#my tall roommate is a weird dude

[torontopigeon]

sometimes my tall roommate gets home and he is very tired and grumpy for a man who does not do hard work at home all day like I do (I am employed in the field of Keeping The Couch Warm and Using Mousie Toys As A Little Pillow) so I have to lie on the ground until he lies down too and I can sit on him until he feels better and he can make a dinner and wet food! it is very taxing after a long day but I do not mind because I am the nicerest furry person ever and deserve tofu water and treats!

also I sometimes get a little silly with it! tee hee!

[ham1lton]

AFTER LAST NIGHT (I THINK I'M IN LOVE WITH YOU).

episode two of ham1lton’s kinktober fest.

— pairings: george russell x reader.

— summary: your vampire roommate is perfect in every way. he's clean, respectful, pays his portion of rent on time, and.... has a crush on you?

— cw: bath sex/handjob, mention of licking tears, biting!!! this is a vamp sex fic. this is acc very tame lmao.

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AITA for thinking my vampire roommate has a crush on me because he’s acting weird?

posted by user728338

so this sounds ridiculous, which is why i posted this on my throwaway acc, but please bear with me. i (23F) have a roommate (26M) who’s… well, a vampire. yes, a literal vampire. before you ask, it’s really not as dramatic as it sounds. he’s actually perfect in pretty much every way—he’s super clean, respectful, quiet, never has people over, pays his rent on time, and never leaves a mess. honestly, having a vampire as a roommate has been way easier than i thought it would be.

but lately, he’s been acting kinda… weird. at first, i thought maybe it was just vampire stuff? like maybe he’s going through some undead mood swings or whatever. but now, i’m starting to think it’s something else. he’s started being extra nice to me, like… too nice. offering to do things for me, complimenting me more than usual, staring at me for just a little longer than what’s socially acceptable.

he also gets super awkward whenever i bring up my dating life. like, i casually mentioned going on a date, and he kinda froze up and changed the subject immediately. it’s really unlike him. i feel like he’s avoiding me sometimes, too. he’ll leave the room quickly if i get too close, and he’s gotten all stiff when we’re watching a movie together like he doesn’t know what to do with his hands.

i don’t know—am i being paranoid, or does it sound like he might have a crush on me? i feel like this whole ‘vampire crush on a human’ thing is just… cliché (like okayyyy tvd), but he’s been so different lately. i want to bring it up, but i also really don’t want to make things awkward if i’m wrong. he’s been a great roommate, and i don’t want to mess that up.

AITA for thinking my vampire roommate might have feelings for me?

view all comments.

randolando: dude don’t worry about it. vampires get weird about crushes. i used to know this hot vamp chick and i totally knew she had a crush on me when she brought me back to her cave and tried to stop my heart. weird but romantic. knowing him, he’s just trying to figure out a way to ask you out without making it awkward. we know how crushes are a pain in the neck. you get it? 🤣

chachaslide: this is sweet. i love seeing true love. i hope you like him back but no pressure. it sounds like he really likes you and isn’t sure how to handle it. if you like him too just be gentle and maybe talk to him about the situation? he could just be scared to ruin what you both have. if you don’t like him, that’s fine! just reassure him that you’re cool being roommates. communication is key!! hope it goes well.

maxattack: KILL HIM NOW. i don't care how 'nice' or ‘perfect' he seemingly is. he’s a vampire, and you're a walking snack. don’t let the politeness fool you. the second you let your guard down, you're done. get out now, stake through the heart, burn the body, and never look back. you don't want to be his next midnight snack. i know from experience.

alexxxxx123: omg. i think i know who you’re talking about. tall, pale, british and his name begins with g? if it’s him, it’s totally harmless.

— user728338: pm me.

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after a long day at work, you step into the london flat quietly, the soft click of the door barely making a sound. as you take off your shoes, you hear george’s voice coming from the living room. it’s low, but unmistakable—calm, precise, and, of course, very posh. curiosity gets the better of you, and you hover just outside the door, listening.

“yes, alex, i know. it’s rather… frustrating, to say the least,” george says, his tone clipped but controlled. “i mean, she’s right here, every day, and yet i can’t seem to gather the courage to—well, you know… express myself.”

there’s a pause, and you feel your heart skip a beat. he’s talking about you. you press yourself closer to the wall, careful not to make a sound, your pulse racing as you listen in.

“oh, of course, i’ve thought about it,” george continues, his voice lowering slightly, almost conspiratorial. “but what if she doesn’t feel the same? what if i ruin everything? she’s… well, she’s stunning, isn’t she? and don’t get me started on how she looks when she—”

he stops himself, clears his throat, and you hear him shift uncomfortably. oh. you feel your cheeks heat up, realising just how close you’ve come to hearing something you probably shouldn’t.

“no, no, it’s nothing improper,” george quickly adds, as if reassuring alex on the other end of the line—and maybe himself too. “you know i’m not that sort of man. it’s just that… i find myself distracted. the way she smiles, the way she moves about the flat, even the smallest things. it’s maddening. i can’t keep my thoughts straight, let alone have a proper conversation with her. it’s utterly ridiculous.”

you bite your lip, your mind racing. george, the prim and proper vampire, with his immaculate manners and his pristine way of speaking… has a crush on you? it almost seems too surreal and you come to the sudden realisation that you were right.

“yes, well,” george continues, a hint of exasperation in his voice, “i don’t think it’s quite appropriate to be so forward with her. she’s human, alex. it’s not as simple as just… declaring one’s affections and hoping for the best. besides, there’s… certain temptations that come with my, shall we say, condition.”

another pause, and you can almost hear the shock in george’s voice as he says, “no, not that sort of temptation. for heaven’s sake, alex, you’re incorrigible.”

you stifle a giggle, feeling a strange mixture of amusement and flattery. george’s usually calm, composed demeanour was cracking, all because of you. and yet, even as he’s talking about his attraction, he’s still so… proper.

“it’s just… difficult, alex,” george continues, his voice softening, as if he’s letting his guard down. “i’ve never been one to get flustered, you know that. but with her, it’s different. every time i try to be casual, i end up stumbling over my words like a schoolboy. i haven’t been one of those since my eton days in 1678.”

he sighs, and you hear the creak of the chair as he shifts. “i’ve considered telling her, of course, but what if she doesn’t feel the same? or worse, what if i… lose control? it’s not like i can just—”

just then, george turns his head, catching sight of you in the reflection of the mirror by the door. his eyes widen, and he freezes, his face going pale as a statue. which means, he’s even paler than usual.

“alex, i have to go,” he says quickly, cutting the call without another word.

you stand there, awkwardly rooted to the spot, trying to process what just happened. george stares at you for a long, agonising second, his usually calm, collected features twisted in a mix of embarrassment and something close to panic. he opens his mouth to say something, then promptly closes it again. without another word, he vanishes from the room, moving so fast that you barely catch the sound of the door shutting behind him.

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the flat feels strangely empty after that. days pass, and george doesn’t return. there’s no note, no message, nothing to explain his absence, and a strange loneliness settles over the place. as much as you tried to shake off the awkwardness of overhearing him, you couldn’t stop thinking about his voice, his words, and how he’d sounded so flustered and so human in that moment.

then, one evening, after a long day, you decide to run yourself a bath. the water is warm, the bubbles thick, and you sink into it, trying to relax, but your thoughts keep drifting back to george. you wonder where he is, if he’s okay, and if he’ll ever come back. mostly because out of genuine care but also, you could never pay the rent alone. it’s london.

just as you’re about to close your eyes, there’s a soft knock on the bathroom door. you sit up, startled.

“it’s me,” george’s voice comes through the door, quiet, hesitant. “i… well, i need to apologise.”

you blink, glancing down at yourself submerged in the bath, and then at the door. “george?” you call out, feeling a mix of surprise and curiosity. “where have you been?”

there’s a pause before he responds, his voice tight with embarrassment. “away. i… needed some time to gather my thoughts. but i can’t stay away any longer. i behaved incredibly poorly, and i’m sorry. i didn’t mean for you to overhear that conversation.”

“you’ve been avoiding me for days,” you say softly, the warmth of the bath soothing but not enough to ease the tension in the air. “it’s fine, george. really.”

“no,” he insists, his voice a little firmer now. “it’s not fine. i’ve been disrespectful, and that’s not who i am. it’s not reflective of how i want to act. i should have… handled it better.” there’s a long pause, and you can hear the discomfort in his tone when he adds, “i’ll… wait outside until you’re decent. i’d never want to intrude on your privacy.”

you bite back a smile. even now, he’s still so proper, refusing to even acknowledge that you’re in the bath.

“george, it’s okay,” you say, a little amused. “you can come in. just… don’t look.”

there’s another pause, and you hear him take a deep breath. then, slowly, the door creaks open, and george steps in, his eyes firmly fixed on the floor. he looks so shy, and he looks entirely out of place standing in the middle of your ensuite bathroom, but he keeps his gaze respectfully averted.

“i… i didn’t mean for things to get so awkward,” he begins, his voice tight with formality. “i’ve made things uncomfortable for you, and for that, i’m deeply sorry.”

you can’t help but smile at his rigid posture, the way he stands there, still too embarrassed to even glance in your direction. “george, you didn’t do anything wrong. i… actually thought it was kind of… sweet. the way you talked about me.”

his head jerks slightly, and he clears his throat, clearly flustered. “yes, well… it wasn’t my finest moment, but… i meant every word.”

you feel your heart flutter at his admission, and despite the strange situation, you can’t help but find his gentlemanly awkwardness endearing.

“thank you for apologising,” you say softly. “and for being so… proper. i appreciate it.”

he finally glances up, just for a second, his eyes still carefully avoiding looking at you directly. “i may be many things,” he says quietly, “but a gentleman is one i’ll never fail to be. i… hope we can put this behind us.”

with a soft smile, you turn your head to the side, studying george’s posture, his stiff formality, his refusal to look at you even now. “but what if i don’t want to?” you ask, your voice quiet, teasing, but with an edge of something more—something curious.

his entire body tenses at your words, as if they’ve struck him harder than he expected. he clears his throat, his gaze still fixed on the floor, though you notice his hands twitch slightly at his sides. “i… i beg your pardon?” he stammers, the usual composure in his voice faltering.

you sit up a little in the bath, the water shifting around you as you keep your eyes on him. “what if i don’t want to put it behind us?” you repeat, more gently this time, testing the waters just as he had with his confession. “what if… i’ve been thinking about it too?”

george is silent for a long moment, his breath hitching just slightly as your words sink in. finally, he raises his head, his eyes locking onto yours, though he keeps them carefully above your shoulders. there’s a flicker of something—hope, maybe, or disbelief—dancing in his eyes. he swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing slightly as he struggles to find the right words.

“you… you’ve thought about it?” he asks, his voice barely above a whisper, as though he can’t quite believe what he’s hearing.

you nod, watching his reaction closely. “george, you’ve been nothing but a gentleman, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t notice… the way you look at me. the way you talk about me.” you pause, biting your lip slightly, the playful edge in your voice softening. “and… maybe I like it.”

“i… i never intended to make you uncomfortable,” he murmurs, his voice laced with sincerity. “but if… if you’ve truly thought about this, then… i can’t deny that i have, too. for longer than i care to admit.”

he glances away, his jaw tightening as though he’s fighting some internal battle, trying to balance his feelings with his unshakable need to maintain decorum. “but you must understand,” he continues, his voice tight, “this isn’t… simple. my nature complicates things. i’ve fought to keep these feelings in check because… i don’t want to put you at risk.”

you tilt your head, your eyes softening as you look at him, seeing the tension in his posture, the restraint he holds so tightly. “george, you’ve never made me feel anything but safe,” you murmur, your voice gentle. “even now.”

he stands by the door, rigid, torn between his desire and his code of conduct. his fingers flex at his sides as though he’s holding onto some invisible line that’s slowly fraying. “but what if… what if i can’t always control myself?” he whispers, as if he’s speaking more to himself than to you. “what if i fail?”

you meet his gaze steadily. “george, you have control. we’ve been living together a long time. if you didn’t, this would’ve gone differently a long time ago.”

he blinks, clearly taken aback by your confidence in him. you shift slightly in the bath, the warm water rippling around you as you lean forward. “come here,” you say, your tone soft but firm.

“i can’t,” he breathes, shaking his head slightly, his eyes flickering with hesitation. “you don’t know what you’re asking.”

“maybe i do,” you reply, your voice unwavering. “you said you’ve thought about this—about us. so have i. and the only thing standing between us right now is your fear that you’ll hurt me. but george… you won’t.”

he clenches his jaw, his eyes filled with conflict. you can see the way he’s holding himself back, the way he’s torn between what he wants and what he thinks is right. “you don’t understand the… the temptation,” he says, his voice strained. “being close to you… it’s not just about control.”

“i trust you,” you say firmly, holding his gaze. “and i’m asking you to trust yourself.”

he takes a deep breath, his chest rising and falling as he battles with himself. finally, after what feels like an eternity, he takes a tentative step forward. then another. he’s still hesitant, but you can see the way his resolve is crumbling under the weight of his desire.

“come here,” you say again, more softly this time, reaching out a hand toward him. “george, i want you here. with me.”

he stops at the edge of the bath, his eyes dark and intense as they meet yours. “this… this isn’t appropriate,” he says, but his voice has lost its usual firmness. there’s a vulnerability there now, an uncertainty that you’ve never seen in him before.

“good news that appropriate isn’t what i’m asking for,” you say with a small smile, your fingers brushing lightly against his arm. “i’m asking for you.”

he swallows hard, his eyes flickering down to the water and back up to you, and for a moment, you think he might walk away again, retreat into that shell of formality he hides behind. but then, slowly, cautiously, he bends down, kneeling by the side of the bath. his hand hovers over yours for a moment, as if he’s still deciding whether or not to let himself go.

“just trust me,” you whisper, your eyes locking onto his, silently urging him to take that final step.

his fingers curl around yours, cool to the touch, and you feel the tension in his grip, the restraint he’s still holding onto. “you’re sure?” he murmurs, his voice low and almost reverent.

“i’ve never been more sure,” you reply, giving his hand a gentle squeeze. his skin cold under yours. “now, get in.”

he hesitates for only a moment longer before, with a deep breath, he slips off his jacket and unbuttons his shirt, still moving carefully, like he’s afraid of crossing a line he can’t uncross. lastly, he pulls his trousers down before he steps into the bath, the water lapping at his underwear, soaking them through, but he doesn’t seem to care. his gaze is fixed on you the entire time, intense and unwavering.

he sits down slowly, the warmth of the bath contrasting with his cool skin, his legs brushing against yours under the water. “i don’t want to… overstep,” he says softly, his voice low and serious, though his hand remains firmly in yours.

“you won’t.” you smile, as you crawl over to him. “if anything, i might do.”

“you could never.” he murmurs, looking into your eyes. “anything you would like to do to me would be my pleasure.”

“anything?”

“anything.”

he exhales slowly, his gaze lingering on your face as if trying to memorise every detail. "i've spent so long keeping my distance," he says quietly, his voice thick with restraint. "telling myself that this... that you... were out of reach."

you shift closer, the water rippling between you as your knees brush against his. "i'm not out of reach, george," you whisper, your fingers trailing along his arm. "i'm right here."

you crawl over to him as you kiss him. he immediately melts under your touch, his cold skin going pliant under your fingertips. you go even further, opening your mouth with his tongue and swallowing the little gasp that comes out. he grips your forearms as you take up more space in his lap, his eyes shut as you greedily touch him everywhere you can.

you can feel him harden under your touch, as you reach down to wrap a hand around him. he bucks up into your touch as he kisses you harder. you tighten your hold as he fucks up into you, the water splashing around you both as he cradles your face with his hands.

for a moment, all you can hear is the motion of the water and his quiet groans against your mouth.

as he moans in your mouth again, you smile and swipe your thumb over his head. his stomach clenches, and his thighs tense as he releases. he looks up at you with apologetic teary eyes, the teardrops spilling over. he looks a mess. his sharp canines protruding from his mouth, pushing his lips into a pout. you kiss him. the role reversal hadn’t been lost on you. you had managed to reduce your ‘predator’ into tears over a handjob. take that user maxattack!

you then smile, not unkindly, and lick up the salty trail that his teardrops had mapped on his face. you kiss his cheek.

“you okay?” he nods in response to your question. you hesitate before asking a question. “do you mind if try something? i’ve always been curious about it.”

“of course.”

you lean forward and bite over his jugular. he seemingly doesn’t react. you bite down harder, when you look at him, he just looks back at you with his eyes wide. the pressure of your teeth didn’t seem to affect him, but hey, it was something to tick off your bucket list.

“having fun?” he smiles.

“a lot.” you grin. “i’d have even more if you let me have my way with you in an actual bed.”

you’ve never seen him move so quickly as he did when getting out of the bath.

