe geets, his tone casual as if he's just encountered an old friend. which he has because that’s his best friend. "long time no see?"

topper's eyes narrow as he takes in the sight of rafe lounging on your bed, “okay, okay. what the fuck is going on?”

he's going to freak out on you.

you clear your throat, trying to find the right words to explain the situation, “he’s visiting.”

top nods, not leaving his best friend out of his sight, “clearly! why are you in my sister’s bed, cameron?”

“was i supposed to sleep on the floor?” rafe replies, tone nonchalantly as he shrugs casually.

you’re going to kill him.

topper's jaw clenches as he shoots rafe a glare, clearly unimpressed by his answer. "you know damn well what i mean." he says, his voice menacing, so different from what you're used to.

rafe's smirk only widens, “relax, man," he says, his tone dripping with casual indifference. "we were just hanging out."

and about to have sex, but your brother doesn’t need all the details. 

topper's expression darkens further at your boyfriend’s flippant attitude, and you can practically feel the terrible outcome. 

"in her bed?" he asks, his voice dangerously low.

you step forward, hoping to defuse the situation before it escalates any further.

 "topper, it's not what you think," you begin, but your brother holds up a hand to silence you.

“and why are you wearing his clothes?”

you glance down at your choice of outfit, flustered, you try to come up with a plausible explanation, “uh—well���it's a funny story, i-i'm out of clothes actually, who knew doing your laundry took so much work?”

his attention flickers between you and rafe, suspicion evident in his expression. you can practically see the gears turning in his head.

"out of clothes?" he repeats, his tone incredulous. "and you decided to borrow his?"

you shift uncomfortably under his scrutinization, trying to come up with a better explanation, but you can’t. “yeah?”

he squeezes his eyes shut as if he’s in pain, “please tell me my sister isn’t fucking my best friend.”

you swallow hard, feeling the weight of his scrutiny bearing down on you, but rafe speaks before you can conjure the words. 

“your sister isn’t fucking your best friend, happy?” 

you shoot rafe a warning look, silently pleading for him to play along and not make the situation worse.

you step forward, again. “topper, please, it's not what you think,” you say, your voice tinged with desperation. “rafe just came to visit, that's all.”

topper's stare softens as he contemplates, but his expression remains guarded. “and you didn't think to tell me?”

you bite your lip, feeling guilty for keeping your relationship with rafe a secret from your brother. “i wanted to, i just... didn't know how.”

rafe interjects, his tone more serious now. “top, i know this probably looks bad—”

“it looks really bad,” topper interrupts, his frustration evident.

“but nothing's happened,” rafe continues, ignoring the interruption. “we're just friends.”

but your brother is still inspecting you. and it’s only when his eyes descend to your neck, you realize what he’s looking at.

“is that why she got at least three hickeys on her neck?”

you feel a flush rise to your cheeks as topper's accusation hangs heavy in the air. you stare nervously at rafe, hoping he'll come up with a believable explanation, but he just shrugs nonchalantly, as if the hickeys are no big deal. 

“they’re not hickeys, i burned myself with my curling iron.”

“yeah and i’m fucking adriana lima on my spare time.”

“okay?” you quickly turn your head back to the wall because you think you're about to puke up everything you just ingested.

"oh fuck, not you." top groans in frustration, seeing where rafe googly looks are directed, “not you two! you can't be serious?! that's my sister, dude; come on!" 

rafe finally stands up from your bed, his tone is firm, his expression serious as he steps closer to your brother, his hands held out in a placating gesture. “it’s not like that.”

topper glances back and forth between you two, focusing on the blush of your cheeks and the adoration in rafe’s face now that you are looking back at him. a sick, knowing feeling had been building inside of him since he walked through the door. 

“i can’t fucking believe this.” 

“it’s not like that,” rafe repeats, walking to your side, hating the way your eyes are starting to water. he keeps his hand on your arm, thumb brushing circles over your cold skin, “we’re together. and watch your fucking tone when you speak to her.”

“don’t tell me how to speak to my sister!"

rafe's jaw clenches, a muscle ticking in his cheek. despite that, his hand remains steady on your arm, offering you a silent anchor of support. you feel a knot tighten in your stomach as you testify the tension between the two most important men in your life escalates.

"guys, please," you interject, your voice trembling, "this isn't helping anything."

“you’re in love with her, cameron?”

topper’s question makes you want to dig a hole in the middle of your studio and run.

what the hell?!

he can’t just barge in and make everything a mess. this is what you were afraid of, people meddling with your relationship. you and rafe haven’t discussed it yet. yeah it’s clear you’re in love with him, but you want to be the one to tell him and vice versa. you don’t want him to feel pressured to do it.

rafe's hand tightens on your arm, anchoring himself with the feeling of you beneath his fingertips. his eyes search yours for guidance. you can see the conflict in his expression.

he doesn’t shy away from the question, and his gaze never leaves yours. he traces every line of your face, “yeah, i am.”

the words hang in the air, a declaration that changes everything and nothing all at once. then time stops. your stomach turns unhelpfully, and you feel your skin turn clammy. 

from the corner of your eye, you see the shock register on your brother’s face before he can hide it. strangely, he seems to understand now, perhaps more than you realized he would. for a moment, there's silence in the room, the weight of rafe's confession settling over all of you. but then topper lets out a heavy sigh, his shoulders sagging with the weight of understanding.

"okay," he says, his voice softer now, lacking the edge of anger from before. "okay."

you let out a breath you didn't realize you were holding, feeling a sense of relief flood through you. despite the uncertainty of what comes next. 

rafe's hand finds yours, intertwining his fingers with yours in a silent gesture of solidarity. you squeeze his hand, feeling the warmth of his touch grounding you. 

"thank you," you say to topper, your voice barely above a whisper but brimmed with gratitude.

he nods, a small smile tugging at the corners of his lips. "just... take care of each other, okay?"

“can you leave now?” rafe all but interrupts the sentimental exchange, “kinda need to properly confess.”

topper raises an eyebrow at his abrupt request, clearly caught off guard by the bluntness. but after a second of hesitation, he nods, pushing himself off the wall where he's been leaning.

"yeah, sure," he says, giving you a meaningful look before turning to leave. "just... be careful, both of you. i’ll stop by later for dinner."

you offer him a small smile in return, feeling a shit ton of emotions swirling inside you as you watch him go. once he's out of sight, you let out a sigh, the tension in the room finally dissipating.

rafe releases your hand, moving to close the door behind topper before returning to your side. his expression is softer now, focused solely on you. 

"you okay?" he asks, his voice soft as he brushes a strand of hair away from your face.

you nod, offering him a shaky smile. "yeah, think so. that was... unexpected."

rafe pulls you into his arms, holding you close as if he never wants to let you go. 

"m’ sorry peach," he murmurs against your hair, his voice filled with regret. "didn't mean to drop that bomb on ya like that."

you sink into his embrace, finding comfort in the warmth of his body and the steady beat of his heart. "t's okay," you whisper, your voice barely audible as you nuzzle into his chest. "just wish it had been different."

he presses a kiss to the top of your head, arms tightening around you protectively. "i know," he murmurs, his voice a soothing balm to your frazzled nerves.

then, as if a floodgate has opened within you, the words spill from your lips, raw and unfiltered. "i’m in love with you too, rafe."

his arms around you tighten, as if to reassure himself that your words are real. 

"i love you," he murmurs against your hair, "more than anything."

you feel tears prickling at the corners of your eyes, “you’re gonna make me cry.”

he pulls back slowly, cupping your face in his hands and wiping away the tears that have started to fall. "hey now, no tears, baby. only happy ones, yeah?"

you nod, sniffling but managing a watery smile. "yeah, happy tears. because i love you, rafe cameron."

he smiles back, a gentleness in him you've never seen before. 

"and i love you, more than anything in this world."

you can't help but lean into his touch, feeling the warmth of his palms against your cheeks. his stare is full of tenderness, his thumb gently brushing away the last traces of tears.

"you're everything, y’know that?" he murmurs, his voice overflowing with sincerity.

you nod, feeling a lump forming in your throat at the depth of his words. "yeah, i do. and so are you.”

he leans in closer, lips capturing yours in a sweet kiss. he moves against you with a gentle fervor, his hands cradling your face as if you're the most precious thing in the world to him. and in that moment, you know without a doubt that you are and as you pull away, breathless yet content, you rest your forehead against his, savoring the closeness and the warmth that surrounds you.

"i love you," you whisper.

"i love you too, always," rafe replies, his voice a gentle caress against your skin.

[missjomarch]

Josephine - Luke Hughes

A/N: This is the longest thing I have ever written. Like actually. I heard the song Josephine by Pony Bradshaw and my brain was begging me to do something creative with it, so I wrote this. But I'm on my period so it turned very sad and angsty quickly. So now you all get to suffer along with me! With that said please please read the warnings and if at any point you feel uncomfortable click away.

Word Count: 3.7k 😳

Warnings: Grief and angst with no real happy ending or comfort. Cursing, crying, mentions of blood and pain. A half second on 18+ content but no explicit details.

(Portions in italics are flash backs. Enjoy, lovelies. 🫶)

Luke Hughes sat sprawled in one of the cushioned armchairs spaced across the rooftop bar the New Jersey Devils currently resided on. His view of the New York skyline was fuzzy, but he wasn’t sure if it was because of the beer in his left hand or the smoke from the joint in his right. The one thing he was sure of was that he didn’t want to be here, and he damn sure didn’t want to be sober. Luke could feel the pitying looks from his brother and captain all the way across the bar, but at least they hadn’t made any comments tonight. 

The team had won the game earlier in the day by a large margin and Luke wasn’t beating himself up over minuscule mistakes like he used to. No, that wasn’t the issue. In fact, Luke was playing some of the best hockey he had in years. His on-ice performance was probably the only reason he was even still on the team, considering that he had been skipping most morning skates and all public appearances for the past few weeks. 

He had seen the therapist the team provided and taken the weeks off that the trainers had suggested, so he isn’t sure why they insist on continually doing mental checkups on him. It was irritating. Especially when he didn’t give them the answers they wanted, so they sent Jack to pester him instead. All it did was remind him of you. 

“Luke.” 

His head snapped towards where you sat in the passenger seat of his car, eyes shining and a soft smile on your lips. 

“The light has been green for like 30 seconds, babe. What’s going on in that pretty head, hm?” 

Luke always swore that your sweet voice could melt 20 feet of snow in the dead of winter. It was like coming home from a long day to a warm house. It was one of his favorite things about you. So, because he knew you’d ask the question again, he simply shrugged his shoulders in response. He fully planned to keep his troubles to himself in an attempt not to worry you, but then your manicured hand was running through the curls at the nape of his neck.

“Tell me about it, Lu. What’s wrong?” 

With your use of the nickname, he was gone. Suddenly all the world’s problems were spilling from his lips, and he couldn’t stop them even if he wanted to. You tended to have that effect on people. You were just so damn easy to talk to. And the best part? You almost always knew how to make it better. A quick kiss and a Band-Aid, and Luke was back on his way with a smile. 

“Luke,” you mumbled, “Luke…” 

“Luke.” 

Jack stood in front of his brother, shaking his shoulder to break him from his trance. 

“You okay?” Jack questioned, not missing the shine in Luke’s eyes as they were torn from the skyline view. He watched as Luke took a deep drag from the joint in his hand, exhaling the smoke as he attempted to clear the lump from his throat. 

“Fine, Jack.” 

“Bullshit,” Jack couldn’t help the scoff he let out, “Get up, we’re going home.” 

Luke didn’t have it in him to argue. Not that he would have, anyway. He never wanted to leave the house in the first place, especially after the situation Jack got him into the last time they had gone out. 2 months ago, his brother had dragged him to this same rooftop bar insisting that it’d be good for him to get out there again. It took all of 30 minutes before Jack was pushing Luke in the direction of a random girl. “A good fuck will fix you right up”, Jack had claimed. 

“Luuuuke,” the girl below him moaned as he kissed down her neck. He didn’t know her name, didn’t particularly care to either. He was a bit too busy resenting his brother for setting him up with this random girl in the first place. 

He tried to ignore the hot anger flowing through him, tried to focus on the heavy breathing of the blonde and the way her nails were raking down his back. Luke’s hands dipped under her shirt, quickly finding her bra and giving it a harsh tug downwards. His fingers fumbled deftly until they gripped her tits, drawing a sharp gasp from the girl. 

“Oh! Lu, please,” she whined. When he didn’t respond, she went to pull his face to hers. But Luke had froze, brain short circuiting at the nickname he hadn’t heard in over 8 months. 

His throat was burning. His breath turned ragged as he yanked his hands from beneath her shirt. He stared at her with wild eyes, chest heaving. 

“Get out,” he ground out. His heart was pounding. What was wrong with him? 

“Are you okay?” The blond started back at him with a horrified expression, and Luke had to bite his tongue to keep from spitting out any malicious words. The metallic taste of blood filled his mouth as he squeezed his eyes shut. 

“Leave, please.” He begged, unable to look her in the face.

“Luke, I don’t understand,” she tried to reason, “Luke…” 

“Luke.” 

Jack was looking at him expectantly from the driver’s side of his sleek BMW as he navigated the late-night New Jersey traffic. Luke blinked slowly, trying to clear the bitter memory from his foggy mind. 

“Sorry, what’d you say?” Luke questioned, choosing to ignore the concern blaring in his brother’s eyes. Jack seemingly decided to let it be, instead jumping back into whatever he originally asked. 

“I was asking if you thought the stadium series would be a good time to introduce Sydney to mom and dad? I know it’s only been a few months, but I don’t know when they’ll be in town again.” 

Luke nodded, “Are you just going to do it at dinner? Or the hotel?” 

Jack hesitated, clearly contemplating the options before lighting up, “What if I brought her to the family skate? She’s been wanting to learn anyways! It be just like when you brought jo-” Jack choked on his words, immediately recognizing his mistake. He turned towards his brother, attempting to get a read on his face in the dim light of the passing streetlamps. But Luke had already shut down, face turned to stare blankly out the window. 

Jack reached over to give a comforting squeezing to Luke’s left shoulder, “Luke.” 

“LUKE!” you squealed as your hands white knuckled his sweatshirt. He giggled at your skating stance before pulling you to his chest. 

“You alright there, Bambi?” He smirked down at you as you sent him a glare. 

“I’m new to this, asshole. It’s not my fault my teacher is no good,” you threw back at him. It was your turn to smirk as Luke’s mouth hung open in mock offense. 

“I’ll have you know that I’ve taught hundreds of kids across the state of New Jersey how to properly skate.” 

“Those poor kids,” you quickly retorted, sticking your tongue out as he scowled at you. However, that scowl quickly faded into a look of mischief and your face dropped as his arms loosened around you.

“Fine. Suit yourself, Bambi.” Luke let you go, giving you the lightest of shoves backwards. Then you were stranded. Forced to watch as your boyfriend skated backwards away from you, leaving you wide eyed and terrified as you froze on the ice. Your fear quickly turned to anger, and Luke marked the shift in your demeanor with a laugh. 

“Luke Warren Hughes, you come back here and get me right now.” 

