#most normal lesbian decision

[tac-bat]

butch sah >:3

[littlebigmouse]

One worldbuilding detail Soul Eater really had going for it was the way they explained everyone having weird, unique and horror-movie inspired names such as Soul Eater, Black*Star, Franken Stein.

The school all these kids attend allows them to sign up with any name they want and to change their names once every six months.

You better believe if I were a thirteen year old with the ability to turn into a scythe and eat monster souls I'd call myself Soul Eater too. "But isn't his original name 'Soul Evans'? That's already a weird first name." He's from a family of musicians. He probably has a cousin called R'n'B.

It also made for the very nice touches in charaterisation where you'd see a character calling himself "Ox Ford" and knew immediately which brand of arrogant, insufferable child-prodigy this guy represented and you'd be absolutely right. Why is there a girl who can turn into a lantern who's name is "Jackie O'Lantern"? Because she's the funniest teenager on the squad.

Shoutout to Maka Albarn for taking her education so seriously she decided to not get herself a fun name, and to Justin Law, who let's say, subverted expectations.

It also just makes total sense for their wacky and non-conforming headmaster to not give a shit about names, or birth names, or gender norms. Death said trans rights, yo.

[tomatomagica]

Help Niya & Charley get out of Georgia (country)

queer people are getting the short end of the stick again so we'd appreciate some help in our move 🙏

Hi! we're Niya and Charley, a bisexual Russian woman and lesbian American enby living in Batumi, Georgia, for the past two years. We've been in a loving relationship for 8 year now.

Our original plan was for Niya to get a fiancée Visa to move to the US, but that was placed on hold indefinitely due to the pandemic and a certain Russian territorial conflict making it difficult for Russians to obtain a visa through embassies. At the time, Georgia seemed like the best alternative, and, as charming as our stay has been for the most part, it is increasingly becoming unsafe for LGBT couples. A new bill was passed trying to make "LGBT propaganda" illegal, which in Niya's experience as a Russian, means "anything they don't like, they can claim is illegal". While Georgia's president does plan to veto this bill, it has been stirring up anger and unnecessary attention to queer people regardless and led to a spike in discriminatory violence already. Even before things got this bad, Charley has had rocks thrown at them, screamed at, and been refused entry to public places for wearing normal feminine clothes.

We are currently looking into moving to Mexico, as that is another place both of us have easy access to a half year visa. Moving countries has never been an easy decision, but we've done it before, and with your help, we can do it again, for the sake of our safety.

Thank you!

[muxshwriting]

the way i loved only you (pt. ii)

Eloise Bridgerton x fem!reader

summary: you never thought you’d find someone again, let alone find someone in a girl from a past you’d left behind || warnings: the lesbians are lesbianing || word count: 1443 || masterlist

part one

"You're writing to her?" Theo asked, outraged.

You didn't see the problem. "Yes? She asked me to, so I will."

"She abandoned you!" He cried. "And Abigail!" Theo was livid. He had cared for you and Abigail when your first love had abandoned you and left you nothing. He never wanted to see it happen to you again and now Eloise had left you in the dark and delivered her words through a letter. A letter. She didn't even have the courage to escape her home and tell you her words to her face.

"She had to." You tried to explain. "You don't understand the Ton Theo, if she came to see us now, she would never be allowed back into society."

"You left society."

You face became serious. "And I would never wish that on another person when they can have a happy and fulfilling life inside society. I did what I thought I had to, sometimes I regret that decision. But I made it, no one made that choice for me."

Months passed, told through letters between friends, letter between confidantes, letters between lovers.

Whereas before, Eloise could be found pouring over copies of Whistledown or nose scrunched into a novel, she now analysed your letters and scrutinised her responses. But Eloise was not the only person you wrote letters to. You also wrote letters to your mother's dearest friend, Lady Agatha Danbury.

It had been going on for years, but not very often. You wrote to comfort Lady Danbury in the knowledge that you were alive and doing well. You told her of Abigail when she was born, of your friendship with Theo and your contentment with your simple life. You wouldn't allow her to see you, nor go and visit her. She knew where you were, knew you were safe and provided for by an allowance your father thought was enough to benefit his spinster daughter who he wanted nothing to do with.

In our father's eyes, you travelled to the countryside and left society in shame that you were not his son. He was happy to send you money and yet otherwise pretend you did not exist. This unlikely and bizarre arrangement benefitted you in ways you couldn't imagine.

Your letters to Lady Danbury were every few months, at most. But when Lady Danbury was at Bridgerton House she spotted a familiar signature scrawled at the bottom of a letter Eloise Bridgerton carried so tenderly.

"Keeping up to date with your correspondence Miss Eloise?"

Eloise jumped, not noticing the dowager behind her. "Lady Danbury. I am simply writing a letter to a... friend."

"A friend." Lady Danbury stated slowly. "A friend called Y/N Y/L/N working in a printing shop in Hampstead."

"Wha- How? How do you know of Y/N?"

"Y/N is the daughter of Lord Harding, silly girl. I made a promise to her mother that I would always look out for her. I would be a terrible godmother if I didn't know where she was."

"Godmother? But Y/N-"

"Never mentioned me? She rarely does. I don't blame her, of course. We haven't seen each other in years."

"But-"

"Now," Lady Danbury lowered herself into a chair next to Eloise. "Would you like to see her?"

Eloise's eyes widened as she took in the words she was hearing. "Yes! Wait- No. I- I can't jeopardise my famil-"

"Don't worry about that." She assured. "It's time I see my goddaughter face to face."

If there was anything Y/N was expecting on a normal day at the printing shop, it wasn't Lady Danbury personally walking through the front doors. And it definitely wasn't the order she gave to arrive at her house the next day for tea. You weren't quite sure what was going on but accepted the older woman's hug and invitation before she was leaving the shop like she had never been there in the first place.

Eloise received the summons by Lady Danbury later that day, requiring her presence for the next day. She spent the rest of the day almost tearing her hair out with nervousness for finally being able to see you again. And, as she often did on restless nights, she found herself rocking on the swing in the garden.

Benedict found her out there when her skin was cool to touch and the dew had began forming on blades of grass.

"Everything alright sister?"

Eloise turned sharply to face him, not expecting the interruption. "Everything's fine."

"Of course." Benedict joined her on his own swing. "Nothing to do with the girl you had me visit last year, the girl you've been writing letters to ever since?"

"Y/N." Your name passed from her lips in a whisper, a word holding such fondness and love that Benedict almost didn't recognise the girl beside him. "I am seeing her tomorrow." She told him like it was a secret, never to be uttered above a murmur.

"You are going to the shop?"

"No." She calmed her brother's racing heart. "Lady Danbury is hosting us."

"Lady Danbury??"

Eloise couldn't hold her laugh at the situation. "Y/N is Lady Danbury's goddaughter, as it would happen. She's the forgotten daughter of Lord Harding."

"Lord Harding who sent his daughter abroad after he was given a son?"

"Who's daughter ran away from society when she was seventeen." Eloise corrected. "And she's got a daughter of her own, a beautiful babe called Abigail."

"But you hate babies." Benedict huffed. "And children." He added.

Eloise tipped her head back to the night sky. "Not her."

Benedict realised that the conversation wasn't going to convince Eloise to head inside anytime soon. She was too caught up in her own mind to be persuaded of anything as of now. He stood, wished his sister goodnight and then headed to his own bed, welcoming the warmth of a good fire.

The next day happened all too quickly and not quick enough. Eloise paced in Lady Danbury's living room, waiting for the moment that you would walk through the front door. Lady Danbury had enough sense to leave her alone to her thoughts so that your reunion wouldn't be watched by prying eyes. A quiet knock at the door had Eloise's head snapping towards the noise. The door was pushed ajar as you slipped inside.

In the instance your eyes met hers, the world ceased to spin and all that was wrong in the world was resolved. Your minds went quiet as your only thought became her and hers was only you. The two of you rushed towards each other, crumbling into each others arms. All the emotions of the last months that you had poured into letters now rose to the surface.

"I'm sor-"

The first words from her lips shouldn't be an apology. You stepped into her space and stopped her from talking, pressing your lips against hers. You feel her gasp before sinking into your kiss and reciprocating with double the intensity. Your lungs were screaming for air as you pulled away, never more than an inch from her face as you gasped.

"I love you." You confess.

Eloise's eyelashes flutter slightly. "I love you too."

"I wish I could run away with you." You regret the utterance as soon as you say it, knowing you shouldn't ask her to forsake her life here just for you.

"Yes." Her response is immediate. "Anything. I would do anything and be anything for you. Everything changes when I look at you. It's not gravity holding me down, it's you." She's begging you.

Tears spring. "We can't-" You try and reason.

The door suddenly opened and the two of you sprung apart. Lady Danbury walked in, her cane tapping on the ground.

"That is why I asked you both here. It's more than a simple reunion." She announced. "If you should wish, you could build a life outside of London for both of you, together."

"What about Abigail?" You ask, worried about your daughter.

"She'd come with you, naturally. But you'd both be free to be yourselves, away from society. I'd ensure you'd never have to worry again."

You looked at her in shock. "You would do that for us?"

"I think I owe you for the last three years, no?"

There was a small cottage in the countryside a few hours carriage ride away from London. It was perfect, a simple home where you and Eloise could raise your daughter without fear and without judgement. Lady Danbury ensured Theo could visit you all whenever he liked an he never missed an opportunity to come and see Abigail.

Everyone was happy, everyone was safe. Life was good.

i don't know how to end things

taglist: @baylegend6 @forever-paramore28

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Bridget Phetasy

Published: Jun 22, 2023

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably witnessed the backlash to Pride. There have been mass boycotts of Bud Light after the beer company partnered with trans woman and TikTok influencer, Dylan Mulvaney, sending her a custom can to celebrate her first year of “girlhood.” Target was next to come under fire for its Pride display targeting children and their “tuck-friendly” bathing suits for women. 

This set the stage for the most divisive Pride month in some time. First, the boycotts. Then videos of angry parents at school boards went viral. Conservative radio hosts and commentators vowed to make Pride “toxic” to brands. But it’s not just conservatives who are pushing back; according to a recent Gallup poll, even Democrats have seen a drop in the acceptance of same-sex relations.

Which begs the question: what happened to Pride? After decades of progress for gay rights, growing acceptance of gay marriage and the normalization of same-sex relationships, Pride is unexpectedly political again. Why?

In search of an answer, I spoke to prominent LGBT thinkers and writers, many of them dissenting voices when judged against the views of many LGBT advocacy groups. Their answers surprised me. Across the board they all said some version of “this was inevitable.”

“When it comes to gay issues, conservatives largely lost the culture war,” Katie Herzog observes. “But something about recent trends has reignited that passion — and issues that seemed resolved are up for debate again. I guess the Nineties really are back.”

“The core reason for the backlash is pretty simple: children,” Andrew Sullivan explains. “The attempt to indoctrinate children in gender ideology and to trans them on the verge of puberty has changed the debate. Start indoctrinating and transing children… and you will re-energize one of the oldest homophobic tropes there is: ‘gays are child molesters.’”

Glenn Greenwald largely agrees: “What destroyed the culture war consensus was their cynical and self-interested decision to transform the LGBT cause into one that no longer focused on the autonomy of adult Americans to live freely — which most people support — but instead to demand the right to influence and indoctrinate other people’s children.”

“They are calling them ‘trans kids’ and medicalizing them at an early age. Lying about puberty blockers. Lying about young girls getting irreversible surgery and so on,” says trans man Buck Angel.

In 2015, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriages, and with bipartisan support it seemed there was a consensus on this one culture war issue, as well as broad support for the legal rights of trans adults to be free from discrimination. The war was largely won. But rather than shutting up shop or refocusing their efforts on parts of the world where gay and lesbian people faced serious discrimination, activists and NGOs moved onto the transgender issue.

“There are countries in the world where you can be executed for being gay,” says James Kirchick, author of Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington. “That’s what the Human Rights Campaign [America’s foremost LGBT campaign group] should be saving its ire for.”

An average person will likely refer to this shift as “woke” and wonder how “the trans stuff” is suddenly everywhere, all at once. Parents are baffled when three out of four of their twelve-year-old daughter’s friend group “identify” as boys or, even more confusingly, nonbinary. People started putting pronouns in their social media bios, on their work résumés and in their email signatures. Biological men are competing in women’s sports and being placed in women’s prisons. In medical magazines and birthing classes, women are suddenly referred to by dehumanizing terms such as “birthing persons” and “uterus havers.”

“It’s like a new enforced public holiday thing and people smell a rat,” says Douglas Murray. “The wiser people realize that something weird is being smuggled in. This isn’t just like, ‘don’t beat up your gay neighbor.’ It’s like ‘there is no such thing as gender.’ ‘There is no such thing as sex.’”

We’ve arrived here thanks to a confluence of forces. Perpetual victimhood pushed by activist groups that need a reason to exist and continue collecting money. The corporatization of Pride. The hijacking of the movement by gender ideology.

“You can’t dress toddlers up in extreme political propaganda while lecturing the parents on committing child abuse for not transitioning their kids and expect everyone to keep quiet,” trans writer Chad Felix Greene tells me.

To a normal, not especially political person going about their life, it can seem like gay culture is everywhere. Pride was once just a day to have fun, go to a parade, and “for those who have just come out as a way to cement their self-confidence in public” as Sullivan says. Now every June it becomes “the Holy Month of Pride” as Murray dubs it. Corporations change their social media logos to rainbows (unless, of course, it’s their Saudi account). Pride™️ has become so accepted it’s inescapable. 

On the surface this might look like capitalism at work. These companies just want the gay dollar! Though there’s some truth to that, there’s also an undertow dragging these huge corporations down. They aren’t making decisions that are in the best interest of their shareholders; they are acting out of concern for their social credit score.

“These corporations aren’t getting any gay dollars from these fiascos. Gays hate corporations at Pride,” said publicist Mitchell Jackson. “Worst of all, these corporate campaigns just backfire on LGBTQ people. Gay rights are now being threatened again because big-box stores needed to sell tucking underwear.”

Jackson is exasperated that corporations listen to the advocacy groups in an attempt to do the right thing: “Corporations go to these groups for advice, hoping to avoid a woke controversy, and they get led into a hornet’s nest — and then these non-profits can fundraise off of the Bud Light controversy of the week.”

“What changed is that LGBT activist groups could not afford to obtain victory,” Greenwald says. “When activist groups win, their reason for existing, and their large budgets and salaries, dry up. They always have to push debates into whatever places Americans resist. They also have to be losing, have a claim to victimhood, a reason to assert that they are righting the bigotry of Americans.”

“It’s so tragic because we’ve reached this moment when gay people have finally won mainstream acceptance for the first time in, like, 2,000 years of history,” Kirchick said. “It’s OK to be gay pretty much everywhere in America — and there are obviously pockets where it’s still a problem, I’m not gonna deny that — but majorities of Republicans support gay marriage. I’ve seen it in my own life as a thirty-nine-year-old gay man: it’s a lot easier to be gay now than it was six years ago. And just when we’ve reached this moment, these activists have decided, in our name as gay people, to just piss off America and to make them think that we are a threat to their children.”

“I am so upset that my community has been co-opted and has been used for some other agenda,” Angel told me. “The work we have done to get here is profound and should never be forgotten. All we want is to live our lives just like you, but of course that’s not what you see now with the people driving the LGBTQIA+++++ bus.”

The real slippery slope hasn’t been the gay rights movement, as right-wing pundits often say. “When I see some of them going after Pride, they appear to blame gay people for the nonsense peddled in the name of Pride today — when in truth gay people are the victims of it,” comedian Andrew Doyle said. 

At the heart of the problem is the fact that LGBT was never the package deal that most people consider it to be. “LGBT people don’t exist,” says Sullivan. “We’re very different from each other.”

Generally speaking, it’s “the Ts and the Qs” that insist it’s all or nothing. Trans activists demand acquiescence to all their demands no matter how insane and pseudo-scientific, push to allow men in women’s shelters and allow kids to be put on puberty hormones or you’re committing genocide. People are are increasingly saying, “OK — it’s nothing then.”

“I think gays and women in general are bearing the brunt of the gender ideology nonsense,” Murray said. “And it has itself piggybacked like some kind of parasitic entity onto gay rights.”

“Gender identity ideology is essentially anti-gay,” said Doyle. “Gay rights were secured through the recognition that a minority of people are instinctively orientated towards members of their own sex. Gender identity ideology seeks to break down the very notion of biological sex and claim that it is unimportant.”

Underneath the rainbow facade are illiberal forces such as “queer theory” that have been eroding the classically liberal foundation of the original civil rights movement that won gay and trans folks the rights they have now. We’ve gone from “love is love” to trans women insisting if a lesbian doesn’t want to suck their lady dick, they’re a fascist. 