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UPDATE: AITA for thinking my vampire roommate had a crush on me?

posted by user728338

hey everyone, i wasn’t expecting the original post to get so much attention, but after reading through all your comments (some of them were wild, lol), i figured i’d give you an update!

so… turns out, you guys were right. he did have a crush on me, and i wasn’t imagining things. i ended up overhearing him on the phone with his friend (as you all predicted), and he was basically confessing his feelings for me! it was awkward at first—he got super embarrassed and disappeared for a few days. i thought that was going to be the end of it, but then he came back to apologise, all prim and proper as usual, even though i was literally in the bath when he did it.

and well… one thing led to another. we had a very honest conversation about everything, about how we’ve both been feeling, and let’s just say it escalated from there.

yes, we hooked up. and it was… intense (vampires, am i right?). i won’t go into too much detail, but it was amazing and also kind of sweet? he is still his usual gentlemanly self, but he’s also loosened up a bit around me now, which is nice. the best part? we’re officially dating now!!

it’s still early days, but things have been going really well. he is is surprisingly thoughtful, and he’s made it clear that he takes this—us—very seriously. i’m honestly really happy with him, and the whole vampire thing? not as big of a deal as i thought it would be.

so yeah, it all worked out in the end! thanks for the advice, everyone. and to those who told me to get therapy or run because he was going to eat me—he definitely didn’t. ;)

tl;dr: my vampire roommate had a crush on me, we hooked up, and now we’re dating!

view all comments

maxattack: THIS IS A TERRIBLE IDEA. IT'S NOT TOO LATE. STAKE HIM. I REPEAT— STAKE. HIM. you say he didn't eat you this time, but that's how it starts. they lure you in with sweetness, get you comfortable, and then BAM, next thing you know, you're in a coffin six feet under. i’ve seen it happen. i’ll say it one more time — STAKE. THROUGH. THE. HEART. I'M WARNING YOU!!!!!

chachaslide: this is SO CUTE! i’m so glad you two talked it out and things worked out in the best way possible. it sounds like you’ve got a great thing going! i hope everything continues to be amazing between you two. just keep up that communication, and you’ll be fine! wishing you both all the best <3

randolando: knew it!!! i told you, vampires just get weird with crushes. i’m glad it worked out for you two! also, the fact that he didn’t try to stop your heart means you’re doing better than me with that vamp chick lmao. anyway, keep having fun, but maybe steer clear of any caves. congrats!

alexxxxx123: OMG IT IS HIM! i knew it! g is a total sweetheart, and honestly, you’ve snagged a good one. i’m really happy for you both. i had a feeling he liked you when you first mentioned the awkwardness. he’s just a bit shy when it comes to feelings. don’t worry, he’ll get a lot more comfortable as you go along! congrats again! <3

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[yellowjestertfs]

Altered State: Part 1

IDK if anyone on here will be interested in this story, its kind of a long and slower but thought I would post it anyways. More parts coming next week!

Most great adventures start with a call to arms, a quest from on high, a declaration of purpose to serve the greater good. Edward’s and Leon’s started with a question asked through a mouthful of chips.

“Wanna play this new game dude?” Leon asked words barely intelligible. He stood in the doorway of their living room, his fat frame blocking most of the light. In one hand he held a bag of chips and in the other, he held up an unfamiliar battered keep case, the type that held video game disks inside. The thing had a red and blue design that Edward didn't recognize. 

“I guess. What is that thing, will it work on my Wii?” Edward asked. He lay on the couch, long thin body taking up the whole thing but sat up and moved over to make room for his roommate. 

Leon shook his head “I don’t think so dude, it's like super retro.” He walked over to the TV and started fiddling with the row of older consoles that belonged to their third roommate Alvis trying to see if any could accommodate the game. "It was free though." He said as he found the right one, an extremely retro blocky thing Edward was surprised even accepted disks. Leon booted up the system, the familiar hum of the machine filling the space. “I got it from that comic shop down the street. This buff dude at the counter just handed it to me. Said he thought I would put it to good use.”

“Alvis would kill you if he knew you were touching that,” Edward warned, always the one to show more caution. 

“Fuck Alvis. If he didn't want it to be used he shouldn’t have bought it” Leon countered. Neither of the two were particularly big fans of their other roommate, but Leon especially hated his guts. He only let the guy live with them because it made the rent cheaper and because Alvis’ weird retro tech fit in with their decor of half-finished Lego sets, empty pizza boxes, and superhero posters, and because for the most part, Alvis left the two friends alone, spending all his time in the engineering building or fiddling with tech in his room.

Leon opened the case and took out a dusty disk, growing on it to reveal the title “Altered State” and the manufacturer HunkTech, neither of which either Leon or Edward had ever heard of. Leon put the game back into Alvis’s video game console and pressed play. The TV flickered for a moment, then exploded with color so bright it forced both of them to squint. Flashes of neon light, strange symbols, and spinning images seared into their eyes, leaving dancing after images. Neither of the friends could look away, their senses overwhelmed by the pulsating lights that burned into the back of their brains. And just as suddenly as it started, the TV went black and both friends came back to themselves.

“Oh shit" Edward muttered, blinking rapidly to clear his vision. "Your game just fried the TV!Alvis is going to kill you.”

Leon opened his mouth to defend himself but before he could a green holographic display blinked into existence, floating in the air right in front of him. Growing text marched across the living room floor reading:

"Welcome to Altered State.”

Leon’s jaw dropped. "Uh, Ed? You seeing this?”

Edward stood motionless for a moment too shocked to speak. “What the fuck” he breathed “What's going on?”

Both of their holograms shifted to display naked, pixelated 3D models of the two friends, hanging awkwardly in midair. 

“Eww, what the hell,” Leon said. He tried to avert his gaze but the images followed the motion of his head and stayed even when he shut his eyes. 

Neither of the projections was a particularly flattering sight to behold.  Leon’s short, heavy frame was rendered in painful detail—his soft belly, narrow shoulders, pudgy limbs, and average penis were all fully extenuated under the brutally detailed holographic projection. Edward’s model didn’t fare any better. Tall and spindly, his twig-like arms and knobby knees, paired with a notoriously ugly face, gave him the appearance of a scarecrow. Edward was not helped much in its attractiveness by the acne on his face, the greasy thin hair on his head, and the pitifully small penis between his legs fully visible in the naked light of the hologram. 

“Your the one with your dick in my face.” Edward shot back, cheeks flushed with embarrassment at the display.  

The hologram flickered again, and new text appeared below both their models:

Analyzing subjects…

The text began to blink as new displays blinked into existence on the peripheral of both their vision, only really notable if focused on. Various menus that displayed statistics quests and a list perks were all there, though all were currently blank. The words level one along with an empty an empty progress bar beneath appeared at the top of their filed of view, though only visible to themselves and not the other. 

Neither of the two friends had time to examine the new features in detail as the words under their models shifted again.

“Analyzing Purpose: Class Selection”

"Class selected: Juggernaut.” Appeared under Leon’s character. 

Leon blinked. "Juggernaut?" he repeated, unsure what to make of the development.

Edward snickered, “I think that's the fantasy term for fatty.”

But before Leon could respond, Edward’s display changed too:

"Class selected: Snake Charmer.”

“What like I’m going to play the flute?” Edward asked.

It was Leon's turn to laugh. “No bro, the game just called you a homo.” 

It took Edward a second to understand. “Not funny,” he said swatting his best friend on the arm, blushing somehow harder. “This is seriously messed up. We need to go to the hospital or something.”

“Relax charmochondriac, don't you see what’s happening?” 

“Group psychosis?” Edward guessed.

“No dude, we are in a video game, and we fucking rule at video games.”

“Leon” Edward said warningly. Before he could say more though quests populated onto both their displays.

“Dude chill this is awesome. My first quest is easy too. I bet I can get level ten before you.”

Edward wasn’t as ready to accept this rapid series of unexplainable events but he also wasn’t ready to let his best friend think he was a chicken. “Fine. I’ll meet you back at the house when I kick your ass.”

Leon laughed and with that both boys raced out the door, shoving each other playfully to get out first. From there both took off to opposite sides of campus, towards their various objectives and their differing yet intimately intertwined destinies. 

-

Leon raced, or his version which was something between a fast walk and an awkward jog, across campus to his first quest. It seemed easy enough: “Go to the gym” it read. Leon wasn’t exactly one for physical fitness but he at least knew where the health center was from campus orientation tour.

Despite his slow pace by the time he reached it he was out of breath. For a moment he stood in front of automatic double doors, panting and intimidated. He stuck out like a sore thumb on this part of campus, dressed in the ratty strained Superman shirt and baggy shorts his protruding belly and wild unkempt hair stood in stark contrast to the muscular adonis in low tank tops and tall fit women in matching sports sets who brushed by him without a second thought. Mustering his courage Leon walked through the doors and into the gym. His ears were greeted by the sound of slamming weights, rhythmic grunts, and a small ding as he completed his first quest and leveled up. He watched as the experience bar filled fully, bumping his level up to two and filling his vision with notifications. The bar continued to fill until it had reached halfway to the next level. A notification appeared in a gray box with plain white blocky text.

You have reached level two. You receive attribute points based on your class: +3 Strength, +1 Charisma +0.3 Intelligence.

Leon grinned as he felt himself change. He couldn’t actually feel himself getting smarter or more charismatic. He wasn't sure if that was because those were more cognitive stats or if it was because the increase was marginal compared to his strength. Either way, it was a strength that Leon felt himself receive. It wasn't much. Leon didn’t suddenly become a hulk or a bodybuilder but he felt something shift. His shoulders widened slightly, his chest inflated a bit and his butt became less saggy. A single vein buried deep in the layers of fat in his arm engorged itself with blood and snaked its way to the surface, pushed upwards by growing muscle and diminishing fat. He felt physically stronger, faster, like he might be able to actually run a bit without throwing up. He didn't actually look all that different, a quarter of an inch taller, a few pounds shifted from fat to muscle, but inside he felt amazing, electric, like this is what he was made for. Leon suspected that feeling had to do with the other notification waiting for him just below the first.

“You have gained a class perk.”

“Gym Rat: as a juggernaut, you feel comfortable in all athletic spaces.”

Leon felt all his worries and insecurities about being in the gym fade away. He scanned his student ID and strode past the muscled jock at the front counter confidently, flashing him a smile and a slight wave. Leon felt just as comfortable in the gym as if he was at the comic book shop, no more, he felt like he was at home chilling with Edward, like he could do anything and give a damn about who judged him. Leon knew he should be concerned about how this game had physically changed his body and mind so easily but he was too invigorated, too electrified, and he had another quest to do. 

“Do a push-up.” It read simply. 

Leon hadn’t tried to do a push-up since 8th grade gym class but he felt confident he was capable of it with the boost to strength he had received. Leon weaved through the various machines and stations manned by the university’s resident hunks and athletes, some gave him dirty looks but most looked right through him. Leon found he couldn’t care less. He found a corner of the free mat and assumed the push-up position. Despite the recent slight boost to his athleticism, it was a task easier said than done. Leon went down as far as he could until he felt his arms begin to shake, about an inch, then pushed himself up with substantial effort.

To his disappointment, the quest still read as incomplete. He reasoned it must be due to his, form. He tried to go lower but ended up face-first on the mat, unable to push himself up. He went to his knees and did a push-up but that didn’t count either. Nor did a push-up with his butt out in the air, or one in which he rested on the ground for a few seconds in the middle. Leon was about to give up when he saw a guy around his age approach. 

He didn't have the same gorilla bulk as some of the huge men in the gym but his body was visibly lean and defined through his tee-shirt, maybe a runner. “Need any help there” he asked. Leon couldn’t tell if he was being genuine or mocking but his new total comfort in the gym provided by his “Gym Rat” perk made him not care. 

“I’m trying to do a push-up.”

“Just one?” The guy asked with a grin. 

“Gotta start somewhere,” Leon said humbly. 

“Your problem is your stance.” He said. He instructed Leon to assume the plank position and then went about correcting Leon’s form. His arms were too close together, his core was not properly engaged, back not fully straight. The man introduced himself as Cal and then instructed Leon to try again. Leon tried another pushup lowering his body slowly “Lower, lower” Cal called Leon and complied though his face turned red and he wanted to die. Cal didn't let him stop till the tip of his dick was practically touching the mat. Then he went back up, slowly and with more exertion than he had ever used in his whole life. 

He was rewarded with a ding and a slew of notifications. 

“You have reached level three. You receive attribute points based on your class: +3 Strength, +1 Charisma +0.3 Intelligence.” 

“You have gained a class perk.”

“Perfect Form: as a juggernaut, you instinctually know the proper form to maximize the performance of any athletic endeavor.”

Leon felt his body shift again from where it lay crumpled on the mat. His stomach deflated slightly, and under his man boobs pecs started to form. His legs lengthened a bit causing his shorts to only reach his knees instead of past them. The changes were as small as the first but Leon couldn’t help but feel amazed. He tried to do another push-up and found that his body now naturally assumed the perfect position without him having to think about it. With his new points in strength, he was able to push out another perfect military-style push-up, and two more before he flopped down onto the mat, fully spent.

“You're getting the hang of it,” Cal said smiling. If he had seen Leon's body change he made no indication. “good luck on your workout,” he called out as he left.

“Yeah see you around man” Leon called after him. He felt on cloud nine. At this rate, Leon would reach level 10 by the hour. On cue, two more quests appeared for him to complete. He wondered how Edward was doing, if he had even gained one level by now. Maybe once Leon had power gamed his way into OP status he could help his friend with a quest or two. 

-

Edward walked across the quad at a brisk pace. He would have run if his bony arms and legs didn't make him look like a chicken when he did. Edward wasn’t quite as sold on this whole bizarre real life video game thing as Leon was but he also wasn’t about to let Leon leave him in the dust. Edward's first quest was pretty simple if non-specific, “be within 50 feet of 30 or more people”. 

Edwards tendency to avoid large crowds gave him the advantage of knowing exactly where they often were. The coffee shop by the quad came right to his mind. At this time of the day, the place was packed with students either leaving or going to their mid-day classes. The place terrified Edward, the thought of so many eyes on him, judging him, mocking him, and yet Edward reasoned there was no harm in at least checking the place out, it not as if the quest required him to talk to anyone. 

As he walked Edward wondered at the game. Leon, true to self had accepted the game right away without question. If his friend was muscular instead of fat he might be called a himbo. It wasn’t that he was dumb, he was getting a degree in public health, but he also didn't have a habit of thinking things through particularly throughly. Their freshmen year Leon had built a glider out of the shower curtain and broke his arm jumping off the second floor of their dorm with it. And last year Leon had thought it was a good idea to subscribe to some shady porn website that had given his computer a virus so corruptive even tech wizard Alvis couldn’t remove it. 

Though they were inseparable best friend Edward was the opposite. He was much more cautious about everything, sometimes to irrational extremes. Last semester Edward had almost dropped out because he was too nervous to get approval for his classes from his sociology advisor. If he was scared of his sixty-five year old sweet as candy professor talking to guys he liked was surly out of the question, not that he would have any hope of success with his appearance. 

As Edward walked across the quad he avoided eye contact with students crowded onto the open green sitting and chatting or throwing frisbees. Edward felt drowned in the sea of people, though the lawn wasn’t nearly dense enough to fulfill the quest. 

The line for the coffee shop was out the door which made him want to throw up. He walked slowly forward waiting for the quest to complete. Finally, when he was only a few feet away, practically in line the quest was fulfilled and his experience bar to level two filled fully.

Edward heard a “ding” in his head and several notifications filled his vision startling him.  

“You have reached level two. You receive attribute points based on your class: +3 Charisma, +1 Intelligence +0.3 Strength.”

“You have gained a class perk.”

“People Person: Those around you feel your natural charm and are more likely to accept you in a neutral or positive way, potentially even striking up a conversation.”

Edward felt a strange itch on his brow and a pressure on his jaw but ignored it. He didn't know what to make of the messages. The stats seemed somewhat consistent with role-playing video games, and he supposed the break down made sense with his class. Still, he wasn’t sure how something like charisma would be incorporated into real life, nor his new People Person perk. As a sociology major Edward knew all too well how complex human interaction was. The perk seemed to imply that not only would the game be changing him but also the people around him and their perceptions. He wasn’t sure if that was even possible not to mention ethical.

“Introduce yourself to a stranger,” the next quest said popping up on the side of Edward's vision. That more than any ethical quandary made Edward scared. It was all well and good for the game to claim that people would react positively to Edward but he knew firsthand that wasn’t true. 

“Hey, are you in line” two girls who had walked up behind him asked. Edward froze, realizing he had positioned himself at an awkward spot half in line half not. The girls didn't seem disgusted by his presence but they also didn't seem particularly enthralled, they just wanted to get their coffee. 