“Nope. Come and get me, baby.” Luke winked at you as he skated past, only serving to further frustrate you. You’d never admit that his plan was working, but the anger was motivating. You let out a strangled groan before starting to shuffle forward, sliding your skates like Luke taught you. You were doing well for a while, slowly making your way towards where Luke was taunting you from the boards behind the net. That was until two kids flew past you, knocking you off balance and sending you scrambling to regain it. 

“Luke! Luke, Luke, Luke,” you called, too focused on your slipping feet to notice if your boyfriend was coming to your aid. Then you lost balance completely, tumbling down towards the ice. You closed your eyes as you avoided flinging your arms out to catch yourself, still heeding Luke’s warnings even as he got you in this mess in the first place. You prepared yourself for the cold hard burn of your backside hitting the ice, but it never came. Instead you landed in a pair of unfamiliar arms, barely recognizing that you weren’t on the ground before being hauled to a standing position. You carefully turned around and were met with Jack’s smiling face. 

“Knight in shining armor, at your service,” Jack grinned, adding a small salute for effect. You rolled your eyes, scanning the ice for Luke. 

“How long have you been following behind me?” 

“Ever since Luke pretended to leave you stranded. He planned the whole thing, I was behind you the entire time to save you from your inevitable demise,” Jack poked you, smile growing impossibly wider at the annoyed look gracing your face. 

“Big words for someone who never went to college,” you shot at him, needing anything to level the playing field between you. It was then that Luke finally returned, skating to a smooth stop to your left. 

“What’d I miss?” 

“Your girlfriend was insulting my intelligence after I graciously saved her precious be-hind,” Jack spoke, adding a bit more than his usual sassiness into the bit. Luke turned to tsk at you. 

“Now, now baby. We can’t make fun of people just because they’re less fortunate than us. It’s not Jacky’s fault he’s stupid,” Luke joked, loving the way your eyes lit up when you realized that he was joining your side. Jack, however, stood slack jawed across from you. 

“Now what the hell, Luke? I went along with your little plan, and this is how you repay me?” You and Luke just blinked at him, silly little grins sitting on your face. “Go to hell, both of you,” Jack scoffed before skating off. Once he was gone, you turned towards your boyfriend. Your pout returned, but it was quickly kissed away. 

“I promised you I’d never let you fall, baby. I just never said it’d be me who caught you.” 

You scowled, “you’re such a smart ass.” 

“Love you too, Princess,” Luke grinned. You begrudgingly allowed him to pull you into his chest, the warmth he radiated melting the glare right off your face. 

You turned your head to press a kiss into his jacket-clad chest, right over his heart. A warm smile graced your lips, “I love you, Lukey.” 

“Lukey!”

John Marino stood before him on the ice, stick poised to do the defensive drill coach had instructed them on. 

“You’re out of it today, kid. Are we going to do this drill or not?” 

“Yeah, my bad. Let’s go,” Luke nodded his head, once again trying to shake the thoughts of you from his mind. He had just barely cleared his vision before the puck was dropped, and John was racing towards him. Practice continued like that, Luke losing focus periodically until one of his teammates pulled him back into the moment. 

When he trudged into the locker room an hour later, he was more than ready to go home. These were usually the days he would most appreciate having you to come home to. Leaving a hard practice and coming home to fall asleep in your arms was the best feeling. He tried not to think too much about the gaping hole that memory left in his chest as he untied his skates. 

Once he was dressed in his sweats he rushed from the locker room, hoping to escape the arena before anyone could question his mental wellbeing. Luke made it to the car without any hounding from the guys or trainers, but he had to wait for what felt like an eternity before Jack finally made his way into the parking garage. 

“What the hell took you so long?” Luke questioned, hopping into the passenger seat as Jack unlocked the car doors. 

“Coach wanted to talk to me for a second. You could’ve gotten the keys from my bag, yknow.”

“Yeah, but then I would’ve been tempted to leave you here,” Luke smirked at his brother. 

Jack only rolled his eyes, all too familiar with Luke’s teasing. His mind swirled with the reminders his coach had left him with after their brief post-practice discussion. Coach was getting extremely concerned about Luke and the lack of focus he displayed at practice and games. Jack was also concerned, and so was most of the team. He knew he should bring it up, but the joy in Luke’s eyes was so rare these days that Jack couldn’t bring himself to disturb it. He just wanted to support his brother the best he could, but Luke wouldn’t open up to him. Or anyone, for that matter. Not his mom, not Quinn, not even his old teammates from Michigan. Luke wouldn’t talk to anyone about you.  So Jack took what Luke gave him. Watching late night hockey, Door Dashing dinner, or playing video games for hours on end. Anything to keep his brother occupied, and make him realize that he wasn’t alone. 

Luke finally made his way into his room at 11 pm later that night, feeling relatively okay after eating dinner and watching a Canucks game with Jack. He had felt so unlike himself lately that any small reprieve from reality was a welcomed gift. He also knew that it helped Jack worry about him just a little bit less. 

Luke had just turned out his bathroom light after brushing his teeth when his door creaked open, revealing Jack standing in the doorway. It wasn’t unusual for Jack to check on him before bed, but it had recently become more frequent. 

“You good to leave for practice at 8 tomorrow?” Jack questioned. 

Luke nodded, “Yeah, I’ll be up.” 

“Better be. I’m not in the mood to drag your ass out of bed in the morning.”

Luke rolled his eyes, but the wary look on Jack’s face made him hold his tongue on the snarky response he was about to shoot back. 

“Promise, I’ll be good to go at 8.”       

Jack deemed that a good enough answer, and went to shut the door.

“Alright. Night, Luke.” 

“Luke…” you shakily whispered on the phone. Your voice was wobbly and high pitched, the tears streaming down your face evident in your tone. 

“Baby?” Luke spoke into the phone, “What’s wrong?” 

It was an hour and a half until puck drop, and you should’ve been on your way to the stadium by now. Luke’s furrowed brows caught the attention of Jack in the next stall over, stopping his movements from where he was lacing up his skates. 

“I was on my way to the arena, and I…” a broken sob escaped your mouth, startling Luke as he tried to fathom what could’ve possibly happened after he left the house. 

 “Someone hit me.” 

Luke jumped to his feet, “What do you mean hit you? What happened?” 

“I don’t know. Someone ran a red light or something and they hit my car. I think I spun into a pole,” your breath was growing ragged as you recited the wreck. 

“Are you okay? Where are you? I’m coming to get you,” Luke rushed out as he began grabbing his clothes back out of his bag. Half the locker room was staring now, all with varying looks of concern. 

“I don’t know what to do. I’m bleeding,” you squeaked. “Lukey, there’s so much blood.”              

This sent Luke into a panic. He was stripping his gear as fast as humanly possible while simultaneously yelling at Jack to give him to car keys. Jack’s concerns fell on deaf ears as Luke undressed, and he finally decided that following Luke was the safest option. 

“No. You’re okay, baby. I just need you to tell me where you are, okay? I’ll be there so soon, just tell me where,” Luke begged. He knew logically that the cops would arrive before he could, but he needed to be there with you. 

“Don’t know. But my head hurts so bad,” you whimpered out. Luke tried to ignore the way he could hear your voice weakening as you spoke. 

“Just stay on the phone with me, love. I’m on my way to come get you, yeah?”

Luke tried to reassure you as he shoved his feet into his shoes and rushed from the locker room. Jack was hot on his tail, car keys in hand. 

“ ‘m sorry, Lu,” your whisper was barely heard by Luke as he sprinted down the hallways of Prudential Center. 

“For what, love?” 

“I wanted to be at your game tonight,” you mumbled. 

“It’s fine, baby. There’ll be a million more games for you to come to, yeah?” 

Luke attempted to comfort you as he searched for your location, plugging it into the GPS as Jack pulled out of the parking garage. Luke could only hope the pregame traffic wouldn’t get in the way. 

“Mhmm. Lukey?” 

“Yeah, baby?” 

Your voice was barely a whisper, “I love you.” 

Luke swore he could feel his heart shatter at the crack in your voice. There were tears streaming from his face as he pushed Jack to drive faster. 

“I love you too, princess. So much. Jacky and I are going to be there so soon. I just need you to hang on for a few minutes. Can you do that for me?” 

Luke’s voice was frantic and only grew more so when he heard your phone tumbling out of your hand. 

“Baby? You’ve gotta stay awake, okay?” Luke pleaded, as tears streamed down his face. His hands shook where he held the phone to his ear. 

“Baby? Please tell me you’re okay. I just need you to say something.” 

Luke’s begging continued until the line went dead. 

“Fuck,” Luke muttered, sobs beginning to wrack his body. Jack looked at him frantically as he continued to navigate the streets of New Jersey. 

“Luke? What the hell happened?” Jack kept spitting questions, but he might as well have been talking to a brick wall. “Snap out of it, Luke.” 

“Luke.” 

Luke awoke to Jack shaking him violently, and he tasted the salty tears streaming down his face before he felt them. ‘No. Not again,’  Luke thought. He shot up in bed, sending Jack scrambling backwards to avoid knocking heads. Luke’s head whipped back and forth wildly as his eyes searched the room. ‘Please, please, please,’ he begged the universe. He ignored the way his brain reminded him of the truth, ignored his brother’s pitying look, ignored the cold bed beside him where you should’ve been. It was if the whole world was pointing and laughing at his grieving heart. ‘Look at this idiot,’ they all seemed to say, ‘He still thinks he can save her.’ 

“Fuck,” Luke exhaled, finally giving up his futile attempts at disproving what he knew was his reality. 

Jack stared as his younger brother lost himself to grief once again. Watching as Luke’s hands disappeared into his curls, head bowed as sob after sob wracked his body. Jack felt helpless knowing he couldn’t take this pain from his little brother. All he could do was hold him and promise to be there through it all. 

“I can’t keep doing this,” Luke whispered into Jack’s shoulder. “Every time I wake up, I lose her all over again, and I can’t do it anymore.” 

Jack hesitates, unsure exactly what to say in this situation. You were always the one with the best advice, the one who could handle anything. 

“We’re going to get you through this, okay? You’re not alone in fighting this,” Jack paused, contemplating how to suggest his next thought. “I know you think you’re fine, but I really think you need help Luke. She would want you to get help.” 

Luke nodded, knowing his brother was right. You would hate to see him like this. Ever the caretaker, you had always been the first person to chastise him for not taking proper care of his mental health during hockey season. If you saw him like this, you’d pull him into your arms and then absolutely rip him a new one until he promised to take care of himself. 

“I know,” Luke mumbled, “I’ll start seeing a therapist. I think I need to step away from hockey for a bit too. It’s not fair to the guys that my mental health is affecting the team performance.” 

“I think that’s smart,” Jack agreed. “The guys might not understand what you’re going through, but they know it’s not your fault Luke. They want you to get better too.” 

Luke could only nod, trying to accept Jack’s words as the truth and fight the part of his brain that was saying this was all his fault. Luke was so tired, but he wasn’t willing to go back to sleep when he knew memories of you was what awaited him. 

“I’ll call the trainers tomorrow. I don’t really want to go back to sleep, can we watch a movie or something?” 

“Of course,” Jack agreed, despite the exhaustion weighing him down. “I’ll even let you pick.” 

A slow, knowing grin spread across Luke’s features, “Even Secretariat?” 

Jack’s sigh could be heard all the way in New York, but he smiled nonetheless. Just happy to see that Luke was making small steps towards returning to himself. 

“Even Secretariat.” 

So that’s how Luke and Jack spent their evening, watching movies and eating obscene amounts of popcorn. Luke had smiled to himself for most of the night, feeling a weight lifted off his shoulders. He knew the process would be slow and that he might never truly get back to ‘normal’. But admitting his pain and asking for help, that was enough for now. 

[harrysmimi]

Harry From Bar

Synopsis: One where YN is conflicted but Harry is there to support her.

Ps. Mentions of abortion and religion pls do not read if this is smth bothers you. And if you are planning to read it, keep an open mind and spread no hate. This is just a work of fiction and NOT real life.

More of my work

YN was sat on her bed in complete and utter and disbelief with her head in the palms of her hand. It is horrible.

"YN!" Her friend, Brielle yelled from her bathroom. "Who's is it? Do you even know?"

"Of course I do, I do not sleep around!" YN defended herself, crying like a baby.

Look, don't take her too seriously. YN doesn't judge other people and their life choices or even let other people do the same in front of her, but she is certainly not the one who would be going out of her way to do the same. She was completely sober when she slept with this guy (so was he) she met at the bar and had a nice two hour chat with. One can say, she let her intrusive thoughts win that day. They very carefully used protection during the entire time.

She quite took on a liking on him. He was charming, adorable and caring most importantly. It is something she was drawn towards. They even exchanged their numbers before she left his place, he texted her to make sure she reach home safely.

His last text read: Perhaps we can meet again?

And her reply was a simple yes to which he reacted with a red heart. And was the end of it. Yes she went down into spiral of the weird betrayed feeling for the first time from someone who she started to grow immediate romantic feelings for. It went on for about a month, she couldn't bring herself to text him. Now this is the third month.

You see YN missed her period for the second time and it did not take her long enough to put two and two together before she was calling her best friend over. This is something serious and had her going down yet another spiral that she had to take two days off work. That isn't like her at all, she loves her job and she hardly ever takes a day off from work. The entire point of her moving to a completely different country was her work.

"Then who is he?" Brielle asked, pulling YN back down to earth.

"The guy I met at the bar three months ago." YN let out a sigh and quickly added, "I haven't dared to sleep with anyone else, before you say anything!"

"Oh okay!" Brielle sighed, "do you want to keep it?"

"I, I, I honestly don't know." YN shrugged, "I mean I am certainly not ready for it and my grandfather and dad and brother will have me buried alive if they find out."

"Who cares about them!" Her friend sighed again and sat down next to her, "it's your body, do whatever the fuck you want to!"

"I know Brielle, but..." YN stopped herself, "I need to talk to him. But I don't know if I should call him or text him."

"Duh! Call him over!"

"I am scared, what if he thinks I am just to trap him? I quite liked him, we were going to see each other again soon but it never happened." And it started, YN cried her eyes out for next hour and half.

It's not a challenge for her to bring a human into the world and raise it, she is definitely financially capable of that, but she is not mentally or emotionally capable to do so. She still has so much to grow in her life and having a baby was further down her list of priorities, most probably after marriage.

Truth is, YN had been sulking around for about a week think the same and a pink plastic stick just brought her fears into reality for her. She's been contemplating her entire life since then.

"He is not going to think that." Brielle assured her friend, "if he does, we're going to kick him to the curb where he belongs and move on."

"It's not that easy." YN shook her head still sniffling on her tears. "I, I, I am going to text him, I can't talk right now."

"Okay, let's do it." Brielle urged her and YN finally texted the guy. Just by the start of the morning three days later she got a reply back.

Harry from Bar

- Hi, this is not Harry.

- I am Jasmine

- This number doesn't belong to him anymore I recently got this :)

That made her heart drop to her stomach. And she was all alone. Her best friend had gone home. It was luckily a Sunday for her and she had to go grocery shopping, even though she didn't wanted to she's still got to eat. She still got her reusable bag and drove to the grocery store.

She has been asking her pregnant cousin what she can eat and can't eat indirectly because she has no idea what to do.