If you’re confused, that’s the point; confusion and contradiction are features, not bugs. In order to understand how this happened, and why, you need specialized knowledge. The average person can’t explain exactly what’s going on, because it’s nonsensical, you can only intuit it; but call it out and you’re dubbed a bigot — and so you retreat, keeping your head down while the gender borg marches on.

The temperature has been raised further by the Biden adminstration’s unambiguous embrace of this ideology. The White House is quick to paint anyone doubting the wisdom of what they euphemistically call “gender-affirming care” for minors as a knuckle-dragger, even though the overwhelming majority of Americans support a ban on such care and many liberal, tolerant European countries have banned it or scaled it back.

No wonder dyed-in-the-wool Democrats who disagree with the idea of biological men in women’s spaces — or are confused about the pseudo-religious idea that you were born in the wrong body, and wonder whether or not pausing puberty is even possible — are terrified to speak out. 

“It was once ‘live-and-let-live’ said Sullivan, “Now it’s ‘embrace the ideology — or else.’”

Herein lies the problem with Pride. You can no longer opt out of the ideology. The trans activism changed everything. It is coercive. It is everywhere. Big Tech acts as an enforcer, in conjunction with the state, policing language, pronouns, exacting punishments for refusing to repeat the mantras “trans women are women” and “gender-affirming care is reproductive freedom.”

“I know many gay activists from yesteryear who are coming out of retirement to address this new anti-gay movement which has usurped Pride,” said Doyle. “It doesn’t help that all criticism of Pride is interpreted as homophobic or transphobic. These are important conversations. Like most culture-war issues, we need to stop thinking of this in terms of ‘left’ and ‘right’. These things are irrelevant. There are left-wing gay people and right-wing gay people — and all of them are harmed by Pride in its current form.”

The backlash is veering into a full-blown moral panic. “I’m seeing a lot more people online talking about gay people as though we are all pedophiles who want to groom children into becoming cross-dressing strippers, and a lot of what’s going on feels like good old-fashioned bigotry rearing its ugly head once again,” said Herzog.

Might the public backlash to Pride push moderates and independents to the left the way the overturning of Roe v. Wade did? From an optics perspective, attacking Pride can often look like attacking the whole LGBT community; just from what I’ve witnessed online, an unsettling amount of homophobia is rearing its head, using boycotts as cover for bigotry. Last week a video went viral that showed Muslim children stomping on the rainbow flag while their parents cheered them on.

“I don’t want to name names but there are certain conservative commentators who are using the backlash against LGBTQIA plus to include a backlash against gays,” says Murray. “But I think it’s inevitable because not enough gays try to do the decoupling that I’ve tried to do myself in recent years and say, ‘Sorry, not my party.’”

Yet the decoupling has begun and it seems to be the only way to navigate our way out of this moment without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. #LGBwithouttheTQ and the #LGB have been trending on Twitter almost every day in June. Even if people don’t understand the forces at work, I think most Americans are smart enough to make the distinction between their gay loved ones and friends and some of the more insane gender stuff.

Like most things, this requires nuance. “You have to say, ‘we respect the rights of adults to undergo a gender transition,’” says Kirchick. “And ‘we want full equality and non-discrimination for transgender people in society, but there are real live debates about at what age it’s appropriate to administer these sorts of medical treatment to kids.’”

“Keep biological sex as a central characteristic in the law and culture,” Sullivan says. “Gender can be added, but can’t replace.”

“I think many LGBT people see this mess but are scared to lose friends and community if they speak up,” said Angel. “But it’s our duty as LGBT members to call this out. To show the world that these people are not a representation of us.”

[djuvlipen]

It's so hard being a Romani lesbian. It feels contradictory at best, unthinkable at worst. You are raised with the explicit goal to become a wife and to have children one day. I can't remember the first time my mother talked to me about marriage, but I remember being around 6 and being told that I will have a wedding one day, that it will be the most important day of my life and that I would make my family so happy. Growing up I'd constantly, almost daily hear about having children and having a boyfriend and getting married some day. It was always one of the most important topics of conversation. Your relatives - even your female relatives - don't seem to think you can make decisions by yourself, for yourself. Everything you wear, everything you say, everything you do is about appealing to men. When I was 5 I asked my mom if I could wear a dress to go outside because it was very sunny and she just told me I wanted to dress that way because I was in love with the male friend that I had. If you want to wear jewellery, if you wear "revealing clothes", that means you want to flirt with a man. This is not even an inconscious, internalized mindset: it is very overt and I was explicitly told that anything I did was because I was in love with a man - a classmate, a friend, a neighbour, an adult family friend (yes, even if I was 8), a male relative. I felt disgusting anytime I wanted to dress the way I wanted because I felt I was inviting men to have sexual thoughts about me.

As a Romani little girl you are groomed to accept relationships with men, especially older men. When I was about 8, my then 15yo sister invited me to her bedroom and showed me condoms and told me that I would need them one day. When we were 12, my female cousins all had boyfriends. My female cousins usually got their first serious relationship at 14-15yo. Two of my cousins had their first kid before they turned 17 (one was with a 28yo man). And this is seen as normal and you're weird for criticizing them. Any heterosexual intercourse is seen as good, as a positive value. The majority of my Romani female relatives sided against another relative of ours who had been raped by her stepfather. My mother and my sister also sided with my abuser and told me that I was being unfairly mean to him because he is my stepfather and I should be nicer, actually.

When I was 12, I had never had a boyfriend. All my other relatives, both male and female, started piling on me. We had family gatherings almost every couple of weeks, and the conversation would always somehow land on me. I was told I was weird, I was a dyke, I was probably a lesbian, my mother usually said she didn't want me to be some ugly dyke but she would also say that I was so mean to her for not coming out to her. This was discussed among my relatives while I was in the room. My mother usually pressured me every couple of nights to tell her if I was a "dyke". Because even though my group doesn't practice child marriages anymore, it's still the norm for Romani girls to be in serious relationship with (older) men when they are in middle school, and you are the weird one for not fitting that norm.

When gay marriage was being debated in my country, I was in middle school and my mother's favourite joke was about a gay teenager committing suicide. It was a joke made by a stand-up comedian and she would listen to it once in a while when driving me to school.

And I am so lucky because my family isn't even very traditional. They aren't even religious. Most Roma are very intense about religion. In my country, there are a lot of Evangelical Christian Roma, who told me that lesbian Roma should be murdered, should be ousted, that gay Romani teenager should be beaten by their parents, should be thrown on the street, that lesbian Romani Holocaust survivors should have been killed. All under the guise of "culture". Because a lot of those people have a "let it be" attitude when it comes to non-Romani LGBT people, but they don't extend that attitude to their own kids.

And then I talk to antiracist and "progressive" Romani activists, usually male, usually straight, who tell me that "being Romani is about being raised with Romani culture and embracing and respecting that culture", but what does that mean for LGB Roma who are constantly being bullied and abused by their own family and community? Heterosexuality lies at the core of Romani culture and LGB Roma won't be free until we start challenging religions and the patriarchal and homophobic bias engraved in Romani culture

[ficsforeren]

Our Little Secret - Chapter 6 (End)

Series Masterlist

Pairing: Eren Jaeger X Female Reader

Genre: College AU, Spider-Man/Spider-Girl AU, Fluff, Slow Burn, Mutual Pining, Eventual Smut

Series Summary: Eren Jaeger, a 21-year-old virgin college student who loves his camera a little bit too much, has a crush on you. Every night, he switches on his camera and talks about you but he never could find the courage to speak to you in real life. Strangely enough, he finds it easy for him to befriend Spider-Girl, the crime fighting vigilante, not knowing that you both share the same identity.

Chapter Summary: Eren still can't believe that he just went on a date with the most popular girl in school and kissed the hottest superheroine in town all in one night. He tells himself that he has to make a decision—to choose between you and Spider-Girl, not knowing that you two are the same person. Well, maybe it's time for you to reveal your little secret.

Content Warnings: swearing, mentions of characters going through depression, traumatic past events, a little bit of smut near the end (not too explicit)

Word Count: 16k

Poster art by the most talented @rainbuniart on Twitter

Armin Arlert loves Eren Jaeger. He does. He really does, like in a platonic-but-can-also-be-qualified-as-super-gay-way-sometimes. 

He adores him. Might even name his fictional son after him in the future, who knows? He thinks Eren is the best friend he could ever ask for. Armin wouldn’t put his life on the line to save him, true, (‘cause as much as he loves the guy, that bitch can die on his own since it will probably be because of his damn fault anyway), but he would definitely sacrifice his most precious body pillow if Eren’s life depends on it and that’s saying something. Actually, hold up. Let’s not make any hasty decisions here. It’s a special, limited edition dakimakura with his fictional wife printed on it while wearing a slutty maid outfit. He ain’t gonna throw those glorious 2D titties just for Eren’s lousy ass.

Though his actions may speak otherwise, Armin does care about him. More than he has ever cared about anyone else, really. Even on those days back in high school when he was a bit… bicurious, Armin had imagined himself—more than once (or ten)—being with Eren and how hot it would be if he had Eren all tied up on his bed with his body shrouded by wet tentacles that were stimulating each of his sensitive spots. He knew it was weird to imagine his best friend begging him with tears in his eyes, saying lewd things like “Please, Master Arlert, please give me your thick, hard cock and fill me up with your seeds. I want you to breed me like a fucking whore,” but Armin was an eighteen-year-old virgin with a raging sexual desire, okay? Can you really blame him? (yes, please blame him, he's insane).

It didn’t help that Eren looked so pretty with his hair down either, especially when he was sitting half-naked on Armin’s bedroom floor during those hot summer days with a popsicle stuck inside his mouth, making questionable groaning and sucking noises as he jammed his thumbs against his X-Box controller. It also didn’t help that Armin had watched too much hentai in his spare time but at least, he was proud of it. Eren watched tentacles porn too—and enjoyed it—but he would always pretend he didn’t and say that he preferred lesbian porn just so he could “fit in” and “be normal” or whatever. Fucking coward.

We’re getting sidetracked but the point is, Armin loves Eren to the moon and back, but sometimes, sometimes, he just wants to break all 206 bones in his body, squeeze him into a pulp and flush him down the toilet. And by sometimes, he means now.

“Armin!” He can hear the sounds of small rocks hitting his window, followed by Eren’s husky voice calling his name in a mix between a shout and a whisper. “Armin! Dude, wake up!”

Armin only has one eye opened, glowering at the digital clock on his desk that shows it’s two in the fucking morning. His parents might be heavy sleepers—the government has to drop a nuclear bomb for them to wake up—but Armin needs complete silence to be able to wane into his dreamland (which would be the only place for him to be embraced by his fox-eared waifu). He tries to ignore the asshole standing outside his window, but that so-called green-eyed butthole is as stubborn as he is relentless. 

Gathering a handful of pebbles, Eren throws them one by one, continuously hissing Armin’s name like a demonic cat. With each stone hitting his window, Armin transforms even further into a seething monster. By the sixteenth pebble Eren throws, the blonde-haired boy pushes himself off the bed, grabs the baseball bat he hides inside his closet—which he bought not for sport, but for this very reason—and stomps his way to the front door.

“Armin!” Eren rejoices when he sees his best friend walking past his lawn, moving toward him. “Oh, thank God, you’re awake! I need to talk to you—WAIT, WAIT, WAIT, WHAT ARE YOU PLANNING TO DO WITH THAT BAT?!”

“I’M GONNA FUCKING KILL YOU, JAEGER!”

It’s always like this with them—Eren annoying the shit out of him and Armin trying to kill him two or three times in a row—but it would all end well, not with laughter, but with a massive bump on Eren’s head that may or may not be big enough to trigger permanent brain damage. But then again, Eren is already an idiot. He’s probably maxed out at this point. 

“One of these days, Arlert,” Eren groans in pain, rubbing the back of his skull as he wills his tears to stop brimming in his eyes. “I’m gonna file a restraining order on you.”

“That’s my line, you nincompoop.”

“I don’t know what nincompoop means but that doesn't sound pretty.”

The two boys sit on the little stairs that lead to Armin’s porch (five feet apart ‘cause they’re not gay). Armin still has his baseball bat between his legs, his golden hair all tousled from his one-hour sleep. Eren, who’s usually attentive to another person’s well-being, is too excited to pay attention to the bags forming under his eyes. Playfully bumping his shoulder against Armin’s, he asks him, “Dude, guess who just had his first kiss tonight?”

“Why do we strive for perfection if it is not attainable?” Armin says, dramatically sighing into the night. “What is the meaning of a good life? Is there a meaning in life itself? Are we human or are we dancers?”

Eren, now confused, has his smile wavering. “The hell are you talking about?”

“Oh, I thought we were just throwing out random questions.”

“That last one wasn’t even a question. That was `Are We Human’ by The Killers.”

“Yes and they were asking us whether we are human or dancers when they should have been asking: why can’t we be both?”

“It’s me,” Eren replies flatly. “I just had my first kiss.”

“Oh, wow, congratulations. I did not see that coming at all.” There’s no mirth or enthusiasm on Armin's face. He's just clapping his hands as he keeps his voice monotone. “Your lips aren’t a virgin anymore. Make sure they don’t turn into a whore.”

Eren, well-accustomed to his sarcasm, remains unfazed, continuously acting like the love-struck puppy that he is. “Aren’t you gonna ask me how it felt like?” He wiggles his eyebrows, showcasing a cheeky grin. “I’ll give you a clue. The word starts with an A and ends with a G.”

“Anal Rimming?”

Eren sends him a flat stare. “It’s amazing.”

“Sure, if you say so. I mean, I’ve never done anal or rimming before so I wouldn’t know, but hey, if it’s amazing then good for you, buddy.”

“I meant the kiss, Armin!”

This attitude Armin is throwing at him is his way of saying dude, I love you but I’m so fucking pissed at you right now, and Eren understands how much he’s being selfish for taking Armin’s precious sleeping time. He knows and he apologizes for it. But if he doesn’t tell Armin about the kiss—about how he’s both overjoyed and conflicted by it—he’s sure as hell he’s going to lose his mind. 

Armin, despite how snarky he is, can only exhale exaggeratedly in defeat once Eren puts his best-kicked puppy look on display. “Fine, you twat. Spill.”

And with his permission, Eren’s words come rushing in like a bullet train. “Dude, it was insane.” Whenever he thinks about the kiss, the first thing Eren feels is joy. The kind of joy that is so fierce, it leaves him burned and paralyzed by it. “I’ve been imagining what my first kiss was gonna be like since forever but even the sweetest dream wouldn’t be able to compare to how amazing it was.”

Armin can see it—that glow on his face. It’s the first time he’s ever witnessed his best friend being this happy. It's disgusting. “You sound like that sappy Aerosmith song.”

“And to think that I was having my first kiss upside down!”

“Wait, what?” Armin finally shows a reaction, his eyebrows adjoined in the middle. “Upside-down?”

“Yeah, she was hanging upside down.”

“Hanging? How—why—” You know that Jackie Chan meme? The one with him looking all confused? Yeah, that’s Armin right now. “Where were you? In her room?”

“Umm… no. We were outside.”

“In public?”

“Yeah, but no one was around. Oh wait, there were like three guys around us but they were unconscious.”

The more he explains, the more perplexed Armin becomes. “Why were they—no, who were they?”

“Just some dudes wanting to steal my camera.” Eren turns sheepish, his index finger scratching his cheek at the memory of you fighting so gracefully under the rain, almost like dancing. The words he says don’t match his expression at all. “They had, like, a knife against my throat. It was really scary.”

“Oh yeah, I can tell, ‘cause you’re blushing so hard right now.” At this rate, being sarcastic is the only way for Armin to keep himself sane.

Eren, to Armin’s horror, giggles. “I remember the way she came by. It was so dramatic. She beat their asses to save my life like bam, kapoww, kapoww!”

Almost getting hit by Eren’s lame attempt at re-enacting your punches, Armin cringed, “Please stop.” 

“We kinda flirted a little bit after that and I just, you know…” Eren has really turned into a thirteen-year-old girl at this point. “I kissed her. She was hanging upside down. There was rain pouring above our heads and we were, like, smiling into the kiss. It was so romantic.”

Fuck Jackie Chan. That meme needs to be reinvented using Armin’s face now. He’s more confused than any Chinese man could ever be. “Hold up, you fucker.” He pushes his eyeglasses up his nose, a pair of sapphire eyes scrutinizing Eren's face as if he could find the answer if he looks hard enough. “How and why was she hanging upside down?”

“Well, she was about to swing away when I stopped her and so she was hanging onto her web and—”

“Her web?” This dude makes absolutely no fucking sense! Armin is now picturing you (not Spider-Girl. You.) in your preppy girl outfit hanging upside down on a tree like a fucking monkey, exchanging tongues and saliva with an actual monkey who was twice your size. The result? Absolutely ludicrous. “Dude, what kind of kinky shit are you guys into?!”