Edward nodded his head, the best he could do with his crippling social anxiety. He moved more obviously in line and the girl went back to chatting. As the line crept closer Edward tried and failed several times to work up the courage to introduce himself to the girls. He came up with various scenarios in his head of how he could make an introduction, all of which ended with the girl calling him a creep. 

Finally, after ten minutes, Edward reached the front of the line. He realized in his attempts to complete the quest he hadn’t so much as glanced at the menu. 

“What will you be having today” a tall tan worker asked, his tattooed arms pleasantly stretching out the sleeves of his shirt. Edward just opened and closed his mouth like a fish, mind suddenly blank of every coffee drink ever, including coffee. 

The worker, whose name tag ironically read “Tag” saw his confusion and smiled. “It's a big menu I know. It's fall, so you can never go wrong with a PSL.” He saw Edwards look confused and he sheepishly clarified “Pumpkin spice latte.”

“I’ll do that,” Edward said, voice quiet but clear. He took a deep breath then before he could think about it blurted out “I’m Edward by the way”. 

Tag gave a handsome grin and wrote the name on a cup. “Thanks, Edward, I’ll that get you out for you right away.”

Edward heard a “ding” but ignored it and the notifications that popped up as he paid on the tablet Tag turned towards him. His hands shook as he selected the largest tip options and stumbled over to the designated area to stand while waiting for a drink and looked at the notifications. 

“You have reached level three. You receive attribute points based on your class: +3 Charisma, +1 Intelligence, +0.3 Strength.”

“You have gained a class perk.”

“Social Sync: You are naturally attuned to the tone and rhythm of conversation making awkward pauses and interruptions a thing of the past.”

New quests popped up as well, two this time. “Make someone laugh” and “Offer someone advice.”

As the messages appeared Edward felt the same strange pain in his face, like the soreness he sometimes got after smiling all day with Leon. He lifted a hand to his face and felt skin much smoother than his normal rough, dry, pockmarked complexion. His weak chin, which had always been a source of insecurity no longer felt totally concave but pushed out somewhat lending a strange sharpness to his jaw. Edward was about to take out his phone to examine his reflection when he heard a voice beside him. 

“He’s so dreamy, isn’t he,” a man said in his right ear. All his life Edward had been painfully scrawny, wrists the size of cucumber and ribs showing through his pale skin. This man was even more slender like he could break with a strong gust of wind. He held a coffee cup that had the name Trent on the side. The guy didn't seem to mind Edwards's silence and continued staring at Tag longingly. “The coffee here is so bitter but the eye candy is so sweet” he mused. 

“Yeah that guy is what I would call a full-sized candy bar” the comment came out before Edward had time to think. It was a mediocre joke, wordy and unoriginal to a fault, but to painfully shy and unfunny Edward he felt like he was a standup comedian. Trent smiled and gave a slight chuckle, though his quest remained incomplete, probably because the laugh was fake.

“He’s a Snickers, and let's just say I’m not allergic to nuts.” Edward tried again, this time eliciting a better reaction from Trent. A slight giggle was all it took for the quest to complete and Edwards' experience bar to increase half the way to level four. 

“Well both of us are going to go hungry. He’s straight.”

“Really” Edward asked. As a closeted gay until he was 19, when he had finally worked up the courage to tell Leon, Edward thought he had pretty good gaydar, and that Tag guy was anything but straight. “How do you know?” He asked Social Sync perk causing him to put the perfect pause between his declaration of doubt and his question without him even noticing.

“He used to date some girl” Trent responded with a touch of disgust.

“Maybe he’s bi,” Edward said and Trent’s face lit up as if he had never considered the thought.

“Oh wow, do you really think so” He asked excitedly. “Now that you say it he is kind of flirty when he gives me my drink.”

“You should just go up and talk to him” Edward advised sagely. “I mean what is the worst that could happen.” The advice was hollow seeing as how Edward had never even breathed in the direction of any of his crushes. Trent seemed to sense this and looked at Edward dubiously. The game system however didn't seem to care. It marked his “give advice” quest as complete and alerted him he had reached level four with a ding. At this rate, Leon didn't stand a chance of reaching level ten before him. 

“You have reached level four. You receive attribute points based on your class: +3 Charisma, +1 Intelligence, +0.3 Strength.”

“Sage: Your charisma gives you an innate knowledge of people's desires, both conscious and unconscious. Note: The higher your charisma the more attuned this sense becomes. Note: this effect is 92.22% more effective on people with a penis.”

Edward felt a shift both in his physiology and in his brain, like before he felt his face move, bones like continental plates drifting every so slightly apart into a more attractive configuration. 

Inside his head, he felt something shift far more drastically. The three +1 boosts to his intelligence had been so slight he barely noticed them, just a slight speeding up of his thoughts and a boost to his reasoning ability. This new change in his mind was drastic, impossible not to notice. A sixth sense emerged, filling his head with a source of knowledge he wasn’t quite sure what to do with. It was almost as if he had gained the ability to read minds only not so strong and without any words, only feelings. Suddenly Edward felt Trent’s desire, a sexual one, not just for the barista, but also for the group of frat boys in the corner of the shop and strangely enough for Edward. He felt others' desires too, though much less clearly. 

Two guys standing to his left both hoped the other would buy the alcohol for tonight's party. The other men in the shop only gave wisps of desire. Edward suspected that had something to do with proximity and his still relatively low charisma.

The women on the other hand Edward could barely sense, only receiving a small tingle like TV static instead of anything readable. Edward wondered at that strange 92.22% bonus towards men. Edward took a moment to reflect on the class he had been assigned. Could Leon be right? Could the name of his class be a gay joke, that he was meant to charm not venomous creatures in baskets but instead the snake in men's pants? It seemed somehow too vulgar for a video game though Edward knew that was illogical. If it was true it begged some concerning questions, like how the game had known he was gay and what exactly it was setting him up to do. 

“Would you go talk to him?” Trent asked suddenly snapping Edward back to the present. His sixth sense faded to the back of his mind, though he could still sense Trent’s desire. “Sorry I know that's a lot to ask but I think you would have more luck than me.” He looked at Edward with puppy dog eyes filled with earnest hope. “Be my wingman?”

A notification appeared obscuring a part of Edward’s vision. 

“Quest offered! Set up Trent and Tag romantically. Reward: XP”

A box under the quest notification had two boxes with “yes” and “no” options. Edward had no idea how to select either option. Out loud he said “I’ll do my best,” the notification disappeared and reappeared small in the quest part of his interface. 

Trent smiled “Really? I can’t thank you enough.” He felt Trent’s desire shift from lust to hope. “Just like using a pickup line or something. Don’t make it too awkward” he said suddenly nervous.

“Don’t worry I got this,” Edward said with about 1000% times more confidence than he felt. He had absolutely no business getting other people's tail when he was still a virgin himself. Edward just knew he was going to make an absolute fool of himself.

-

It turned out that the quests to advance to level four were not as easy as Leon had imagined. The first quest “run a lap” proved exhausting but doable. Leon made his way to the elevated track that encircled the gym and with perfect form, if less perfect endurance, ran the loop. Before the game, Leon would have had to walk most of it, but the two levels and six points he had gained in strength allowed him to push through with a slow jog. The quest's completion bumped him 3/4 of the way to level four. He had no doubt the other quest would get him all the way there if only it was possible. 

“Do a pull-up.” How hard could one pull up be? Extremely difficult it turned out. Dangling from the elevated bar Leon tried with all his might to heft his flabby body up. He only managed to lift his head halfway before the effort became too much and he was forced to give up. 

Leon knew it wasn’t his form keeping him from completing the exercise like it had been with the push-up. Instead, it came down to a plain and simple lack of strength. Leon didn't know what to do. He felt frustrated that he had hit a roadblock so soon. He looked at the experience progress bar, so tantalizingly close to the next level. Maybe he would have to do it the old-fashioned way. Train his back and his biceps extensively until he could do a pull-up on his own. Leon knew something like that would take weeks if not months but he was nothing if not stubborn.

Determined not to give up Leon found a set of dumbbells and began to lift with perfect form. The activity didn't provide the same instant gratification as leveling up did, but Leon was starting to understand how people could get addicted to this. As he worked his eyes wandered to the graphical display imprinted on either side of his vision. He found he could unfocus on the information and the display would blur unobscuring his vision. He focused again and the quest and progress bar came back into his field of vision. Leon couldn’t tell if he was imagining it but it seemed as if the bar was more full. He did a few more curls and watched the progress bar tick up the tiniest amount. He lifted the other arm and it moved again. He grabbed the largest weight he could conceivably lift and using all this strength curled it with both arms, the progress bar moved, still not much but more than before. Leon grinned. He was pretty sure he had just found an exploit.

Thirty minutes later a tired Leon prepared for his last set of leg presses to get him to level four. The “exploit” he had found wasn’t as much of a hack as he had originally hoped. Working out gave him experience to fill the bar but not nearly as efficiently as quests. He had to go from machine to machine loading up the maximum amount of weight he could lift, not much, and completing various exercises until that part of his body was completely exhausted. His “perfect form” perk ensured that he was able to complete each exercise to its fullest despite not knowing how to do any of the exercises. All he had to do was approach a machine or a set of weights and his body would suddenly assume the position.

Even with his perfect form protecting him from injury Leon was exhausted. The day's gym session was more exercise than he had ever done in his life. His hair was matted to his forehead and dark sweat spots had appeared around the collar and pits of his Superman shirt. His body felt like a sack of bricks like he could fall asleep and not wake up till his next birthday. Leon persisted and as he performed his tenth leg press he heard a ding. His legs slammed back to their resting position and he breathed heavily, feeling his body begin to change and notifications pop up. 

“You have reached level four. You receive attribute points based on your class: +3 Strength, +1 Charisma +0.3 Intelligence.” 

“You have gained a class perk.”

“Animal Endurance: The rate at which athletic activities tire you is decreased significantly while the rate of recovery is greatly improved. Note: the potency of this effect scales off of strength.”

Leon felt his muscles harden, his arms bulge, his legs bulk up and shift. His core burned as his abs shredded themselves and strengthened. The layer of fat on Leon’s body, though still present thinned. Underneath it his muscles went from average to distinctly fit, no great titan yet but also not a slouch either. His weariness from all the exercise it took to reach level four drained away thanks to his perk and Leon once again felt reinvigorated. 

He marched over to the nearest pull-up bar and with only a small amount of effort hoisted himself up with the power of his upper body. The completed quest brought him a third of the way up to level five. Two more quests appeared. “Bench press a third of your body weight.” And “exchange workout tips”. Neither seemed especially difficult. 

Leon looked around to see if he could find Cal to knock out the more social of the quests but the helpful runner was nowhere to be seen. Instead, Leon found a benchpress machine and went to load it up. Leon was shocked to realize he had no idea what his body weight was. Before Altered Reality, Leon had weighed 230 pounds, now though he could be anything. Leon squinted at the holographic display in the sides of his vision and found with effort he was able to bring up a stats page. 

Leon: 

210 Pounds

5’10’’ Feet

Strength: 11

Charisma: 7

Intelligence: 8.9

When he played video games with his roommates Alvis was the one who focused on the numbers, min-maxing his character to be the strongest possible. Edward liked to talk to the NPCs, to understand the story, and Leon, well Leon liked to punch things and not worry too much about the boring stuff. Still, with his 8.9 in intelligence, Leon couldn't help but notice some changes to his body composition. There was the inch in height his body had gained from those three levels and the twenty pounds of weight he had lost. Leon suspected the total loss was more like 30 or 40 pounds of fat but that the added muscle made up the difference. His stats were interesting too. Leon hadn’t much thought about it but based on the quests and perks he had received the Juggernaut class seemed to be one that focused on athleticism. Despite that, he still received a marginal boost to charisma and intelligence at each level which he supposed were meant to keep him well rounded. Leon did the math, the current numbers would mean that his intelligence before the game had been eight, which seemed right, and his strength a two, also unfortunately right. The four in charisma seemed rude, but Leon supposed he had never had much luck with women for a reason.

Doing math once again Leon loaded up the bench press, factoring in the weight of the bar to reach seventy pounds one-third of his weight. He assumed the position under it, with perfect form thanks to his perk; then with substantial effort, Leon lifted the bar over his chest and with as much control as he could manage lowered it. That was the easy part, the hard part was pushing it back up. Leon clenched his toes, bugged his eyes, and pushed with all his eleven strength upward. His mind suddenly flashed to the bar crushing him, rolling down onto his neck and ending this game. Panic more than determination got the bar up and back to its starting position. The quest was completed and the progress bar to level five was filled in another third. 

Only once the bar was fully returned to its resting position could Leon see the girl standing over him, upside down from his prone view. 

“I was ready to pull that thing off you.” The girl said in something between a mix of condescension and admiration. Leon sat up.

“Umm, thanks.” He said nervously. He recognized this girl from his advanced biology seminar, although she didn't seem to know him. She looked very pretty with her high ponytail and tight yoga pants, which only made his voice stutter more. “I’m Leon.”

“Cassy,” she said.

An idea came to his mind. “Got any tips for this one?” Leon asked, hoping to knock out his remaining quest. 

Before Cassy could answer though a tall man in a low-cut tank top that showed off his ripped torso and cannonball shoulders approached and wrapped his mammoth vascular arms around her. “Cassy, why the fuck are you talking to this fatty?” He asked as if Leon were some flaming garbage outside his window, offensive to his sight. Leon recognized him as a member of Alpha Sigma, one of the best and most dickish fraternities on campus.  

“Fuck off Hunter” Cassy said rolling her eyes.

“Yeah fuck off Hunter” Leon repeated. He instantly regretted it.

Hunter's eyes went wide, and a vein on his neck began to pulse. Leon stared back at him with a level of defiance he knew defied both the social order and logic. Leon had always been brash, a trait now manifested in full force by the extreme comfort he felt in the gym due to his Gym Rat perk.

Cassy shot him a look asking if he was trying to get himself killed then turned to Hunter to defuse the situation. “Come on babe let's go.” 

Hunter heard none of it. He got right up in Leon's face so close Leon could smell the sweat on his body and the ZYN in his breath. “Listen here tubby, this is a gym. The McDonalds is down the street. Now fuck off or I’ll turn your happy meal into chicken tenders. Ya hear?” He stood up and started to walk away Cassy unhappily following after him. “And don’t ever talk to my girl again homo.”

Leon knew he should be scared but instead, he found the whole interaction funny, his “Gym Rat” perk really might be working too well. “Got any gym tips for me” he called after Hunter, wanting to still get something out of the interaction. He couldn’t wait till he was bigger than that arrogant prick and no one could talk to him that way.

The frat bro turned around “Eat a fucking salad” he called. Leon’s last quest remained incomplete. He wondered why for a second then realized it said “exchange workout tips.” 

“You should really get off the roids, it's killing the last two of your brain cells,” Leon called after him. Hunter moved to turn around, probably to beat the shit out of Leon but Cassy grabbed his hand and dragged him away. The quest completed and Leon reached level five. Not too bad for seven charisma he thought proudly. The now familiar ding sounded along with a wall of notifications. Leon began to feel strange. A biting ache began to thrum in the pit of his stomach. Doubled over Leon rushed to the bathroom, careful to head in in the opposite direction of Hunter and Cassy. 

He burst into the empty men's room and then into the nearest stall he could find. As he sat on the toilet the pain intensified. Something was happening and it hurt like all hell.

-

Edward had no idea why Trent had even started talking to him. That wasn’t something people ever did to ugly Edward, maybe point and whisper, but never strike up a conversation and surly never ask him for help. It must be his stupid charisma and perks scrambling everyone's brain he concluded. Edward was about to turn back to Trent and tell him he had made a mistake and that he actually couldn’t help him when he heard “Edward” yell from behind the bar. He saw Tag the sexy fit barista holding a steaming to-go cup and looking around the coffee shop for Edward. Trent gave him an encouraging smile and a thumbs up.

Edward felt as if he was moving in slow motion like he was making his way to the gallows. Tag saw him coming and smiled, extending the drink towards him. Edward reached out to take the drink, his finger ever so slightly brushing up against Tag’s hand in the process. He wasn’t sure if it was the touch or just the proximity but he felt his new “Sage” perk activate in vivid detail.

A picture suddenly flashed in Edward’s mind. A subterranean location full of flashing lights and loud rhythmic music, a rave Edward realized. He saw Tag standing alone in an open button-down shirt showing off sexy tattooed muscles. Edward flashed back to reality. His sudden vision had caused him to linger a bit too long grabbing his drink and he jerked his hand away awkwardly. 

Edward retracted his hand and gave a smile hoping to save the moment. “Hey, are you going to the rave tonight?” Edward asked as casually as he could “I think I have seen you at a few before. I heard the one tonight is supposed to be especially hype.”

Tag seemed surprised for a moment then reassessed Edward his demeanor shifting from customer service friendly, to peer in-group easygoing. “You mean sewer fest? I want to man, but all my friends are busy tonight and I don’t want to go alone.”