It's just so confusing!

She picked out mostly junk food which she found appetising, which contained chips, ice cream, bread and butter and some other healthier options too. Lately she has been too exhausted to even cook herself meals for the whole day.

Just as YN was loading her bags in the back seat of her car she saw the guy from the bar walking into store with a girl. He had his arm around her shoulder. Now YN knew who it was, the girl was his sister. He'd shown her the pictures when he was sharing his weekend's experience with her that night.

Just as she was about done he saw her and approached her excusing himself from his sister. Luckily she had her sun glasses on to hide her swollen eyes from crying so much. Though her red cheeks and nose would be pretty evident.

"Hey, YN!" He chirped.

"Hi." She smiled shutting her car door.

"Haven't seen you in a long time." He started, "actually, let me rephrase that I wasn't in town for a few months so couldn't get back to you."

"Oh, I, I texted you yesterday." She started, still sniffling from her tears from three hours ago. "You changed your number."

"Oh, yeah." He smiled sheepishly, "I lost my phone and we couldn't find it. They gave me a new number, also lost all of my contacts. You sound sick, you alright love?"

"Yeah, I, uhhhhh, I actually wanted to talk to you about something."

"Yeah, what is it?" Now she had his undivided attention, which intimidated her even more to approach the conversation.

"Not, not here please. Can we like go somewhere private?" She could hear her heart thump in her ears.

"Okay, you wanna go to mine?" He asked.

"I, I have groceries in my car. It's not that urgent anyway." Harry could tell it is indeed something urgent and she is making excuses.

"Then we can go to yours." He announced, "I will tell my sister she can take my car, we can go to your place and talk."

YN just nodded in agreement. He just walked over to his sister for a minute meanwhile YN got herself a few seconds to gather herself up. She's been going through a shit ton of emotional turmoil and, balancing a very demanding job with very little food and nutrition was never a challenge for her but with a growing fetus inside in a different story. Her lifestyle works for her, but it is not working while she is clearly pregnant. She knew she shouldn't have gotten that ultrasound there it's fucked her up emotionally even more.

"Okay shall we go?" Harry came back to her.

"Mhmm." She nodded. She some how managed to drive to her place and Harry carried all her groceries upto her flat for her. "You want water? Or tea, or coffee?"

"Water is fine, thank you." He nodded.

"Please, have a seat." She insisted as she reached for a glass. He watched her as he sat on the bar stool behind the kitchen counter. The flat with a loft bedroom was small yet incredibly lavish and luxurious looking, maybe it's the way she has it all set up. He also noticed she haven't taken off her sunglasses yet. She sat the glass of water in front of him and walked around the country. "I will be back, just a second." She went into her bedroom upstairs and came back down with a with a blue folder and without her sunglasses.

"You alright YN?" He asked, now clearly worried seeing her red puffy eyes.

"I don't know how to tell you," her voice cracked as she tried not to cry but her eyes were pooled up with tears.

"Hey, what happened?" He was quick to get off his seat and go hug her the first thing. "It's okay. It's okay, I promise!" She wrapped her arms around him. "You can tell me, that's okay." He caressed the back of her head as she had her face buried in his white shirt.

"I, I, I am pregnant and I don't know what to do!" She cried out in muffles, "it's yours I promise!"

"Hey, hey, hey I want you to take in a deep breath for me, okay?" He guided her through the breathing exercise to get her to calm down a little. She just looked at him with guilt and hope in her eyes, "look, I trust you. Look at you, you've gone all pale come and sit on the sofa." He walked her to the sofa quickly fetched her a glass of water. "You need time to gather yourself?" To which she nodded.

Harry sat there in silence. Well, this wasn't the first time for him to go through a scare like. Certainly his past girlfriends went through similar situations but all of those have turned out to be negative, this time it turned out to be positive with a girl he knew only for two hours.

Well, he was quite smitten by her. And to be honest he really couldn't stop thinking about all these months, if it weren't for his phone getting lost he would have asked her out. He even visited the same bar a couple of time hoping to see her there, but he didn't and he eventually had to go on the tour in America. He'd nust gotten back home a two days ago and now he's gotten the news that he could potentially be a dad now.

But, whatever YN wishes to do. She seems very conflicted to him. If she choses to not keep it, he'd support her. If she choses to keep it, he'd support her anyway and step up to be a present dad regardless of where his relation with her leads.

They both sat there for what seemed like to be hours but in reality it's just been ten minutes. "Can you please fetch that folder?"

"Yeah." Harry quickly got up and brought her the blue folder, from which she took out a few reports.

"Got these pictures yesterday when I went for the appointment." She showed him the grainy ultrasound pictures, a seahorse looking silhouette was the cutest thing ever, it took his breath away.

"Oh, I see them!" He whispered, pointing his finger to the obvious human fetus silhouette. His eyes pooled up with tears.

"Yeah." She nodded and they both sat in silence again, or at least Harry could feel his heart thumping in his ears.

"Oh my god!" He took in a deep breath to face the conversation, "you want to keep it?"

"I don't know." She looked down at her hands in her lap, "I don't know honestly. But if you don't want to have to do anything with this matter, I understand."

"Don't say that." He moved closer to her carefully, "I want to be there to support you, no matter what your decision is. At the end of the day it's your body you're going to house a human for nine months in."

"Do you want it?" She asked, "don't give me a diplomatic answer please."

"I do want a baby, I want to be a dad one day or other, yeah. I think I'd want this little one." He admitted after yet another silent pause from him. "I don't want you to base your decision on what I want YN."

"I know." She nodded, "I know I will be a bad mother, I am not emotional there to be a parent plus I'd have to deal with my family for getting pregnant like this. But I don't want to get rid of it, I know this will sound stupid but I don't think that's the right thing to do with an innocent life. I don't want to kill it."

"It's not stupid, your feelings are valid." He took her hand in his into a gentle hold, "if you don't feel ready for it, I say don't do it. Even though you'd have plenty of time to prepare, but if you really think you can't, then you shouldn't have to."

"You are not helping." She started sobbing again.

"Hey, can I hug you?" He asked carefully approaching her to which she responded with just curling up next to him, he wrapped his arms around her. "What do you want now? And be honest with me, please."

"I want to focus on my career." She shared, "it sounds mean, but I am really not ready. It's going to be a big conflict as well because I am not married I just don't know what to do!"

"Hey, first off all, your feelings are not stupid." Harry corrected her, "you don't want the baby?"

"I don't know, but I know if I have this baby I won't be able to be there for him or her. I am not ready!" She sobbed again.

"Hey look, you don't have to." He announced, "you want me to go with you?"

"You will?"

"Of course, I would!" He squeezed her in his arms gently, "look you shouldn't feel guilty for putting yourself first. It's very important you that, yes it is difficult to make these kind of decisions. But put yourself first."

"Okay." She nodded, now slowly pulling away from him not wanting to make things awkward. "Did the condom really broke?"

"You want me to be honest?" He asked with a guilty look on his red face, she nodded, "I don't know honestly, got in bed immediately after we cleaned up. I swear I would have told you."

"I trust you." And to be fair she does, the man was asking for consent at every little thing. She was also fully present in the moment.

"Did you eat something?" He asked just to get a nod of her head in answer in disagreement, "you want me to make you something? Did you get pasta?"

"Yeah." She sniffled.

"I'll go make you some pasta." He placed a delicate kiss on her head before he was off to kitchen.

"Wait, you can cook?"

"That's sounds surprising doesn't it?" He chuckled, "well, turns out I can't keep a cook as I travel so much so had to learn to cook for myself." She just gave him a small smile.

In no time Harry was done with some delicious pasta, he plated up two plates and brought them back to the sofa just to run back and get water. YN honestly did not feel like eating but she felt too guilty to let all of his hard work go to waste. It was pretty good actually, she liked it.

"I, I, will make an appointment for Tuesday then." She spoke breaking the silence between the cutlery clinking on the ceramic plates.

"Sure!" He agreed, "I will give you my new number you can text me, I will come and pick you up."

"Mhmmm." She nodded again.

That was about it for the afternoon. Harry did gave her his new number and promised not to loose it or have it saved somewhere so if he looses it he can reach out to her this time.

......................................................................

Tuesday rolled around and Harry was anxiously waiting for YN's text. It was way too early in the morning, but he was still ready for her text whenever she is.

To be honest, Harry really never got over the fact he still wants to see where things would go with YN if they both gave it a chance. He is just not so sure about how she would take it now given the situations. He is really smitten by her, so much, he will admit it shamelessly. He still finds himself grinning like an idiot when he thinks about their first interaction.

How she thought he was his own doppelganger, how she mocked him for solid fifteen minutes with an untouched wine glass in her hand. In her opinion she'd rather spend four pounds on the cheapest glass of wine even if she doesn't drink to keep the creepy men away from her.

She talked to him, apparently he wasn't being creepy and did not ask to buy her a drink. And most probably because she was having so much fun mocking him and laughing. He still doesn't know how that night happened honestly. It was blissful.

To pull him out of his day dreaming his phone started ringing, it was of course YN.

"Hello love, good morning!" He said as he answered the call, sounding way too excited.

"Hey, good morning." Her morning did not sound so good, "I called in the clinic yesterday after work they said they couldn't fit me in, and I like already took next three days off. Do, do you think you can me out here? Now I know I should have called them earlier but I had to run in early for work, there was this important thing I had to get to which I had been putting off..."

"Hey, look you don't have to explain yourself." He assured her, "let me make a few calls and we'll take care of it okay?"

"Okay." He let out a sigh, "please call me back, I'll call my friend too."

"I promise, will call you back. Give me half an hour." He reassured her again before the call was ended.

He called in his manager, and the hardest calls to make were to his mum and sister. He needed their opinions okay. He doesn't know if either of them have been into this situation but he hoped they could help. His sister told him about her friend who is a doctor at this private clinic, who she had referred her other friends too. Luckily both, his mum and sister were so nice and cool about it. To ease his nerves, it was good. Amazing actually!

He had called in the clinic and they actually had few slots open for an appointment, he made sure with YN first before booking one. Rest assure he wasn't ready for the questions she bombarded him with when he went to pick her up. The clinic wasn't so far away from her place actually.

Harry spent his entire Sunday night and all Monday researching about the pregnancy and everything which came with it. And everything about the abortion.

"Harry, it is a private clinic, I really can't afford it. Do you think they'll charge to cancel the appointment?" She panicked when he told the name of the clinic.

"Don't worry about it, we'll take of it."

"No, no, nope! I really can't afford it." She started to get stressed.

Actually she had spent more at hospital these past few weeks than she had her entire life. She had to actually dip into her savings which she was going to use to buy the flat she is living in. Maybe in a couple more years, or at least before he lease ends as her landlord was really looking to sell the property. And it was eating at her that a huge chunk of her savings went to something she could so surely avoided from happening.

"Let's just go in okay, let's just see what they say first." He parked his car and got out to get the door for her. YN was clearly nervous the whole time.

She had gone in for the procedure alone actually, she could apparently go home by the evening they said. If things seem good, or they'd have to keep her in for the night. Which none of them were prepared for. Harry had to wait outside for about an hour before he was told he could see her in the recovery room.

"Hey love, you doing alright?" He asked as he carefully entered the room. A nurse was checking up on her there.

"She is a bit drowsy, let her sleep if she wants to." The nurse informed, "she is doing well, you can probably take her home by evening." He smiled at Harry before he was out.

"Thank you." Harry acknowledged the nurse and carefully sat beside YN on the edge of her bed.

"You are blurry." She shared.

"You are under a lot of meds right now love." He shared, "you want to take a nap?"

"Mhmm." She nodded, "I, I want to lay on my side but I can't move."

"You want me to help you?" He offered already helping her to lie on her side, well, she did it on her own anyway, "is it better now?"

"Yeah."

"I'll wait here for you, okay?"

"Thanks." Her eyes were already closed shut.

Harry sat right next to her for next three hours as she took a much needed nap. He found some old magazine to keep himself occupied, he read almost every little gossip and random facts column. He got to know ketchup was once used at medicine and shrimp's heart is in it's brain. Totally weird as fuck!

None the less YN was up in a couple of hours. She was doing well.

"Hi!" He greeted her as he placed the magazine down.

"Hi." She smiled back.

"How are you feeling now?" He asked watching her carefully, her forehead was all sweaty.

"I am warm, I don't know." She yawned.

"Want me to turn up the AC?" He asked to which she nodded in yes, he did so after he found the remote, "you need a minute or do you want me to call a nurse?"

"I don't want to see anyone right now, there were like five people there." She shared.

"Mhmm, do you need something?"

"Nope, I am good, thank you!" She smiled again now lying on her back.

"You did so great, the nurse said you can be discharged by evening hopefully." He shared, "what do you want for dinner, it's my treat."

"Oh, can we get burgers? I am really craving those I don't why!" She chuckled weakly making him grin showing off his dimples.

"Sure, anything you want, love." He carefully leaned down to press a kiss on her forehead. It felt natural in the moment but he felt awkward real quick. "Hey, can I ask you something real quick? I don't know, it might be a bit of a wrong time to do so."

"What is it?" She let her hed relax more into her pillow, still teensy bit drowsy from the medications but technically sober and in her consensus. Harry took a hold of her hand, the pad of his thumb rubbing over her knuckles.

"How, how about after you're feeling better and have rested well enough, we, we— I mean you and I can go grab dinner sometime?" He asked nervously, he is a little scared to be honest but he's trying his best to act cool. "I mean like a date. I've always wanted to ask you out to be honest!" A soft embarrassed chuckle left his mouth.

"A date?"

"Yeah, only if you want it to be." He added quickly.

"You, you sure you want that?" YN asked, her eyes welling up with tears in instance. In her defence she was starting to get cramps now, bht it was just the partial reason of her getting emotional.

"Why wouldn't I be?" He announced more than making it sound like a question, "was going to ask you out the same day but got a last minute call from my manager and then shit happened. Hey, why are you crying?"

"You're asking me for a date, I just got rid of your and my baby." She pointed out feeling guilty.

"Hey, hey, hey that's not why I asked you out my love, it's because I genuinely like you!" He announced to her, "I just want to get to know you, you are the most genuine person I've met in a very, very long time now. And you placed yourself first, don't have to be guilty about it. You know I wish I would have asked this the very morning I booked you that cab back to yours. I wish I wouldn't have lost my phone then."

"Really?"

"Yes!" He chuckled, finding her red nose now adorably funny, "I really do feel that way. Not asking you out just because I got you pregnant, lovie. I really do like you a lot!"

"I qm going to cry, stop!" And her voice was choking already as she spoke, which made Harry pull her in a warm and tight embrace.

"I respect your choice YN, that's the bare minimum I could do, you deserve so much more." He whispered in her ear.

It's been weighing on her heart, when growing up all she was taught that when she finally get married and get pregnant she has to keep that child and care for it, it's her duty to do so. If she felt otherwise, she was being ungrateful of the great gift. Her family is very religious, still. And by-product of that belief is herself and other five of her siblings. Though it is going to take time to get over those internalised misogyny, she hopes she can over come those really.