And it’s only then that Eren remembers something. “Oh, no, you’re getting the wrong idea. I wasn’t talking about her. I kissed a different girl.”

“You kissed a diff—” Armin stops himself before he explodes. Taking a deep breath, exhaling with his eyes closed, he mutters under his voice, “Lord, give me strength.” When he blinks open his eyes again, Armin seems much calmer, although his grip around his baseball bat is tightening twice as hard. His fingers are just itching to smack the shit out of his best friend. Again.

Eren, scared for his life, has both hands in the air. “Calm down, Min.”

“I’m calm, I’m calm.” But he takes another deep breath just in case. Armin smiles—that kind of deadly smile that doesn’t reach his eyes—when he asks, “Let’s start from the beginning. You went on a date with Miss Popular.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“But you didn’t kiss her and instead you kissed someone else.”

Now that Armin phrases it like that, that feeling of remorse that Eren felt an hour ago comes back rushing in. Eren still loathes himself for kissing another girl right after his date with you ended but the thing is, it felt right. It felt like it was something he had been wishing to happen for years. He had spent all this time imagining what it would be like to share a chaste kiss under the rain with you—the college version of you. But when the moment was there, he couldn’t do it. It didn’t feel right. He felt guilt at that time, knowing that Spider-Girl kept showing up in his head when he was supposed to be thinking about you. But he didn't feel any of that when he shared those kisses with that alter ego of yours. He just felt joy. It felt amazing. It felt right. 

But with Armin confronting him about it, he returns to the dilemma he was drowning himself in a few hours ago. The time when he realized that he was in love with Spider-Girl instead of you.

“Yeah,” Eren admits in shame, casting his gaze downward. “I kissed someone else.”

Armin fixes his glasses again, just so he’d have something to do instead of looking flabbergasted at the revelation. “And who did you kiss?”

“Umm… Spider-Girl.”

Armin looks at him and Eren looks back. Three seconds pass by in silence and then—

“AW!” Eren shouts in reflex, not caring if it’s two-thirty in the morning, right after Armin smacked him with the end of his baseball bat. “Dude, stop doing that! It hurts!”

“You’re fucking with me,” Armin says, hitting him repetitively on his side. “You’re absolutely fucking with me right now. Can’t believe I woke up to listen to you spouting bullshit!”

“I’m not bullshitting you!” Eren winces, trying to dodge his next attack.

“You’re saying you kissed one of the town's hottest superheroines? The same girl who took down the Lizard—no, the same girl who looks smoking hot in that white spandex—you kissed that girl?”

“Yes! Fuck—Stop hitting me!” Eren, at some point, manages to snatch away the bat from Armin’s grip. His body feels sore all over, even more than when he fought those men in the alley. “Yes, Armin, I kissed her.”

“Yeah,” Armin snorts. “And I just had some raunchy sex in the barn with Green Goblin. Expect his babies to pop out of my ass in nine months.”

The brunette rolls his eyes. “Look, Spider-Girl and I have been friends for weeks now. Here.” Eren retrieves his phone from his pocket, going through his gallery before he shows the selfie he took with you in your costume on the night you shared stories on the rooftop of St. Mark’s theater. You were both so close to each other, shoulders nearly squeezed together as you tried to fit your faces inside the frame. Eren had the biggest, gleeful grin, his skin seemingly tanner than usual next to your white mask and hoodie. Armin examines the picture with suspicious eyes, his gaze shifting back and forth from his friend’s face to his phone. 

“Hmm, very convincing,” Armin comments. “Not sure where you found the skill to photoshop this shit so fast when it took you a week to choose a fucking filter for your Twitter PFP but okay. Assume that I believe you—I don’t,” he emphasizes. “But for the sake of our conversation, let’s just assume I do."

"Fine." 

"So you kissed her.”

“Yeah.”

“Upside down in the rain?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“And how was it?”

“It was…” Eren’s cheeks sizzle at the memory. “They were… soft. Her lips, I mean. They were so soft and they tasted… sweet.”

Armin’s expression turns from suspicious to I’m-tired-of-your-shit-Jaeger in 0.2 seconds. “I was thinking more like it was bad because I’m sure she had rain clogging up her nose, ‘cause that would’ve sounded more realistic, but sure, let’s be corny.”

“Wait,” Eren blanches. “Do you think she was uncomfortable?” It’s stupid that he only realizes this now, but then again, what else is new?

“Yeah, well,” Armin shrugs. “Hanging upside down certainly didn’t seem like it was the best position to make out in, 'cause you have blood rushing to your head and all. And since it was raining, she definitely had water getting up her nose.”

“Oh my God,” Eren utters in horror, his hands going to his head. “Why didn’t I think about that?”

“Probably cause you were too busy sticking your tongue down her throat.”

Eren has no consistency in managing his emotions because at one point he was panicking, and now, he’s back to giggling like a schoolgirl. “Yeah, we used tongue a few times. It was so exciting.”

“Give me back my bat. I’m gonna kill myself with it.”

But jokes aside, the question remains. How could Eren, who has zero games in dating as far as Armin knows, kiss another girl—and not just another girl, Spider-Girl—right after he went on a date with one of his campus’ most popular girls? Even the sentence sounds bizarre and he hasn’t spoken them out loud. Most importantly, though, why? Why did Eren do it? “I thought you were in love with her,” Armin says. “Miss Popular, I mean. You spent the entire summer jerking off to that one picture of her wearing that short skirt and now you’re saying you like some other girl whose face you don’t even know?”

“Did you have to phrase it like that?” Eren mumbles in shame though he can’t deny the fact that he did spend—well, not the entire summer, the entire two weeks, probably—masturbating to the thoughts of you. It wasn’t the proudest moment in his life, but in his defense, that skirt you wore looked super cute on you. “I know, I fucked up,” he sighs, rubbing a hand over his face. “I’m the worst.”

“How did this even happen?”

Eren tells him everything, and the more details he reveals, the harder he drowns in his guilt. He feels like he just betrayed and disrespected you—both you and Spider-Girl and it hurts him terribly because he still can’t decide between the two of you. He’s so conflicted he feels like he’s about to vomit his insides. 

“It’s so weird, you know?” Eren says. “At the end of the date, I was sure she wanted me to kiss her. I mean, like, the moment was there. We both felt it, and I wanted to do it but I… I kept thinking about Spider-Girl and it just felt… wrong. I didn’t want our first kiss to go that way—me kissing a girl while thinking about another girl. It wouldn’t be fair to her.”

“Should’ve just kissed her, in my opinion,” Armin counters. “If you had done it, it would’ve been easier for you to make sure of your feelings now.”

 “But that would’ve made me the biggest asshole in the world.”

“You are the biggest asshole in the world. But yeah, probably. Did it feel right when you kissed Spider-Girl?”

Though the remorse on Eren’s face still stands vividly, some of it morphs into delight at the memory. “Yes, it was,” he admits. “It felt like… something I should’ve done weeks ago, you know? Like, why didn’t I realize sooner that I’m in love with her kind of feeling. And I keep thinking about everything—about my feelings toward Spider-Girl and my feelings toward her and it’s stressing me out. Do you think a man can be in love with two girls at the same time?”

“You’re talking to a guy who has, like, seven different waifus. Of course, you can,” Armin snorts. “The problem is, unlike my wives who don’t know I exist, you have to choose. Unless you want to continue being a gigantic fucking asshole for the rest of your life, you need to decide who you want to be with.”

“I know...” Eren starts chewing on the inside of his cheek. It feels like he has a storm raging inside him. “I think I’m in love with Spider-Girl because I feel like… I know her better. I mean, I’ve been spending more time with her, so she feels more like a person to me. More… You know, real.”

Armin nods. “But when you went on a date with Miss Popular, did you enjoy it?”

“I did.” His answer is immediate. “More than I expected I would. She was so nice and funny and she… She gave me a scarf ‘cause she thought I was cold. She was so caring. She was great.”

“What if her personality is just as attractive as Spider-Girl’s then?” Armin provides a new perspective—a genuinely good one, which is rare considering how big of a pervert he is. “I feel like you just need some time to get to know her better.”

“Yeah, but how can I do that if I keep thinking about Spider-Girl? What if every time I see her, all I do is compare her traits to hers? It’s not fair.”

“Okay, let me ask you this,” Armin sighs loudly into the air. “Can you really see yourself dating a superhero? You don’t even know her real identity or what she looks like. What if she’s ugly?”

“I don’t care how she looks.” Determination stands thick in Eren’s voice. “It’s her—” He clears his throat, his face turning scarlet. “I-it’s her heart that I love.”

“Oh my God, I’m gonna throw up on you.” 

“I mean like her mannerisms!” Eren hastily adds when Armin threatens to jam a finger inside his own mouth. “Her attitudes, the way she talks, the way she thinks, and the stuff we talk about—that’s what I care about the most. She’s my best friend.”

“Excuse me?” Armin repeats, offended, picking up his weapon.

“A-after you, of course.”

“That’s right, bitch.” He drops his baseball bat back to the ground. “Okay, fine, you don’t care if she’s ugly. Not my problem. But does she like you?”

“I think so? I mean, she kept asking me to kiss her again. You don’t do something like that with someone you don’t like, right?”

“Yeah, well, strangers fuck at nightclubs all the time. I won’t think too much over a kiss.”

The pretty shade of red that paints Eren’s face turns pale by the second. “You don’t think she likes me?”

“I do, but is it enough for her to want to date you?” Armin lands a hand on the other man’s shoulder, giving him his best sympathetic look. “I wouldn’t be so sure, man. Look, I’m not trying to sound like a douchebag for crushing your R-rated dream so early like this but you’re my friend and you need a reality check so here it goes. She’s a superhero. Okay? She’s busy. She doesn’t have time to play tonsil hockey with nerds like us. Plus, if she cares about you then maybe she won’t date you ‘cause you’ve seen what happened to Mary Jane, right? That chick got taken hostage at least once a week these days, ’cause of what?”

“Umm… Cause she’s dating Peter Parker?”

“That’s absolutely right, you nincompoop.”

“Like I said, I don’t know what nincompoop means.��

“At this point, MJ doesn’t even scream anymore when she has a gun pointed at her head. She’s just like—” Armin pretends he has his smartphone between his hands, his thumbs moving to type something. He keeps his face blank and his voice monotone, talking in an exaggerated New York accent. “‘Oh no, please, don’t hurt me, I’m scareeeed. Hashtag SpideyDrama, hashtag Spidey-MJLoveStory. Take a cute selfie with my kidnapper—” He pretends to take a picture, puckering his lips while forming a peace sign with his two fingers. “—aaaand post.’”

Under different circumstances, Eren would have laughed. Armin’s impression of her was spot on. “Yeah, but that’s because everyone knows that Peter is Spider-Man. No one knows who Spider-Girl is.”

“Yes, but if you keep making out with her in public, they’ll know about you, and then what? You want to start doing your own TikTok trend? Hashtag PrayforErenJaegerTheNewDamselinDistress?” Eren parts his lips to answer but he’s stopped by two hands squeezing him by the shoulders. “Look. Just give Miss Popular another try, okay? It’s easier to be with her than being with Miss Vigilante, I promise you. Plus, Spider-Girl knows how you feel about her, right? Don’t you think it would make you sound like a player if you talked like a lovesick fool about another girl, but then you confessed to her three days later?”

Again, it’s absolutely ridiculous that Eren just realized this now. “You’re right,” he utters in horror. “Holy shit, you’re right.”

“Of course, I am.” Armin scoffs, tossing back his imaginary long hair over his shoulder. “Forget about Spider-Girl for now. Give it a week or two to sort out your feelings. Or focus on something else, like jerk off to your favorite tentacle porn or something. If you still feel like you can’t move on from her then, we’ll go to Plan B.”

“W-what is that?”

Armin retrieves his bat. “Me, beating the shit out of you until you suffer from a massive concussion and forget about this whole thing.”

“Yeah, why don’t we just stick to Plan A for now, thanks. But no tentacle porn.”

"Pfft, whatever, your loss."

***

You have never—never—felt like you were floating in the clouds after sharing a kiss with a boy, and yet there you are, climbing through your window with the biggest dopey smile on your face. You take off your mask, throwing yourself on your bed with the longest, most blissful, content sigh you’ve ever heaved in your life. 

You have two fingers tracing over the seam of your lips, your skin somehow still tingles whenever the memory of that kiss resurfaces. The sweet, pleasant taste of his mouth still lingers near. The soft texture of his lips is the best thing you’ve ever felt against your own. 

“Eren…” His name drifts past your lips and you find yourself giggling, turning over to your stomach before you let out a high-pitched scream against your pillow. It felt like a first love’s kiss and perhaps it was since he is your first love, isn’t he? You haven’t been able to stop thinking about him. Every cell in your body seems to scream I love him, I love him, I love him every time his smile appears behind your closed lids. It feels like you’re thirteen again, just a lovesick girl whose fingers are itching to pour every emotion you felt into your journal. 

Dear diary, I’m in love. 

You didn’t think your first kiss with him would be like that, but it was ten times better. No, a million times better, even if you did have rain clogging up your nose at some point. Eren was so… passionate, you think to yourself as you feel your stomach flipping at the memory of his lips melding against yours. You may be a virgin, but unlike him, you have experienced many first kisses before and none of them was this memorable. None of them managed to awaken the butterflies in your stomach as his kisses did. And none of those boys tasted as good as he was.

“I am down so bad,” you sigh as you hug your pillow close to your chest, a dreamy smile sketched upon your lips. I can’t wait for tomorrow to come. I want to see him. I want to be with him again.

With that thought in mind, you begin to create your diabolical plan to reveal your true identity to him. As cute as he was looking all conflicted from falling in love with both you and Spider-Girl, you decide not to torture him even longer. It’s unbelievable, the amount of elation you felt the moment you realized that he’s fallen for Spider-Girl. It’s clear proof that he wasn’t just attracted to your looks, but your personality too. It puts you at ease, knowing that he keeps catching feelings no matter what persona you’re putting in front of him. He fell for you when you were just an innocent little girl who couldn’t do anything but fangirl over Wonder Woman all day. He fell for you when he saw you stepping onto the podium to accept your science medal, blinding everyone with your perfect smile. And he fell for Spider-Girl, your alter ego that embodied your true personality.

I wonder how you would react when you find out that I’m all those three?

“Maybe I should step up my game,” you mumble to yourself. “Maybe I should be a little…”

The corners of your mouth curve up. Your smirk is just straight-up evil at this point. Hell, even Norman Osborn didn’t look this wicked when he turned into Green Goblin. 

“Aggressive.”

***

When Eren told his brother, Zeke Jaeger, that he wanted to borrow his motorcycle to pick up a girl this morning, his brother was on the floor. Literally on the floor. 

Zeke was skeptical at first, snorting loudly as he muttered, “Pfft. As if you could get a girl to notice you. Bet my ass you’re just being delusional.” But then Eren, heaving the biggest sigh, raised his phone in the air, flashed his wallpaper—that one picture you took on your date with you smiling as you kissed his cheek—on his brother’s face and Zeke collapsed to his knees.

“Oh my God.” Zeke landed both palms on the parquet, eyes shaking in horror. “Oh my fucking God.”

Eren, who was accustomed to his brother’s dramatic antics, simply shrugged when his aunt Dina looked at them funny. “He’s having a moment,” he explained and Dina just returned to her cooking, not wanting to deal with any of that. 

It usually took Zeke a while to get back on his feet—literally—when he was having an episode like that. Eren simply waited with his back leaning against the wall, checking his watch with boredom written in his eyes. “Try and make it quick. I got a date.”

“I can’t believe you found yourself a girl before me,” Zeke sobbed. “I thought it was Armin dressing up as a girl again—"

“We’re over that phase now.”

“—but no, she’s actually a cute fucking chick. Probably has massive badonkers too.”

“Please don’t say that.” Great, now I can’t stop thinking about it too, Eren adds inwardly, face flushed. What if she… does have massive badonkers—I mean, tits—I mean, breasts. He shakes his head. Eren, you idiot. Who cares if she has huge boobs or not. Flat, or huge, those are still great tits—no, stop thinking about her tits!

“Fuck, what if it’s true?” Zeke looked up to his brother from below, like a tortured servant to his sadistic master. “What if she’s packing some dobonhonkeros? Like, massive dohoonkabhankoloos, ya know what I mean? Big old tonhongerekoogers—”

“Language, Zeke,” Dina chimes in from the kitchen. “I don’t understand what you’re saying but I know they’re filthy words so stop it.” 

Eren, in the meantime, is conflicted between not thinking about your breasts or smacking the shit out of his brother. “You’re being disrespectful, stop it.”

“GOD, I WANT A GIRLFRIEND—”

“JUST GIVE ME THE GODDAMN KEYS!”

Zeke, almost with tears painting his eyes, handed them over to him. “Once you’re finished with it, do me a favor and just run me over. I don’t have the dignity to keep on living anymore.”