“Oh damn that sucks,” Edward said. He was mindful of the stares he was getting from the other students around him but couldn’t bring himself to care, this was going too well. “I wish I could go but I have a paper I have to write tonight. My friend Trent was actually just saying he was thinking about going though.” Edward pointed back at Trent who gave a little wave. 

“Oh, I know him.” Tag said when he saw Trent. “That would be sick man. I really don’t want to miss Sewer Fest. How about this,” he took a cup sleeve and started to write on it, “Give your friend my number and tell him to text me” he handed it to Edward. 

“Will do. You two have fun” Edward said as he walked away. Trent looked at him wide-eyed and was about to say something but Edward made a signal that they shouldn’t talk about it inside.

“This is for you,” Edward said as he handed Trent Tag’s number once they were outside. 

“No way. You're actually a god. How did you do that?” Trent asked amazed.

“Don’t get too excited,” Edward said sheepishly. “You're going to a rave, and it’s in the sewer.” 

“A rave? You know what, I’ll take it. I really can’t thank you enough.” 

“Oh, it was nothing. Honestly, you helped me just as much as I helped you.”

Trent ignored the cryptic comment. “Well I should go, I guess I have to find an outfit to wear to a sewer. Would all white be a bad idea?” He handed Edward his phone. “Will you put your number in my phone? I’ll text you how tonight goes.” 

The two exchanged information then Trent left. Edward stood there sipping his latte, which really was too bitter. He saw Trent typing out a message on his phone as he walked away.

Moments later Edward heard a “ding” as the quest was completed and he reached level five. Notifications sprung up in his vision, more than usual. Edward couldn’t read them, he couldn’t focus on anything. His mostly full coffee slipped out of his hand and spilled onto the ground as a golden nebula sprung up around him and his face and body were wracked with pain. He started to scream.

[anon-sect]

"Your shoes really reek, dude. You need to air them out." Lenny complains to his roommate in his dorm room. Nick had been his roommate for the past three years at college. Somehow, they kept being put together each time. Each year, he had to put up with his foul-smelling running shoes. Nick was a 6'5" tall athlete jock on the college track team. He was running at least 7 miles just about every day. The odor from his favorite running pair was so pungent.

"They are my favorite to run in. And I am not changing them. So deal with it." Nick told him as he went to his next class, leaving the foul sneakers behind.

Lenny had enough of them. So he put them in a trash bag. He went to the garbage shot in the hallway and shoved them down the pipe. He was satisfied that he didn't have to smell them anymore.

While Lenny was napping, he was awoken by Nick. "You seen my running shoes? I can't find them." He was asked. He thought about lying to him, but the truth would come out eventually. "I threw them in the garbage shot. If you want them, you can go looking in the basement." He spoke as he turned over to ignore him to go back to napping.

Nick was upset. He really loved those shoes. What Lenny didn't know was that those sneakers were special. They were once a former human who used to bully him in the neighborhood. He turned him into sneakers to punish him. He loved torturing his former bully with his feet. Now, he needed a new replacement pair. Since Lenny decided to chunk his shoes without telling him first, he knew whom to replace his favorite pair of running shoes with.

Nick grabbed his TF device from his backpack and put in the setting for sneakers. He pointed at Lenny. With one flash, Lenny was reduced to a new pair of running sneakers. He picked them up to examine them. He pressed on the insoles. They seemed even better than his previous favorite.

Lenny instantly awoke to feel a change. He found himself split in half and in a different form. He felt fingers pressing down on his face. "You got rid of my favorite pair of running shoes. I really loved running on the bully that used to torment me in my neighborhood back home. That guy was a good pair of sneakers. But now you have to replace him. You will be my new favorite running sneakers. This is the consequence of throwing that other guy away without knowing the full truth." He heard Nick speak to him and laughed. The foul sneakers used to be a person all this time, and he chunk him like a common object. Now, this was his fate. He tried screaming for help but lacked any vocal ability. He couldn't even move on his own. He felt Nick place him on the floor. He had a sick feeling of what was coming next.

Nick placed his new running sneakers on the floor. He grabbed a pair of socks he wore for three days straight. He quickly sniffed them and saw the stench was horrible. The thought of Lenny having to deal with that made him smile. He put the stinky socks on his feet and put on his new favorite sneakers without a single care about Lenny.

Lenny would have gagged if he had a physical mouth. The socks that were now pressing down on his face was so foul, it smelled like something died in it. Next came the being walked on part. Each step felt like a building crushing him over and over. He could feel the floor and ground beneath him as though his back was being ground into it. He thought it couldn't get worse till Nick started running. He was in constant pain and agony feeling the ground beneath him and the foul stench of the socks bearing down on his insole face. As Nick continued to run on his usual nine-mile run, the socks began to get sweaty. The sweat combined with the stench saturated the inside of the sneakers. He now had no way to escape from the smell.

Nick returned back to the dorm room after his run. It was a little weird having it all to himself now. But he loved his new favorite sneakers. They were way better than the previous ones. He was glad those were gone. Lenny was a great replacement. If anyone asked about his roommate, he would tell them he didn't know where he was. Besides, no one would believe that he was turned into a pair of sneakers anyway. "You were excellent on my run. I am looking forward to running in you nearly every day. If anyone asks about you, I will not know where you went. Thanks for chunking those other shoes. You are much better than them." He told his shoes as he went to go take a shower. He loved that his new shoes already had his foot stench. It should be a badge of honor for Lenny to smell like his feet on day one.

Lenny regretted getting rid of the other sneakers. Had he known that he would be replacing them, he would have just suck it. Now his fate was the same as the other guy. He was Nick's sneakers, and no one would be the wiser.

[theprettynosferatu]

CW: Orientation play/conversion. Remember that your sexuality is valid, and conversion is NOT a thing beyond fantasy. Also, fuck "conversion therapy"

“All I’m saying is…”

“Look, you’re speaking out of your ass”, Ava said, barely containing her frustration.

“How am I speaking out of my ass? It has been done and thoroughly…”, he tried to reply.

“Yes, yes, Pavlov, blah blah blah. But you’re talking about something else entirely, not conditioning reactions”

“Not Pavlov, Skinner! Actions can be conditioned too. Look around you! Mobile games, casinos, even the goddamn army uses conditioning to…”

“Can we agree that there’s a difference between conditioning obedience in a controlled setting and whatever the fuck it is you’re suggesting? You’re not talking about tapping on impulse to buy funbucks in a game! You are talking…”

“It’s only a difference of degree, not of kind. With the right combination of techniques…”

“No, there’s a core there that you can’t just… overwrite. Some things can’t be changed. Like… like how you can’t hypnotize someone into doing something they would never do”

“You know that’s bullshit, right? The whole hypnosis thing. You absolutely can make someone do whatever the fuck you want. It’s just a matter of how you approach it. Like, you would never harm a person, okay? But if I change what your idea of ‘person’ is, say, by making it more narrow you would absolutely harm someone I made you see as a not-person. Or maybe you can be made to believe you’re helping them, not harming them”

“That’s some creepy cult shit, dude. And anyway you can’t write a paper on this because a) there’s no evidence and b) doing the research to get evidence would be absolutely immoral. So I say look for another topic and for the love of God don’t go around spewing that bullshit if you want to ever get laid. Oh, speaking of! Linda will be arriving shortly and we have a date night, so please, please try to be a normal roommate and not freak her out. For me, okay?”

“When have I ever freaked her out? Linda loves me! And who knows, maybe she has an opinion on our little debate”

“Dude, she’s an Art student. I doubt she’ll be interested in our weird Psych dissertations”

“Perfect! Fresh eyes!”

“See, that’s the kind of weird shit I-”

The buzzer cut through the air, and a moment later Linda was inside the apartment, all smiles as usual. He took a moment to watch them as they embraced. 

They were almost comical in their contrast. Linda was tall, taller than he was, willowy and slender, her limbs graceful and shapely, her hair a long, flowing river of playful copper that almost seemed to dance on its own volition– with her green sundress she appeared to him as some sort of elven princess ripped from the pages of a fantasy novel and stuck into a mortal world in which she didn’t really fit. Ava, on the other hand, was probably the shortest adult he had ever seen. He might be tempted to call her petite, but that had a connotation of a lithe frame, almost like a tastefully proportioned doll. Ava was the complete opposite of that. Sometimes he felt Ava was an experiment aimed at testing how much of a person’s weight could be tits and ass, held up by strong, thick thighs. He felt quite guilty about such thoughts, and he understood why she wore nothing but oversized t-shirts and hoodies. It was logical: an early, spectacular growth spurt, heightened by her small size, had made her the target of relentless bullying by jealous classmates and awkward come-ons by hormonal teen males. It enraged him, he realized. Ava was beautiful and the cruelty of idiots had made her feel pain about it instead of pride. He made a point to never stare at her, even if he sometimes failed. It made their relationship as roommates a tad hard, he had to admit. 

 

Not that he had a shadow of a shot, of course. Ava had no interest in men.

Unless, of course, he was right in his theory. And he had good reason to think he was.

“So, Linda: Ava and I were having a bit of a debate…”

“Don’t start, dude”, said Ava.

“Oh, a debate! Do tell!” chirped Linda.

“Do you think we can be completely conditioned and changed, or is there some part of us that cannot be modified, no matter what?”

“Huh. Hard one. Like… a soul? I don’t know I buy it. I feel there isn’t really a self, you know? Like… Buddhism. The self is an illusion and all that”

“Come on, you can’t be serious! You can’t change who someone fundamentally is, and it’s sick to even consider it!”, said Ava.

“Well… what if I could prove to you it can be done?”, he stated, barely able to hold back. He know what he was going to do. He had been reluctant, but now it felt like a certainty.

“You can’t, so stop being an ass”, said Ava.

Fine. Game on.

“Linda, I love your socks! Pride socks!”

“Yup!”, said Linda

“What the hell–”, mumbled Ava.

He took a deep breath.

“Linda: rainbow socks…”

She replied in an instant.

“Are for sucking cocks!”

Ava felt as if reality had shifted into some horrible, twisted nightmare. She was about to scream something, anything really, to make Linda take that back before something stopped her in her tracks. Her body heard it before her mind did: her roommate's voice simply commanding her. Watch. 

And she watched. She watched as the love of her life smiled and went on her knees. Ava could do nothing but watch in disbelief and pain. Linda had never been with a man. Ever. 

“I might have… started testing my theories. On you both. Not that you’d remember, obviously”, he stated casually as the beautiful girl in front of him lovingly undid his pants. “I’d say Linda’s sexuality is part of her core self, wouldn’t you? Let’s see how that holds up after the months of conditioning I’ve subjected her to”

He felt guilty, sure; but there was such a high to it, such an entrancing quality to the combination of seeing instant, complete obedience and the final, definitive proof of the truth he had known to be right all along. Was it wrong? Yes. Did he care? Not at the moment. Ava’s eyes were a poem to him. Suddenly he was ripped from his reverie by the soft, loving touch of Linda’s tongue on his dick. He hadn’t even realized he had gotten hard just from the sense of complete power, of total, undeniable conquest. This was a primal, ancient arousal. Ava could do nothing but watch, and he took that sight in. God, he could almost taste it.

Linda moaned. The cock was so beautiful. So perfect. She felt so… silly, like she was now, for the first time, seeing in color and realizing the sky was, in fact, blue. It was obvious. Simple. Natural. Cock deserved worship. Cock deserved devotion. Cock demanded obedience. It was as if it was growing in her mind, taking over more and more of her, pushing who she had been out effortlessly. It expanded. It corrupted. It twisted and shifted all within. Cock. Cock. Cock. She kissed it with reverence, in awe of it. It was all that existed to her. All that mattered. She needed to please it. Needed to feel it throbbing inside her. Needed to be taken by it.

Ava saw her girlfriend slide a hand between her legs and felt nauseous. As much as she knew this wasn’t Linda’s fault, she could feel her heart breaking, her anger rising… and worse, her pussy getting wet. Her body betraying her. She hated him, and she hated Linda, and she hated herself most of all.

Suddenly, Linda couldn’t contain herself. She relaxed her throat, looked up at her Master and took his entire manhood inside her mouth. She almost came instantly. It was peaceful and sexy and just simple, like his cock was the puzzle piece that fit her perfectly, completed her, made her whole. She existed to be conquered, and realizing she was putting his pleasure over her ability to breathe was the final sign of her complete, loving surrender. She let it out, watched it glisten with her spit, and started licking it and loving it and she didn’t know how much came from her own need and how much it was a silent command by the man who had shown her the light. Her mind was too fuzzy to make such distinctions anymore.

He took a deep breath, fighting back the first signs of an orgasm. He needed to make a point.

“Linda… do you love Ava?”

The blonde stopped for a moment, shocked by a myriad of contradictions.

“Yes”, she decided. Her voice was shaking.

“Tell her”

Linda looked at Ava, the woman she had loved above all others.

“I love you…”

“But you have more to say, don’t you?”

“I… hmph… I…”

“Tell her”

“I love you… but… but… I love his cock so much more! Fuck! I need it! I need to feel it, to suck it, to be fucked by it… I’m sorry… but… I love it, I love it, I love it! I want it to fuck my throat, to take my cunt, to ram my ass! I need it! I need to be a slave to it, a whore for it, a fucking living toy!”

“What if you had to choose between Ava and my cock?”

“Fuck her! Sorry, my love… I do love you, but… You can never do to me what… what Master does to me, what his cock makes me feel! I hope I won’t have to dump you but… I would leave you for this cock in a minute! I’d do anything. Anything. Anything!” If she had more to add, her need to serve cock snuffed it. She took it all in with desperation, with total, shameless abandon. She needed to feel... used. In her proper place.

Ava felt a tear roll down her cheek. Her knees buckled in defeat. She didn’t even care. It was all gone. Her life, her love, all gone. And she could feel her eyes drawn again and again to the cock that had destroyed her. She felt her mouth watering.

“Linda, would you say you’re a lesbian?”

“Fuck no!”, she said before immediately wrapping her lips around the cock’s head.  

He felt a swell of pride. Of triumph. He knew Ava sensed the truth as well. He was right. He had proven his point. And now Ava’s full conditioning would take hold. A little bet with himself, making her own mental acknowledgment of his theory her final trigger. She took off her t-shirt. She would never wear it again. No more shame, no more pain about her figure. Only arousal and pride. His gift to her.

She crawled to him on all fours. The girls kissed– but now, they kissed for him, to arouse him. They were lovers, only they both knew there was a higher love. A truer love. Ava looked up at her owner and opened her mouth, greedily awaiting his blessing. Linda used her skillful hands, aiming his cock and teasing it, jacking it off, using just the right amount of pressure and speed. 

No man could resist such a sight.

In a few seconds, Ava was covered in his cum, more beautiful than she had ever been. Linda certainly felt that way, and she licked and kissed her sister slut clean.

He watched carefully, looking for signs of defiance, and finding none. In fact, Linda put his fears to rest with a simple statement.

“Ava, we need to buy you a pair of rainbow socks”

Did you enjoy this story? You can support my work at patreon.com/prettynosferatu !!

[hmshermitcraft]

based off of my own experiences at music camp. but i added shipping :3 and also minor sneaky gender crisis headcanon

---

Impulse cannot believe that Gem managed to convince him to do this, but here he is, standing in front of a mirror in the common room an hour before honor recitals, in one of Cleo's dresses. He's- why did he do this?! Not the dress part, though that's... a stressor for a different reason (s?)he's trying not to think too hard about right now- but the whole deciding to audition for honor recitals thing. And he actually got in. That's- that's a big honor, literally. Camp has a lot of talented young musicians! All he does is hit a few drums sometimes! There are so many others who deserve this more than him!

So, yes, maybe Impulse gets a bit of stage fright. It's weird and stupid, because he's been on-stage before and done solos before and not been nervous at all!

But those times, he wasn't the only person on-stage.

Impulse thinks he might be sick, he's so nervous.

"Hey, buddy!"

Impulse nearly jumps out of his skin at the familiar voice, putting a hand to his racing heart.

"Geez, Skizz, that scared me-"

Skizz laughs and drapes himself over his best friend/roommate (at camp, at home they just. You know. Have their own separate houses), resting his head on top of the younger's. "You nervous?"

"Y-yeah, just... just a bit." To distract himself, Impulse focuses on Skizz's form in the mirror. He's wearing a dress, too (what did Gem get the guys into?), one of Pearl's- she's the only one actually tall enough to have clothes that might fit Skizz- and it's a nice dark blue color, dusted with star patterns. It's customary for everyone to wear more "formal" or "fancy" clothes on recital nights at camp, regardless of whether or not they're performing. Only, this year Gem single-handedly managed to convince half the guys on Hermit-side to wear dresses as their recital-night clothing.

Personally, Impulse thinks Pearl's dress looks much nicer on Skizz than it would on anyone else. Not that he'd say that out loud.