She really do wants kids, she is not sure how or when yet, but she does. This time felt just way too wrong to her. She can barely take care of herself let alone take care a whole new human and teach it how to go by their day and manage their emotions. It is definitely much more than just being able to financially take care of someone.

After what felt like whole ten minutes but actually had just been a minute Harry tried to pull away but YN wouldn't let him. "No, please don't."

"Oh, no I won't darling." He held her tight again, "you'd still let me take you out?"

"Yes!" She chuckled softly. "I want to get out of the hospital first please!"

"Mhmm, for that you'll have to let me go so I can go and get a nurse." He informed her.

"Oh, yeah..." He let go of him reluctantly.

"I'll give you all the cuddles you want, first let's get you out of here." He placed a gentle kiss on her forehead.

Soon they were out of the hospital and back at YN's. Harry was already planning a perfect date in his mind, given YN was adviced to rest (not bed rest) for a couple of days.

The next night Harry gave up and cooked up a nice and hearty meal for for both of them, they called it a date. According to Harry, that's the most romantic gesture he's ever done for anyone. Everything was starting to look like it was going to be fine.

......................................................................

N O T E:

Okay, so pls bare with me, my brain is a bit rusted lately. I apologise if this one sucks. I tried my best.

Also, pls feel to point out any typos, or not. I do not have time to go ahead and proof read this. I have to catch up on sleep. Hehe.

Hope you like it!!!

......................................................................

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Lemme know if you want to be added to or removed from the tag list

[veryace-ficrecs]

Tim Joins the BatFam Early Fic Recs

This list will include all ratings and tags, so read at your own discretion! :)

the butler's neighbor by deargalileo - Rated G

it starts with a baseball, thrown onto the wayne's property. it's alfred's job to deal with such happenings, of course. but over tea and galas, it turns into so much more.

after all, why should bruce be the only one allowed to adopt any child that he finds?

the capillaries in my eyes are bursting by Scarlet_Ribbons - Rated T

Bruce grunts, standing up. “Jenkins said the same. What about what you weren’t told?” And without dissembling, Jason says, “I think they fucked that kid up, B.” [Jack and Janet die. As things get weirder and weirder, it feels like Tim might be at the center of the unfolding conspiracy.]

An (almost) Foolproof Lie by HiddenDreamer67 - Rated T

“No, they don’t leave me totally alone.” Tim hurriedly explained. “My neighbor Bruce Wayne looks after me.” Batman stared at him for a long while. “Bruce Wayne.” He parroted slowly. (A young Tim Drake gets kidnapped by Falcone. When Batman rescues him, Tim tells Batman that Bruce Wayne is his temporary guardian. Oddly enough, Batman isn’t fooled by this perfect cover story.)

Anton Syndrome by Anonymous - Rated M

Tim's parents have been away for six months and counting—the longest he's ever been left alone at one time—and it's starting to have some unpleasant side effects. Luckily, he has a solution. OR, the one where Tim attempts prostitution to cure his touch starvation. His plan goes wrong pretty much from step one, but it all works out for the better.

I'll Stand By You by TaraLaurel - Rated T

"I'm not going to ask you why you're out here, kid," Jason nods. "That's your business and you don't know me or Dick to trust us." Not true. Tim trusts Jason Todd and Dick Grayson with his life. Just not with, the other stuff. "But," Jason continues, "if you want to tell me what got you here, or you just want to talk about anything, you can, with me. Dick too. He's an annoying ray of sunshine that won't ever shut up most of the time, but he is actually a good listener. I'd know." OR When Tim's parents find out Tim's secret, they kick him out. Now, on Thanksgiving, Tim is living on the streets and is thankful for the two strangers currently saving him from getting his face pounded into the pavement. Wait...those aren't strangers...

Just a Typical Monday Morning by Writer_loves_tropes - Rated T

There are three things in life that Timothy Drake knows for sure. One, Tim is the greatest retro Guitar Hero player in the world (even if the wonderful people at the Guinness Book of World Records won’t rightfully acknowledge this fact). Two, Tim is allergic to walnuts. He’s convinced his parents that he’s allergic to spinach too because he hates it. He’s pretty sure when his parents find out, they’re going to make him eat spinach casserole for dinner for a whole week as punishment. And the third thing Tim knows for sure? He’s sure that on this typical Monday morning, the entire Gotham High School thinks Timothy Jackson Drake is Robin, Batman’s vigilante sidekick. A random locker check and the real Robin stashing his suit in Tim’s locker is all it took to turn Tim’s typical Monday morning into one of the craziest Mondays of his life.

Brother Wanted by Vamillepudding - Rated G

Well-behaved boy (10) is looking for big brother (11-15). Must meet up with me three times a week, for at least two hours each. Overall duties include helping me with homework, playing videogames with me, and showing me how to play catch. 10$ per hour. Tim, lonely and in desperate need of company, decides that if his parents are not going to give him a sibling, he's going to hire one instead. Luckily, Jason Todd-Wayne shows up in the nick of time.

Holy security breach, Batman! by destiny919 - Rated G

Janet finally shoos him away towards the hors d'oeuvres or drinks table with the tacit understanding that she doesn't want to see him again until the end of the gala. And probably not even then, it wouldn't be the first time the Drakes forgot to take him home with them and Tim had to discreetly call an Uber before the host noticed and made Tim embarrass his parents. For this gala, however, he almost hopes they forget him again, because tonight Tim has a plan. They're at Wayne Manor, and Tim is going to find the Batcave.

wrong number by adelfie - Rated G

There’s a few rings, then the phone picks up. “Wayne Residence.” That’s funny, Tim thinks, Mrs. Mac doesn’t sound like herself. -- On a hot July evening while home alone, eight-year-old Tim gets a fever. He means to ask Mrs. Mac for help — but ends up accidentally calling Alfred Pennyworth. Somehow, even in sickness, he wins all the hearts of the Wayne family in one fell swoop.

assaulting existence with improbability by destiny919 - Rated T

"Where's Batman?" the kid demands. "We need to show him." Jason decides to go with the easy question. "Show him what?" The kid gives him an incredulous look. "Proof you didn't kill Garzonas, what else?"

5 Times Tim Spends the Night at Wayne Manor + 1 Time He Comes Home by motleyfam - Rated T

Tim is good at galas.

No, scratch that—Tim is great at galas. He’s been attending them ever since the age of three, when his parents first stuffed him into his little Gymboree tuxedo and gave him a stern lecture about ‘sitting quietly’ and ‘speaking when spoken to.’ He knows all the rules: what to wear, how to stand, when to smile, what to say, what not to say. He knows how to come across as polite and intelligent and charming, and on absolutely any other day, he would be rocking this.

[caeli0306]

chapter 16 of castles crumbling (aka Tales from the Airport Bathroom extended version) now posted!

Chapter 16: Meltdown is now up on AO3: READ HERE

WE ARE SO FREAKING BACK!

I'm so sorry this one took so long, but as you guys may know, the last couple weeks/months have been really tough for me and writing has been like, impossible. I was stretched too thin and over committed myself, and I just needed a break. Admittedly this probably would have been posted on Saturday but my college football team lost and I had to spend a few days in mourning. This chapter is way shorter than I originally planned bc I just wanted to post something so bad so I can get back into my writing habit that I was like fuck it we'll just go with what we have. I hope people enjoy this one - chapter 17 will not take as long (assuming another grandparent doesn't die and Alabama wins the rest of its games this year lol)

Summary:

Violet should already be dead. People whispered about her weak body and how she would never live up to her family's martial accomplishments. Violet rose above them all, however, fighting and killing to survive the Navarrian Intelligence Agency's brutal BASGIATH training protocol. Now, people whisper about Violet's swift ascension through the NIA's ranks as one of its most valuable operatives and assassins. The whispers don't matter to Violet: She has her own agenda, and it's a dangerous one - finding out what happened to her father.

But one mission changes everything: Suddenly, Violet finds herself in the crosshairs when she stumbles on information Navarre wants buried, and the country she fought for begins to turn on her. Violet knows too much, but she's determined to do what she does best: Survive. Her only hope is the son of the man who they say killed her brother, but their partnership is far from assured. Some grudges run deep, and trust is a currency too valuable to give freely. Xaden realizes Violet may be the key to everything, but with enemies seen and unseen closing in on all sides, the consequences of failure are deadly.

===

Xaden opens his mouth to argue back, but Liam intercedes.

“If you two are going to do this now, can you take it elsewhere?” he asks with a grin. “You’re making a scene.”

And that’s when, once more, I return to reality. I can’t help the blush that fights its way up my neck to my cheeks, because he’s absolutely right. Everyone still in the armory is staring at us. Kill me now.

“Fuck me,” I mutter. I throw another glance in Xaden’s direction, but I can’t get a handle for what’s going on in that head of his. I huff, then turn on my heel, marching towards the doors. I hear the sounds of someone following me – no doubt Rhiannon. Or maybe Liam.

When I get to the doors that lead out into the maze of hallways beyond the armory, I’m surprised to see that it was Sawyer who followed me this time. Then I remember that he’d wanted to talk and slow my pace.

“You ok?” My friend asks after he’s matched his steps with mine.

“Absolutely dandy,” I reply.

I don’t have to look at him to know he’s rolling his eyes. “You’re a horrible liar.”

“It helps that I’m not trying to be a good one.”

[omegalomania]

hey gang what time is it its time for another joe trohman podcast. this actually came out like a month ago but i missed it until isa linked it to me and because i like doing these heres a highlights reel

the host says he appreciates that joe opened the book with the question of whether or not satan fucked his wife to which joe replies "well you know, when you have kids, sometimes you wonder that. you truly wonder what are these demons. i love my children btw they're phenomenal."

sometimes it does get tiring playing the same songs over and over. joe says that "thnks fr th mmrs" has a really good energy and tempo that keeps it exciting to play live

he talks about playing a really short iheartradio christmas show pre-pandemic and nobody in the crowd knew "sugar we're goin down" since they were only familiar with the more recent hits like "centuries" and "uma thurman" and joe said that it made him fall in love with sugar all over again in a weird way ldjfldkfd

he laments recently getting the chance to see wu-tang, nas, and busta rhymes at the hollywood bowl but he didn't go

his love language is giving gifts! he got his brother a custom drum set (which his mom attempted to throw out)

he reiterates that when writing the book he didn't want to be mean to any of his bandmates cause he likes them and thats not what the book is about! the host makes a joke: "like how you guys had that threesome with simple plan...i understand, you don't wanna get into that!" joe is offended that he clearly doesn't know how many guys are in simple plan. "there's more than three guys in there! the orgy was far larger than you give it credit!"

he doesnt remember any other names that the band could have been called but he does think fall out boy is a pretty terrible name for a band. "i can't believe i'm in a band called fall out boy."

discussions of the band origin and how joe funded it with his bar mitzvah money ("fall out boy, funded by judaism!") but when asked about financial gains from the band he says they all split everything evenly and it's one of the things that's helped them last this long

talking about scott ian and the damned things and he talks about how managing a supergroup is like herding cats because everyone is so busy with their respective groups. he says he'd LOVE to do a third damned things record though!

he talks about how weird it was to have this boy band aspect to them when they were at their peak pre-hiatus, because they were all hardcore kids and punk kids.

he recalls that around this time patrick asked their manager, with visible concern, "are we...the nsync to panic at the disco's backstreet boys?"

he's glad that they've outgrown that and kept pushing forward and looking forward, and by now they're no longer a boy band. "we're a man band!"

he thinks it's kind of neat to see the emo movement of the aughts become nostalgic and cool now ("it was not fucking cool when we were doing it [...] we stuck around for long enough to Not Be Lame"), but it's a big thing for fall out boy that they do not want to be a nostalgia act and they want to keep making new albums.

the host semi-jokingly says "so you and panic at the disco are not gonna go out on tour, is what you're saying." joe says "no" very flatly and i lose my shit.

he denies that fall out boy is working on any specific new music. he says they're just piecing things together organically and that no real album has coalesced. (note: this episode aired 11/12, ~2 weeks before the fob8 tribune ad)

he talks a bit about working with brian posehn on the axe and how much he loved doing it! he calls the whole story a metaphor for dealing with pain and trauma and the different ways there are to confront that stuff. he said the axe is coming out as a trade "soon" so people who don't have a subscription to heavy metal can read it

his first concert was tom petty and the heartbreakers when he was 10 or 11

he says the two things that matter most for a band's live show are the drummer and the singer. he then proceeds to be extremely sweet about patrick and andy.

"patrick, he's incredible, he's so gifted, and he's worked so hard with his voice lessons and figuring out how to sing from the diaphragm properly, and he really knows how to work through when he's sick and having real issues, so he's quite a trooper."

"and andy is just a great drummer. when he thinks he's had a bad day i'm like...yeah. sure. i don't think you know what that is."

he did not get laid in high school. first time was in a shared tour bus, listening to testament (a thrash metal band), when he was 19. (they never saw each other again)

since testament was the soundtrack the host asks if he ever gets a reaction whenever joe hears chuck billy (testament's lead vocalist). joe says without missing a beat, "when i see him i do, that's for sure."

he is an avid bowler. he has a wristguard and a spare ball and he used to take lessons. he calls it great stress relief!

[lucky-bucky-boy]

Arrogance Incarnate

Pairing: Loki x Reader

Summary: Loki and you don’t get along, at all. It’s infuriating and frustrating, except in the few moments where it’s pure bliss.  Inspired by @lokisgoodgirl series Hostile F*cks that I stumbled upon a few days ago.

Word Count: 2859

Warnings: Slight angst, smut, dom/sub elements, angry fuck, pet names, open-ended ending

A/N: This post does not have any of my taglist added as my taglist is now 2 years outdated. I hope you all enjoy this piece as I certainly enjoyed writing again. Let me know what y’all think!

This is set as if everything is happy and okay, everyone lives in the compound together. Also, inspired by @lokisgoodgirl​ Hostile F*cks series that I stumbled upon the other day!

I do not own these characters. Do NOT repost my writing and/or fics anywhere without my written permission. Reblogs are welcomed and highly appreciated!

No one really comprehended how it got like this, some days it was better not to ask and just ignore it. It didn't start out this way, quite the opposite as a matter of fact; all warm welcomes and soft smiles inevitably turned into agitated sighs and annoyed eye rolls. 

You couldn't help it though. He had become absolutely infuriating; too sure of himself, too cocky, too arrogant… Too Loki. 

Nat sat beside you at the kitchen island, finishing up her food as the time neared for her to leave. Majority of the team had been assigned a mission, they wouldn't be gone for long - only 2 or 3 days - but it required a lot of manpower to assure no one got hurt. You'd been on the last few big missions so Tony let you sit this one out, figuring you'd enjoy some peace and quiet.  

But peace and quiet was the last thing you would get. Since this mission requires the most finesse, the assurance that no one would make an abrupt move, that no one would steer away from the plan, Loki had also been chosen to sit this one out. 

"I really hope you guys get back sooner rather than later," you huffed, picking at the last bit of the fruit in your bowl. 

Nat chuckled softly, shaking her head at your complaints, "Try not to kill each other while we're gone. Spiderboy is hanging back too if you need someone to occupy you."

You rolled your eyes, standing up to clean up your dishes and taking hers with you, "Peter is an MIT student, has to travel between here and Boston every 4 weeks, has a girlfriend, is working on suit upgrades, and has friends in the city he hasn't seen in months. I doubt I'm the first person on his list of people to 'occupy'."