“Will do,” Eren said—promised—as he threw a black leather jacket on top of his white shirt. “I’ll be back in two hours,” he informed his aunt. “We’re just gonna study in my room after that.”

“Studying each other’s bodies?” Zeke uttered with jealousy coating his tongue. “Gross.”

“Statistics, actually.” Eren planted a small peck on Dina's cheek. “See you, Aunt Dina.”

“Bye, love,” Dina chuckled, seemingly proud that her nephew—one that she regarded as her own child, unlike the other one—was old enough to bring a pretty girl home with him. “Make sure to bring her something. Us girls love gifts.”

“Okay.”

“And buy some condoms on your way home.”

Eren nearly tripped over his feet. “I-it’s not like that!”

Zeke was lying flat on the floor at this point, like a stabbed victim on a crime scene, only in his case, the knife was invisible and he was bleeding tears from his eyes. “When can I get myself some bonkhonagahoogs…”

“Please kick him out before I get home,” Eren said.

“Trust me, darling,” Dina sighed. “I've been trying to do that since day one.”

“Guys, I’m literally right here.”

“Shut up, Zeke.”

***

Eren is just as jittery as he was during his first date with you, only this time, it’s ten times worse as he keeps thinking about Spider-Girl no matter how much he tries not to. The guilt he felt over the kiss sticks permanently in his mind, and it feels like he just committed adultery with a church elder or something when he isn’t even in a relationship with you—any version of you. But even so, he tries to stick close to his plan. He has promised to spend some time studying for finals with you, and he intends to give his full attention to you and no one else. Since he’d brought you a bouquet yesterday, he decided to buy you homemade chocolate truffles from this cute candy store downtown, one that Dina claimed to be the best one in the world. 

He arrives two hours early at your ballet studio, feeling so nervous to see you again that he feels like the whole world is spinning too fast before him. He’s waiting outside in the parking lot, leaning against Zeke’s all-black Royal Enfield Classic 350 with his phone in one hand and his head on the clouds.

What am I going to say to her? Can I even act normally around her? What if she—

“Eren.”

“Fuck!” The boy jumps on his feet, almost losing his grip on his phone from how startled he is. He spins his head around to the side, spotting you standing close with your gym bag slinging on one shoulder. His shock-filled eyes quickly traverse down your body, taking in the sight of you dressed casually in your fitted black tank top and white track jacket. “W-why are you not wearing your tutus?”

Out of all the things he could’ve said, of course, that’s the first thing that comes out of his mouth. “Because I’m still outside and my practice isn’t going to start for another ten minutes?” You reply with a hint of teasing in your voice. “You look handsome today, by the way. I always think you look hotter wearing a leather jacket instead of a hoodie. Not that I don’t like it, though. Hoodies make you look cute.”

This is an ambush, Eren thinks. You, casually throwing your compliment at him as if it’s nothing, feel like a fucking ambush to him. “I—Umm—You look—You look cute too.”

“Thank you,” you titter. “I can’t believe you arrived here before me.”

“Oh... Y-yeah.” It suddenly feels like it’s twenty degrees hotter for him. “I guess I was a little early.”

“As always,” you toss him a smile—the one that has the perfect amount of beauty and shyness that makes his heart swell in his chest. “You’re not planning to wait out here for two hours, are you?” When Eren has no answer to give, you chuckle. “Gosh, you are too cute. Come here.”

“Huh?” 

“You can wait inside.” It’s so natural the way you tangle your hand around his even when you can feel your own heart palpitating. “It’s warmer there.”

Eren, with his cheeks turning scarlet, follows after you. “Is—is it really okay?”

“Well, no. Usually, we don’t allow strangers to watch our rehearsals.”

“Then, why—”

“Relax, Ren.” You hurl a wink at him. “Petra—my instructor—is a close friend of my mother. I’ll just tell her you’re my boyfriend and she’ll make an exception for me.”

Three things left him dumbfounded. The first one is clearly the fact that you just called him your boyfriend. Second, it’s that naughty, naughty wink you threw at him, one that matches your cute little devilish grin. But none of those were as surprising as the way you called him with that nickname. 

Ren.

You’ve never called him that before, have you? But Spider-Girl called him Ren all the time, which is why to his ears, it sounds so familiar. The way you said it. The way your voice sounded when you did. Even if his mind tries to deny it, his heart still pounds. It feels so strange for this to just be a coincidence but you don’t give him a chance to think about it long.

“I’m gonna go change into my tutus, okay?” You tease him once you enter the studio, chuckling at your own words. “You can sit at the back. Try not to stare at the other girls as you wait.”

He knows he’s dumb but today he just feels ten times dumber and it shows. “W-why not?”

“Well, obviously, because you’re pretending to be my boyfriend today.” You reach out a hand to fix the collar of his jacket, watching him flinch at the way your fingers brush against his collarbone. “And also…” You look up at him, turning your voice into a breathy whisper as you feign a pout. “I don’t like seeing you look at other girls. I want you to look at me.” You take a hold of his key-shaped pendant, twisting your fingers around his necklace. “Only me.”

Fuck, fuck, fuck. If there was steam coming out of his ears, Eren wouldn’t be surprised. He does feel like his face is about to explode. “I-I’ve only been looking at you.”

“You sure?” Your tongue peeks out to wet your lower lip and Eren swallows at the sight. “You seemed so… distracted last night. You weren't thinking about some other girl, were you?”

He’s staring at your lips. He’s definitely staring at your lips. Oh my God, her lips. “I—I didn't—I wasn’t—” He’s panicking. He’s already having a hard time trying to stay alive from your attack. You really didn’t need to bring back Spider-Girl into his head, but you did and that’s why you fit more as a supervillain instead of a hero.

Eren can practically taste the minty scent of your breath from how close you are when you grin at him. “I’m kidding,” you giggle, patting his cheek and giving him back his space. “You look like you’re about to pass out. You okay over there, big boy?”

“Yeah…” Just feeling like I’m having a cardiac arrest but I’m fine. “Good luck with your dancing—your practice. Break an arm.”

God, he’s an idiot, I love him. Refraining yourself from laughing, you stand on your toes and grant him a soft kiss on his cheek. “It’s break a leg, dummy,” you whisper in his ear, your smirk brushing against his earlobe. His face is practically in flames when you turn on your heels, tossing him one last smile before you disappear inside the changing room. 

The rehearsal starts on time and there you are, walking back into the studio dressed in pink seamed ballet tights, a black halter-neck leotard, and a pair of beige pointe shoes. Your outfit, the way the fabric hugs your body tightly, leaves no room for his imagination to wander. It’s so unfair that you look both adorable and effortlessly sexy at the same time. Eren doesn’t know whether he wants to say, “You’re so cute, I want to squeeze your cheeks!” or “You’re so hot, I wanna clap those cheeks.” He wants to do both, honestly, but he’ll need to rephrase that last line if he wants to be, ehem, respectful.

He can see your back muscles contracting as you perform, your skin glistening under the light, coated by a thin layer of sweat that somehow only makes you look more erotic. He hates the way his mind thinks, so he tries to focus on your movements instead. Every posture you strike is as graceful as it is beautiful and Eren has to remind himself to blink before his eyes fall out of his sockets from staring too long.

You try to concentrate as much as you can on the instructions Petra gives you but every time you see your reflection in the mirror, you also notice the way his eyes are entranced with every gesture you make. He’s staring at you like you’re the only girl in the room—the only girl in the world, even. As much as it pleases you to be the center of his attention, it’s also harder for you to focus on your steps. You just can’t wait for your practice to end.

Eren is so captivated by everything you do, and if he had brought his camera with him, he would’ve taken every bit of your expression. He wishes he could record everything. The way your body moves… Even the slightest lift of your finger is fascinating to him. At this moment, all thoughts about Spider-Girl vanish away from his mind. It feels like he’s falling for you all over again, his heart throbbing like on that day when he saw you on campus for the first time. You’re so pretty. So, so pretty that you leave him breathless.

“Hey,” you greet him again once your rehearsal has ended. “Sorry you had to wait long.” You’re dabbing a towel against the side of your face, gathering your belongings in your arms as the other students are making their way to the changing room without you. “I’m all sweaty so I’m just gonna go take a shower real quick. Is that okay?”

Eren can see a bead of sweat running down the side of your face, disappearing right between your cleavage. It’s the most pornographic thing he’s ever seen and this comes from the man who spent the whole summer watching questionable porn clips with Armin. It also doesn’t help that Zeke’s face keeps appearing in his mind, whispering to him, “Bro, look at those badonkers,” and no, Eren doesn’t want to look at your badonk—breasts. It’s very inappropriate, and you deserve to be respected. 

Fucking monke. Eren is going to run him over for real after this.

“Eren? You okay there?”

He coughs once, trying to focus on your face instead of your, in Zeke’s words, dohoonkabhankoloos. “Yes, I—uhh… I’ll just go wait outside, okay?”

“Okay.”

You’re not sure what you’re expecting but when Eren walks away without saying anything about your performance, you feel a sliver of disappointment growing inside you. Keeping your thoughts to yourself, you tighten your grip around your bag and pivot on your heels.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” Eren says, stopping you in your tracks. You turn around, facing him with a questioning brow. The boy smiles at you, doing it so beautifully, so delicately, so lovingly that you feel like you can fight the whole world just to protect that smile. “You look so beautiful when you dance,” he says, his eyes gleaming in the adoration he holds for you. “So graceful, you’re like, uhh… Like an angel.”

It’s corny. It’s corny and cliche, and embarrassing, and you love it. If anyone else had said it, it would’ve sounded like the cringiest pick-up line, but not him. Eren said it like a confession as if he truly felt that way and he had to tell you the truth no matter what. He doesn’t intend to sound corny, of course, but what can he do? You did look like an angel in his head. But now that he’s hearing the words out loud, he can’t help but feel mortified by them. “S-sorry,” he blushes. “I didn’t mean to sound so… lame.” 

“No, it’s fine.” You could feel a pleasant warmth pooling inside your stomach. “Thank you.” You smile back at him, a bit timidly but as beautiful as always. “Will you… come and watch my recital next time? It’s not until three months from now, but—”

“Of course!” His eyes light up in excitement, his voice loud enough to make three people turn their heads at the sound. “Of course, I would love to! Can I bring my camera with me?”

You almost laugh. He reminds you of that little Siberian husky he owns, the way she looked so excited as she ran down the street, chasing a hummingbird. “Yes. Yes, you can.”

***

There are a lot of things Eren is grateful for in his life. He’s thankful that he has his Aunt Dina taking care of him and his brother after his parents passed away. He’s thankful that he has Zeke, no matter how obnoxious he is, for always lending him his credit card whenever Eren is in desperate need of money (involuntarily, true, but let’s not get into details). He’s thankful that he has Armin in his life to knock some sense back into him, both literally and figuratively speaking. And of course, he’s thankful that he met you—every version of you, though he hasn't noticed yet. But today… Today he doesn’t direct his gratitude to his Lord. Today, he wants to thank whoever it was who decided that motorcycles should have these super cramped seats because holy shit, they’re doing God’s work.

“I’m sorry for holding onto you like this,” you say with your hands tangled around his waist, a little bit embarrassed with how close you are to him. The motorcycle itself is designed to be a two-seater, but apparently, comfort for the pillion has not been a priority—which is a good thing for Eren because you don’t have other options left but to have your front all squeezed against his spine to fit in.

“Umm…” Eren swallows and he swallows hard. You’re wearing his leather jacket above your clothes and yet he can still feel the way your breasts—oh my God, they’re so soft—are pressed against his back. Maintaining his eyes on the road, he tries to focus on his surroundings as best as he can. “I-it’s okay.”

“Are you sure you’re not cold? You can take back your jacket if you want. I can just use mine.”

“No, it’s fine. Yours is too thin.” He refrains himself from sniffling because damn it, it is cold. He should’ve thought of bringing a spare jacket for you, but no, of course, being the idiot that he was, he didn’t. “Don’t worry about it. My house isn’t far from here.”

“Okay.” Despite his reassurance, you still have your eyebrows knitted in concern as you can still feel him shivering from the cold. As a way to warm him up—which is only an excuse for you to touch him even more, and to continue with your diabolical plan—you embrace him from behind, tightening your arms around him just a little bit harder. 

Fuck, Eren thinks, face flushed. You’re plastered against him like a conjoined twin and he can feel your warmth seeping through his shirt. It’s a wonder that he’s still able to maintain his grip on his vehicle. “W-what are you doing?”

“Umm… Making you feel warm?” You reply sheepishly which drives him insane. You’re already so beautiful and sexy in his head, now you get to be so innocently adorable too?

Eren only responds with a little "Oh..." because that’s the only thing his pea-brain can manage to form with all this blood rushing to his head. God, you wish you could steal a glimpse of his face. What kind of expression does he have right now? He must look so cute.

He’s dying, that’s how he looks. Probably about to combust into flames too. Why are they so sooooft, Eren wants to whine, feeling your chest pushed up against his back even more. Is this the kind of sweet torture people talk about? The kind that makes you feel like you’re both in heaven and hell at the same time? It certainly feels like one. 

“Sorry, Ren…” Noticing the way his body is tensing, you loosen up your hold. “Am I making you feel uncomfortable?” 

“No!” Eren takes off his left hand from the steering wheel and snatches yours back before you can retrieve it. He keeps it in place, pressing your splayed fingers tight against his stomach until you can feel the shape of his abdomens underneath the thin layer of his white shirt.

“I’m not uncomfortable,” he says, his voice subdued by the wind. You fail to notice the way he stutters his words. “Hold on tight so you won’t fall."

When he’s only driving twenty miles per hour because of traffic ahead, even if you did fall, you would only get a scratch on your palm at most but neither of you cares. You both know it’s just an excuse anyway. "Okay."

"And also, uhh…” Eren is glad he has his helmet on to conceal his face. “It’s… warm. You, I mean. You're so warm.”

“I'm glad I am,” you giggle, winding your arm around him again, even going as far as resting your chin on his shoulder. Feeling a bit naughty, you lower your pitch, seduction ringing in his ears. “Kinda wish we were alone in your room right now,” you purr, your fingers hovering dangerously close above the hem of his jeans. “I know something else we can do to warm you up.”

That’s it. That’s the final string. Eren’s concentration breaks and he’s easily startled by the car driving past him on his right. Veering his vehicle immediately to the side, he nearly collides with the motorcycle on his left. 

“WATCH IT, JACKASS!��

“Sorry,” Eren mutters in chagrin, while you’re cackling like a witch behind him. From his bar-end mirror, you can see how he childishly pouts at your laughter. “Why are you laughing—that wasn’t funny!”

“It was a bit funny,” you sneer. “You panicked like a girl.”

“Well, you were saying some nasty things to me!”

“What nasty things?” 

“Y-you said you were going to do something else to warm me up.” 

“Yes, I was speaking about making some hot chocolate for you. What were you thinking about?”

He opens his mouth, closes it, and repeats these two actions three times more before he gives up and grouses, “Oh, shut up.” Eren spends the rest of his drive pretending to be upset about it, even when you can tell he’s having the hardest time masking his smile. He can’t do it for long since your giggle is infectious. 

“You seem happy,” he comments, mirroring the joy on your face. 

“That’s because I am,” you reply, snuggling close. “I feel like I’m the happiest when I’m with you.”

Oh, for fuck's sake. “Don’t make me crash our bike into another car, I swear to God—” 

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry!”

When the laughter has receded, Eren shares stories about Dina and Zeke, the two family members he loves dearly—well, he loves Dina, Zeke can go to hell (affectionately)—and how they are very excited to meet you today. But the second you arrive at his house, no one comes to answer the door.

“Weird,” Eren mutters as he walks past the entrance, dropping the keys on the counter. “I thought they’d be—” He stops short when he notices a piece of paper lying on the coffee table. With a frown, he picks it up and runs his eyes across Dina’s neat handwriting.

Zeke and I are going shopping to give you kids some time alone. We’ll eat outside too so we won’t be back until nine. Remember to use protection ;) - Love, Dina.

Eren, too busy trying to understand what the fuck is going on, doesn’t notice the way you’re standing on your toes, trying to steal a peek at the paper from behind his shoulder. Unlike him who needs a whole minute to process her words, it only takes two seconds for you to finish reading the whole thing. 

Eren shrieks at your presence, crumples the paper with both hands, tosses it inside the trash bin, and hopes the whole thing gets swallowed by hellfire. “You—You didn’t read that, did you?” It feels like he has his heart throbbing in his throat.

“Read what?” You play dumb, even tilting your head to the side for a cute, dramatic effect.

“Nothing,” he says, and when you arch your eyebrow at him, he spins you around, placing both hands on your shoulder as he guides you down the hallway. “Let’s just go to my room. Go, go, go, go, go.”

“Wait.” You stop him with one hand in the air, putting on your best solemn face. “Have you brought protection with you?”

“OH MY GOD, GO!”