"You'll do great, dude, I know you will. You're an amazing drummer."

"I know, but... just... people."

Skizz chuckles. "And me!"

"Yeah, you and the others too, but, but, what about the staff? And there are lots of people on the Empires side who I don't know, and even the kids in the younger cabins on our side, I just-"

"Impulse. Breathe. We're all here because of a mutual love for music- or, I guess, 'cause our parents forced us here, but I doubt it- and everyone, and I mean everyone, is at a different skill level. We're all nervous about these types of things. It's normal, okay? You're gonna kill it. And hey, if you do get nervous on-stage... all us Hermit-side folks are gonna get front-row. Me especially. Just, if you have to look at the crowd, look at us. No-one else."

Impulse nods. "...Thanks, man."

Skizz's mouth quirks up into a grin. "No problem."

Next thing Impulse knows, over an hour's gone by, and he's sitting at the drumset they set up in-between the space between the last performance (Bdubs, here at camp in his fifth year for Vocal) and this one. He takes a deep breath and lets his eyes settle on his best friend, right in front-row, as he'd promised. And then he gets to playing.

And you know what? Skizz is right. He absolutely kills it. He leaves Alumni Hall that night feeling more exhilarated than ever before. Even more so, somehow, when Skizz comes up to him afterwards and gives him a bear hug, and the normally touch-averse Impulse has to hide his flushed-pink face in Skizz's shoulder.

Skizz will always be Impulse's rock, especially on a night like tonight. And any comments Impulse gets - from hermits or groups he's less familiar with - are about how good his drumming was, or how good he looks in that dress.

He thinks several people asked him out. But he wants nothing more than to spend the night kicking back with Skizz, celebrating a job well done.

[or-ng-c-ss-dy]

i generally have a lot of ideas for when dustin and jim had their first time, it can be anywhere from way back when they first met, just first night getting right to it, to the solid present day, tensions boiling over after nearly eighteen years of friendship.

if i had to pick one though, and this is weird because i've never written a fic for it as far as i can tell, the strongest place i'd put it would be when they were in china in 2014. dustin's and greg's girlfriends had just dumped them, they were two sad guys in china...but greg's getting sent titty pics on snapchat, he's getting some. dustin's a sad guy alone...

dustin getting up and going to jim's room, whoever he was rooming with passed out somewhere else so it's just jim in there. telling jim that greg's jacking off to a snapchat pic, and jim's laughing but he's also sympathetic because he knows about dustin's lady problems. his girlfriend made it pretty clear that she was over him, so he's not gonna be getting any snapchat titty pics, and he's kinda bummed out because he thought he could really like this girl.

so jim's got a hand on his shoulder, and he's like "that sucks, dude. you'll meet someone when we get back, i'm sure of it." and telling him that he's a great guy and that he's hot, so he won't have any trouble finding someone. and, of course, all dustin hears is the last part, so he's like "you think i'm hot?"

and the thing with jim being gay, is that dustin knows that he is. but they don't really talk about it, jim's really cagey with his love life. jim's definitely one of his closest friends at this point, but jim's wrestling life and his personal life are really separate at this point. he knows that jim likes men, but he doesn't know any details...he doesn't know what jim's type is, and jim's face is turning a little red.

"yeah, guys that look like you are sorta my type. y'know, tall and strong, that type..." stammering a little.

and dustin's just like "oh" because he doesn't know what to do with that information. because jim likes guys and he likes guys that look like dustin, and dustin's a guy and he looks like dustin.

we all know that dustin's really weird about guys, always talking about kissing them and stuff like that. how he'd be good at giving blowjobs (insane thing to say, thank you, dustin). jim's a guy and dustin's thought about kissing guys, and that does extend to jim. he's thought about kissing jim, probably more than any other guy. like he doesn't think about kissing gargano like he does jim.

jim's hand is still on his shoulder and dustin's just sorta staring at him, thinking about greg in the room they're supposed to be sharing getting some...thinking about how he could lean in and get something for real, which is scary and weird, but he just sorta wants to do it.

"jim?"

"yeah?"

and jim sounds sorta out of breath for some reason, a little high pitched definitely. his lips are stained purple from wine and he licks over it with a stained tongue, which dustin notices because he's staring at his mouth.

"i wanna...can i just...here, try..."

it's barely english, but jim gets it, leaning in at the same time that dustin does and kissing him.

which would definitely escalate into sloppy handjobs, both of em making a mess on jim's bed that's going to be really hard to explain to his roommate if he sees it.

and anyway, dustin spends the night there and they wake up in a tangle of limbs, sober. and dustin's just thinking like, "geez, what the hell did we do last night?" even though he remembers every part of it. and jim's a little hungover, and his lips are still stained a little, and then they're making out again which makes it feel less weird over all.

they definitely get interrupted by jim's roommate for the trip, but he makes so much noise that dustin's able to extract himself from jim's body, hiding his boner with a pillow, jim hiding a smirk to himself.

none of this makes the video of course, but they're sneaking around pretty much all the time after that.

also, greg apologizes at breakfast but then reveals to everyone that his girlfriend wants to get back with him, and he's like "sorry we're not sad guys in china together" and dustin just shrugs, and makes a comment about not being that sad after all, slowly zooming in on jim where he's sitting across the table from him.

[puptoy]

My college roommate (20m) found out I (22m) have a small dick

Okay so. Throwaway account for this, obviously.

I'm good friends with my roommate - he's cool, we play Minecraft and watch video essays in bed together sometimes (we don't have a couch), nothing weird. I'm bi but I haven't been bringing anyone home, so it never came up.

I'm kind of androgynous. Not short, not tall. 5ft 9, slim build, kind of look like a skater.

Anyway. We like to roughhouse, so one day we were wrestling and he pins me down, my arms over my head. I'm not sure how I was trying to pin him but I ended up with his waist between my legs.

Instantlyhard.jpg

I tried to hold still, not shift around or touch him and make it his problem. Obviously. I didn't wanna make him uncomfortable. But I kept saying, dude, I give, I give.

Red alert. I am in my PJs and there is naughty but a single layer of flannel separating my slim jim from my roommate's hip... And scrutiny, apparently.

After I tell him no, I'm not going to admit Legolas is a Mary Sue or whatever silly shit we were pretending to argue about - he shifts and I'm done.

Anyway. I can tell when he feels it because he stiffens. Then relaxes, gives me this smug look. Shitshitshit. He asks if that's all I'm packing. I say yeah, shut up. He - and may I just say, what the hell - decides to drop trou and show me that he's bigger than me soft. At that point I was hoping he was a shower, not a grower, for the sake of my sanity.

I guess it was a "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" type deal. Or I just wanted to check for sure. But he said I should let him see, and I - I don't know what came over me.

(Did I mention he was hot? Deep voice, gorgeous face, tall, the body, everything. God really plays favorites.)

I manage to lift my hips enough to shimmy my PJ pants down, which does kind of grind me against hip and him into mine, and fuck, I'm... yeah. Smaller than average, sure. But my dick doesn't even look like it deserves the title "cock" now that I'm getting a better look at it next to his.

Seems like he enjoyed seeing me strip on command. His length is filling out, getting heavy and thick... I can't look away. He's easily twice my size. And it seems like we're both getting off on seeing it.

We didn't do anything that first time. He just laughed and said that's kinda gay, bro, before he finally let me up to go take a shower and pretend I'm not desperately masturbating.

And now I have a problem. He thinks its funny to tease me about my dick. But every time he does, I remember that, and I get turned on and flustered and forget what I'm doing. I think he's doing it on purpose, and it's getting worse.

The other day he called me "bitch boy" and I should feel disrespected, I know, but it made me hard.

What do I do, reddit?

[theoddcatlady]

Blood On Set

Being an actor isn’t easy. I’d like to act full time but right now working the night shift at my local Wal-Mart is what pays… part of the bills. I got three roommates to afford my apartment, we all bond on the impossible dream of catching our big break in the MCU.

Frankly I was through the moon when I finally got called back to do some work as one of the main characters in an indie film. Up until then, all my ‘acting’ skill was as an extra or a dead body and I was dying to actually show what I could do, you know? I wasn’t gonna get paid well but this could’ve been a stepping stone to greater things.

Shooting was to take place over two weeks. I was to play Seth Taylor, childhood friend to the main character who always wanted something a little more but never had the nerve. Plotline was basic, college girl was being stalked by an unknown figure who may or may not be supernatural, turns out it’s a group of satanists who need to sacrifice her on the new moon to achieve their sinister goals.

The night before shooting began all of us actors had drinks together. It was great getting to know each other. The star of the show was Abby, and I don’t really believe in love at first sight… but I believe in instant chemistry. And I knew off the bat Abby and I were compatible. She had this spark, this love for life and for acting. She’d already gotten a few small roles, even a guest role on a TV show as the victim of the week. I never felt so immediately comfortable around someone else.

Got to meet a few other people too, Geoffrey, who was going to be Abby’s boyfriend/first victim of the movie. He had one of those big laughs that could get a bit grating after a while, but he was nice enough. Liberty, who was going to be Abby’s best gal friend, she had such a morbid sense of humor and had us laughing all night. Ricky, CJ, Garrett, all gonna be various cult members, and Colin, the cult leader. I wasn’t really sure about the casting of Colin, he seemed so quiet, but I realized quite quickly when he stood up why he was cast- dude was nearly seven feet tall. I’m fucking five foot four, I had to crane my neck up to see his face.

Our director/writer/producer was Duncan Turner. He seemed pretty nice, a bit nervous, but nice. Clearly had a boner for Abby, he couldn’t tell her no to anything. I tried to tell him I was a trans man, he seemed to be trying to avoid the subject, then Abby brings up the idea of working that into my character’s backstory and he immediately grabbed his copy of the script to start scribbling in new lines.

Yeah, it was clear this was his first movie, but frankly I didn’t care. This was the first time I had a role with more than two lines. I was pumped.

First two days of shooting went off perfectly. Despite my initial doubts about Colin, he came right into the role of the disturbing cult leader Damion. And although the script was a little cliché, a little ridiculous, it was still fun.

It was fun. Until things got… weird. And by weird I mean someone got killed.

It was day three. We mostly used Duncan’s old college as a set, and we were filming the scene where Abby’s character Nancy is being chased around a theater all set up for a college production of The Phantom of the Opera. What was meant to happen was I was supposed to trip CJ and we were supposed to run off while he was stunned.

What happened was, I tripped CJ, I heard the sound of something cracking, and I looked up just in time for a giant fucking spotlight to come crashing down. CJ opened his eyes just in time for it to squash his head like a grape. Blood and head gore exploded everywhere, covering me, Abby, and the set around us.

I threw up. Duncan screamed bloody murder. Abby just stared at CJ’s twitching body.

Yeah, holy shit. I’ve never seen a dead body outside of a funeral before and uh… yeah, had a lot to talk about with my therapist that week.

It was just an accident, of course. No one was up there. Something was a little loose, and CJ was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. That was our third take of that scene, I was declared not responsible for CJ’s death. And uh, we marched on with filming.

Yeah, it’s cold, and I probably should’ve jumped ship then. But we only had so much time we were allowed to film at the college and Duncan invested a lot of his own money into this movie. Not to mention if I did leave, I’d forfeit my paycheck. We managed to reshoot the scene with Garrett and at the parking lot instead. Granted, Garrett nearly got hit by a goddamn car because some dumb bitch was driving drunk instead of taking an Uber, but he dodged it last second.

I should’ve known the shoot was cursed though. Like nothing as bad as CJ happened until the last day, but things were always off. Garrett kept showing up drunk and ended up breaking his ankle. Thankfully he’d already shot all his scenes but Jesus Christ dude, it’s still work. Ricky just stopped showing up, fucked off to god knows where. Geoffrey cut his arm really bad during his murder scene and it got infected. One of our dude extras got a little creepy with Liberty and she ended up breaking his nose. I could go on. Not to mention I started having some really fucked up nightmares.

I’d always struggled with nightmares. My combo of meds make my dreams super fucking vivid, but this was different. I swore I was really there when I dreamed that Garrett’s feet were getting sawed off. Or when worms and maggots started crawling out of Geoffrey’s cut arm, silencing his screams when they all filled his mouth and choked him to death. Just. Really fucked up shit.

I spent a lot of time with Abby to distract me from all the weird shit going on. We’d have drinks at her place, we’d talk everything from our acting dreams to the name of our favorite Neopet when we were kids. God, I could’ve talked about anything with her. I felt so safe and comfortable around her.

Maybe I should’ve picked up quicker that nearly all our male extras bailed. Or just didn’t turn up. There was something very wrong with this shoot and it’s on me that I didn’t realize something was wrong.

Last day. Last shoot. Final scene. Seth was going to save Nancy from being sacrificed by Damion, and we’d kill him together. It was originally going to be shot in Duncan’s basement, but the morning of I got a text, saying Abby was going to pick me up and that things had changed.

She arrived about an hour from sundown, already in costume judging by the fake blood all over her t-shirt. I jumped in the car and asked what was up.

“Colin has a better basement, more space for camera junk and stuff. Duncan was totally cool with it and will meet us there. Apparently it’ll be a one take deal, so you think you can do it?”

I gave a double thumbs up. Abby smiled, my heart melted, and she offered me a bottle of water. So my throat wouldn’t be dry during shoots.

I didn’t realize I was drugged until I was almost asleep, and of course by then it was too late.

I woke up tied to a chair, some sort of cloth stuffed in my mouth to gag me. The room was completely dark and smelled like rotting meat. In front of me, I saw Duncan laying on the floor, his head was bleeding but I heard him groan. I wondered why the hell he wasn’t getting up but then I saw the pools of blood around his hands and feet.

He’d been nailed to the goddamn floor.

When Abby walked into sight it hit me like a sledgehammer that the blood on her shirt probably wasn’t fake.

She waved her hand and candles all around the room lit up. I would’ve screamed if I could’ve, but all I could do was stare in horror at the bodies nailed to all the walls. Garrett, Ricky, CJ’s headless body, all the other extras that stopped showing up, other guys I didn’t recognize. All of them were dead with their chests ripped open.

Abby came beside me and tested the ropes on my wrists to make sure they were secure. “You comfortable? They aren’t too tight or anything?” She asked.

I stared at her, I couldn’t believe this was happening. Abby nodded before removing the gag. “Right, sorry. Can’t talk while gagged.”

I swallowed all the spit in my mouth before I said, “Why are you doing this?”

“Because he needs it. Otherwise he’ll die. And I won’t let my boyfriend die. You’re just here so you have an alibi, so it’s not pinned on you. Cuz I really like you, Logan. And I’m sorry you have to witness this, but if it gets too much, just close your eyes. I had to at first too.”

I was going to ask why the hell her ‘boyfriend’ needed something when I realized something was hanging from the ceiling that was not another body.

It crawled down one of the walls, its unnaturally long limbs jointed in three different places. It had six arms and four legs, and was naked. Each of its pale fingers ended in an inch long claw. It was the most inhuman thing I have ever seen.

But its head was human, even if its neck was almost two feet long. Colin’s head. Colin’s head was on this thing’s body, and as it looked up at me I swear its eyes looked hungry. Abby patted its shoulder and shook her head. “Leave him alone, babe. He’s my friend,” She said.

Colin looked at her before bobbing its head up and down and it scrambled over to the awakening Duncan.

“Wha… what’s going on…” Duncan’s eyes fluttered open as Colin’s head hovered above his own. His face went white. “Oh- oh my god, what the f-”

One of Colin’s limbs shot forward and its claws unzipped Duncan’s chest like a winter jacket, his guts spilling out everywhere. Duncan’s scream will never leave me. Colin’s mouth opened, revealing a mouthful of janky sharp teeth before he bit into Duncan’s guts, I think I saw him pull out an intestine before I listened to Abby and closed my eyes.

Duncan didn’t scream for much longer, but the chewing and swallowing sounds were impossible to block out. When it was all quiet, I finally opened my eyes. Duncan’s torso was hollowed out, his eyes staring lifelessly at the ceiling.

Colin looked normal again, just your average guy. Abby patted his back, kissed his gore covered cheek, and he walked upstairs. She looked at me and I had to ask one more thing:

“What the hell are you two?”

Abby laughed quietly.

“I’m a witch. And as for Colin… he’s… unknown.”

With that, she walked upstairs and out of my life.

The cops came soon enough, I guess Duncan’s screams carried enough, or maybe Abby called them. I was taken to the hospital and thankfully I was just considered a victim that these two crazy motherfuckers hadn’t gotten around to. There was twelve bodies in that basement.

Maybe Abby cursed the shoot herself, maybe it was just never meant to go right. Either way, Abby and Colin are gone, and I don’t think I’ll ever see them again. If I’m quiet for too long I swear I can hear that chewing echoing in my ears.

I did get paid though. Dunno by who considering how very not alive Duncan is, but I just got the money wired into my account today.