Nat followed you, rubbing her hand along your back as you stood at the sink cleaning the dishes. "Well, take yourself out, or have a movie night. Maybe rearrange your room like you've been talking bout. Or find a good lay." She teased at the end. 

You shook your head, turning the water off and shaking your hands of the water, "Yeah yeah, I know. But I'd rather spend my time sitting in the same room as you, playing on my switch, and bitching about the same shit over and over. But I'll live. You, however, need to get going before Steve decides to come searching for you."

She sighed, an apologetic look spreading across her features. "I know. But, we're still on for that brunch and spa spot next week. I'll text you updates, okay?" 

You nodded, watching as she turned and made her way to the meeting room for debriefing. 

This was going to be a long few days. 

You started making your way to your room, intending to grab a book then head out to sit by the pool. But you didn't make it far, hearing Thor's booming voice echoing off the walls. You stopped, hating yourself immediately for being interested in the conversation, but nonetheless you stayed out of sight. 

"Be nice to her, brother. She was the only one kind to you when we arrived. Surely, you must appreciate that enough to think about your actions."

Loki's sigh was sharp and loud, "For the last time, Thor, how I treat our fellow colleagues," there was a tinge of disgust in his voice that turned your face sour at hearing it, "has very little to do with you. Besides, this back and forth between (Y/N) was started by her. For being the one who was kindest to me, she's the only one now who is constantly irritated by my very presence."

It was true. You hated to admit it, but every word was true. Shaking your head, you kept moving, trying you best to make it seem like you hadn't been listening in. 

When Thor and Loki had decided to make Asgard their new home, things were rough. Loki's history with Earth made it so that S.H.I.E.L.D required them to live with the Avengers for two years. Any trips he made outside the compound had to be supervised for the first 6 months, then slowly he could gain trust. 

Their arrival was almost a year ago. You had heard the many stories of Loki, mostly bad with Thor sprinkling in some good. It became glaringly obvious to you that something had to be happening at the time the others had met him, that pieces of information were missing for you to understand fully why Loki attacked New York. Sure, you didn't want to immediately dismiss the concerns, but you wanted him to feel like he had someone there who didn't hate him. 

And it did begin that way, a friendly introduction, showing him books, introducing him to movies and songs. There were countless times in the beginning where Loki and you were almost inseparable. 

Then the missions started, and irritation started. He was too brazen, making bold moves without discussion. More than once he had put you in a predicament where you could have gotten hurt. There was this one mission in particular, you were undercover in a club trying to collect information, Loki was your watch - the person you had been talking to had gotten a little too close, nothing you weren't expecting, but Loki apparently felt it was too much. The two of you had to rush out after Loki left the guy with a broken nose. 

Sure, it became frustrating to work on missions with him, but it didn't become bad at home until after he was able to leave the compound on his own. 

One night, admittedly after too many glasses of wine, you had made your way to Loki's room with the full intention of trying to flirt your way into a date with him. He was tall, stunningly gorgeous, playful, and caring. You had spent a lot of time with him, movie nights that kept you up late, stories being passed back and forth. But just as you were about to knock on his door, there was a loud, high pitched, nasally moan of his name. It was a voice you didn't recognize, your blood running instantly cold as your hand hovered over the door.

It was that moment that things turned bad. You had made an backhanded remark the next day, and Loki being Loki reciprocated. Every day another verbal dagger thrown until the two of you couldn't be in the same room together. 

Tony had even put you two on an easy mission together, hoping that somehow you two would have it out and things would improve, but that didn't work. It just made things worse. 

You did have it out though. The first times of many you would truly have it out with Loki. No one had noticed or caught on, not that either of you were aware of. You truly couldn't stand him anymore unless he was seated to the hilt in you, or if his piercing eyes were darkening between your thighs, or his hands roaming every inch of your body. 

How would anyone catch on? Outside of your bedroom, the two of you barely even spared a glance to each other and the ones you did were out of sheer agitation. No lingering words or flirty smiles. And the only time you found him in your bed was after weeks of build up from bickering and arguing. 

You closed your door behind you, sighing deeply to try to put your roaming thoughts at bay. This was truly going to be a long few days. 

The weather couldn't have been better, but the moment you stepped outside the desire to be anywhere but on a bed or couch went out the door. You stood there for a moment, taking in the warmth of the sunshine and the soft breeze of air that allowed a reprieve from the heat. The jets of the teams leaving soared overhead. With yet another sigh you turned on your heels, heading back inside. 

Opting to head back to your room, you passed the living quarters again where Loki had taken home for the day. Your footsteps passing brought his attention from the book in his hands, watching with slight amusement as you moved through the compound. 

"Having troubles making up your mind?" He called to you. 

Another huff and roll of the eyes, but you kept moving, ignoring the God's taunt. 

You hadn't been in your room long before the door flew open, startling you. Loki stood there, annoyance written on his face. "No one else is here, so must you continue to pretend to hate me to my core?"

Words left you, unsure of what to say or how to feel. This was bold of him, he'd hadn't come to your room without warning before, and truly you did expect to just ignore each others existence for the next few days. 

"I asked you a question." He let himself in, shutting the door behind him as he stalked his way to stand above you at the end of the bed. 

"Pretend?" You asked, voice soft and throat dried. You hated the effect he could have on you - the smell of him, of leather, musk, and mint overwhelming your senses. 

"Are you saying you're not pretending?" His eyebrows were raised. 

You huffed, rising from your sitting position to your knees. "Loki, I can assure you, that pretending would be much less exhausting."

"Darling, don't act like there isn't a part of you that wants me." You swallowed hard, staring up at him. Of course you wanted him, you wanted him in more ways than you would admit. Loki stared back, "If you're not pretending, then why do you hate me?" His voice was almost teasing. 

"You're arrogant. You're arrogant to the point that you are blinded by it." You stated.

"That's it? Did the little pet get her feelings hurt by something I said? Or was it something I did?" He teased, punctuating the end of his sentence by carding his hands through your hair and tugging tightly. 

"I am the God of Mischief after all, darling. You truly didn't think that I wouldn't be a little unhinged, did you?" He tugged your hair back, forcing a gasp out of you as he started to move you to a lying position, him hovering over top of you, "We both know there's a part of you that still loves it. If you didn't, you wouldn't have your legs wrapped around my waist right now, you wouldn't moan my name so wantonly, you wouldn't even let me anywhere near your pretty little pussy." 

Loki used his leverage of his hand in your hair to turn your head, kissing at the sensitive skin of your neck. "Admit it," he said between kisses, "admit you want me, darling."

A chill ran down your spine. You hated it, the second he was on top of you, you had instinctively wrapped your legs around his waist, your hands now carding in his hair. You were already getting wet, trying your best to hold back any whines or moans. 

Loki didn't like you ignoring him. He bit down on the junction between your neck and shoulder, sucking hard and undoubtedly leaving a mark. He pulled back, "if you want me to satisfy you, you need to admit it."

His hand left your hair, both of them moving to roam across your body. The moved under your shift, cold fingers causing goosebumps to spread across your skin. He didn't say anything as he continued on, hands moving to cups your breasts, thumbs rubbing over your nipples through the fabric of your bra. 

He was going to tease until you admitted it. Loki's hips rocked slowly against you, relishing in listening to you whine and whimper, your own hips trying to run against him, your core getting hot with need. His lips continued their assault on your neck, careful not to leave any marks too high up. 

Suddenly, your shirt was gone, Loki using it magic to take it off. His mouth move to your shoulder, leaving an array of purple and blue there, making his way further down and nipping at the top of your chest. 

"Please," you whined, pulling at his hair, "Please Loki."

He chuckled against your skin, hands snaking behind you to undo your bra, taking notice of the goosebumps thay spread across your skin from the feel of his hands on you. "Admit you want it. You know what you have to say."

You whined, squirming as he pulled up some to discard your bra. Immediately, his mouth attached to your nipple, flicking and sucking the sensitive bud as his hand moved to toy with the other one. He switched back and forth, your moans like music to his ears. 

Moans were spewing out of you, hips rutting harder and fast. "Damn it, Loki, stop the teasing and just fuck me if that's what you came in here to do." You managed to choke out. 

Loki pulled away from your chest, both hands playing with your nipples now. "I came here to teach you a lesson. Now, admit you want it." 

"I want it," you finally blurted out, feeling like you were going crazy with need. "I want you, Loki. Please just fuck me."

"Good girl," suddenly, all of your clothes were gone. He sat back on his legs, looking down at you for a few moments. "Heavens, you're still just as ravishing to look at."

His were gone now as well and he leaned back down, capturing your lips in his. It happened so quickly, him moving your calves to his shoulders, lining his cock up with your core, pushing in slowly as your lips moved against each other feverishly. 

Loki pushed himself all the way in, staying still once he was fully seated, watching the look of ecstasy on your face, eyes screwed shut and mouth slightly agape. It was a look he would never get tired of. 

He waited until you looked up at him to pull out and shove himself back in, setting a pace that rattled you inside out. He moved one of your legs down to his waist, angling his hips and moving a hand to rub your clit. 

Loud moans fell from you, echoing off the walls and sounding like songs in his ears. He kept at it, feeling your walls spasm, watching you feeling at him. 

A wave of confidence ran through you, moving your other leg back down to his waist, you sat up as best as you could, carding a hand through his hair and pulling him back down to kiss him. You move your lips to his neck, making sure his would match yours in color. Hands moving along his lean body. 

Pressure began to build, his relentless pursuit of both your high starting to become successful. Your free hand moved to his back, scratching against the pale expanse of skin and leaving bright red marks in your wake. 

Suddenly, a hand was gripping your chin, forcing you to look him in the eye, "you're being so good for me for someone who hates me." A chill ran up your spine, the pressure in your core ready to flood and take over, "I can feel you squeezing my cock, cum for me, darling. Be my good girl and cum for me."

Between his blissfully sinful words and the rutting of his hips against yours, you toppled over the edge, immediately securing your mouth to his shoulder and biting down to muffle your loud moans. The pain spurred him on, his thrusts becoming erratic as he neared his own high. Loki came, painting your insides white as he collapsed on top of you, careful not to crush you too much with his weight as he took deep breaths, both of your hearts racing. 

There was a pleasant quiet that fell between the two of you, something that hadn't happened before. It was always finished and get gone as quickly as possible, but this time he laid there for a couple of minutes, both of you taking in the bliss of not being at each other's throat. 

Loki inevitably pulled out of you, taking the time to get up and get a rag from your connected bathroom. He brought it over, slightly damp, wiping the dried saliva from his own neck before handing it to you so you could clean yourself up some. As you did, he grabbed his clothes instead of using his magic to put them back on. 

Loki slipped his pants on, holding the rest of his clothes in his hand as he made his way to the door. With his hand on the knob, he turned to look at you, an almost tired expression on his face.

"When you have decided you're done pretending to hate me, let me know." And with that he walked out, leaving you there to contemplate your every emotion.

[simulation-machine]

SIMS RELATED PROJECTS/UPDATES

My spring break is coming up in a week and holy crap do I have plans on plans on plans, especially since my summer is gonna be full of school + internship + HOPEFULLY friggin' graduating with a BA in Psychology so that I can start applying to grad schools.

Read more iffin' you'd like! It's long! Here's a picture of my golden retriever napping on her brother's food bowl to entice/entertain you:

god she is so precious i would literally kill for her

GOAL 1: MASTER GSHADE/ReSHADE

I know that some people are sticklers for this but my thing is that I had no gee-dee clue what I was doing with ReShade, whereas Gshade just kinda clicked and worked for me? That said I have a bunch of resources for learning ReShade so I might end up moving back to it at some point.

My main issue is figuring out the order of all the different effects. It obviously matters, I'm sure people smarter than me have tried to use presets only to be like "why tf does this look absolutely nothing like the baller screenshots this one cool Simblr has?" Annnd it turns out it's order + remembering to turn off certain graphic settings. Also photoshop, but that's gonna take a lot longer for me to figure out lol.

Like I'd been struggling to figure out why @gunthermunch's gorgeous Lithium preset wasn't looking as sexy as it did before annnnd it's because I forgot to turn Edge Smoothing off when switching to it. Jesus wept at how dippy I am sometimes.

Eventually, what I would like to do is maybe make my own preset at some point? I would be kind enough to show the effect order too if I did so. But this requires so, so much more shader knowledge than I currently have.

FUN FACT: My first ever degree was in art, I even went to a very fancy and private art school (School of the Art Institute of Chicago if you're curious)- I dropped out after one semester because uhhh that shit is expensive. Ended up finishing my degree at a much cheaper location in MN. That said, my art was 100% analog and 2D, and it turns out it did not translate super well into trying my hand at graphic art.

It's funny because I've been gifted really neat stuff for graphic art (like a really nice Wacom tablet and Adobe subscriptions), like people just expected my mixed-media ass would know what to do with it. NOPE! But yeah, Sims is sort of my excuse to try my hand at this stuff again, especially since I have a bit more energy now that my soul is not regularly being drained out of my body by customer service and tech support jobs.

GOAL 2: GET CRACKIN' ON ANOTHER DOOR

This one is hard because I am only on Gen 2 of the Orsons and it's sort of hard to justify starting up another story while that one is less than 1/5 of the way done.

THAT SAID, I don't plan on posting Another Door until I have a decent chunk of it done. Since it's not a casual gameplay story nor a legacy challenge, I plan on editing the bajeez out of the screenshots for it, really honing in on the aesthetic. I want it to look and feel very different from my random legacy challenge.

Fortunately, this story has been fucking up my sleep schedule for *months* now and I have a lot of the writing for it done. The hard part is translating that into the Sims, making sure I get the right poses and stuff, maybe even learning how to make some super easy CC (like, posters and stuff), and stuff related to GOAL 1 above.

What I'm saying is that it's going to take a bit. But I'm super serious about sharing it because it's my obsession and honestly the first time a story of my own design has possessed me in literal years.

Also, I want to make sure I have a significant backlog of the Orsons before I start seriously simming for it, because I don't want to screw over my favorite little pixel babies. This legacy challenge is going to be the one, I have done so much to keep my save files to keep it safe from harm (ask me how many backups I have of the save files. JK don't, the number is frankly silly).

GOAL 3: START YET ANOTHER MASSIVE CC PURGE

Y'all, my CC folder for this game is honestly an embarrassment. I go so hard on CC shopping because this community is stupid-talented and I like giving my pixel babies nice things and cool looks. When I'm bored and not quite in the mood for gameplay, I just like making neat-looking sims that I do absolutely nothing with because I love fucking around in CAS.

I have built my own PCs since I was 17 years old, and when I first built COMPUTERMACHINE (current rig) back in the autumn of 2018, it was with the goal that it would run Sims 4 flawlessly no matter what I did to it. It's got ridiculous amounts of RAM, I religiously update parts for it. And to be fair, even with the current 6,907,907,890 TB of CC I have atm it runs better than Sims 3 ever had with a measly 50 GB of CC.

But for me, it comes down to finding all the stuff I wanna use. Making myself get rid of the stuff I don't wanna use. Straight up yeeting the CC that I thought was going to look incredible that uh, didn't deliver.