***

Things aren’t going as smoothly as Eren had planned. Actually, nothing went as planned. For all he knew, all he had been doing was just turning red like a fucking tomato for the whole two hours he had spent with you, and you teasing the shit out of him. And it doesn’t seem like you’re going to stop anytime soon!

Is she planning to kill me? He sighs as he opens the door that leads to his bedroom, welcoming you in. She wasn’t like this yesterday. Now, don’t get him wrong. Eren loves how aggressive you’re being—he hasn’t unlocked his kink yet, but he’s secretly a sub who longs to be dominated by his women, both in bed and in real life—but with how smooth you’re going right now, constantly flirting with him as if it would kill you if you didn’t make him blush every ten minutes, this is getting so bad for his heart.

And it doesn’t help that he’s now alone with you in an empty house for the next—he takes a glimpse at his phone screen to check on the time—three hours and twelve minutes. His thoughts are going insane. From Dina’s message to the image of you in your skin-tight leotard, and of course, the way you embraced him on the ride home too. You’ve been giving him signs that you like him. You’re more honest and blatant compared to how you behaved during your date, and as much as he is certain that Spider-Girl is the woman he’s in love with, he can’t deny that he has feelings for you too. And the way you’re looking at him right now, sitting on the edge of his bed in your cute little red dress and your cute little matching headband with your smile never faltering away from your lips—everything about you right now is so… titillating.

“You’re such a dirty boy,” you smirk.

Eren nearly collapses. “W-what?” What the hell is happening? She can hear my thoughts now? WHAT IS GOING ON?! “What do you—I’m not—I don’t know what you’re saying.”

“I said you’re a dirty boy.” Your salacious smirk turns into a mischievous grin. “As in your room is a mess.”

“Oh!” He laughs once in relief, his hand coming up to wipe cold sweat off his forehead. “Oh, you were talking about my room, thank God.” Wait. He panics again, eyes moving back and forth from one corner to another, scanning his room. He’s sure that he’s cleaned up everything he could this morning, and by cleaning up, he means picking everything off the floor, jamming them inside his closet, and pretending that they don’t exist. Everything seems to be in order. There are no clutters on his computer desk. No laundry on the floor. Sure, the books on his shelf are in disarray, but at least they’re not too dusty. “It looks clean to me, though.”

“On the outside, sure,” you titter. “But your wardrobe looks like it’s seconds away from exploding. I don’t need to take a peek inside to know that you have dirty clothes and questionable things stored there.”

“I don’t have… q-questionable things,” Eren says very unconvincingly. Poor boy can’t lie to save his life. Unable to stand the way you narrow your eyes suspiciously at him, he sighs in defeat, “Well, it depends on how you define questionable.”

“Playboy magazines?”

“Nope.” Why should I buy one when I can just see naked girls for free on PornHub?

“Erotic novels?”

“No.” Ha ha, too bad. You were close, though, cause instead of erotic novels, I read—

“Erotic mangas, then?”

Fuck. “N-no,” he coughs out.

You wait for him, watching him with the nastiest grin you could muster until he gives up on his lies. “All right, all right, you got me,” Eren says, rolling his eyes. “I have some hentai mangas hidden in my closet. Happy now?”

“Immensely,” you chirp back and whatever it is you’re doing, it’s working well because Eren feels like he can breathe properly again. 

Now that the tension isn’t as suffocating, you both settle down on the carpeted floor, your backside leaning against the side rail of his bed. You have your textbook perched on your lap, a pen between your fingers as you teach him about univariate and bivariate transformations. Eren wears a pair of eyeglasses when he studies, and you hate whoever invented those black frames for making him look more attractive than he already is as if his little man-bun wasn’t strong enough to emphasize that. 

An hour passes by in a flash and Eren asks for a ten-minute break. You follow him to the kitchen, watching him make two cups of hot chocolate while casually throwing back some of your earlier teasings. It feels so domestic—the playful banter you throw, the way you share smiles and giggles while you both sit on the kitchen aisle with your legs dangling in the air. And while you secretly fantasize about spending every morning with him like this, Eren is constantly reminded of the time he spent with Spider-Girl.

Why does this feel so familiar? He ponders. Is your personality similar to hers? Is it the way you talk? Or is it because he unconsciously starts projecting Spider-Girl on you? Because he can’t stop thinking about her even when he’s trying his best to focus on you today? He grows restless at the thoughts. Because if that’s the case, then what’s the point of doing this? It’s clear that he’s still searching for Spider-Girl everywhere he goes. Even when he’s seeing you, he still thinks about her. He was sure he managed to forget about her earlier today, but the more he grows comfortable with you, and the more you show your true personality to him, the more he sees Spider-Girl in you.

When you return to his bedroom with him trailing after you, you notice a little box sliding out of his bag. Eren follows your gaze, mumbling, “Oh, shit, I forgot,” under his breath before he snatches it away. “I bought something for you earlier today,” he says, taking a seat on the edge of his bed with you settling down right next to him. “I wanted to give this to you back when we were at the studio but…” He smiles a little bit sheepishly as he hands it over to you. “I got, uhh… distracted.”

The way he said his words, it was clear that you were his distraction. “Thank you,” you reply, your fingers playing with the little red bow that ties the package together. “You’re always so thoughtful. I wanted to give you something too, actually, but I couldn’t get it done on time. It’s going to take a little while before I can finish it.”

“Oh?” His whole face brightens at once, seemingly giddy at the thought, as it would be the first time he’ll receive a handmade gift from the opposite sex. “You’re making something for me?”

“Yeah.”

“What is it?”

“It’s a surprise.” Your coquettish smile quickly becomes one of his favorite things in the world. “For now,” you land a hand on his shoulder, leaning up to brush your lips lightly against his cheek. The kiss is light and chaste, and yet, Eren turns rigid, his heartbeat roaring in his ears. You break away with a bashful smile painting your lips. “I hope that’s okay?”

“Umm…” He mumbles out, unfocused. “Yeah…”

The moment is there. The same atmosphere, the same tension that you felt when you were about to part ways at the end of your date has returned, ten times thicker than before. You maintain your gaze on his face, while Eren learns the texture of your lips with his eyes. They seem so soft, so inviting and he wants it. He wants to know how it would feel like to have your mouths pressed against one another but at the same time…

He’s conflicted again, you think to yourself, and if you’re not careful, your devilish smirk will rise to the surface again. It’s such a fun game watching him like this. You can almost literally see the way he’s battling against himself. On one side, he wants to kiss the bejeezus out of you, while on the other hand, he wants to push you away and say, “Girl, you’re making my jeans tighter than ever but this heart only belongs to one woman, and as long as you’re not dressed in white spandex, you’re not her.”

The evil that you are, you plan to make it even more interesting. “Kiss me.”

Somewhere at the back of his head, a nuclear bomb explodes, killing half of his brain cells at once. “W-what?” Eren croaks out, sounding like he hasn’t spoken in years. 

You lean closer, your breath fanning his lips. God, your perfume, the scent of your breath—you smell so fucking wonderful. Sliding a hand up his chest, fingers gliding smoothly against the fabric of his shirt, you whisper again, “I want you to kiss me, Ren.”

“I—mmph—” His eyes close in reflex the moment your lips touch his, his eyebrows sewn together in the middle. You frame his cheek, bringing him closer to you than ever. For a moment, he succumbs, his fingers fisting the sheets underneath him. You press your body against him, and he wonders if you can feel his heartbeat reverberating on your skin. He lets out this cute little whine when he feels you parting his lips with yours, but the second he feels the tip of your tongue touching his, his body flinches and Eren breaks away.

“S-sorry.” He stands up abruptly from the bed, one hand shooting up to cover the bottom half of his face. His blush creeps up from his neck to the tip of his ears. He seems breathless, panicking out of his mind.

Your lips are just itching to exhibit a wicked grin but you pretend to be confused. “Is there something wrong?”

“I—I can’t—” He’s looking anywhere but your face, jittery hands moving animatedly as he speaks. “You and me—we can’t—I can’t do this with you—Not right now—Not when I’m—I can’t, I’m sorry, I can’t.”

Poor Rennie looks like he’s having a heart attack. “You can’t?” You’ve never taken any acting classes before, but you’re sure as hell this performance you’re doing right now deserves an Oscar's Best Actress nomination. Guess binging Euphoria all weekend has some perks after all. “But…” You perceive him with glassy doe eyes. “I thought you liked me…”

“I did!” He shouts out the words like it physically pains him to say them out loud. He’s losing his mind and it’s hilarious. “I did…” Eren goes down to his knees before you, his hands reaching out to take yours before he settles them on your lap. They’re sweating, and so cold. “I really liked you but…”

You start to feel bad but the sadistic villain inside you wants to see more so you just fake a sob. “But now… You don’t like me anymore…”

“Oh, God.” You, brushing your nonexistent tears with your fingers right now, are his kryptonite. “Please don't cry. No—no, it’s not like that! I like you!” he shouts, his eyes shaking as he peers into yours. “Jesus, I think I even loved you at some point and maybe I still do, I don’t know—I don’t understand my feelings right now, I just—”

“It's okay,” you say, trying to calm him down. You're a bit worried now because if this guy ends up passing out, that’s going to be your fault. “It’s all right, Ren… I know what you’re saying…”

He pauses to take a deep breath. When he speaks again, he no longer sounds as squeaky as before. “Listen to me,” he squeezes your hand, and even if his fingers are still trembling, they’re doing their best to comfort you. “I really, really do like you. Honestly? I was so obsessed with you before. I stalked you like a pervert. I took pictures of you when you weren’t looking. I've had your photo as my wallpaper for God knows how long. My video journals—”

Are all about me, you echo the words in your head as he speaks the same thing. Oh my God, he’s freaking out so bad, he’s telling every bit of his secret now. So cute. 

“I did all those things because I liked you and you should hate me for it—”

“I’ll never hate you, Ren. I want to be with you.”

You’re killing him. You can tell you’re killing him inside. “And you don’t know how much those words mean to me but the truth is, I’m—” He hesitates, still contemplating whether he should say the words out loud. He doesn’t want to hurt your feelings, but if he continues doing this, letting his desire overtake him once again, he’s only going to hurt you even more. He needs to make a decision. “I’m in love with someone else.”

You fake a gasp, even going as far as covering your mouth with both hands. “Y-you are?”

“Yes…” He answers in dismay. “I know maybe I should give myself some time to figure this out but I don’t want to be selfish. I don’t want to make you wait for me. I don’t want to make you feel confused. And I know it would be easier to love you instead of her—I don’t even know how she feels about me but… I can’t. I can’t deny that I’m in love with her. And it’s not fair if I keep doing this with you when I keep thinking about someone else. I don’t want to be that kind of person.”

He’s kind. Eren is always kind. He could’ve just dated you both if he wanted to, but he didn’t. “I see,” you solemnly respond. “Can you… tell me who you’re in love with?”

He nibbles on his lip, looking down when he says, “S-Spider-Girl.”

FUCK, YES! In your mind, you’re punching the air in triumph with Cardi B and DJ Khaleed throwing a party in the background, celebrating your victory. But if you take a look at the situation, how fucking ridiculous is this? Imagine if Spider-Girl wasn’t your alter ego. It would be like you confessing to that delusional nerd Armin, only to be rejected by him saying he’s in love with a random cosplayer whose real name he didn’t even know. Well, with Armin, it’s still a plausible thought. Ridiculous, sure, but plausible.

“I see…” You land a hand above your heart, pretending like it’s breaking when you’re really trying your best not to cackle like a madman. “Oh, gosh… I don’t know what to say… This is such shocking news to me.”

Colors drain from his face. “I’m sorry.” He looks like he’s the one who’s having his heart shredded apart. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you like this. I’m sorry for leading you on. I should’ve told you last night. You are such an attractive woman. You’re beautiful. You’re brilliant and you’re so kind and—”

Oh my God, he’s consoling me now. It’s getting harder and harder not to guffaw at his face. "Ren—"

“—I’m sure there are a lot of guys out there who would love to date you,” Eren says, his eyes drooping in sadness. “And I know this is a selfish thought but I hope we can… still be friends?”

God, you better be grateful I’m Spider-Girl ‘cause this feels like a terrible break-up movie and I’m livid. “We can,” you nod. “But only if you do something for me.”

Eren blinks, his eyes turning hopeful. “Yes, anything. Anything you want, I’ll do it.”

“Okay, then, sit down on the floor.” With a confused frown, he follows without a word. “Lean back.” You give two light taps on the railing of his bed and he rests his backside against it. “Good, now close your eyes. Don’t open them until I say so.”

“Umm… Okay…” 

“Promise me that.”

“I promise.” His furrow turns deeper when he senses you crawling up his bed. You position yourself behind him, lying down on your stomach with your elbows propping the upper part of your body. 

You lean close, whispering breathily in his ear, imitating the words he once said to you on the night he kissed you. “Can I try something I’ve never done before?”

He shivers. The way your voice echoes through his mind sends his mind reeling. “Y-yes…” It sounds more like a question and you almost laugh. He’s beyond nervous. 

Your hand slithers down his cheek before you hook your fingers on the underside of his jaw. You lift his face. His gaze would’ve lingered on the ceiling if he had his eyes opened but Eren keeps them pressed shut. Your touch feels burning on his skin. “W-what are you doing?” he stutters out as you take off his glasses.

“Telling you my biggest secret,” you murmur, leaning closer until you have your face hovering above his. He can almost feel your every word on his skin. “Do you trust me?”

“I—” He noticeably gulps. “I do.”

With an elfin smile, you lower your head. Eren softly gasps when your lips are connected. You’re kissing him upside-down, similar to the kiss he shared with Spider-Girl. You try to replicate the way he kissed you that night, starting out slow, giving him a light, innocent kiss. There’s no pressure on your lips, nothing to distract him away from how soft they feel against his. This is that kiss—your first kiss together.

And Eren remembers it. His body, his lips, his heart remember it.

A few seconds are spent with Eren holding his breath and when you pull away, whispering, “Look at me,” he slowly opens his eyes but they stay half-lidded, completely dazed. 

You stroke his cheek, your smile is an everlasting beauty. 

“I’m in love with you too, Rennie.” 

Your confession certainly comes as a shock, but it’s not as much as the way you called his name. Eren has his heartbeat ringing clamorously in his ears, his eyes widening at the pet name you gave him back when you were nine-year-old. His flashback hits him at once and it strikes him like thunder. He has never told anyone else about the little girl he met in the hospital except for Spider-Girl, and even then, he didn’t tell you that she used to call him Rennie. So how the fuck can you tell? 

Eren turns around, almost knocking his head against the railing as he does. “Wait—” He rises to his feet, both hands stretched out forward. He is mortified beyond belief. So embarrassed, that he wishes he can light himself on fire so he doesn’t have to deal with whatever the fuck that’s going on. This can’t be—she can’t be—

He catches you grinning at him no matter how much you try to hold yourself back. “Calm down, Rennie.”

“No, don’t call—” Oh my God, I can’t breathe—This isn’t happening right now—She—

You’re laughing—great, now you’re laughing—interrupting his thoughts and sending him even further down this endless hole of shame. “So, I’m your first love, huh? Been crushing on me ever since we were nine? Damn, didn’t know you were such a simp for me, Tarantula Boy.”

“No. No, no, no, no, no.” He only has one color on his face: red. “You can’t do this to me—”

“And you jerked off to my pictures?” You playfully scold him, stepping down from the bed and making your way to his spot. “Can’t say I’m pleased with that. Also, I can’t believe you kissed me right after our date ended. Not to mention, I had to save your ass again—”

Fuck, I can’t do this. Eren spins on his heels, literally trying to run away in shame as his brain turns into mush. He has one hand around the doorknob, ready to run and jump off the nearest bridge when you stretch out your arm and shoot out your web. Snaring him by his wrist, you pull him back toward you with a hard yank. With a startled yelp, Eren tumbles back, his body nearly crashes against yours but you catch him just in time. You flick the web off your wrist and tangle your arms around his neck. 

Standing on your toes, you press your body against his, meshing your lips together and laughing against his mouth in response to the muffled sounds of his protest. “Kill me,” he sighs against your mouth, followed by a strangled moan when you part your lips just to close them around his bottom one. “Just kill me now, please.”

“You sure about that?” You tease him, one hand sliding down his chest. “Cause I’d rather do something else if you ask me.” You nip on his lip, not being as gentle as before. 

Groaning in defeat, Eren frames your face with both hands. He decides to take control of the kiss as a way to make you feel just as flustered as he is now. He’s still awkward, his teeth almost knocking against yours but when his tongue slides inside, he manages to steal a gasp out of your mouth. 

You lean your entire weight on him, clawing against his chest as he winds his arm around your waist. “Easy, Tarantula Boy,” you giggle, still sounding mischievous albeit a little breathless.

“You’re evil.” Eren moves his lips to your jaw before he settles his head in the crook of your neck. “I can’t believe you played me like this. Is this the reason why you were being so aggressive today?”