I guess Abby didn’t want my time wasted on what probably would’ve been an okay movie, had not most of the cast got murdered and eaten by her boyfriend.

[pretendfan]

{ Liquid Dreams }

(This is my first Workaholics fic, if anyone reads this I will be so happy, because the story is ridiculous and their fandom isn’t on here, helloooooo anyone, but I love these dudes so much, rewatching the show has landed me here so enjoy…this is also posted on AO3)

Gen:

Anders Holmvik/Blake Henderson/Adam DeMamp

Story:

(What happens when you add dem boyz and a pile of old Cosmopolitan magazines?)

(This story answers that question and more…)

♥️5K♥️

WARNINGS 18 PLUS : mentions of cranking it, drug use, drinking alcohol, let’s talk about sex, bro humour, swearing aplenty, very much like an episode of the show, the dudes learn somethings, Adam is misogynistic, Blake is a babe, Anders is such a dad…

“I can’t help you there dude you are just gonna have to decide for yourself.” Adam DeMamp explains with a shrug as he roller blades confidently in the street, next to his best bud who was biting his bottom lip deep in thought.

“Yeah but what if the pills actually work and they make my hog bigger?” Blake Henderson questions whilst performing a quick spin, as if to prove his point that the subscription was a really fucking good idea.

“It definitely wouldn’t be able to fit in those pants of yours, because why are they so tight you need to really give your balls some breathing room!” Adam declares loudly skating ahead whilst holding his arms high above his head.

“My boxers are loose enough but that isn’t the question, what I’m asking-“

“Is if pills to enlarge your dick will work or better yet you can just get a pump and we can share it!” Adam stops suddenly and Blake almost crashes into him, but breaks just in time for the battered cart that he was pulling along, to bash pretty hard against his leg.

“I love you dude truly, but neither you or Anders would ever use my dick pump if I bought one-“

“That’s just selfish-“

“Dude, where the hell is this garden stuff you saw that was free to take?” Blake cuts off Adam before he starts to whine, because soon the tantrums would begin and it was too early for any of that bullshit.

“Just along here bro calm down-“

“I haven’t had my red bull yet dude so I’m still tired.” Blake groans at the same time that he notices Adam pulling an uninterested face in return.

“Oh, I’m sorry that I rushed into your room and excitedly told you all about the incredible treasures that I had found!” Adam retorts whilst throwing his hands back up in the air in exasperation.

“No, you just jumped on my bed Adam and punched me until I woke up, also interrupting my pretty sweet dream-“

“We can’t all dream like you Blake, are we not men of action?” Adam cuts off his friend with a confident smirk.

“My dream was very important actually involving Nickelodeon slime, the bright green kind and one of my favourites Lacey Jams.” Blake informs Adam who of course isn’t listening as he sets off again on his blades.

“Cool story bro.” Adam chants as they both avoid a passing car, the driver rewarding them with a weird look but neither of them cared.

“We are allowed to blade on the street sir!” Blake announces waving at the guy who just continues to drive ahead, whilst Adam flips him the bird.

“Stupid drivers-“ Begins Adam but then he suddenly points ahead and shouts “There’s the treasure!”

Blake follows his roommate and stops in front of a house which was of course way tidier than theirs, with tall dark green bushes out front that framed the house, completed perfectly by the pile of old crap sitting next to the curb.

“Dude, this is junk-“

“Yeah, but it’s all ours Blake!” Adam cheers cutting off his curly haired friend, who gives him a disbelieving look right back.

“How are we getting all this back to the house? Shouldn’t we have asked Ders to help us.” Blake questions still not fully awake because he was tired and of course horny, but Adam had ruined his chances of waking up in a good mood.

“Blake, that’s why you’ve got that cart dude are you even on board with this-“

“I don’t even know what day it is.” Blake mutters whilst brushing his mess of hair back with both hands.

“Come on, let’s go! It will only take a couple of trips and look haven’t you seen the inflatables?” Adam questions with a faux shocked voice.

“I bet they are all busted-“

“Dude, stop being a buzz kill” snaps Adam literally stamping one of his feet, which almost causes him to fall flat on his ass but Blake grabs his arm to save him.

“I just wanted a few more minutes alone in bed-“

“To jerk it? Is this all because you haven’t had any hand fun yet, come on Blake I’ve done it three times already.” Jokes Adam with loud laugh.

“How the hell could I when you fucking woke me up?” Blake questions beyond frustrated right now as he asks “Can we just get this done because Ders is gonna start wondering where the hell we are.”

“Just promise me that as soon as we’re finished you go take a shower and treat yourself, use some of Anders lotion in the bathroom.” Adam smiles happily at Blake who grins back equally amused.

“You mean the green bottle-“

“Yeah, do you use it as well then?” Adam asked with an arched eyebrow.

“Dude, I’ve had to replace it-“

“No shit!” Laughs Adam as he bends down to pick up a deflated palm tree, complete with muddy grime on it, but throwing it in their pool would clean it up of course.

“Let’s not tell Ders about that though-“

“Of course not, bro code or some shit.” Adam cuts off Blake with a firm nod adding “Now grab some damn stuff and let’s go!”

“It is a really nice lotion though.” Chuckles back Blake as he picks up a patio umbrella, with a large palm tree design on it clearly these people liked a theme.

In the end it takes the pair over two hours to get all the stuff, with Ders saying he wouldn’t help them he was clearly too busy and the pair of course needing a blunt break, because Blake had been verging on battering Adam with one of the garden chairs they had taken.

Finally with all the treasures out the back as Adam called them, Blake however just saw it as junk but a beat up plastic grey box held a degree of interest, yet right now all he really cared about was finally taking a shower.

It had actually been fun to skate back and forth, well once the weed had kicked in he felt better for a while, until Adam had started talking about a pool party that they should totally have next weekend.

Which sounded dope but from previous experience it was always a sausage fest, and all Blake wanted to see were chicks in bikini’s for once, the thought makes a warm heat spread across his stomach.

Noticing Adam saluting him with a beer from the kitchen Blake nods with a cheeky smirk, as he heads into the bathroom whilst trying to decide, what scenario to use in his head first because he was a guy who liked a storyline after all.

“Don’t be too long in there!” Anders states when he hears the bathroom door lock, glancing back at Adam who has a funny look on his face.

“Give the dude a break he hasn’t cranked it yet today-“

“But hadn’t we all agreed that the shower was off limits?” Cuts in Anders in a warning tone.

“Sure, but you can’t tell me that you don’t pay extra special attention to your little guy in the shower!” Adam retorts with a snort like an amused warthog.

“Of course I fucking do that’s why my favourite lotion is in there-“

“Is that the one in the green bottle?” Adam asks innocently but fails as a grin spreads across his face.

“Please tell me you don’t-“

“I bet Blake is using it right now.” Adam cuts off Ders whilst grabbing another beer from the fridge beside him.

“Is nothing sacred in this house?” Snaps Anders who walks out of the kitchen angrily.

“I also use your laptop Ders.” Adam mutters to himself with a chuckle, because they didn’t hide anything here, and his tall roommate had all the important passwords.

It is late afternoon when the guys regroup again with Adam having set up the junk out in the yard, the lawn chairs and umbrella out alongside various inflatables which included a pizza and pink dolphin, all of which were half blown up in the pool.

“How romantic.” Anders deadpans as he steps out into the yard, noticing the dented metal table and blue plastic kid’s pool, which Adam had half filled with snacks.

“I like to wine and dine, before I sixty nine dude you know this.” Adam chirps happily as he sits down at the edge of the pool, shirtless of course dipping his toes into the warm water.

“When ever have you-“

“Ugh I feel so much better after that nap, because I was definitely sleepy after my shower!” Blake announces cutting off whatever Ders had been saying with a grin on his face.

“Yeah, let’s hope I have some fucking body lotion left-“

“Adam, you told on me?” Blake questions whilst trying to not look caught out when clearly he already was.

“Wait a sec-“

“Neither of you can ever go near my lotion again.” Anders states with a stern look as his eyes scan, from stupid Adam to Blake who was pulling a ridiculous face.

“Now that’s all cleared up, permission to join the party now dudes?” Blake asks with a smile as Adam holds a thumb up, and Ders mutters something about going to grab some beers.

“Permission granted, now let’s play a few slam dunks over the pool before the pizza gets here!” Adam demands whilst spinning round to get out of the pool, only to slip and fall back in sideways which makes Blake laugh loudly.

“Zero points for that dismount dude!” Blake yells at the same time that Adam raises his head above water spluttering all the while.

“All part of my plan, because if there were any chicks here right now they would all jump in and rescue me.” Adam shouts and coughs as he doggy paddles to the edge of the pool.

“Sure buddy-“

“Ready for some beers dudes?” Cuts in Anders reappearing with a large red cooler, placing it down on top of the plastic grey box, beside the palm tree umbrella.

Before anyone can reply there is a crash and the box breaks, causing the cooler to tip but Anders grabs it before the contents is spilled, although he wasn’t really looking because something else had suddenly caught his eye.

“What broke-“

“Guys, we’ve hit jackpot!” Anders announces cutting off Blake as he bends down to pick up a magazine, turning it round to show the guys who glance at one another awkwardly.

“Want some fashion tips Ders?” Adam questions with a scoff as his friend sighs, whilst Ders continues to wave the copy of Cosmopolitan excitedly in his hand.

“No wait, don’t they have like these sex quizzes in those things?” Blake asks out loud causing Adam to slow clap and Anders to flip the magazine open.

“Ten ways to impress your man-“

“Erm, I’m not into that dude.” Adam shakes his head firmly noticing the look on Blake’s face.

“But we can learn what women would do to us, if we ever met any and managed to actually bring them back here.” Blake states sarcastically the thought bumming him out momentarily.

“This could help us then!” Anders demands closing the magazine gently, like he didn’t want to leave sticky finger prints on any of the pages.

“Yeah to jerk off later to-“

“That’s a given, but for now we could learn something from these shiny magazines.” Anders states looking down to see more in the broken box, alongside an empty bottle of wine, also a photocopied picture of what looked like bridesmaids.

“Well I get first dibs because it’s my treasure after all!” Adam informs them both with an ached eyebrow and a challenging look on his face.

“Dude I helped you.” Blake reminds him lamely.

“Stop guys! Let’s just sit here and start looking there seems to be a whole bunch of them, and a picture of some random bridesmaids.” Anders nods with an excited smile on his face.

“I call dibs on the bridesmaids!” Blake raises a hand excitedly whilst Adam rolls his eyes.

“Fine, but for now let’s crack open a few beers and take a couple of quizzes.” Ders smirks as he takes a seat, on one of the old lawn chairs, praying silently that it won’t break on him.

“We are definitely not telling anyone about this-“

“Of course not dude, now shut up and sit down!” Blake informs Adam as they sit down on a chair and the cooler separately, grabbing a magazine each from the messy pile on the floor.

Silence fills the backyard as the guys look at their magazines, each with their own mixed thoughts until eventually the door bell rings, and finally Blake looks away in time to catch the pizza dude.

Hurrying back in Blake dumps the pizza on top of the cooler, taking a seat on the floor instead as he watches Ders lift up the box lid and they all dive in, still silent neither of them glancing at one another just lost in the pages under their noses.

“Oh there are so many hot women in these magazines-“

“Fully clothes sadly.” Adam cuts off Blake as dusk starts settling in, and he quickly looking up to pour out some beer in honour of his loss.

“Yeah, but check out some of the sex pages they have a lot of toys.” Anders nods with a smirk, glancing at his friends who chuckle back like awkward teenagers.

“My flesh-light is way better than any rabbit toy!” Adam announces as he reads something and then asks “Hey, where is the clitoris?”

“It’s not anywhere near the butthole, that’s all I know!” Jokes Blake with a soft giggle, brushing some mangled hair behind one of his ears.

“It’s at the top-“

“Dude I know that I was just joking!” Laughs Blake whilst wiping an imaginary tear from his right eye.

“Are you sure-“

“Dammit I know ok!” Blake snaps causing Adam to hit him on the head with a rolled up magazine.

“You need to get laid.” Jokes Anders whilst Adam cheers and nods in agreement.

“Yeah well, so do you two!” Blake chokes back with a dark look on his face, as he chugs down the rest of his beer.

“No offence but you could sure use some help closing Blake, so maybe there is something in one of these damn cosmos.” Adam states with a fake smile attached to his lame sentiment.

“Again, take your own advice dude.” Blake retorts whilst poking his tongue out at his friend.

“Now guys-“

“I’m going to kill you!” Screams Adam cutting off whatever Ders was about to say, as he proceeds to dramatically launch himself at Blake who was already on the floor.

“Dude, get off me!” Blake yells whilst trying to push Adam off him, as the pair roll around freakishly close to the pool fighting like idiots.

“I’m not getting involved.” Anders informs them diplomatically.

Seconds later Blake pushes Adam into the pool, but he manages to grab onto Blake’s tee shirt and they both fall in together, a warm breeze moving the page that Ders was reading as he tries to ignore the chaos.

“I’m pissed now!” Blake declares getting out of the pool, taking off his tee shirt which makes Anders look up and Adam scoff as he splashes around in the water.

“Dude put your tee shirt back on.” Adam sighes with a shake of his head.

“Jealous Adam are we?” Blake smirks as he holds his arms up high above his head, a move that he knew showed off his sleek frame and muscles.

“Of you?” Questions Adam with a hysterical laugh like he had just understood the world’s funniest punchline.

“You’ve even got those damn Usher lines Blake!” Ders cries out loudly pointing a finger at him almost accusingly.

“And with that I’m heading to the roof-“

“Come back here and fight!” Adam shouts splashing water again as Ders dives to save the magazines.

“Let him cool off, you just need to stop attacking the dude.” Anders tells Adam in a serious voice, which makes him think he sounds like his dad causing Ders to shudder.

“He started it-“

“Dude enough, now tell me about this pool party idea, and then I will show you the swimsuit issue!” Anders cheers causing Adam to rush out of the pool excitedly.

“Holding out as always Ders?” Adam asks with a pointed look.

“Dude you have to see it!” Anders smirks smugly because he would definitely be taking the magazine to his room later.

Blake meanwhile is drying off with one of the towels on the roof, hopefully it was Adam’s one but they borrow a lot of each other’s stuff, so it was hard to determine who owned what nowadays.

Tying the hair band from his wrist Blake puts his wet hair into a low ponytail, just so it’s out of his face as he closes his eyes, and tries to listen to what his roommates were talking about.

Blake was self conscious about a lot of things especially seeing how good looking his bros were, sure he gave back as good as he got some days, but right now he felt annoyed mostly at himself and the fact that he wanted another beer.

Also a hit on his bong that was currently sat untouched downstairs wouldn’t hurt either, but he was up here now on the roof and wanted to prove a point, unsure what exactly but Blake was hella pissed that his friends kept taking shots at him.

“We should go and see him.” Anders looks up on the roof a while later, to see that Blake was still up there, he was surprised the dude hadn’t gone to his room to sulk.

“Blake’s fine-“

“I think that we need to help him meet someone.” Anders cuts off Adam stating the truth because Blake was pretty inexperienced, but it wasn’t as if him or Adam were rocking high numbers either.

“Dude needs a makeover!” Adam cries waving a page at Ders from his magazine.

“You need to reign it in-“

“No hear me out, we tidy up the dudes hair and face moustache, then perhaps add some clear mascara bring out the blue in his eyes.” Adam states eyes firmly on the page he was reading from, not noticing the look that Ders was giving him right now.

“Blake’s just shy-“

“Crazy awkward around chicks!” Adam bellows with a laugh which makes Anders throw his magazine at him.

“I can hear you dudes.” Blake shouts down in a deep voice, wishing himself that he had just gone back to his bedroom and crashed out instead.

Anders grabs the cooler whilst Adam silently picks up some of the Cosmos , and they both make their way up to the roof quickly, it was time for a dude summit to talk some real shit.

Blake watches as they both struggle to get up to the roof, he could offer to help with the cooler but instead he stays put in his seat, until his conscious gets the better of him and he silently snatches said item from Ders hand.

“Thanks dude.” Anders says with a nod as he sits down on a lawn chair with a sigh.

“Here.” Adam opens the cooler and pulls out a fresh beer, handing it over to Blake who silently accepts the peace offering.

“Sorry we went too far this time and-“

“You’ve done a lot worse before than this.” Blake cuts off Ders with a closed off look but not without adding “I guess we all can push each other to the limits sometimes.”

“Yeah like that time you cut the brake wires on Ders car -“

“That was you?!” Anders snaps at Blake who tries and fails to look innocent.

“That was back when I was heavily watching the timeless movie that is “Speed” all the time.” Blake shrugs with a smile.

“Yeah but isn’t that movie about a bomb on a bus and they can’t go over a certain speed limit?” Adam asks with a confused look on his face.