I do CAS CC purges about once a year but have literally never done it for Build & Buy stuff, because OMG some of this shit I've had since 2014. Like when Sims 4 first came out. YIKES. My CAS CC obsession is notable but it's honestly nothing compared to my Build & Buy. Even before For Rent made building lots slow af, my PC was starting to take a solid minute to switch to different buy categories.

It would take a long af time so I want to make sure I have a bunch of content in the queue before I do it. It's gonna be a whole ass thing and be so, so boring to do. So I'm putting it off for when I have a ton of time to do it. Like, oh, my entire Spring Break?

GOAL 4: MAKE A FRIGGIN' RESOURCES LIST ALREADY

This would obviously need to wait until after GOAL 3 is completed, but I wanna make sure the awesome creators whose stuff I use get credit, and that people know where they can grab neat stuff. It would include not only CC but mods, Gshade/ReShade presets, and maybe even lots and sims I've downloaded from the gallery?

(Since I am super anti-paywall and very unapologetic and rude about it, I will also share where one could perhaps get some of these CCs without paying some dip a Trenta Starbucks Unicorn Frappucino amount of $$$)

It's ambitious as hell because *gestures vaguely at GOAL 3* but it would make things like doing WCIF asks and lookbooks so much easier.

Somewhat relatedly, I wanna make a navigation post, especially once Another Door starts getting posted. That story is gonna be a bit huge with multiple arcs that take place over the course of like, 14 years. Plus once the Orsons get to the 4th+ generation, it would be easier to track things down.

IN CONCLUSION...

I have been having so much fun sharing my silly little Sim adventures on Tumblr, so much more than I ever thought I would! You all have been so great to me, and all of this stuff is sort of a way for me to repay that. Ever since I stopped being able to be artistically creative ever since a really nasty depressive spell in 2017, Sims has been my #1 artistic outlet. And having people who are even somewhat entertained by my pixels is incredibly motivating.

Basically, if you read all of this, DAMN would you have been a rad livejournal follower of mine circa 2007. On the seriousness, however, thank you all so much for being rad and encouraging and sweet. I promise to do you all, if not proud, then at the very least not disappointed.

Time to hit the bong and take some pictures of Lou and Tatertot before taking my IRL doggos on a walk~

[paravillintiniay]

I’m gonna make a really really long vent post and put it under a read more because I’ve had a rough month and I’m like emotionally bleeding out and I don’t know what to do so idk maybe I’ll put a bandaid on it with this maybe not

I used to think that once I became an adult that I would become independent and no longer be a chronic misser outer and not have to rely on people who clearly do not care about me or my wants as much and that I’d be able to move on, but every year that passes by it feels farther and farther from my reach and even more shameful because everyone I talk to that I can’t speak openly to (extended family, neighbors, acquaintances that I’m not close to) thinks I am like a TOTAL loser because I’m 24 and can’t drive and have never had a consistent job and didn’t go to school and have nothing going for me but I can’t just be like “yeah well my parents won’t teach me to drive and I have to beg my mom for weeks to get her to take me to target when I need something and I don’t have any friends in town so what the fuck do you suggest I do” because it’s kind of a hostile trauma dump but also to them the answer is simple it’s just “take some initiative, stop being lazy” but no one ever taught me how to do that or encouraged independence and every time I ever did take initiative I would get shot down. They don’t get that my parents are so controlling that I CAN’T just Uber to the dmv and get my license because the consequences to that are great, and we don’t have public transit and our community isn’t walkable so I can’t just walk to a job.

Eventually I developed a sort of apathy as a defense mechanism and I just stopped caring about anything because caring about things only meant that I’d be disappointed but the problem is apathy only gets you so far because then people think they can walk all over you.

I just want to feel important. Not to my friends, I love my friends I care about my friends I know they care about me but they can only do so much from several states away. I want my family to care about me, but when my birthday fell on Mother’s Day we all decided “oh yeah we aren’t going to do anything because all the restaurants will be crowded” so instead *my mom and I* spent 2.5 hours cooking lunch, then my brother showed up 2.5 hours later than he said he would with his kids, handed me a card with a visa giftcard in it, and we all sat on the couch not doing anything with the tv off for a few hours not doing anything. I asked if he wanted to go to a concert with me and he blew me off. Then he left. The original plan was to instead go out on monday (Mother’s Day was on sunday) and take me to the book store and run some errands but my mom told me Sunday night “I’m really tired let’s do Tuesday” and then Tuesday night came and I asked if we could do Wednesday and my mom was like “well (grandma) has a thing on Thursday and dad has a thing on Friday and we had a thing we were going to do this weekend” so I said “oh so Wednesday is the only day that works huh?” To which the response was “we’ll see.” We did not go to the book store on Wednesday. We still have not gone to the book store a week later and of course, the ENTIRE week this week just has to be sooo busy we just caaaant make time. I’m tired of having to beg my mommy to spend at most two hours of her time doing something for me. I’m tired of her making it a big deal when I need or want to go somewhere when she’s the one who never taught me to drive. I made my own birthday cake. I just want to feel important. I just. Want to feel like I matter. That isn’t even touching on the fact that one of my brothers completely forgot/didn’t acknowledge my birthday. Thanks man. It’s not even the birthday that gets to me because I don’t expect anything it’s just the fact that they ASK me what I want to do and when I tell them they blow me off or ignore me or do something else that directly inconveniences me. I just want to feel like I matter. Like my wants and needs are valid.

I want to be independent. I’m tired of being a chronic misser outter I’m tired of not being able to do fun things just because no one wants to do them with me and I don’t have the means to do them by myself. It’s gotten to the point where everyone I know is moving on in life without me in so many important life milestone ways and I know it’s only a matter of time before I am simply alone. Before no one has time for me because that’s a natural part of life, you grow up you get a job you get married have kids but not for me. Never for me.

And you know what? My nephew was born late last year and I feel so much guilt for saying this because I love him so much but FUCK that kid. Everyone in my family forgot to be a there for me but now there’s a baby 🥺🥺🥺 he need so much love and time and attention 🥺🥺 you’ve had so many holidays and birthdays April you can be selfless and sacrifice for him 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺 I’m a grandparent now so I’m gonna drop everythinf whenever your brother asks and spend time with my grandbaby 🥺🥺🥺🥺 but what about ME? when am I going to get the support that I need? On top of not having very many friends or a support system I now no longer have my older brother to hang out with and go see movies or concerts with sometimes and it just. Sucks. I’m so tired.

I said the other day that my mental health feels like when you’re playing a survival game and you’re starving so the screen starts flashing and shaking and your health is constantly ticking down and you don’t have any food so you keep slapping bandages on to try to keep yourself alive until you can find food but you only ever find scraps and berries that keep you sustained for about 30 seconds before you’re starving and dying again. I can hang out with my friends and be happy and joyful but the second that’s over I’m back to bleeding out. Every time my parents rush to the aid of someone else and blow me off is like a stab to the gut. Every time my parents say “it’s the weekend I’m not leaving the house” but are just SOOOO busy during the week they can’t help me with what I need. Every time I miss something that’s important to me and time sensitive just because I can’t drive. I don’t know how to keep going. I’m tired of feeling like such a loser all the time. I just. Want. To feel. Important.

[isa-ah]

*coughs up blood* i just sent the message to my mom that im cutting contact lol for people who are nosey

I'm about to start a new chapter in my life, so it's time to tie up loose ends with people who will not be turning the page with me.

This begs the question; how patient should you be? How long do you give someone to learn, to make the choice to grow, and to find their respect for the people around them? Days, weeks, months, years? Because I've been waiting for nearly a decade and I'm tired of it.

I thought for a long time that tolerance was the best I could hope for. Gritted teeth and being allowed to sit at the table with everyone else. Not being openly mocked. I thought, when I was a kid with no self worth, that that was the best it could ever be. But I'm older now. I'm an adult, I'm getting married, I have mature peers, and I've started to realize how absolutely bullshit that is.

I deserver unyielding support and love. I deserve respect. And I'm getting it- from Lo's mom, from Lo's family. They've shown up en masse to celebrate with us. Not a single person has questioned my identity, has made me feel disgusting or unwelcomed or decieved. They're ecstatic to be involved in the planning and execution of our union- and it's lead to questions not about me, but about YOU.

They want to know why YOU'RE not involved. They want to know why I cried so hard I nearly threw up when Drew told me he would never support us. They want to know why I don't have a SINGLE family member in attendance. And when I tried to explain it, how it happened, the resurgence of disbelieving disgust I was met with made me realize they're right to feel that way.

These strangers have shown me more compassion and understanding than you ever have. You've had nearly a decade to figure yourself out, to step up and become a better person. To not just tolerate, but to LOVE me. And you haven't. And I've lost any expectation for you to. It's 2022 and you've done nothing to unpack your internalized homophobia.

And the funniest part is, it's not just you! You've made my brothers into bigots as well.

I tried. I fucking tried. I pressed for family dinners. For outings together. For conversations between us, between you and my soon to be husband, so you could understand that we're not monsters. We're just people. We love and support each other, and we were trying to establish something of that with you.

What we got in return was consistent homophobic and racist commentary and jokes over the dinner table. Rape jokes, Holocaust jokes, and your daily usage of the word "gypped"- an anti Romani slur coined as part of the genocide of Lo's ancestors. We tried to grin and bare it, under the assumption that with time you'd learn, but fuck. Why are we the ones left holding the bag?

We put up with your nasty bullshit, and you can't even make an appearance? You can't even say NO? You ignored me when I tried to ask you to come to our wedding. To my FACE, you IGNORED me. You did NOT even RESPECT me enough in that moment to say NO. I gave you THREE chances. And you could not even be bothered to say no.

And so, why am I still trying? Why am I holding the line, keeping communications valid, when after so long you've done nothing but regress? You're a worse person now than you were when my grandparents died. You taught me the foundations of anti racism and that gay people were just normal people. So why are you so unbearably nasty now? What happened?

Well. I don't know how to tell you this, but it's a line you've chosen to cross. You are, and I mean this genuinely from the bottom of my heart, a religious extremist. You've chosen the white person's guide to colonization over your own child- again and again and again and again. And for the last time. I won't keep asking you to pick when I know I'm only going to lose.

I hope that in time you'll find your humanity again. That you'll start to unpack and understand how far beyond any level of tolerance or compassion you've swung. How much you've not only hurt me, but damaged my brothers world views. They're going to struggle to ever settle into any space that isn't unambiguously straight, white and religious. They're going to internalize things deeply- DEEPLY- about their own worth and the worth of people who aren't exactly like them. And it's going to hurt when the day finally comes that they have to confront the knots on knots on knots that you've allowed to be tied up within them.

I know, because I'm nearly twenty-six and I'm still dealing with the fringes of what I was taught as a child.

It's not too late for you to grow and change. I'm not writing you off. But I'm not going to keep channels of communication open for someone who thinks so lowly of me and my husband. I love you. But I'm done.

[coralinehecc]

Corals Monthly Update #3

HOHOHO!! FIRST BLOG POST OF 2023 AND I’M NEARLY 2 WEEKS LATE!!! Super sorry about the long wait! I’ve had tests recently and only got off of school like a few days ago haha! So! Welcome back to my monthly update on what I get up to in my life! Now, before we get into January, I, for the final time, have to tap back into the previous month. Curse past me for thinking the 21st was a good day to start doing these!!! ANYHOW! The rest of December and early January were a BLAST! But lemmie talk about what happened after I made the last update. CHRISTMAS!! I had a great time with my family and I got a bunch of fluffy things cuz that’s apparently the easiest thing to get me now. We also had dinner on Christmas day with my Grandparents like every year. Over-all that day was very fun! I even got drunk playing Minecraft which was funny for everyone in VC. The next few days weren’t anything exciting, however my brother Finn had a bunch of his friends over for his birthday which was chaotic. But the excitement picks back up on the 28th! BECAUSE SKYE AND VI CAME OVER FOR NEW YEARS!! We’ve been planning this since like, June, so it was awesome seeing them again! We did all kinds of stuff from shopping to playing some awesome games! (I am now chronically addicted to Ultra Kill thanks guys)

We even did some baking! Here is our glorious creation I dubbed, “The Jimothy”. 

Overall the rest of December was awesome! I’m glad I got to celebrate New Years with my besties! Overall, I’ll give it a 10/10! Best way to end 2022 >:D Here’s a few more misc photos hehehhehe

NOW! FOR JANUARY!! January started off still vibing with the guys. However they would then go home on the 4th which sucks. But before that, both Skye and I spent a lot of money on consoles that are almost as old as ourselves. They bought a fucking PS Vita and I got a motherfucking Wii. We both had fun with em and I even helped Skye homebrew their Vita since I wanted to put PebbleCD on it (I failed but shut uuup) But yea, sadly the guys had to go and it sucked! But I still had a great time. There’s a bit of a gap here right up until the 12th, where finally, the big event happened. CAREY IN THE HOUSE WENT LIVE!! I had finished it a few days prior but figured I’d build up hype by posting it on that Friday. AND IT SURE WORKED! The video blew up faster than any of my videos before it! I am so happy the response has been overwhelmingly positive. I also love how the only main complaint that was common amongst people was that Careys exaggerated accent was annoying which, yea can’t argue against. For anyone wishing for more CITH content, I did a behind the scenes mega thread over on my twitter if you wanna have a deeper look into the production! I’ll even link it here:  https://twitter.com/Carey_Black_/status/1619731723352444928 Now, to move onto why it took me forever to make an update. My mock exams.. BUT BEFORE THAT!! THERE’S ALSO THE FACT THAT MR WULF AND I WERE ABLE TO ARCHIVE THE ORIGINAL EDDSWORLD BANG BOOM SPLAT PROJECT FILE!!

This all started because Wulf wanted to edit the credits for his arcade BBS build since I was helping him out and since I said SWF modding is hard he just casually asked Psycosis and after seeing his WIP cabinet, gave Wulf the FLA! So a current “BBS arcade version” is in the works by yours truly thanks to both the generosity of Psycosis and the fact that Mr Wulf is a fucking mad man who could stop global warming in a month if he wanted to LOL! Here’s Wulfs finished Cabinet btw!:  https://twitter.com/MrWulfOfficial/status/1622295302685315073 But yea, for real. My mock exams were a pain! For those outside of Ireland or have a different name for em, Mock exams are, well, exams that act like a practice run for your finals. They’re always harder than the actual finals and are usually graded stricter too! Why? Who knows! The Irish education system is a joke. I feel like I did somewhat ok in them anyway? Some were definitely worse than others but overall it was more of an inconvenience. I did get this really cool art piece out of it however.

Exams would later spill over into February and like I said at the start, I finished and got off school a few days ago. Overall, this month was about a 7/10. It was pretty good, especially in the Eddsworld department, but mocks and other personal tid bits I didn’t mention here dragged it down for me. Since February seems to be mostly me being off school, I hope this month will be better haha! Only time will tell! Thank you for reading! And I hope to see you next month!! (Hopefully on time too haha!) 

[tothemoonandback-myass]

Posting this more to keep record since I'm starting to lose track of all the bullshit that's happened in the last few months. Starting with:

- My most recent ex (M) breaking up with me out of nowhere. More on that later.