“I’m sorry.” Your small laughter morphs into soft moans as his tongue slithers against yours again. Your fingers slip between his strands, your eyes closed in pleasure as you face the ceiling, giving him more access to nibble on the supple skin of your neck. “I didn’t mean to go this far, actually. I just wanted to tease you a little bit but—” Your sentence ends abruptly in a gasp when he seizes you by your waist and throws you down to the bed. His strength surprises you but the way he handles you so easily, losing almost all the tenderness in his touch, lights your stomach on fire. He crawls on top of you, pinning your hand down against the sheets before he smashes your lips together again. The sudden change in his attitude baffles you but you're quick to display your smirk again. “My, my, look who’s being so aggressive now.”

“Shut up,” he replies, face aflame, robbing you of the ability to speak. Eren kisses you deeply, almost frantically, demanding, plundering your mouth with his own, and you understand why. He doesn’t use his passion to cover his embarrassment, not like what you thought he was doing. He’s kissing you like this, like he owns you and you own him, because he’s been in love with three different people all this time, and all of them are now in his arms, in the shape of you. And, God, you are beautiful.

“Calm down,” you remind him again, sliding your fingers up and down his spine, effectively slowing down his pace. His bun is a mess, his strands falling all over the place, all designed by your eager hands. You play with the baby hair on his nape when he pulls away, your smile is too delicate to be real. “I’m not going anywhere. You don’t have to rush.”

His heart hammers inside his chest and it’s beating so fast, it’s frightening, but Eren loves it. He’s always felt this way when he was with you—with any version of you—but now that he knows you’re all of them, his heart beats three times faster. “I don’t think I can do it.” He keeps his face close enough for the tip of your nose to brush against his when he whispers, “I’ve been in love with the same girl for twelve years and now you’re right here and I’m… I’m going insane.”

He’s adorable. So adorable. “Well then, maybe I feel the same way…” You untangle his hair tie with one hand, pushing back his hair behind his ear before you caress his cheek. “‘Cause I’m sure I’ve been in love with the same boy for twelve years too.”

He melts in your arms, weak with the surge of joy that suffuses his body. “It’s hard to believe that you’re Spider-Girl,” he breathes out, resting his temple above yours, closing his lids. He seems so blissful, so relieved at the revelation. “But at the same time, it feels so right. This is the perfect moment of my life, I feel like I’m gonna die.”

“Don’t die just yet,” you titter. “You haven’t loved me enough yet.”

He breaks away with a peal of laughter flowing past his lips. “I’m already going insane because of you and you still want me to love you harder than this?”

“If you can.”

“So demanding.” He jokingly rolls his eyes. “That little boy in the hospital.” He twines his fingers around your wrist, bringing your hand closer to his face. He speaks his next words with his lips brushing against the lines of your palm. “Have you always known it was me?”

“No…” You’re entranced, eyes turning a bit hazy at the way his long eyelashes flutter against his cheeks. He peppers soft kisses on your skin down to the veins that paint your inner wrist. “I only realized it was you when you told me that story.”

“That night on the rooftop?” His pout returns. “You should’ve told me then.”

“Well, yes, but then I wouldn’t get to have this much fun.” You toss him your signature Cheshire Cat grin. Eren throws you a playful snort before he dives back to taste your lips again. “Plus, I was too… embarrassed to say a word back then. I’ve always thought you looked familiar but I had no idea that you were that boy.” You hug him close, breathing right against his ear. “You grew up so handsomely, Rennie….”

He’s buzzing with joy, every part of him is. “You’re really trying to kill me right now, aren’t you?” Eren tickles your side, making you laugh hard enough for his neighbors to hear. He takes in everything, the crinkles in your eyes, the way you have your mouth opened wide, and that adorable laughter you emit–he loves it all. “This is how I always imagined you to look underneath that mask when you laughed,” he confesses, settling himself between your legs. 

You play with his necklace, fingers hooking around his silver chain. “Are you disappointed that I’m not as feminine as I usually behave on campus?”

“Are you kidding? I love you more like this.” Your heart thrashes wildly, no matter how hard you tell it to stay put. Eren props his elbows on the bed, trapping you between his arms. He gently swats the bangs out of your eyes, taking his time to examine your every feature, using the chance to commit every part of you into memory. “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever laid my eyes on but it’s Spider-Girl whom I’m in love with, and I never cared about her looks. I care about the way she comforts me with her words.” He presses a gentle kiss on the center of your temple, stunning you with intimacy. “I care about the way she cares about me.” He drags his lips to your cheek, lips as light as feathers. “How she gets upset on my behalf when I blame myself for something that isn’t my fault.”

“Yeah, you do that a lot, it’s annoying,” you giggle and you can feel his smile growing on your skin. “What else do you care about?”

“I care about the way she uses sarcasm as her weapon.” His lips are now closing around your earlobe, letting you know the shape of his smirk as he speaks. "And how she gets snarkier when she's embarrassed, not knowing what to do when she receives a compliment."

You flinch, a little bit sensitive in that area. Especially when he sounds breathier like this, huskier as if he just woke up from his dream. “I thought I was irritating.” 

“Sometimes, sure.” But in his next lines, he abandons all the mirth in his voice, and he speaks sincerely from the bottom of his heart. “I'm kidding. I just find you endearing. I care about how you always pretend to be strong when you’re actually scared.” He grants a soft kiss on your nose, breaking away to look you in the eyes as he strokes your hair. “I care about how you seem like you don’t need anybody else in your life, when the truth is, you’re always searching for someone to be there for you. Just like everyone else, you’re scared of being alone.”

Your gaze softens, your stomach somersaulting at his words. “I can never lie to you, can I?” Your voice is not louder than a whisper, your lips only a breath away. “Ever since we were kids, you always knew what to say to me. You understood me more than anyone else.” It’s such a wonderful feeling to be with someone you can truly open yourself to. No secrets. No lies. No sweet nothings. No boundaries. “I wish we had never grown apart during those years. I would’ve loved to spend every moment with you. Growing up together. Being your best friend and making out with you on our school’s rooftop during lunch breaks.” You brush two of your fingertips against his lips, tracing the pretty shape of his mouth as he chuckles. “Maybe I could even give you that radioactive spider that bit me so you could be my sidekick and we could fight crimes together.”

“Your sidekick?”

“It’s kind of a package deal. Plus, I have better social skills. You're not ready to be a superhero, trust me."

"And why not?"

"'Cause even if you were able to kick some ass, you’d never win against your true enemy.”

“Which is?”

“The press. And Tony Stark ‘cause he’d just bully you like crazy without me.”

He just can’t seem to stop grinning when he’s with you. “Well, it’s not too late to start. I'm sure there's some radioactive spiders somewhere.” He gently bites on the tip, rolling your finger between his teeth. “Can you find me a tarantula, though? Spiders are a little bit overrated.”

“Of course, baby. Whatever you want.” 

Eren smiles, bestowing another kiss and letting himself drown in your taste for a minute before he pulls away with a pout. “You said you could never lie to me,” he mutters. “But you’ve been lying to me about your identity for three months.”

“Oh my God,” you groan, throwing your head back. “Stop being so butthurt about it. I said I’m sorry.”

He chortles, gathering your face in his hand again. “You’re so annoying.” He pecks your lips. “But I love you.”

“You’re such an idiot.” You pull him for another kiss, separating your lips to welcome him inside. “But I love you.”

Your kisses seem never-ending, and none of you complains about it. It’s so addicting, so exciting to have his taste lingering in your mouth, to feel the flick of his tongue against yours. Eren may be an inexperienced kisser, but he learns fast. By the time he regains confidence, it’s easy for him to steal your breath away, leaving you all dazed and needy for more.

You have your body squeezed against his, your heels hooked behind his waist, but you’re left feeling unsatisfied as you still have layers of clothing separating your skin from his. “Can I do something I’ve never done before?” you ask him with a cheeky grin.

Eren, who was suckling on your neck a second ago, elevates his face just to give you a flat stare. “Can you stop embarrassing me for one second?” 

“What, I can’t speak English now?”

“You’re using my words!”

“Since when are those words your words—It’s basic English!” Laughing, you roll him to his back, position yourself above his lap and watch him gulp in anticipation. With a naughty smirk, you slip your hand underneath his shirt, your fingers tracing the ridges of his abdomens before you bunch up the fabric in one hand and push it up to his chest. “Wow…” The word accidentally slips out of your mouth as you stare shamelessly at him. “Jesus, when the heck did you work out?”

“S-shut up.” He pushes down his shirt, hiding as much skin as he can from your hungry eyes while blushing like the virgin that he is.

Well, actually, you’re a virgin too, but at least, you act like a pro. “Why are you covering—let me see your abs!”

“No!”

“Wha—” You’re trying to pry his hands away. He’s pretty strong, and you don’t want to use your superhuman strength to pin him down just so you can marvel at his stomach (you won’t stoop that low).

“Stop trying to undress me, woman!”

You know what, if he keeps fighting you back like this, you might as well tie him up with your web. “Rennie, come on, just give me a peek!” Did you sound desperate? Yes. Are you desperate? Yes, times a thousand. “I’m your girlfriend, you know!”

“You literally just became my girlfriend like seven minutes ago!” He’s struggling just as much, keeping the hem of his shirt as low as possible. “Also, being my girlfriend doesn’t mean you can do whatever you like with my body! Ask me for my consent first!”

You see, he’s right. He’s totally right, but— “Babe, I can literally feel your dick poking against my thigh right now.”

“Y-yeah, but still…” Aaaaand he's blushing. 

“Huh. Cute. Now let’s get back to the game, darling.” You grab the hem of his shirt and— 

“No, wait! I’m not mentally ready and we're—” Eren gasps loudly—almost too dramatically—in both horror and surprise when you shoot two lumps of your web, snaring his wrists and keeping them glued on the bed right on each side of his head. He turns to face you again, his jaw dropping low when he speaks, “Did you just use your web on me?”

You did. Holy shit, you did. What happened to not stooping that low? “I-I’m sorry.”

“Just to see my abs.”

You palm your face, your cheeks blazing hot. “I’ll let you out—”

“You know Peter Parker wouldn’t do this to MJ, right?”

You sigh. You kinda wish you were bitten by a radioactive bunny so you could dig really fast and bury your whole existence inside a hole. “Well, I mean, I wouldn’t know–”

“Steve Rogers would judge you so hard right now.”

“Steve’s actually a kinky bitch. I’m sure he likes it. Look, just calm down,” you tell him, settling yourself on his lap while trying your best to ignore the way his cock is twitching in his pants at the sensation of your weight pressing against him. “I won’t do anything to you without your permission, all right? I'll act like a gentleman. A gentlewoman, if you must.”

“Oh, am I your lady now?”

“You’re acting like one right now, aren’t you?”

“Oh, shut up.” He yanks on his wrist, trying to break free but your web is unyielding. “Can you get this off of me? This looks ridiculous!”

No, it doesn’t. This looks kinky as fuck. Never have you imagined that you’d be using your superhero ability to tie up a handsome man on his own bed, but you learn something new every day, I guess. Trying not to stare so much at the way his biceps are flexing with every attempt he makes, you ask the most important question. “Are you nervous because you’re a virgin?”

“I’m not—” His face catches on fire. “I’m not nervous, I’m just—okay, yeah, I’m nervous.”

“Because you’re a virgin?”

“No,” is his first answer but then bashfully he corrects with, “Well, yeah, kinda. But I’m more nervous about the fact that you’re… not.”

“Not what?”

“A virgin.” He tucks his chin, his voice muted. “I just… I don’t want to disappoint you.” Because Eren knows that you’ve dated several popular guys on campus in the past. Porco Galliard, Colt Grice, even that notorious bad boy, Floch Forster at some point. How can he compete with that? He wants to have sex with you—God, he wants nothing more than to get his dick wet with the girl he’s been in love with for twelve years—but what if you’re not satisfied with him? What if he sucks (no pun intended)? What if he’s supposed to suck but he can’t suck properly? Like sucking on your tits, for example. What if he can’t suck them right? What if—

“I’m a virgin, though,” you say.

“Okay, you can do whatever you want with me. I’m ready.” 

That’s it. That’s all it takes for you to get his consent. The next thing you know, Eren has his shirt bunched up around his chest, your fingers splayed and pressed flat against his stomach. “Damn,” you murmur under your breath, eyes transfixed on the way his muscles tighten underneath your palm. “If I had known you looked like this underneath that hoodie, I wouldn’t have wasted all these months keeping my identity a secret.”

His blush blossoms fast on his face, flinching when he feels your fingertips tracing the dip of his V-line. “I—I thought you were trying to keep your identity a secret to protect me.”

“Well, yeah, that too, but—” You brush your pads against his navel, feeling the little happy trail that disappears behind his jeans. He lets out this little sound, like a mix between a yelp, a whimper, and a moan, and it’s so fucking cute. “I think I’d be okay with you getting kidnapped once a week if I get to do this every day.”

“It feels so weird to have a hot girl talking about me like this, but okay.” Eren, despite how bizarre this conversation is getting, still has his focus on how to break himself free from your webbing. “Can you do something about this, please? It feels sticky on my skin.”

“No.”

“What do you mean 'no?' I can’t touch you if I’m like this!”

“Yes, that is the point, now shut up.” To Eren’s surprise, you casually yank your dress over your head, tossing it haphazardly on the floor and leaving you only in nice lacy lingerie that matches the shade of your lipstick.

“Fuck me,” he mutters under his breath, his gaze quickly shifting down to your chest. He gulps at the sight. “B-badonkers…”

“Excuse me?”

“I mean, your tits—your breasts!” He stammers. “They’re—they’re perfect. Like, the shape of them and how they look so… so soft and…” He clears his throat, realizing just how much lame he’s being. “You know, like a really nice pair of natural, fully functional breasts.”

You scrunch up your nose at his words. “Are you going to be like this the whole time?” You reach one hand behind your back, unclasping your bra.

“I… hope not…” He’s staring with unblinking eyes, practically salivating at the sight of your breasts bouncing once as you position yourself better on his lap. Fuck, they really are perfect. “A-are you sure you’ve never done this before?”

“You mean sex? No.” You lean forward, crawling up his body until you have your face hovering above his again. “Why?”

“You just seem awfully calm and—” You leave him speechless for a good few seconds when you press your breasts against his chest. Eren whines, closing his eyes as he throws his head against the bed. “Fuck.” 

Your lips twitch up into a smirk. “Soft, aren’t they?”

“Like fucking marshmallows.” He dreamily sighs—almost sobbing, really. “Can I have your tits in my mouth, please?”

Perhaps sometime in the future, when you look back into this scene again, you’ll have the biggest cringe moment in your life because what the fuck is he asking but right now, everything just seems so hot, you don’t even care. “Yeah, but maybe later once I’m done with you.” You reward him with a kiss to distract him, stifling his protest. “To tell you the truth, I’ve gone to second base before but I’ve… never gone past that.”

“Oh… Why not?”

“Just didn’t feel like it was the right thing to do at that time,” you answer with a shrug. “I almost did it with Porco but… It felt like I was missing something so I stopped him at the last minute.”

There’s jealousy burning inside him, but the revelation also provides him some relief. “I see…”

You can sense it, the tiny hint of fury raging in his chest and you nuzzle the tip of your nose against his to soothe him down. “Are you jealous?”

“No.” 

He is. He so is. “Would you like it if I said I was waiting for the right person?” You slide down one finger from the middle of his chest to the dip of his belly button. “Waiting for you?”

“N-no.”

He would. He so would. “You’re cute.”

“Stop calling me cute—ah!” A moan is snatched away from the back of his throat the second you grind your hips against him. Even the slightest friction drives him insane and now he has you rubbing your clothed heat against his bulge. “Fuck, baby, that feels good.”

You recall the way he called you by that pet name on that night you shared your first kiss with him, and as pleasant as it was in your ears, this one feels a million times better. It’s laced with urgency, desperation, and need. “Can I take off your jeans?” You ask him, even when your fingers are already playing with his zipper. 

“Are you going to ask me questions the whole time?”

“You said you wanted me to ask for your consent.”

“Yeah, fuck that. Do whatever you want with me. I’m yours.”

You almost laugh. “Well then, don’t mind if I do,” you say, a moment before your lips meet in a frenzied kiss. Eren arches his back, wanting to close every inch of gap between your skins until he feels like you’re completely plastered against him. He can feel your hand sliding down his stomach, toying with the button of his jeans before you push them down to his mid-thighs, along with his briefs. With a sheepish smile, you maintain eye contact as you curl your fingers gently around his shaft.

“How does it feel, Rennie?” You keep your face close, loving his expression. “Feels good?”