“Well yeah but I had tried to place a fake bomb on the Vo’ but just ended up accidentally cutting the stupid wire.” Blake tells Adam whilst avoiding the daggers that were coming from Ders eyes.

“You need to grow up-“

“Dude you were playing along too it was the time we had taken the last of the Adderall, and you were the Dennis Hopper character!” Blake reminds Adam with an arched eyebrow and a smirk.

“Pop quiz, hot shot.” Adam quotes in a voice sounding similar to the aforementioned actor.

“I think you owe me some money dude because I had to take the car to the garage-“

“I can’t afford anything.” Blake cuts off Ders hurriedly.

“I was joking, but don’t ever mess with my damn car again!” Anders laughs but there is still a warning tone in his voice.

“We all mess with one another, that’s what bros do but me and Ders have decided that what we should do now is help you!” Adam shouts excitedly, wobbling in his seat a little but he steadies himself quickly.

“Help me, with what?” Blake asks cautiously because both his dudes were giving him a manic look.

“Meet a real-life chick and close-“

“Oh, like you both have extensive knowledge on this!” Cuts off Blake making a noise in his throat to prove a point.

“Well these magazines might help-“

“I think that you both need to be cut off dudes .” Blake begins with a wide eyed look that disappears as he says quietly “What could those things possibly say that would help me?”

“Let’s take a look!” Ders announces sensing the dip in the mood as he picks up a magazine and flips it open hurriedly.

“Another beer-“

“Here, listen to this!” Anders cuts off Adam as he hold up a page and reads out loud “ What women really want, and it’s not what you think.”

“First of all guys are more intelligent than girls that is a fact!” Adam shouts loudly and then takes it home by saying “ Girls lie they say that they will call you and then you’re speaking to a pizza place.”

“I’m sorry that happened-“

“Ain’t no thang!” Adam cuts off Ders as he then elaborates “ I met another chick that night at said pizza place and we made out in her car.”

“Nice dude.” Blake nods with a grin at his best friend.

“See Blake, that’s your problem right there-“

“I thought we were being nice to one another again?” Begins Blake cutting off Anders as he quips that “Those magazines are making you bitchy as hell man.”

“Blake, you need to grow a pair dude!” Adam chimes in which makes Ders clap in agreement.

“I told you guys that I was a late bloomer-“

“No, not that! What I mean is set your sights on someone and go for it dude.” Ders states in a sage voice, the kind that usually works in a chaotic moment.

“Did you learn that from the glossy you’re holding? Because that’s bad advice dude.” Adam tuts at Anders who rolls his eyes right back.

“So what advice do you have then?” Blake asks Adam finishing his beer and burping loudly as he chucks the empty can behind him.

“It’s so easy.” Adam begins eyes flitting between his two friends as he wriggle his eyebrows and says “ Two words, pool party.”

“Well that’s four words-“

“Stop being a nerd!” Adam snaps at Blake who looks down at the magazines and grudgingly picks one up.

“Nerds are soon to be the next big thing, so stop being a loser Adam.” Blake retorts eyes glancing the pages, until he stops at the swim suit section.

“Enjoy dude.” Winks Anders pulling an excited face.

From here on out the night rides on with Blake studying the swimsuits his bong resting between this feet, Adam asking Anders questions about an anal sex quiz, and the leftover beers growing warm because the cooler lid had been left open.

Anders cannot believe how much he is learning right now, sure the porn he watches religiously keeps him in the know, but these pages offered a fresh perspective and it was making his denim pants tighten as a result.

Meanwhile Adam is wondering to himself if he could wear more pink would it suit his hair colour, or maybe purple could help illuminate his brown eyes bring out the colour of his lips, fuck now he was debating whether he could pull off shorts.

Glancing up at his two friends, who were far to immersed in their own reading material to notice, Blake rolls his eyes because tonight has been weird with a capital W and normally he rolled for times like this.

But things had gotten personal and unless he mentions the idea of a girlfriend out loud, he hated being frogmarched into a conversation about his inability to date, because news flash he knew first hand but times might soon be a changing.

Not sure how out yet but Blake needed to be more confident, maybe he could fake it and show the world that he meant business, all he wanted was to finally lose is cherry because he had been dumped many times before he even had a chance.

“Hey guys, do you think I have an apple or an hourglass figure?” Adam questions breaking into the silence with serious question in real time.

Anders literally drops the magazine from his hands, whilst Blake shapes his fingers into a rectangle frame placing them up to his face, so he can check out Adam who is obviously waiting for an answer.

“What is happening right now?” Anders questions with a confused look on his face.

“I was just asking a question-“

“Well those shapes are referring to women’s bodies and not dudes, so I think it’s time that we should step away from these things.” Anders states cutting off Adam as he knocks the magazine from his hands.

“Yet we still have some many unanswered questions Ders.” Blake replies sarcastically which makes Adam nod in the affirmative.

“You two are beyond help-“

“And you need to lighten up dude!” Adam talks over Anders with a grin, as the guys make the awkward descent from the roof.

“Someone has to be a grown up.” Ders retorts in a tired tone.

“Sucks to be you bro!” Blake chants until he almost slips down the last bit of trellis, grabbing onto Adam’s shoulders so he didn’t croak it.

“I disagree-“

“Just know that I’m doing fine bro.” Blake announces almost believing it himself, as he not so subtly picks up a magazine from the floor near the pool.

“We all are dude, but just that know my stock is the highest!” Adam states firmly almost standing on Blake’s foot, as he dips down to also grab some reading material for his bedtime

“Have you hit your head again?” Ders asks Adam in a shocked voice as he explains “ I feel like I’m the top gun round here.”

“He’s a real life Tom Cruise over there!” Blake announces in a loud voice.

“Clearly he’s too tall to be Cruise-“

“We all know that I’m Bradley Cooper.” Anders cuts off Adam whilst closing the palm tree umbrella, at the same time locating the magazine he needed to help him sleep.

“Yeah if you’re in the dark perhaps.” Adam retorts which makes Blake splutter out a laugh, and Ders glare at them both as they all make their way finally back inside the house.

“Well this has all been a blast but I’m off to bed now.” Blake announces with a fake yawn despite it being earlier than usual, he tucks aforementioned magazine under his arm with an awkward smile plastered across his face.

“Yeah it’s been such a long day.” Nods Anders picking up his tie from the messy coffee table, wrapping it around his book with a nod.

“Time to go crank it hard dudes.” Adam declares with an overzealous wink, leaning past Blake to grab the box of tissues from the small diner table by the wall.

“There is this new oil that I have been meaning to try.” Anders smirks back at Adam who nods happily.

“Man, you ought to come see my set up someday I’ve got lube for days bro!” Adam states with a chuckle glancing at Blake who looks visibly embarrassed.

“Don’t be shy dude!” Adam nudges Blake hard with his hip as he explains “We all do it bro, and I’ve definitely heard you.”

“Yeah well you’re not exactly quiet either Adam.” Blake retorts with a smile stating “ I like to wear my headphones and set the scene, add some candles and never ever rush.”

“Sounds really romantic Blake.” Anders rolls his eyes at Adam with an unattractive snort.

“They don’t call me a ladies man for nothing-“

“That’s because they don’t dude.” Adam cuts off Blake as he pats him hard on the back adding “You need to be more like me, all the DeMamp men are very sexual.”

“I guess you’re the odd one out then right Adam?” Anders cracks making Blake laugh loudly whilst brushing some curly hair from his face.

“I rocked the world of those four and half girls at college, I bet I’m all they still think about.” Adam retorts in a sulky voice which makes Blake pat his friend on the shoulder.

“Half a girl-“

“Don’t ask!” Cuts in Blake raising both of his hands in front of Anders face, whilst Adam shrugs and mutters something that no one can make out.

“On that note then, I’m off to bed.” Anders nods as he starts to walk to his room.

“Don’t start crying again dude like you did last time!” Adam laughs loudly as he follows suit to his room, almost dropping his box of tissues in the process.

“That was only because you put on Matchbox twenty!” Anders retorts making Blake shake his head with a playful chuckle.

“Need I remind you that the song “Push” is fucking classic!” Blake states placing a hand on one of his hips at the same time.

“Thats true.” Begins Anders who then reminds his friend “But please don’t go burning the house down with your candles dude.”

“Not after last time-“

“Dude, what did you do?!” Cuts in Anders ignoring the look on Blake’s face as he gets to his bedroom door.

The three of the stop outside together smiles and nods aplenty, as they bring the night to an early close.

“Good humping boys!” Blake states with a cheeky smirk.

“Night guys.” Anders nods with a crinkle in his eyes.

“If you hear me screaming, don’t come a knocking!” Adam declares hopping up in the air to hit the top of the door frame with a flourish.

With that three doors simultaneously open and close, whilst one is locked and another changes their mind leaving it ajar, then moments later the opening chords to an O - Town song begins to play through the last door.

LETS GET WEIRD…

[hxhhasmysoul]

tagged by @noname-nonartist, @cursedvibes thank you both for the tag

1. Are you named after anyone?

My aunt. My parents didn't like any names and chose that one because they had to put something in the documents.

2. When was the last time you cried?

About 2 weeks ago, I had a serious mental breakdown. Cried for like 2 hours.

3. Do you have kids?

Nah, never wanted any.

4. What sport have you played?

None really, in primary school I had the opportunity to play basketball, my gym teacher invited me to after school classes but all the kids there were older than me and I got awkward and ran away. Of course I didn't try later with any other sport, because I'm weird.

5. Do you use sarcasm?

Unfortunately, yes, I can't help myself.

6. What’s the first thing you notice about other people?

Idk... maybe clothes? Maybe hands. I'm really awkward and I absolutely don't notice the faces, I have to meet someone at least twice to be able to recognise them on my own.

7. Eye colour?

Dark brown.

8. Scary movies or happy endings?

Is this a dichotomy? A story can be scary and have a happy ending. It can also have a bad ending and not be scary, just drama... I like character driven stories.

9. Any talents?

Not really.

10. Where were you born?

Hospital.

11. Hobbies?

Writing, reading, making comics, video games, long walks.

12. Pets?

I have an introverted dog. Is she a pet? Hard to tell, she's kinda like a roommate that tolerates me as a necessary inconvenience because I give her food and take her for walks.

13. How tall are you?

172cm

14. Favourite subject in school?

None, school was kinda shit. With ADHD all subjects are a chore.

15. Dream job?

None. Meaningful or useful jobs don't pay living wages, I learned that the hard way. Only useless jobs do, and tbh they just shouldn't exist. I'm deeply embarrassed I have one.

tagging but only if you feel like it: @faceless-dude, @yuujispinkhair, @subdee, @yuuji2032003, @amoralnerd, @yukisdomain, @galaxynajma, @voidcat-senket

[banannabethchase]

Steady Love - also on AO3

~

Adam, with Nick as his roommate, starts off his sophomore year of college with a crush, actual friends and a whole lot of shenanigans. He ends it with, somehow, more.

~

Welcome to my 300th fic on AO3! I decided to combine elements of my 1st, 100th, and 200th fic on AO3 to create this one, and thus, a college AU involving 5 of my all time favorite ships across 3 of my most special fandoms. I hope you enjoy this continuation of The Rumor of Us for those of us who remember me from back then, and the continuation of the Quintis College AU I briefly wrote. Title from Look After You by The Fray, one of my all time favorite romantic songs.

~

“Page!”

Adam turns to see Nick throwing the basketball at him. He catches it and dribbles around the other team’s defense, which isn’t that impressive knowing who the defense is, and shoots.

The ball bounces off the rim and toward Nick, who makes the save and a three pointer.

“Yes!” Nick yells, dropping to his knees with his fists in the air. “I’m the effing king of this!”

Adam walks over and shoves Nick to the side with his foot. “Lucky shot,” Adam says, grinning down at him.

“Was not!” Nick scrambles to his feet. “I’ve been practicing my three pointers all summer.” He nudges Adam in the shoulder. “Anyway, we’re basically out of time for the gym. We only booked an hour.”

Adam checks the time on his phone. “Damn it,” he mutters.

“Are we done or something?” Toby asks. “Please say we’re done.”

“Wimp,” Happy says, grinning. “You don’t have to play next time, you know. I think I’d do better if you weren’t on my team”

“I do have to play!” Toby says, scrambling after Happy as she steps toward her bag on the side of the court. Adam’s kind of baffled he missed the insult entirely. “I have to make sure you don’t get yourself killed.”

“Toby, let’s be real here,” Happy says. “The only reason I play basketball is because you made me socialize with people other than you and the rest of the Cyclone, and you decided your roommate’s weird brother was the right call. You’re just mad I’m doing better with these friends than you are.”

Toby pouts. “Hey!”

“And I am not the weird one here,” Nick says.

“Bye, y’all,” Happy says, grinning over her shoulder. “C’mon, Curtis, to the showers.”

Adam rolls his eyes as Toby’s pout turns into unshielded excitement. They scamper away.

“They’re really weird,” Adam muses, dribbling the ball absently. “I like them.”

“Right?” Nick says. “Toby’s a TA, but he’s our age. He skipped a bunch of grades.”

“That explains some of the,” Adam shoots the ball and misses, pausing to find the right words, “socially awkward moments.”

“No kidding,” Nick says. He chases after the ball and chucks it back at Adam, who manages to make the three pointer this time. “There you go, dude. I knew you could do it.”

“It’s because he’s tall.”

Adam turns at a voice that makes his entire body light up. “Matt!” he says, trying to hold back before getting too weird. “Hi.”

Nick glances over at his brother. “What the eff are you doing here?” he asks, bouncing the ball. Adam fights the urge to tell him to shut up.

“You always make fun of me for not being able to play,” Matt says. He looks incredible; Adam’s never seen him in basketball shorts and a tank top. “So I figured I’d come and learn from the self-proclaimed best this year.”

Nick rolls his eyes. “You have awful timing. We only rented the court until five.”

Matt shrugs. “So, like, rent another hour?”

“That’s not how it works.” Nick belts Matt with the basketball, and Adam is impressed that Matt at least can catch it. He doesn’t dribble though. He just holds it in his hands. “Somebody else will have rented it out.”

“We could ask to share,” Matt says. With a quick flick of his eyes, he chucks the ball in Adam’s direction. Adam has to jump a little, feeling his shirt fly up as he does do, but he manages to catch the ball.

“You can’t – Matt, go away.”

“No!” Adam says. Matt and Nick look at him. “I mean, we could go to the outdoor hoops, right?”

“It’s ninety seven degrees outside,” Nick deadpans. “Let’s just go do something else.”

“Can I shower first?” Adam asks, wrinkling his nose. “I’m all gross.”

“I’m sure you’re fine,” Matt says, waving him off. “Dining hall should be serving dinner by now.”

“It’s five o’clock,” Nick says. “We – really?”

Matt shrugs. “I’m hungry.”

“Me, too,” Adam adds.

Nick sighs. “Whatever. Fine. Dinner.”

“I hope they have the pasta bar this time,” Matt says. And Adam knows, in that moment, with that smile Matt throws him, he’s doomed.

Matt flounces off to the pasta bar, almost skipping.

“Dude,” Nick says, elbowing Adam. “What is your deal?”

“Deal?” Adam asks, trying to keep himself from blushing. “There’s no deal. I’m – why?”

Nick stares at him. “You’ve hung out with Matt before and never been this twitchy.” He study’s Adam’s face. “Do you have a crush on my brother?”

“No.”

Nick’s expression goes from curious to annoyed. “You have a crush on my brother,” he says, definitively. “Oh, my god.”

“I – don’t!” Adam says. “And shush.”

“If you don’t have a crush on him, then I can say it as loud as I want.”

“No!” Adam says. “Damn it. Just – don’t tell him.”

“Are you gonna tell him?” Nick asks.

Adam presses his lips together and shrugs. “Maybe? I don’t know. I don’t…yeah.”

Nick sighs so deeply his shoulders slump. “If you make him cry, I have to kill you, you know that, right?”

“What?” Adam asks. “I’m your roommate!”

“Roommate and friend always comes second to brother,” Nick says, shrugging. “It’s biological. I am genetically wired to care about that dumbass.”

They look over, where Matt is very possibly flirting with the cook making the pasta, from the way he’s smiling and leaning against the counter. Adam can’t decide if he’s jealous or distracted by how good Matt’s butt looks in his shorts.

“Believe me,” Nick says, grabbing a slice of pizza, “I am the most annoyed about it.”

They grab some extra fruit and vegetables, because Adam’s mom’s voice is always in his head, and they find a small table near the hydroponics station.

“You ever get tempted to, like, grab a leaf of lettuce off of there and eat it?” Nick asks, shoving half the slice of pizza in his mouth.

Adam blinks. “No, but I am sort of fascinated at your impulse to eat public leaves.”

“They’re not public leaves!” Nick scoffs. “It’s lettuce grown by the college, and I pay tuition, so they are my leaves.”