- Getting threatened on the floor by my assistant manager

- Two weeks later of said assistant manager being a complete ass and bully I get fired because HR didn't want to actually deal with the problem after I reported him. Also because my manager was old friends with him and the only coworker who was a witness hated me.

- My grandmother died

- Unemployed and somehow catch COVID even though for the first time since the pandemic started im not interacting with hundreda of people regularly? Completely kicked my ass for about a week

- I completely cut off contact with my entire friend group including my best friend after a couple months of increased problematic behavior and now I'm alone with no one

- I start losing my vision in my left eye and when I get it checked at my usual doctor (because I had a history of this particular thing happening) I get told it's nothing serious

- another month or so later I'm down a third of my vision and get a second opinion. They immediately catch the problem (same as I had before) and I'm rushed to the hospital for emergency eye surgery. That's a loose term because I was stuck there for 3 days where no one told me anything and I couldn't eat and was essentially in a hallway.

- My most recent ex (M) tells me the reason we broke up was due to her accidentally getting pregnant and miscarrying within a few days and it messing everything up and caused her to lose it on me (understandably). We weren't ready for kids and it wouldn't have happened but still a fucked up thing to learn and confusing to think about.

- My most important ex (P), back from 2015 or so accidentally came back into my life briefly. We talked, it went poorly, as nice as it was to know they were alive they didn't mean to reveal they were checking up on me and everything went to shit. It ended with a fight and them blocking me. This is the same ex who cheated on me, had a kid with the guy less than a year later, then some time later used me for a few months before disappearing again, leading me to thinking they might be dead and them secretly checking up on me for who knows how long because they "care". I don't fucking know. I'm exhausted.

--- update 1 ---

- matched with a super attractive girl on a dating app. She was super into me. Everything seemed great.

- Then I get blocked out of nowhere. Accused of shit I never did. Freak out and explain and eventually fix things that I had no control over in the first place.

- Planned to meet. Talked the entire way to where we were meeting up. Maybe 5 minutes away she starts acting funny. Changes the meeting place further away. Posts weird statuses on Facebook. Stops replying. Blocks me again. Get threatened by her brother. I freak out again with no idea what's going on or if she's even okay.

- I write a long letter explaining how I'm not sure what happened but I'm extremely hurt and confused and would like to try again if she would just talk to me about what's going on.

- she eventually replies, apologizes. Blames her brother for sabotaging the meet. I explain I'm on my last chance with her. My emotional and mental health has been devastated and I can't take the stress anymore. We start talking again and make plans to meet the next day. I reply to one last message quickly while half awake as I pass out. But everything is fine.

- wake up the next day and I'm blocked. Again. She claims I'm a piece of shit. Selfish. Has a line of guys who want to be with her. Etc. After a mini panic attack I calm down and realize she has serious issues. She needs help and I need to walk away from this situation and wash my hands of it. Finally after a week of insanity and my mind being played with and fucked around I'm able to get back to good

--- update 2 ---

- been looking for a place to buy or rent for over a year and no luck. Every time I apply they say they're swamped and have like 80 applicants and it's just impossible to find a place unless I spend my entire income monthly. So I'm stuck where I am

- for a few months now it's been increasingly clear the business I work for is going down the drain. The owner is a joke, the people before the current staff signed shit contracts and combine that with the downturn in the industry everything's been going downhill and looking more and more like we're gonna go out of business. Ever since I started back in August every month at minimum 1 person has left and not been replaced and now we're bare bones and I just have no fucks left to give about this place which sucks because I fucking loved this job until a couple weeks ago.

- my boss, the one who I was the assistant to and literally was the only reason I got hired in the first place gave her notice a few days ago. It sucks. The job was already bullshit but I'm not willing to pick up her work on top of my own since they're not replacing her and just expecting things to be fine.

- the family cat, Grey, hurt his paw a couple weeks ago. Thankfully nothing major aside from some pain meds but still a bit of a worry. Then earlier this week he was acting funny and not looking good and he was rushed to the vet. Turns out he had a urinary blockage and even though it's fairly common they went over everything including worse case scenarios including euthanasia and I was devastated. I was barely able to hold myself together at work and not breakdown. Even though he's home now and doing much better I'm still depressed from it. When I visited him at the hospital there was a woman in the room next to us. In the middle of me and my dad talking I had to stop him because I heard her crying. She said she was sorry and sobbed and it was clear her pet was just put down and it killed me. I can't stop hearing that over and over.

- Probably to be continued cuz my life is a joke

[laz-laz-ace-pilot]

I posted 54,649 times in 2022

That's 33,170 more posts than 2021!

295 posts created (1%)

54,354 posts reblogged (99%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@cantwearflipflops

@pinkys-plan

@sulevinen

@spacerocksarethebestrocks

@screaming-velociraptor

I tagged 4,941 of my posts in 2022

#andor spoilers - 1,089 posts

#andor - 969 posts

#tbobf spoilers - 228 posts

#writing reference - 136 posts

#reference - 107 posts

#kenobi spoilers - 95 posts

#personal - 76 posts

#in the shadow of his brothers - 67 posts

#star wars - 60 posts

#drawing reference - 57 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#this has been followed by tory and rwandan propoganda. ‘we have no human rights violations. people are safe here’ no the fuck they aren’t??

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

I'm sorry to every other action movie star, but you will never be as cool or sexy as Diego Luna dive jumping and shooting a Deathtrooper fascist while in that jacket. It's over, go congratulate Mr Luna on the way out.

674 notes - Posted November 24, 2022

#4

Some Imperial somewhere: you're never going to believe who just organised a massive prison break

768 notes - Posted November 9, 2022

#3

There are so many details in Andor that I could pour over forever, especially in the prison. The language used is so corporate and sanitised - 'minimally invasive enforcement techniques' to describe electrocuting someone to death, 'on programme/ off programme', 'hot floor' - all of it defangs the reality of what they're living with for the oppressors (and maybe for the inmates to increase productivity?) but must drive the inmates mad.

There's tiny moments too; the fact they showed one guard being late due to a 'problem in tech', establishing that the idea that its a well oiled machine is just a thin veneer. The desperation of the inmates to hear news about themselves from outside and getting nothing. The use of what looks like sign language to communicate across blocks. The comment about if two inmates are in the same cell they both get fried - that could be read as just to stop inmates conspiring together, but also implies that inmates can't seek romantic, sexual or even friendly companionship. There's a homophobic edge to it, and further reinstates the prisons control over happiness. Pleasure can only be achieved through productivity for the Empire, everything else is forbidden.

And that doesn't even go into the set design, the costumes, the filming, the acting! Or how those scenes are juxtaposed against the luxury of Mon Mothma's apartment.

This show guys!

1,023 notes - Posted October 27, 2022

#2

I know people are seeing the post credit scene and lamenting that Cassian and Melshi were forced to build the very weapon that will kill them (which is true and I am definitely also 'people') but... it also confirmation that the prison escape directly impacted the development of the Death Star.

Like, we know that turning off the facility meant that Narkina 5 couldn't be fully operational for months, and the loss of 5000 prisoners who were all assembling large numbers of pieces a day... all of that had to hurt the production schedule, not to mention any further damage from Melshi or Cassian's testimonies reaching people inside and out of the prison system.

How long did it delay production? We don't know - it could have been weeks or months, or even just hours. But knowing how little time the Rebellion has once they learn of the Death Star's existence, and how the Empire was closing in, even before then - Jyn and team escape Jedha with the message and means to destroy the superweapon by literal seconds - I just feel like it counted.

The Death Star will one day kill both Cassian and Melshi, but they, and 5000 other men, also bought precious time for the Rebellion. Just enough time to get the plans off Scarif. Just enough time for some desert farmer boy to make the crucial shot.

2,580 notes - Posted November 24, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

ISB and Luthen playing 4D chess against each other:

Ferrix:

3,009 notes - Posted November 23, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[the-everlasting-downpour]

I. — Cognac.

Failure knows no bounds and makes its home here within me They Grieve — Wither

Martyrous In a trans Nero di Marte — Sisyphos

A dark evening in Port Nömbug. Wet concrete underfoot. Puddles, many puddles – thousands of puddles, as if it were meant to be. A population of fourteen thousand. Small four-story houses with families and singles living in separate huge apartments. The main contingent of the town is made up of paradisians. A few craft beer bars behind the back.

Three men are arguing with each other. One has clearly been drinking, big bags under his eyes from lack of sleep and working late. He is dressed in an unbuttoned, hobbled coat down to his ankles, with a knitted sweater underneath, black pants and shoes. He tries to keep his composure as a cultured intoxicated man might. The light of the streetlamps surrounds him and his two friends.

And the great northern sky stretches overhead.

Heated like a tungsten thread, the argument turns from the usual emotional dialog to a long great shout. One shout is layered on top of another. One of the trio, dressed in a sailor's uniform, hopes that people won't see it, that they won't call the police. The drunk one doesn't care about that – his soul has unfolded to the point of unbearability.

His scream pours into a fist connecting with the face of the sailor who tried to quiet him. A third man – a girl in a knit sweater and jeans – dodges his punch, goes behind his back, takes him under his arms. In an unspeakable floating frenzy, the drunken man begins screaming exhaustedly. Rising from the ground, the sailor punches the drunk in the face with all his might, knocking him unconscious.

The moon shows its pale face.

«Every morning is a new opportunity. Sometimes I don't think that's true, because I don't have any more opportunities. Unless I put a bullet in my head.» Diary of Newt Garfield, dated October 8, 2026.

Newt came to my shop about the first hour of the day, when the clientele is nowhere to be seen. He is a frequent visitor to my establishment, and I am always glad to meet him, though he said he was afraid he was annoying me with his frequent appearances. We shook hands, and he asked the familiar question:

— What's up with the car?

My face changed threefold – the smile came off it. Newt noticed this and became slightly concerned.

— Something very serious, wasn't it?

I just nodded and told him to follow me. Soon we were standing in front of his car, a reliable BMW from the nineties. Nice interior, powerful engine, the works. The hood was open, the center of attention was the unfinished cylinder block. There were strange marks inside each cylinder where the piston went.

I simply told him:

— Run your hand over it.

He looked at me first, then reached his hand inside one of the cylinders and felt the walls.

— How does it feel? – I asked him.

— Like… sandpaper.

— And it's like that all over the block.

He looked back at me sharply, his face a look of confusion and concern.

— You realize it can't be like that. We're gonna have to take the engine off and rebuild it. Not just the block, but the pistons as well.

— So what you’re trying to say is that the engine completely fucked?

— It is.

— That kills my plans, – Newt said with a sigh, tucking his hand into the pocket of his long coat.

— Why's that?

— You said you were going up north with your family for a couple weeks, – Newt said. – Maybe even a month.

— Yes, – I answered, – but not today!

Newt looked at me with a strange look of surprise.

— I'm leaving on Friday, – I explained. – Today is only Tuesday. I'll get my brother and my son to help me – we'll fix your car and only then go up north to visit our loved ones.

— I see. – He held out his hand to me. – Thank you very much.

I shook his hand. He waved goodbye and then disappeared from my sight. Soon, when the rhythm of my heart matched the pulsation of the returning silence, I went outside, lit a cigarette, and looked up at the sky. It was gray and breezy.

«And whenever the wish appears, the will disappears.» Diary of Newt Garfield, dated October 8, 2026.

He met me around two o'clock in the afternoon.

The place where my place is located doesn't get many visitors (unless it's on holidays, and even then it's not a sure thing – a lot of people just forget they exist), and sometimes I think about just shutting down the business, ditching my newfound friends, and going back to my country.

And that's what I would have done if it weren't for him.

Even though we haven't known each other that long (only a year), we're already thick as thieves. Once we were glued together, we'll never be unglued again. And he came to me one rainy evening – drenched, he asked for a cup of coffee, loudly placing two jsabs on the counter – loudly, almost with a slap, to hide the fact that his hands were shaking from the cold. I ordered and just watched: he gulped down the hot, scalding strong black coffee without sugar, left two more jsabs on the table, and disappeared out of the establishment back into the rain, turning into droplets.

And I figured that was the only time I would ever get to meet a rain man. But I was wrong.

He showed up at my place with weekly regularity, asked for the same thing – a cup of strong black coffee without sugar, always left a tip and disappeared. Between us there was not a single word, and we do not need words – we communicate and understand each other through looks, which could not but please (for several years of existence of my business, with any of the rare clients I have not had to reach such closeness).

And this day was no exception. It was overcast outside the window, I was smoking behind the counter, gradually losing hope that this day would bring anything at all. It was two o'clock in the afternoon. There was a desire to close prematurely, to return home and report to my father, who will once again tell me: fool, why I did not go to the teacher, as he did. The door opens abruptly, and he walks inside with a quick stride. He walks up to the counter, places the prepared two jsabs (a bill of exchange this time, which can't help but make me happy) on the counter. For a moment our gazes meet. I take the bill, and after a couple of minutes I hand him a cup of coffee. He silently drinks it, puts two more jsab (with the bill) on the table and leaves the place.

When he finally disappeared from sight, I left the place. I wanted to take a drag, but the cigarette in my fingers was already rotten. I threw the cigarette butt away and lit a new one. I looked up at the sky. It was even sadder in the blue haze.

«Dirty engine of thought, clean engine of blood. I'm still young, though I've been standing on the ground for half a century.» Diary of Newt Garfield dated October 8, 2026.

«I couldn't be happier that you are continuing with this therapy, even though you previously thought it wouldn't help you. During this session, I saw a change in your behavior – you became calmer and more rational. You seem to have started to go along with the darker thoughts of yours. Your alcoholism is still seen as a problem. I am trying to develop a method that will benefit both of us in our way. All I can say now is that that matter is all about timing now. As for me – you can be more independent now. You know the recommendations, so I'll take a back seat. You can still visit me, but now it will be optional. Keep up the good work!»

— Why I have to lie?..

«Sense is being lost with every passing second.» Diary of Newt Garfield dated October 8, 2026.

Alex A. wakes up at six o'clock in the morning in his house. He gets dressed and goes for a jog, and when he comes back, he takes a shower. When he comes out of the shower, he goes to the kitchen and eats breakfast. Then he'll go back to his room and start working on his next novel. After work, he'll then go out and then go to bed.

And so it has been for the tenth year.

Alex A. is an innovative writer from the cold Russian countryside. Slowly but surely, in Paradise and on the territory of his vast homeland, he released several books, immediately put in the level of cult writers of the northern lands. What set him apart from other authors was his lack of greed and maximum anonymity – no one from outside his circle of friends and acquaintances could get to him, even if they wanted to.

And in that circle of friends, surprisingly small, but honest with him and with himself, Newt found himself. They'd met at some trade show about four months ago-and they still walked shoulder to shoulder.

Alex A. sat in the kitchen, drinking his bitter herbal tea. The phone was lying next to him, and if Alex A. had been a dozen years younger, he would have had a manic desire to take it in his hand and browse the Internet, in order to somehow spend these quiet minutes. However, Alex A. has grown out of this obsession, and now he wants nothing – only calmness, peace. A chance to leave the world and go to his Nirvana.