His chest rises and falls with rapid breaths, his face scarlet and erotic. “Feels ama—”

Right at that exact moment, Zeke Jaeger comes bursting inside his room with a phone in his hand, recording everything as he shouts, “AHA! CAUGHT YOU GUYS IN 4K! I knew you wouldn’t be studying–” He freezes at the sight of you stroking his sibling’s cock, your naked breasts practically dangling over his face, and for a second, none of you make a sound.

And then, it’s chaos.

The three of you are screaming at the same time, with you quickly grabbing the nearest pillow to cover your front, completely forgetting to throw a blanket on your poor boyfriend who’s practically buck-naked on his bed. Eren, with his wrists still glued to the sheets, can only spout out incoherent words, while his brother, who’s so horrified at the sight of Eren’s cock, spasming and leaking in desperate need of attention, can only stand still, his brain unable to function. It’s only until Eren screams, “ZEKE, GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY ROOM!” that he returns to his senses, whining out, “DINA, MY BROTHER IS FUCKING BEFORE ME!” as he runs back into the kitchen.

You hastily jump down from the bed, shutting the door and locking it up. “Use your web,” Eren says, “He has a spare key. He can still barge in anytime.”

“I think he saw us,” you utter in horror.

“Yeah.” 

“If I drop him off the building and make it look like an accident, do you think you’ll be okay with that?”

“Will I be okay with you killing my brother after seeing your boobs and catching me getting tied up to my bed and being dominated like a fucking masochist by my girlfriend?” Eren watches his cock wilting away. “Yes.”

“Well, not killing. I’m just gonna punch him hard enough to give him like a massive concussion or something.”

“No, no, no. Let’s just stick to murder. I like murder.”

***

AN: Hi, everyone! It took me a while but I finally got to finish this series. I wanted to write a small epilogue that will feature a funny scene where they get to lose their virginity to each other but since I'm pregnant with my second child now, I don't think I'll have the energy/time to do it, I'm sorry 😭😭😭 I hope you enjoyed the story despite how cringe this is (I'm never gonna do comedy again oh god what was I thinking). Anyway, thank you so much for reading! I'll see you next time!

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[mioxeno]

My personal reading of Sumire Yoshizawa who I read as a lesbian who suffers with comphet and identity issues:

A big aspect of Sumire's character is the desire to live up to her parents's and society's expectations for her. Sumire struggles to reach those expectations and her identity starts to spiral and deteriorate overtime. Both before and after Kasumi's death, Sumire's self-deprecation hurts her in a way that she feels obligated into comparing herself to her 'normal' sister Kasumi, who is beloved by everyone. Based on Sumire's comments throughout the game before Kasumi's death, her parents focused all their attention on Kasumi because she was everything they desired out of a daughter. Popular, outgoing, gifted in everything they did together, everything Sumire wasn't. So Sumire tried to live up to their expectations by trying to be like Kasumi in everything, their hobbies, personalities, and even looks.

It's clear that beyond her issues with her family (which she downplays likely due to Sumire thinking she doesn't deserve better), Sumire was noted to be 'different' by others around her, and her parents just ignored it because it was likely more convenient for them not to bother and focus their attention onto Kasumi. Due to this, it made Sumire start to feel she doesn't deserve to live unless she was exactly like Kasumi. Kasumi's death just kick-starts her mental breakdown, and Maruki's rash decision to change her cognition to believe she was Kasumi likely prevented Sumire from taking her own life.

Sumire's 'crush' on Joker started during the period where she believed herself to be Kasumi. Kasumi was likely straight, as she was just a 'normal girl.' Sumire idealized herself to be in a desire to conform to society. The Sumire Joker interacted with for most of the game wasn't really Sumire but instead Kasumi, Sumire's attempt to conform to the society that The Phantom Thieves are trying to reform.

When Sumire's cognition of Kasumi is broken by Maruki during the 3rd semester, after Joker and Akechi went to confront him, she latches onto the love she formed while she was 'Kasumi' as a way to cope and latch onto the sense of normalcy she felt. It's due to this that she begins to believe she loves Joker. However, whether Joker accepts her confession or denies it, they part at the end of the game. It personally reads to me as a way of showing that the crush was namely 'Kasumi's' and not Sumire's.

Sumire has a long way to go with accepting herself at the end of the game. With her sexuality, herself, and starting to overcome the survivor's guilt she has over losing Kasumi. I personally believe she'll likely start to bond with Futaba slowly due to them being in the same year at Shujin Academy and likely learn to accept herself with Futaba's help given her own experience with identity issues and blaming herself for the death of a loved one.

In conclusion, I believe Sumire is a lesbian who represses her sexuality due to fear of it making her an outcast moreso than she's already treated by those around her. The game ends with her trying to accept herself and find her own identity independent of Joker or Kasumi in her own time.

[yandere-paramour]

All the recent Ata asks have spiralled my little bunny brain into coming up with like the perfect most pathetic wet cat useless lesbian darling for Atlanta and uuggghhhh if only I could wriiteeeee ;^;

Anyways I gots a totally rad little bunny question for your silly yandere’s >:3

How would they all fair with a darling who’s either a voluntary shut-in, or a shut-in due to outside circumstances? (Like chronic illness, agoraphobia, etc etc)

This question is very normal and not at all sparked because of anything going on with me nope nope my bones are pawfectly fine :3

-The nervous bunny in your ask bin

Oh, Noelle LOVES this. She loves her perfect Darling safely inside the apartment. She will absolutely spoil you with anything you desire, and anything you could possibly be interested in, she will ask a favor of Atalanta to get it to you. Like seriously, she will ask Ata to set up a Broadway musical in a secret warehouse just to please you. She loves staying at home with you; being safely in the house with her perfect Darling is the ideal scenario.

Atalanta doesn't mind it. If you are this way, her brain unconsciously associates you with her father and she thinks "oh... this one is fragile". She understands how to deal with a fragile Darling; remember she learned from the best. You will be treated like you are made of glass and every decision will be made to keep you as safe and healthy as possible. She won't even make you come to galas or public events with her if you're not comfortable. You will be for her eyes only💙.

Vivien is probably the worst with this. He's an energetic little guy. He doesn't like staying bored in the house; he wants to take his Darling out on the town and have fun with them. A Darling who couldn't come out and have fun with him would make it difficult for him and his hyperactive personality. He wouldn't say anything, he would just suffer in silence because his skin crawls when he's not doing something.

[ikatakoirl]

We need to normalize criticizing our favorite works, pointing out shortcomings in representation while simultaneously celebrating how far that representation has come. I’ll go first.

The Riordanverse (Percy Jackson and its spin-offs) is hands-down one of the best examples of mainstream queer representation for kids. It was probably the biggest formative element of my early queer journey, and I am so grateful for everything Rick Riordan has done for the community. I will continue to support him and his works with all of my heart.

That being said, he has a problem with squeezing his representation into the very last pages of the book, confirmed but not explored. We have three confirmed queer relationships involving demigods:

Nico and Will, confirmed in the last chapter of the series

Piper and Shel, confirmed on the very last page of The Burning Maze.

Magnus and Alex, confirmed in the last chapter of the series (they did kiss a bit earlier)

P.S. I forgot about Lavinia until just before posting, but her entire lesbianism also is introduced and concluded in the span of about a page.

As you can see, it’s extremely consistent. Like I said, these are the only three examples of queer teenage relationships over Riordan’s five series, and they all happen right at the end. We also find that most of the straight pairings (Percy/Annabeth, Frank/Hazel, Jason/Piper, Tyson/Ella, and even things like Hedge/Mellie are confirmed in the middle of the series and given room to grow our at least be referenced back to.

It’s unclear whether this was a conscious or unconscious decision. Perhaps Riordan felt constrained by his publisher. Perhaps he was afraid that he didn’t have the proper background knowledge to accurately write the details of a queer relationship. Both of these are understandable and valid, if a bit disappointing, and I would much rather that he wrote them as he did than not at all.

However…

The good news is that it seems like he’s trying to fix it! He sprinkled in enough of Will and Nico in the first book of the sequel series Trials of Apollo for me to forgive him for their lackluster confirmation in Heroes of Olympus. But then he surprised us all by making Nico and Will two of the five main characters on the Trials of Apollo’s finale (The Tower of Nero), and I can tell you that the fandom ate it up!

But in case that wasn’t enough, soon after the release of The Tower of Nero, Riordan announced The Sun and the Star, now set for release this May! In this book, Nico and Will are the protagonist and deuteragonist, meaning the story will be entirely focused around them! And just to make sure Riordan absolutely knows what he’s doing, he’s decided to co-write it with a gay author Mark Oshiro to make sure they can represent the characters accurately!

And… and the best part… Riordan has done his fair share of novellas and short stories, and ever since the announcement I had assumed that that’s what this was, but no! It’s a full-length book with 480 pages! To compare, that’s strangely enough the exact same page count as The Tower of Nero! I’m so blown away by how much Riordan has gone above and beyond with this book, and I’m insanely excited for it. Sorry this turned into The Sun and the Star propoganda, I didn’t know that the publication date was so close or how long it was until just now.

Anyway, where I’m going with this is that I have extreme respect for a creator who’s willing to listen to feedback from the kinds of people he is writing about and constantly grow from those mistakes! He’s still by far my favorite author of all time. Love you, Uncle Rick!

[garden-ghoul]

broun and valence are like the reverse of those divorced lesbians who ran a merc company together on palisade. their child is war crimes. they only got common law married AFTER adopting war crimes. both of them make unilateral decisions for the other and neither of them has ever apologized. their moral philosophies are almost directly opposed. broun has never experienced this kind of intimacy before and will do anything to keep it. valence thinks this is a normal amount of weird for broun to be and just wants them to be happy.

valence led a revolution and became one of the most important people on partizan and got a new boyfriend and still hung out with this loser who steals weed from teens! they’re deeply moral and really don’t give a shit about all the horrific war crimes broun did!!

(tearing out my hair) broun changed their name and went to another part of the galaxy and tried to mold their entire life around what valence would want and did it SO SO FUCKING BADLY and is so piss-poor at grieving that they can’t even MENTION valence to valence’s old friends!

I KNOW I’M JUST RESTATING WHAT HAPPENS IN THE SHOW BUT WHAT THE FUCK. THEY’RE IN LOVE. NOTHING GOOD WOULD HAVE HAPPENED BETWEEN THEM IF VALENCE LIVED.

[controversial-blorbo-bracket]

Controversial Character Tournament Round 2: Light Yagami from Death Note vs Edelgard von Hresvelg from Fire Emblem: Three Houses

(remember that these characters are fictional and your fellow tumblr users are real. please be normal in the notes, i will not hesitate to block if you harass people)

Propaganda under the cut, may contain spoilers:

Light Yagami:

LOVE: - "He does some messed up things but have you considered: fucked up protagonists rock :)" HATE: - "this man makes me sick. ive genuinely had manic episodes over hating him. i have trauma from his existence in general. not even because of the murder. because hes a sexist cheater :(" - "My cousin and I frequently debate this. I think despite his 'intentions' he's ultimately a despicable character who cares for nobody but himself. She disagrees and says that he is just trying to do the right thing and making a difference in the world (she still thinks his actions are wrong, but she doesn't think he himself is despicable)" BOTH: - "I mean cmon man"

Edelgard Von Hresvelg:

LOVE: "People either claim she's the hero or the irredeemable villain with no in between. She's also my lovely wife who has never done anything wrong in her life." "I never even finished her route and remember nothing of what happens in that game but I DO remember the absolute warzone the fandom turned into because of her. She staged a coup and overthrew the head of the government/church and I think that's pretty cool of her. "But she committed war crimes!" God forbid women do anything." "I lied in the previous question. I don't hate her or love her in fact I have never even played this game. But I keep finding people making up Discourse™ featuring wild accusations of bigotry towards both Edelgard fans and Edelgard haters so I feel that she belongs here. (Also my friend hates her. but HER friend loves Edelgard. So even in my small social circle there is a clear polarization.)" "ok I don't have any solid propaganda because my opinion of her is more positive-neutral, but. she fits the spirit of this poll. trust me." "[three houses spoilers] Yes she started a war but it was the only apparent way to break the chokehold the church had over everyone in Fodlan. Also she’s the only lord you can gay marry so I’m hopelessly biased" "every time i go into the tag its either "edelgard is perfect no notes!!" or "edelgard is literally a fascist!!!". ive never seen someone with a neutral opinion of her. i yearn for battle." "I know very little about her to be quite honest! But good god. As a fire emblem fan for the GBA and engage. I have NEVER seen such a decisive character like Edelgard. Jesus Christ. I still find stuff in those tags. What the hell!!!" "I don’t even go to Fire Emblem but even I know that Edelgard has never done anything wrong, ever, in her entire life, and that if she did any war crimes they were a SUPER effective use of girl power. source: I am a lesbian. (realtalk I genuinely love a noble-minded extremist revolutionary and think Edelgard is a great character, so it’s kind of a shame that opinion on her seems to simply split down the line of “whether the person wants to kiss Edelgard or Dimitri more.”)"

HATE: "So on the one hand, she's fully willing to kill and burn and murder her way to a "better future" at the expense of the present, but on the other hand she's pretty cool and #girlboss. She's also a canon gay romance option, but idk if that makes her more or less problematic." "I just. I understand why people like her. I really do. And I don't have anything new to say for why I dislike her. Edelgard fans and stans have heard everything. She has great points and motivation, but her methods are wrong. She hitches her ideals to the first good opportunity and never reconsiders her allegiance when things go off the rails. She hates the church for "lying to people" and proceeds to lie to her own populace herself in her own route. She gives Claude an opportunity to live because she knows he believes in her goals. But Dimitri and his Kingdom are too beholden to the church to ever be offered such mercy. She herself acknowledges that the change she wants to see is more quickly enacted through war than subtle and slow societal change. She recognizes the human toll of her actions, but she justifies it through flowery language and an insistence that the change needs to happen now or it never will. I honestly find her so interesting, and I agree with a lot of her thoughts about the need for societal change in the world of FE:3H. But people latched onto her and propped her up as someone who can do no wrong. And that just never sat right with me. I just think she’s a hypocrite who got put in front of a shiny means to her end and was immediately blind to every other opportunity around her." BOTH: - "I dont even play fire emblem but I cant escape people not shutting up about how much they love or hate her" - "You said there were no hate answers for her...and I don't really hate her so it wouldn't be right but I wanted to balance things out some. She's the perfect storm of a character who sounds right and progressive and has a route all to herself that doesn't contradict that...but once you play other routes, it becomes clear she's kind of. full of misinformation. And attacking people who don't deserve it. Also a LOT of the divisiveness I'm willing to blame on the writers rather than her, for having her both be Evil Tyrant we NEED to take down and Sad Uwu Baby who just wants to eat cake and laze around and loves You the Player SO MUCH."

[sleepingdeath-light]

Hello, by any chance can I request the hexside squad (luz,hunter, amity, and willow) poly couple headcanons, human reader

Poly Headcanons | Amity, Hunter, Luz & Willow

thank you for requesting, anon!

reader is assumed as being gender neutral

note : hunter and amity are only metamours in this (i think she’s canonically a lesbian, hence this decision), everyone else is dating

i could summarise this polycule very succinctly with the words “good luck having any personal space” — but i’ll be nice and elaborate a bit more

congrats on your 3 badass girlfriends and your anxious overly protective boyfriend — hope you don’t miss sticking up for yourself too much

amity and luz are your biggest cheerleaders in everything you do whilst hunter and willow are always nearby to catch you if you fail and help you be the best you can be

luz is the only one who understands the references you make (being human and all) so there will be times where you’ll have to sit the others down and explain things very thoroughly

willow gets into cooking and food prep because of her passion for plant magic and will bring new dishes for you all to try on date nights

hunter is very protective and insists on training with everyone to make sure you’re all prepared for anything and everything that might get thrown at you

amity is always something of a voice of reason and will help you keep on track with what you need to focus on — be that training or assignments or something else entirely

group sleepovers at eda’s place are a must and happen a minimum of once per week — with sleeping arrangements usually changing from night to night

sometimes it’s : you, hunter, willow, luz amity

other times it’s : hunter, luz, you, amity, willow

but no matter the position you’ll be throughly smothered with cuddles and affection by the end of it

amity and hunter are the best metamours one could hope for and, being the most prepared and rational of you all, are usually the ones scheduling dates and training and such — whilst making sure to train each other just as much (like best mates with a history of violence)

the most to least affectionate duos when together are: (most) luz & amity -> luz & willow -> luz & you -> willow & you -> willow & amity -> willow & hunter -> hunter & you -> hunter & luz -> hunter & amity (least / completely platonic)

hunter is both touch starved and incredibly unused to casual affection, hence him being on the least affectionate side in general

luz is massively pro-pda and will smother everyone she can with all the hugs and kisses she can get away with

amity tends to be quite reluctant with pda and affection because she’s prone to being really flustered but she’s open to being reciprocal if you/willow/luz initiate it

willow is more mild with affection but still gives it freely because she grew up with it being a normal part of relationships

you have all at some point given hunter a spa day complete with manicures, face masks and more because the poor thing is a walking ball of nervous energy

the girls (amity and willow mainly) will paint all of your nails — luz helps with this but she can be very clumsy with the brush and ends up covering your hands with nail polish

you all end up sharing and swapping clothes at some point

matching outfits? matching outfits!

otter, cat, bird, bee and your animal of choice onesies

luz gives everyone silly nicknames (which you only pretend to hate)

willow has kicked several people’s asses for messing with her partners — which was only shocking the first three times

your penstagram chat is complete chaos with like twenty chats going on simultaneously

you, luz and willow have a competition to see who can fluster hunter/make him go red the fastest — mediated by amity, of course — which hunter is unaware of

your penstagram group chat is absolute chaos — like there are twenty different conversations happening at the same time

[animentality]

Hiya. Little chance you'll see/respond to this, but I thought I'd throw it out there anyway. I'm kind of stuck, gender-wise. As a gender-fluid afab person, I kind of know where I want my transition to go, with both T and surgery. The problem is, my very lesbian partner has some squicks about the way I want my transition to go, (namely the clitoromegaly and metoidioplasty.) I haven't talked to her about this yet, because of the squicks. (I know I need to, it's just something I haven't built up to yet.) There's a lot of love in the community for the effects of going on T that I want, which makes me feel good, but knowing my partner would no longer find me attractive because of it is. distressing. This is complicated by the fact that I do sex work, so I'm putting off transition anyway to retain my audience. I know I need to stop letting other people's approval and attraction dictate what I'm doing with my body, but it's money to live off of and I desperately love my partner, (and I'm used to sublimating what I want for others.) I don't know if you have or care to give any advice or response, but even just typing this out and sending it is making me feel better, so thank you <3

I get it, friend.

I really do. You know it's what you want, but you're also afraid of how much it'll change things.

And I don't blame you. There's always comfort in stability and the status quo. holding on to things you've grown so used to having, that you worry you might not be able to survive without them.

But if you know it's what you want- and I think it must be, otherwise would it really be a difficult decision? - then you'll find some peace in knowing that things are never as stable as they seem anyway.

you have to pursue the things that will make you happy in this life. it's the most important thing. sometimes that means choosing something that's harder to do, in the short term, but will bring you peace in the long term.

and yeah, it will be uncomfortable and painful if, or when, your partner no longer finds you attractive because of the transition, but if she really loves you, and cares for you as a person, then she'll support you, even if it's only as a friend. she won't cut you out of her life, if she loves you as much as you love her.

And I know that sounds bad, but the truth is, people are attracted to what they're attracted to. Now that doesn't mean she definitely will lose interest in you, though. Because honestly, I think you definitely need to talk about it, and maybe you'll be surprised.

I have known lesbians who have a few exceptions, just as there are straight people with their own "gay exceptions."

And transition isn't exactly a new practice or anything, but transition surgeries sort of are, in the grand scheme of things. they can be kind of disturbing to people, even supportive people, at first, because surgeries in general are always disturbing.

something primal in us just doesn't like the idea of letting someone else cut into our flesh and rearrange all the parts inside. it's instinctive, i think. but just as you can grow and change, so can other people.

even if they never ever thought about it before.

life is kinda funny like that. you can think you'll never ever do something, but then someone else might come along, someone you desperately want to be with, and then you'll become more than you ever expected you would be. and you'd do it together.

but you definitely need to talk to her. she might surprise you. or she might surprise herself, actually, if you give her the time to consider how it'll change your relationship.

But if she's no longer attracted to you, and if you break up, well, relationships always fall apart when one person wants to stay the same, but the other desires growth, and change. It might seem terrifying, not to have her as a romantic partner, and maybe you're afraid you'll never find someone else, but these things are normal, these things are not as scary as they seem.

All human beings, trans, cis, het, gay, bi, have to deal with the fact that people change and some relationships end. Some people can adapt, and stay together. Some can't.

Some people lose interest in their partners over many, many years, and some people can't stay in relationships with people who become sick, or disfigured, who have horrible injuries that change who they are. Life doesn't go the way you plan, ever.

So you aren't alone in that feeling. And I hope that your community is there to support you too, so that you don't feel alone in this either.

You might consider joining groups, or finding people, who know what it's like to lose partners because of transition, by the way.

It's always good to have a network of support.

Now as for the sex work... listen, I don't know your financial situation. if it makes sense to not transition right now, to put it off so you can pay the bills, have a roof over your head, then you can always wait as long as you need to.

But I wouldn't let that hold you back either.

Financial stability is very important, and being able to pay for food is your first need and all that, but emotional and psychological fulfillment are important too.

so in the future, if you have the money, or maybe find other jobs, or other means of income, then don't let it stop you.

and also, if you enjoy sex work, and you don't want to stop doing it, or having it as an option...you can find another audience.

it might be smaller, and different, and you might have to start from the ground up, but if you already have an audience that makes you good money, then you're resourceful. you're creative.

you can do this. all of this.

but anyway.

my advice to you is...do what you need to do, to make money, but remember that life is primarily about being happy. it can't always be happy, but...the end goal is happiness.

you have to go looking for it, though.

even if it doesn't look the way it used to, that's the grand adventure called living.

thanks for the ask.

always feel free to vent to me, by the way, especially about this, because as a transmac, I get it.

I personally only would want top surgery, but I understand completely the afabs who want to fully transition.

I remember the first time I used my name, and not my deadname...I remember the joy I felt, when my friends started calling me by masculine pronouns...

I couldn't discourage you from seeking the self you were born to be. It's a wonderful feeling, being the person you dreamt of, on those lonely nights where you laid in bed and wondered why you feel so different and alone.

But you aren't alone now.

Good luck, anon.

Hope everything turns out ok, and then I hope the rest of your life is wonderful.

[unclewaynemunson]

Pt2 to the Wingman Wayne AU sequel :D (This one’s gonna be slightly longer than most of the other parts!) | You can read pt1 here | ao3 link

Robin would never admit it to Steve, but she is nervous. Like, really nervous. The level of nervous you get from having a date as a lesbian in a small town in the Midwest who has only ever dated one girl before – a girl she knew from the school band, which means they didn't actually meet each other on a date, which means that Robin technically doesn't really have any first-date experience at all – contrary to Steve, who has a lot of first-date experience.

What do people wear for a first date? How do they prepare? Should you even prepare at all? Do people come late, do they come early, do they bring a present, how do they greet each other?  

By the time she's finally changed into clothes that make her feel the right amount of comfortable yet attractive, her room has exploded into even more of a mess than it usually is: her whole wardrobe is covering literally every inch of the floor, another pile of clothes is thrown haphazardly onto her bed, and Polly is making herself comfortable on Robin's favorite soft cardigan, no doubt getting dog hair all over it.

She shoots another glance in the mirror, tugging at her collar and frowning at the way her jeans are fitting around her upper legs.

'No, you're not gonna get changed again,' she sternly tells her reflection. 'You're fine. This is fine. You got this.'

'You got this,' Rosalinda repeats from her cage in the corner of the room. 'You look great. You look great.'

Robin perks up at that; teaching Rosalinda to say “you look great” whenever Robin is looking in the mirror has definitely been one of the better decisions in her whole life so far.

She rushes over to the cage to treat the parrot on some nuts, but then she notices the clock and a string of curses escapes from her mouth as she starts frantically looking for her All Stars - which she finds buried underneath Polly’s butt.

Well, at least she has one thing less to worry about now: fashionably late is gonna be her very well thought through arrival time.

---

She arrives at Benny's about ten minutes late. As she haphazardly shoves her bike into a rack, she spots a curly-haired girl leaning against one of the parked cars with a somewhat bored look on her face.

'I'm so sorry,' Robin says, slightly out of breath as she rushes up to the girl. 'I'm literally the worst at time management and I couldn't find my shoes because my dog was sitting on them and then I lost my keys because I forgot to –'

'It's fine,' the girl interrupts her. To Robin's relief, her lips are curving into a smile – a very pretty smile, that is. 'Mr. Munson already told me that you were probably gonna be late.'

Something about that seems really unfair and Robin huffs.

'How does he even know that? I never even met the man! No one even bothered to tell me your name, and you already know all about one of my worst personality traits!'

'It's Nancy.'

'What?' Robin gives the girl a distracted look.

'My name.' She holds out her hand and Robin shakes it, even though she thinks that's a bit formal for a date – it is, right? Or is this normal date etiquette and is Robin indeed as clueless as she feared she would be?

'I'm Nancy,' the girl elucidates. Her hand is cold against Robin's, but not in an unpleasant way, and Robin can barely suppress a shiver. 'And my worst personality traits is that I always want to be right.'

Robin can't help but smile at her. 'Good to know, I’ll make sure to remember that in case I ever need to let you win an argument,’ she answers.

'You're Robin, right?'

'No, I'm Tammy,' Robin deadpans.

'Oh.' Nancy lets go of her hand, going wide-eyed.

'Kidding. I'm Robin. Sorry for that lame joke.'

But Nancy chuckles, and it sounds just as cute as her smile looks. All of Nancy is cute, actually: she's almost a full head smaller than Robin and wearing a colorful skirt paired with a purple button-down. A necklace with a ballet-shoe pendant is resting against the skin right underneath her collarbones, and her fine-featured face reminds Robin of a work of art: perfectly heartshaped, with sharp cheekbones, a pointed chin, and huge, deep-blue eyes that get this adorable sparkle when she smiles.

And unfortunately, Robin knows all too well what will inevitably happen whenever she's put in front of a girl as pretty as Nancy. It's like she can actually feel the words piling up in her throat.

'I have to warn you, I've never actually been on a date with a girl before. I mean, I've dated a girl, but not been on a date, like, with someone I don't know yet. I mean, it's not like I'm not out yet, alright, but in this town, there's only so many people you can be out to, if you know what I mean, so I couldn't exactly go happily dating around, and I've never really been interested in dating boys at all, so that never happened either – so what I'm trying to say is that I've never been on a date before and it's kinda making me nervous and I have this habit that I start rambling when I'm nervous, so you should probably just cut me off at some point or else I'll be passing out soon because I'm getting really out of breath and –'

'Take a breath,' Nancy finally interrupts her monologue. Her smile is less shy now and more amused, and Robin gratefully does what Nancy ordered her to do.

'It's okay,' Nancy says in a sweetly quiet voice. 'I'm glad you told me. I've actually never been on a date with a girl either. I've been in some relationships, with guys, but they didn't – they didn't really work. Um...' She points towards the door. 'Should we get –'

'Yeah, let's go inside,' Robin says, eagerly taking the chance to continue their conversation somewhere that's not a joyless gray parking lot.

They order at the counter and Robin lets Nancy pick a booth; they end up at the one in the most remote corner.

'Well,' Robin says, raising her Coke at Nancy, 'Cheers to Wayne Munson, I guess, for landing both of us our very first official date with a girl.'

Nancy chuckles and clinks her glass against Robin's.

'Cheers to Wayne Munson,' she repeats. 'I have to admit, I was very surprised when he called me. I only met him once, you know?'

Robin listens attentively while Nancy tells her how she met Mr. Munson at the plant, where he was working while she was on an assignment for the newspaper. It's surprisingly easy, to talk to her. They easily launch into this whole conversation about the working conditions and safety hazards down at the plant, both equally indignant about how the employees are treated there, and Robin fires all kinds of questions at Nancy about her job at the Gazette.

'I've been really lucky,' Nancy admits. 'Last year I got this internship at the Hawkins Post and that was... not great. I was basically the only woman and all those men thought I was only good for making them coffee and sandwiches. It's actually why I broke up with my boyfriend. He thought I should just “sit it out,” be grateful for the opportunity or whatever. Which I thought was fucking bullshit.'

Robin nods eagerly, her mouth too stuffed with Benny's heavenly burger to form an intelligible response.

'Anyway, I didn't sit it out – I went behind their backs for a good story and they fired me. But that's how I ended up at the Gazette. They make much better articles anyway – like the thing we did with the plant.' Nancy pauses to take a sip of her drink, and her eyes are lit up beautifully with the passion for the work she's doing. 'They care about this community, want to publish stuff that actually helps make it better. So I got to talk to Mr. Munson, and he had some really interesting things to say,' she said, coming full-circle with her story like a true journalist. 'But we didn't talk about any personal stuff, you know,' she continues. 'So I was really surprised when he called.'

Robin chuckles. 'Yeah, I haven't even met the man, I only know his nephew Eddie. He's supposed to have some sixth sense for matching queer people,' she tells Nancy while jokingly wiggling her eyebrows. 'That's how my best friend became Eddie's boyfriend. I wouldn't have been here if that dingus didn't tell me that it was gonna be worth it.'

The shyness is back in Nancy's smile as she holds Robin's gaze over their fries.

'Well, I think your friend might be right about that sixth sense,' Nancy says quietly.

Robin feels her cheeks heat up at that and looks away from Nancy's intense gaze.

'Don't tell him that,' she jokes. 'His ego is already annoyingly big.'

She looks back into Nancy's eyes and immediately feels fucking stupid for not taking her chance and say something heartfelt in response to Nancy's brave vulnerability.

'But no matter how much it pains me to admit it, I have to agree with you that he might be right,' she awkwardly adds. And luckily, it works: Nancy is beaming at her like the fucking brightest star in the milky way.

Pt3

Taglist: @munsonsuccubus @messrs-weasley @shrimply-a-menace @booksandsience @sadcanadianwinter @mightbeasleep

[marshmallowprotection]

out of curiosity why do you hc rika as a lesbian? :)

I don't know many people in this fandom who don't headcanon Rika as a lesbian, to be honest with you. In fact, it's been a long time since I've seen anyone write her any other way.

In my eyes, I've always read into Rika as someone who reflected on her sexuality later in life because her traumatic experience with the Catholic church made her bury anything about herself that didn't fit with whatever the church believed (I.E. the Pastor and her Abusive Parents).

How could she think about who she liked when she had to focus on surviving? How could she think about having crushes and having a normal childhood when all she knew was suffering? How could she openly experience crushes when her family would've hurt her for it? Rika knew that openly expressing anything that went against what the church and her abusive parents believed would hurt her. She'd learned to try and keep quiet and stay small, but even that couldn't protect her.

She never thought about her romantic feelings for others growing up. She didn't think she was worthy of love! Had she been able to grow in a safe, warm environment, I think it would've been easier for her to sit down and reflect on her feelings towards other people enough to see that she was sapphic. That she had feelings for girls instead of boys. That she felt like herself around other girls and wanted to explore it more freely.

Rika yearned to be loved her entire childhood, just as much as I think she yearned to love in return.

Rika was taught that she was the devil from a young age, a devil for simply existing as an orphan girl with trauma who could never make the adults who were hurting her happy, and she internalized so much self-hatred because of that. Her experience with love isn't healthy for the most part. She latched onto Jihyun Kim because she wanted the chance to become him. She wanted to be him. Her love for him, in my opinion, wasn't never her being "in love" with him.

Does that mean she didn't love him? No, I do think she loved him in her own way, but I don't think she was in IN LOVE with him.

Rather, Rika was in love with the idea of being in love with Jihyun and in love with the idea of becoming Jihyun. She wanted to love him, at first, especially, she wanted to be in love with him, she wanted a life with him, she wanted everything with him because he felt like a God and a Savior to her life that felt miserable up until that point, but the longer she spent with him, the less it felt like love and the more it felt like obsession.

She was in love with the idea of escaping her demons, and to her, V was her dream. If she could become him, she would no longer be the devil, she would be V, a savior, a sun, a perfect lift that could do not a single thing wrong.

I think it's very easy for a lot of people to look at Rika's story from the perspective of a closeted lesbian who grew up in an abusive Catholic household, who never had the opportunity to think about what she'd like out of life because her family made the decisions for her ahead of time, and anything that deviated from what they wanted would have her face their wrath.

I've had a few friends with the same story as Rika in that sense, they tried to follow the expectation their family set up for them. They tried to force themselves into that role and they were miserable because of that. They kept trying to be someone they weren't, and someone they could never be, and only when they were able to be honest with their feelings and what they knew in their heart, did things start to change for the better in their lives.

You can't force your way into being someone you're not. All you do is make yourself miserable in the process. The world would be a damn better place if we didn't have to deal with homophobia and the effect the Christian church has on young people who are told they will go to hell for simply loving someone. My family did and said a lot of things to me because of my sexuality, before I even understood who I was or my feelings, all because of people using the bible to spout vitriol and hatred.

It's miserable to have to live in hiding growing up, feeling like you have no choice but to hide away to learn and explore your feelings without the fear of someone screaming at you or worse. So, when I think about Rika, myself, and I know many others, look at Rika and find a sense of kinship.

Headcanons are just headcanons, after all. My viewing Rika as a lesbian brings me some comfort and it ain't hurting nobody.