Suddenly, the doorbell rang. Alex A. slowly and quietly put the mug on the table. In confusion, he almost grabbed the gun lying nearby. Who it could be was the main question in his mind.

— It's open! – he shouted.

The door opened. Newt appeared from behind it, reflecting the light from his glass eye into Alex A.'s face.

— Oh, it's you, – Alex A. said, unsurprised. – Come in, no need to fuck around at my porch.

Newt shyly stepped inside, took off his shoes, coat, and hat. Walked into the kitchen, sat down next to him, said hello to the writer by the hand. They started talking.

And they talked for a short time, but it felt like hours. They talked about everything that came under the hand of consciousness. The living room and kitchen became brighter. The tea cooled slightly.

Words were lost, and so was the meaning. An unbearable lightness of being. The cautious hand of consciousness pored over the options for continuation. Neural connections succumbed to the pulsing rhythm of music played through a non-existent turntable. Quietly becoming insane.

Thank goodness it all stopped quickly. Newt, under the pretext «I have to go, I have other things to do», promptly got up from his chair, walked out into the hallway. Alex slowly followed him and noticed him putting on his hat.

— Ah, answer me one last question, – Newt said, with a smug smile. – Your girlfriend's coochie – is it really candy-sweet?

Alex A. stood with a nonchalant expression on his face. It was like he knew Newt was going to say that.

— It's funny, it's really funny, – he said sarcastically and absentmindedly. – You know what's funnier, though?

— What? – Newt asked.

— You're almost half a century old and you can't put your fucking past behind you.

Newt stood up in exasperation. The phrase, said with almost no emotion, echoed inside his skull. Alex A. snapped his fingers and said as he walked away:

— Now that's really funny.

«White king, black queen. The illusory utopia of our lives.» Diary of Newt Garfield dated October 8, 2026.

After watching the play, the Captain said goodbye to Helinia and went home. He didn't feel bad, but he didn't feel good either. It wasn't that the actors, the sets, the soundtrack, or the whole show in general had failed his expectations – he was just tired, and so he couldn't react normally to this theatrical beauty that Helinia had encouraged him to see.

Looking around, he saw nothing but buildings, as if fluorescent-lit, and street lamps that scared him away with their light. The captain wrapped himself in his uniform and quickened his step. He was uncomfortable with the light of these lamps and even more so with the fluorescent lights that surrounded the buildings as if they were divine beings.

It reminded him of a fairy tale he had heard a long time ago. The tale of the sailor who met the sea serpent. The tale of the sailor who went mad in the lonely and identical sea. A tale that hid a creepiness under the cover of simple words and wrong truths. I was a sailor for nothing, the Captain sometimes thought, inside the walls of his apartment.

Suddenly, stopping, he noticed that he was in an unfamiliar neighborhood. Where the houses were taller than anything else in the world. Where there wasn't even a moon, and where the clouds pressed down on consciousness with a rabid, armed hammer. Consciousness, like the Captain, began to get lost among these high-rises, began to imagine some creatures existing beyond the boundaries of vision. Turn around and there stands Death, faithful to us all.

But suddenly he noticed a dim luminescent glow in the sky, which surrounded one of the black buildings with a halo. With shaky hands he pulled out his phone and turned on his flashlight, the Captain moved quickly, almost running, toward the building. The cars around seemed to be deformed creatures of metallic flesh and mechanical existence. When he reached the heavy metal door of this high-rise, the Captain noticed the sign: 14/2 Manserrate St. Right now he was standing at the foot of the high-rise where his alcoholic friend lived.

With ease in mind and body, the captain opened the heavy door, stepped inside. The stomp of his boots echoed throughout the stairwell. Climbing the three steps up, he walked to the elevator. There was duct tape on the doors and a sign that said: «NON-FUNCTIONAL». Disappointed by this fact, the Captain sighed and began to climb up the stairs.

Soon, Captain made his way up to the seventh floor, where Newt's apartment was located. He rested his hand on the railing, exhaled, and looked through the gap between the flights. The distance was vast. The captain, removing his hand from the railing to his coat pocket, looked around the doors, searching for the right one. Finding one, he approached, knocked politely. Silence – drinking, Captain thought, and glanced at the knob, which meant the door was not closed. He pushed the doorknob and stepped inside.

The apartment was quiet and dark. As his vision slowly adjusted to the darkness, Captain took off his shoes and carefully left them right by the door. He looked into the living room – no one was there, only the unshaded windows allowed him to see the deep dark blue color of the evening sky. He went into the kitchen and found Newt staring dumbly at his kitchen table, where there was an empty glass and a bottle of brandy. The captain sat down beside him, put his hand on the table and, looking at his drunken friend for a moment, said:

— This is the tenth year we have lived here. It's been about fourteen since her death and his disappearance. You've grown up, found a decent hobby that can pay for your needs, are among good and loyal friends. Yet you continue to brood over the past.

The captain took the bottle of cognac, examined the labels on both sides, stood up and put it back in the refrigerator.

— And we, – Captain continued, sighing, – are trying to get you out of this… self-assembled hell.

Captain returned to his seat. He moved closer to Newt, placing his one hand on the other.

— We don't care that you don't think anything will work. We don't care about your pleas to leave you alone. You're in a big delusion if you think alcoholism will solve your problems. Even if there is the tiniest chance of freedom, we will go after it. We'll try, we'll make mistakes and start over, but we'll fight to the end.

Newt continued to stare dumbly into his desk. He wasn't listening. He couldn't listen. All sound was drowned out by the churning of blood and the sounds of electrons transferring across neural connections. Captain lowered his gaze for a moment, thinking about what to say next, but soon came to the conclusion that everything necessary had been said. He stood up, and before he left, he reached into his pocket and said:

— Some stranger handed me this letter. – Captain took out a sealed flat envelope. Says it's addressed to you. Read it tomorrow and tell me what's in it.

Captain left the letter on the table, rubbed Newt's shoulder, and, after glancing at him for the last time today, left the apartment.

«Newt. I don't know if this letter will get to you or not, and I don't know if you'll read it…. …But if it does, if you're reading it, know that your son is alive…»

[dramartist]

Temptation.

For the first couple of months it's purely tempting. "Hey, you should try this- i haven't felt stressed about homework at all!" "God it's been a relief not having so many fights around the house. You should really try some." "Woah, I'm sorry that happened to you. If it gets to be too much, why don't you try some of this? It'll help ease your pain..."

Time and time again, everywhere I turned, everyone was on and talking about Euphoria. As the name suggests, it's a seemingly harmless drug that won't let anyone feel sadness. Not just sadness, but stress, shame, embarrassment, fear, anger, sickness, any negative emotion you could think of. Instead, they're left feeling happy, prideful, confident, calm, anything feel-good. They just take a pill and suddenly all their problems go away. It's super easily accessible and cheap. Hell, even doctors have started to recommend it in minor treatments.

And it just... doesn't sit right with me. This... craze, this addiction, it's uncomfortable. It changes people. And I just feel like I'm getting left behind. That's why it's been so hard to not just give in and take it. So, so hard. Because, just one pill every couple of days, and everything is all better? Wrong.

I... had a friend- a best friend - who has been my friend since preschool. He was like my little brother in the way we got along and I took care of him. He was always so earnest, but so shy and scared of talking to other kids. Sometimes I'd get a little too aggressive in pushing him to make friends, but it worked in the long run. When we hit highschool, he would struggle tons with schoolwork and teasing from other kids. I guess he was embarrassed by me a few times whenever I'd chew people out for him, but that's my best friend- I wasn't going to let his highschool years be completely awful. As we got to planning our college careers, he confided in me about his depression and fears of the future. I was heartbroken for him, but I stayed by his side as we talked for hours and cried for hours that night. It was healthy. We were making progress.

And then Euphoria was sweeping the nation. All of a sudden people were happier, less destructive. It was all anyone talked about in just the first week. All the outcries and controversies were practically quelled by the end of the month, and that was terrifying in and of itself. After all, a wonder drug that no one spoke out about? It was too good to be true.

I'd brought up my worries to my friend a few times as we'd hang out stressing over finals in my dorm, voiced my discomfort about it, contemplated caving to it as a joke. And he seemed all for it.

"What... why?!" I had asked.

"Why not?" He responded. "If it's like you said, it's doesn't look like it's hurting anyone. It... actually sounds like a relief to just... not feel anything."

"It doesn't just take away your feelings-" I corrected, "it stops you from feeling bad. And makes you feel good? I guess. As a replacement, because I mean, people still feel something. Otherwise they wouldn't get hooked on it. Feeling nothing would be unnatural."

We continued scrolling on our laptops in silence, writing notes down and snacking on popcorn from the microwave I snuck in.

"But... feeling nothing isn't unnatural. It happens," he spoke finally, not looking me in the face. "And it's better than feeling bad. But now that there's a drug out there better than feeling nothing, than feeling bad? That makes you feel good? Why shouldn't you take it?"

"Cuz it's not right," I said, "we're supposed to feel the bad along with the good. Like, take this exam. Sure I'm panicking a little because I have no god damn idea what this article is talking about and if I fail this I'm gonna lose my scholarship benefits..."

"..."

"..."

"Is there supposed to be a 'But-' in there somewhere?"

I tossed a popcorn kernel at his face.

"Buuuuut, if I actually pass, I'll feel like- like a fucking god."

"Real humble-"

"You know what I mean. A sense of accomplishment is a thousand times better because I struggled! Because I was at the lowest of my lows and I came out on top! That feel-good drug is just going to diminish that and I'll learn nothing. Hell, it'd probably only make me feel happy that I fail and lose scholarship benefits, and suddenly I'm homeless, all with a smile on my face."

I waited to see what he would say, but he was lost in thought at the time, frowning at something I said. He was probably thinking of something to say then, a wise way to make this drug make sense to me so I wouldn't be so stubborn and stupid about it. But, in my hasty assumptions, I falsely accused him of having taken the drug before. Of him betraying me after I expressed my discomfort about it. And... the fight got ugly.

Thinking back on it now, he was probably struggling a lot and genuinely wanted to try the drug. He was probably trying to talk to me about his feelings about it, but I just kept cutting him off thinking about his betrayal. He's always had things worse than me, and was probably trying to tell me something when he mentioned that he felt nothing a lot. As soon as I realized that, I felt sick to my stomach. I felt stupid. It was like all that progress we made about him trusting me to be a safe place to talk about his feelings was just shat on, and it was entirely my fault.

I waited to go confront him after that. It didn't feel right to see him that night after he stormed out of my room; best to give him space. I waited the next day too, trying to think up how exactly I was going to apologize for hurting him while I was busy with studying and work. Then by the next day, when I caught him at lunch and I was absolutely torn up and guilty for what I'd done, I was already too late.

I approached him, but already the vibe was... unnervingly positive. He was with perfect posture, savoring the meal in front of him. A full plate, as opposed to a cup of ramen noodles like usual. He was well groomed, hair slicked back with gel and not drooping in front of his eyes. His signature hoodie was no where to be found, and instead wore a plain black tee and jeans that weren't ripped and weren't doodled on. He still looked like himself... but as though he actually took care and put time into his appearance. He was almost glowing too.

"You done staring?" He said, waving for me to sit down.

I did so, mustering up the courage to apologize, but I just couldn't get over how he looked. He looked... healthy. Unburdened. And not the least bit concerned that we had a major fight where I undermined his feelings.

(Edit: I clicked post instead of save, so here's the rest of what I wanted to write.)

It was... difficult to meet his eyes, when usually it would be him who couldn't look at me. Suddenly, I was all too aware of my own baggy clothes, food stains on my shirt and faded sweat pants. My hair felt frizzy since I left it down and unbrushed. I was all too aware of the tiredness of my eyes, a twitch holding onto the folds of my eye bags. I stared at his plate and felt how empty my stomach was, tightening more as I tried to fight off a growl.

"I'm... really sorry about-"

"I forgive you."

I shot my head up, never having been interrupted before. Plus the forgiveness was... unexpected.

"I'll be honest," he continued, "although before I hadn't used Euphoria, it really hurt to hear you talk at me like I was evil for taking something so untrustworthy. But I'm not hurt by it anymore, because I finally did take it. You're just scared about something you don't know about, and that's okay. I forgive you for that."

I flinched, his words having stung me. But I just... couldn't place why.

"I'm not... scared," I responded, feeling my mouth go dry as my apology left my mind completely. "I- I- it's not about being scared, it's about the importance of natural feelings. That we're supposed to let ourselves feel negative emotions instead of just skipping out on them completely-"

"Now look, before you continue and refuse to let me finish, let me shed some light," he placed his fork down and sat even more upright than he already was. "As someone who has struggled with depression, who is struggling, having something like this is... a blessing. I have never had the ability to live happily, or even neutrally- because let's be real, no one can be happy all the time. I was drowning in negative emotions. We've talked a few times about it, and you've always tried to support me, and I appreciate that. But you aren't me- you can't understand how hard it was to be filled with a spark of hope from your many encouragements, to going back under after seeing what a mess my life was. I had no energy for anything. I was constantly doubting my existence and whether I'll ever be able to amount to anything. I can't even afford a therapist, even though we tried to come up with a plan- I just couldn't bring myself to take that first step. But this..." He held up a transparent, teal looking pill and reached out to press it into my hand, "genuinely helps. I looked into it as best I can, and I'll admit I was a little rash because of our argument that day, but I've never felt so energetic before!"

"As soon as I took it, it no longer felt miserable to see myself in the mirror. I was motivated to make changes about myself that I was previously unhappy about. I could appreciate my style, I could appreciate my looks. I was proud to be able to fix my bed in the morning, to cook myself some food. To finally tell my parents that I love and forgive them. All I was missing was being able to talk to you, and even then, I was excited and eager to finally see you again."

I was winded.

Full blown, time frozen, just shocked. He'd taken Euphoria because of our fight. I didn't even get to properly apologize, he just moved on without me.

Perhaps if I were a better person, if I gave in to taking it right then and there, I wouldn't be feeling so awful about everything now. I wouldn't have jumped up so quickly and thrown the pill back in his face. I wouldn't have hurt my leg tripping over that same chair and swatted his hand away as he tried to help me. He was only trying to help. But it just didn't feel right. Maybe if I had taken it, I would have come to accept that this version of him was healthy for him, or maybe it's what he always would have been if he wasn't so depressed. But if he was always like that, then just how much of our friendship was him simply tolerating me? I mean, he was just so confident and sure of himself. He spoke more than I had ever heard him speak before. Was that because I really never let him speak his mind? Was I always bad for him?

...

Look, the point is, everything is different now. Everyone is different. Sure things are... easier. Maybe I am scared. But- but bad things still happen all the time, and it's so good damn unnerving to see all these smiles like everything will be okay. People just look at a difficult situation, pop a pill, and suddenly are all sunshine and rainbows about it, but the problem is still there. It just... it doesn't feel right. I don't get it.

And that's when the temptation is strongest. But it's not fair- it's not right. Being happy shouldn't be that easy. There's nothing to learn from it being that easy...

Is there?

Year 2025. A new drug was recently discovered that makes you unable to feel negative emotions for a few days without any drawbacks to your health. It’s easy to produce and costs like a pack of gum. Everyone takes it. But you absolutely don’t want to.