Adam nearly stops breathing when Matt sits down next to him, like he doesn’t care Adam’s covered in sweat and his hair is a wreck. His heart is racing as Matt flashes him a smile.

“The pasta guy is really nice,” Matt says, mixing what appears to be something with vegetables and pesto. He shoves a giant forkful in his mouth and makes a face so pleased Adam has to turn away and take an unreasonably huge bite of pizza. “And he gave me extra pesto.”

“Yeah, because you were flirting with him,” Nick says, rolling his eyes. “God, you’re worse than Piper at that one party.”

“Am not!” Matt argues.

“The one when she stole all that toilet paper last year?” Adam asks, once he’s swallowed the pizza. “That was hilarious.”

“I was not flirting with him,” Matt says, and Adam doesn’t miss the way he flicks his eyes toward him. “Shut up. Eat your pizza, Nick.”

“Don’t tell me what to do!”

Adam snickers as the two of them bicker back and forth, finishing most of his plate before they get under control. Matt’s got his lower lip stuck out, Nick’s glaring, and Adam, mostly, is entertained.

“Are you two done?” he asks, because he wants to know what happens next.

~

By the start of September, Matt’s been to every single basketball court hour that they’ve had, and Adam is…technically handling it. The amount of times Matt has pulled off his shirt mid-game and Adam either missed a pass or immediately fell over is in the double digits.

He’s regaling his friends in class with the most recent story of Matt making a moaning noise during stretching when Annabeth and Piper both begin laughing at him mid-lecture, which feels excessive.

“Oh you legit like him,” Piper says, with a sharkish grin. “Pro tip? Act on it now. Otherwise you’re fucked like me and Reyna for the first semester of school.”

“Based on what I’ve heard before I’ve knocked,” Annabeth says, flipping to the right page in her notes, “nobody fucks like the two of you, but okay.”

Adam laughs as Piper rolls her eyes and slumps into her seat. “You all suck,” she grumbles.

They pass notes and tease each other through the lecture, which Adam would feel bad about but he scored a 95% on the first anthropology test and was only outscored by Annabeth, so he figures he’s fine.

Annabeth pokes him in the ribs when he snickers at a sex joke Piper makes.

“They’re going to hear you,” Annabeth says, scrolling her phone with one hand and taking notes with the other. “He’s not even using a mic now. And I really don’t want to get yelled at.”

“You’re on your phone looking up – oh, my god.” Adam leans back. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t see you putting lingerie in your cart.”

Annabeth smirks and shrugs. “Don’t look at my phone screen next time.”

By the time class is over, Adam knows he’ll be begging Annabeth for a copy of her notes, but he’s in good spirits to go for their basketball time.

“I gotta go,” he says, smiling at the two of them. “Basketball hour, you know.”

Piper immediately starts making kissy faces.

“It’s just basketball!” Adam says, suddenly wishing his hair was down to cover his likely pink ears. “He needs help with it.”

“You know what he needs?” Piper says, grinning.

“Don’t say it,” Annabeth says. “It’s a cheap joke.”

“He needs your dick.”

Annabeth and Adam sigh in tandem while Piper cackles.

“One of these days I’m going to tell on you to Reyna,” Annabeth grumbles.

“About what?”

“Bad sex jokes,” Adam offers. “Making fun of me.”

Piper scoffs. “She likes it when I do that. Reyna loves my stupid jokes.”

“Yeah, if you guys do go abroad,” Annabeth asks, adjusting her backpack on her shoulder, “you’ll have to learn a whole new language to make sex jokes in.”

Piper wrinkles her nose. “Reyna really wants to, but I’m not sure. She’s looking at France.”

“I’m sure there’s sex jokes in French,” Adam says, shoving his books in his backpacks. “Or you could just say ‘oui oui’ all the time and look like a dork.”

“Coming from you, that’s great.” Piper hits him on the arm with her notebook, grinning. “Go play homoerotic sports with your future boyfriend.”

~

The first set of tests by the second week of September hit, and Adam realizes he has a little collection of friends that makes him feel cozy, but a bit confused. He’s not exactly sure when his and Nick’s dorm room became the place where everybody hangs out, but he keeps trying to hide things like his teddy bear and his dirty clothes while Kenny and Piper try to kill each other in Street Fighter.

What’s even more difficult to manage, though, is Matt, sitting right next to him. On his bed. While Nick keeps glancing at him. Adam thinks that’s silly, because Happy and Toby are quite literally making out on top of his desk.

“Where’s Annabeth?” Reyna asks, yawning. “She and I have that Chem lab in the morning and I really want to go over our methodology.”

“Lame,” Piper says, twisting the controller and immediately killing Kenny’s character. Adam thinks that’s impressive, based on Kenny’s shriek of horror. “She and Percy are out on a date. She’ll be back soon.”

Reyna sighs. “She forgot to tell me. Jerk.”

“That’s because I was supposed to tell you, and I forgot, because I’m beating this wimp’s ass at every video game possible,” Piper says. She claps Kenny on the shoulder. “Actually, victory makes me horny. Reyna?”

Reyna snorts, but she jumps to her feet. “Why did I expect anything else?”

Piper throws a grin over her shoulder, short blue hair flying everywhere. “Later, nerds.”

Kenny’s still staring at the screen, open mouthed and miserable. “She beat me,” he says, horrified. He turns to Nick. “Why’d you – I brought my console here just so she could beat me?!”

“Piper’s weird, man,” Happy says, shrugging as she pulls away from Toby. Toby still looks super dazed. “Blame Adam. He’s the one who became best friends with her first or whatever.”

“Hey!” Adam says. He’s still trying to deal with the fact that Matt is pressed up against him. “She’s your friend, too.”

“That is beside the point,” Nick says, sliding to the floor. “Scoot over, Kenny. You can beat me.”

“It’s not the same if you let me beat you,” Kenny grumbles. “But, since you suck, I’d beat you anyway.” He hands Nick the controller.

“Hey, Hap?” Toby says, playing with the edge of her tee shirt. Adam rolls his eyes, meeting Matt’s in a knowing grin.

“What?”

“Your roommate’s out, right?”

She snickers. “God, you’re predictable.” She waves at them. “Later, everybody.”

The room is quieter, less intense now that it’s only the four of them, and Adam can feel Matt relax into his side. Nick and Kenny are fervently battling each other. Adam feels like this is a good moment. For what, he’s not sure.

“So,” Adam says, picking at a frayed end on the hem of his shirt. “How’re classes going for you?”

“Great!” Matt says, sending that megawatt smile in Adam’s direction. “Well. Pretty good, at least.”

“Only pretty good?” Adam asks.

“Yeah, math is kicking my butt,” Matt says, sighing. “I’m an ed major, so I have to take a class on how to teach math, which would probably be fine if I could memorize all the stupid vocabulary words.”

“I, um. I can tutor you, if you want.”

Matt turns to him. “You can?”

Adam nods. “I had a whole business in high school about it, but you’re my friend so I wouldn’t charge.” He smiles. “That sound good?”

Matt nods so hard his ponytail slips out. “Yeah!”

Adam leans behind.

“What are you doing?” Matt asks. He’s still smiling, though, so Adam thinks he’s in the clear.

“Oh,” Adam says, picking up the hair tie. “This fell out when you were nodding.”

Matt flushes the cutest pink Adam’s ever seen. “Thanks,” he says. Adam watches, probably too closely, as Matt ties his hair back up.

“So, um, how about tomorrow morning?” Adam asks. When he rests his hand on the bed next to Matt’s, the dip of the mattress makes his hand slide on top of Matt’s. Neither of them move. “For tutoring, I mean.”

Matt nods. “Yeah. That sounds good.”

Nick flicks his gaze over at Matt and Adam, frowns, and opens his mouth. But Kenny’s screaming in victory before he can say anything.

“Oh, that’s how it goes, baby!” Kenny yells. “Victory doesn’t make me horny, but it does make me hungry. Anybody want to go pick up pizza?”

They do. They get pizza and sodas and bring them back to the dorm room. Kenny and Nick hang in Nick’s bed while Matt’s with Adam on his.

Adam feels like he may just combust.

They put on Five Nights at Freddy’s, which Kenny insists will be good because of the game it’s based on, but Adam’s a little hesitant.

“They’re giant toys, Kenny,” Adam says. “How could they possibly be scary?”

An hour later, Adam is more than pleased that it’s actually scary, because Matt’s buried his face into Adam’s chest and is halfway in his lap. He exchanges a glance with Nick. And gets a smile back.

Kenny and Matt sleep over. And Adam thinks this might be what college is supposed to feel like.

~

Matt and Kenny leave after they get breakfast in the morning, but Matt reminds Adam of their tutoring date before he leaves.

“I’ll stop by around one?” Matt asks. “You know. Since we slept in.”

Adam nods. “Yeah, I gotta shower.”

Matt makes an interesting face, pressing his lips together. “Okay.”

Nick grabs his arm and yanks. “Dude!”

“What?!”

“You are in love with my brother.”

“Am not!”

Nick yanks harder.

“Ow!”

“You like him,” Nick says. “You like Matt. I know how weird you are about your bed, and you let him sleep on your pillow.”

Adam frowns. “I’m not weird about my bed.”

“You have to remake it every time you sit on it funny and you change the pillow case every time somebody touches it.”

Adam stops in his tracks and turns to Nick. “You noticed that?”

“Of course I did,” says Nick. “You’re my friend. It’s why I tell people, usually, to stay off your side of the room and not to touch your folders on your desk. But Matt walked in there and sat down, and you didn’t even react.”

Adam opens his mouth, but then steps forward and grabs Nick in a tight hug. “Nobody’s ever noticed that and been nice about it before,” he says, words muffled by Nick’s shoulder.

“Course, man,” Nick says, patting him on the back. “You’re my best friend.”

Adam won’t let himself cry. “I am?”

Nick nods, like it’s the easiest thing to say, to believe. “You are.”

Adam exhales. “Even though I have a crush on your brother?”

“I knew it!”

Adam laughs and runs back to their dorm with Nick chasing him, feeling at home with a group of people for the first time ever.

~

Around 1:05, Nick’s left for reasons he won’t tell Adam, and he’s got the room to himself. Matt’s not technically late, he guesses, since he’d said around one. But the possible anxiety of being stood up triggers his need to clean and organize. He’s in the middle of putting away his last few books into his mini bookshelf when there’s a knock.

He stands and opens the door to see Matt, hair in a neat little half ponytail, smiling at him.

“How’d you get in?” Adam asks. “Um. I mean. Hi.”

Matt, miraculously, laughs. “The RA here knows me,” he says. “Can I come in?”

“Yeah, definitely.” Adam moves so Matt can step by him, and his heart has never beat faster. Matt sits gently on the bed. There’s nothing in Adam that wants to move him or clean the sheets. It’s strange.

“I brought my homework,” Matt says, swinging his backpack to the floor. He pulls out a notebook and sets it on his lap, unopened.

Adam makes his way over to the bed and sits on his desk chair so he has a little extra space to set up on his bed. He shoves his glasses up his nose and forces himself not to look at Matt. “Um, so,” he says, clearing his throat. “Your class is kind of different than math that I take, since it’s learning how to teach math from it’s foundation. What are you stuck on?”

Matt blinks at him. “You know I don’t actually need help with math, right?”

Adam blinks and turns to Matt. “What?”

Matt’s smile is far too intriguing. “God, you’re cute.” Adam can hear his heart pound in his ears. “You – you’re smart, yeah, and I’m sure you could help me with everything. But I know the differences between subtrahends and addends and all that.” His eyes are too pretty under all those eyelashes. “I guess I wasn’t clear enough, but this was a ruse to hang out with you more.”

Adam’s mouth falls open as he looks at Matt, trying to process what all of it means. “You – hang out with me?”

“Without Nick, I mean,” Matt explains. “He always wants to tag along.” He turns to Adam. “This way we could have some time just us.”

“Just us?” Adam doesn’t know why he can only repeat the last thing Matt said. But Matt doesn’t seem fazed.

Matt nods, smiling. “I figured, after last night, you might like me too.”

Adam reaches out and rests a hand on Matt’s arm, trying to prove this is real and not a dream. Matt leans in and kisses Adam before he can process what’s about to happen. Matt’s lips are soft and warm against Adam’s, more than a dream. Adam almost falls over with how perfect it is. When Matt pulls back, his heart is racing and he can’t stop looking at Matt.

“Was that okay?” Matt asks. “I, like, have been trying not to want to kiss you for a really long time, and I almost did last night but Nick was there, and then you touched my arm and everything, so I figured –”

As much as Adam loves hearing Matt talk, he thinks he’s rambling and would appreciate being helped to quiet down. So Adam leans in and kisses Matt again, getting a cute little squeak of interest before he throws his arms around Adam’s neck. Adam breathes into it, leaning into Matt. He doesn’t know when he throws his arms around Matt’s waist, when he drags Matt into his lap, when Matt starts leaning into him, just that it’s happening.

Something about their combined weight is too much for the chair and it slides backward, the two of them falling to the floor. Matt giggles.

“Oops.”

“I think you broke my office chair,” Adam says, grinning up at Matt. “You are the worst person I’ve ever tutored, I think.”

“Am not!” says Matt, and Adam tries not to feel miserable at the lack of contact anymore. “Plus, it’s been, like, fifteen minutes, and it was a ruse I kissed you in the middle of, so that gives me bonus points.”

“I was going to tutor you the whole time,” Adam argues, and he adjusts his chair back up. It should be okay. “I just also wanted to kiss you.” He shrugs, leaning against his desk as Matt makes himself at home on his bed. “I was sort of worried the tutoring thing meant you didn’t think of me the same way.”

“Well, that’s just not true.” Matt stretches out in his bed, arms behind his head. Adam’s pretty sure he’ll have this image burned into his memory for the rest of his life. “I only started coming to basketball because Nick told me you were there.”

“So we have Nick to thank for this,” Adam says, grinning. He sits down on the bed, most of his weight still on his feet as he tries not to overstep Matt’s boundaries. “Good to know.”

“Adam?”

“Yeah?”

Matt’s grin goes a little devious. “If you want to come snuggle right now, it’s your bed. Or I can move. But you don’t have to sit so awkwardly in your own dorm room.”

Adam opens his mouth. “I – I’m not awkward.”

“You’re a little awkward, but it’s what I like about you.” Matt’s eyes are pretty and big, his smile honest. He scoots over and pats the side of the bed. “Come on. Forget math. Come snuggle.”

Adam carefully lowers himself into his bed next to Matt. They’re above the blankets, it’s the middle of the day, and Nick will probably be back from the gym any time now. It won’t go farther than either of them want.

When he settles, Matt turns over and cuddles into him. Adam automatically wraps his arm around Matt’s back and finally relaxes into the moment. “Hi,” he murmurs.

“Hi,” Matt says.

“Your hair smells nice.”

“Your sheets smell nice,” Matt says. It’s a sweet sentiment, but Matt’s face is shoved into Adam’s chest so he’s not sure how much of that sentence is real.

Adam doesn’t even know how to react. He’s spent weeks trying to get this moment to be anything near possible, and now it’s here in front of him. And he’s got no fucking idea what to do.

“Are you okay?” Matt asks. He scoots over, sitting up. “I’m going too intense, aren’t I.” Adam watches Matt curl up on himself. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re not too intense!” Adam blurts out. Matt tilts his head to the side. “I’m just sort of freaking out a little bit. Not because of you. Because I’m…me.”

“Because you’re you?” Matt asks, and he scoots back over to Adam. “That’s why I’m here. Because you’re you.”

Adam turns around, finding himself nose to nose with Matt. “I like you because you’re you, too.”

Matt tilts his face and they kiss again, soft, gentle, and intentional. Adam feels warm and cozy. He lets himself reach up and rest his hand on Matt’s waist. Matt scoots closer to Adam and sighs, sending a thrill of exhilaration through Adam’s body. He angles his hips away, because he isn’t willing to screw this whole thing up, and keeps the kisses under control.

He doesn’t know how long it is, only that he wants this to last forever, with Matt curled up in his arms, his little giggles, their brief breaks to talk.

“So, does this mean we’re boyfriends?” Matt asks, red faced and hair mussed after a particularly enthusiastic make out. “Just to clarify.”

“I – I hope so,” Adam says, and he feels his face heat up. “I’d like to, I mean.”

“Good,” Matt says. “Then we’re boyfriends.” He leans in and kisses Adam again, and it feels like they could do this forever.

Forever in a college dorm is impossible, though, and the door swings open.

“Have you talked to Matt? He’s not answering my texts.”

Matt and Adam separate, and Adam freezes. “Um.”

Nick breaks into a giant grin. “Oh, damn,” he says. “I knew it. I knew it. Matt, you’re as subtle as a freight train.”

“Shut up, Nick,” Matt says, but he pulls Adams arm more tightly around him. “Let me have some time with my new boyfriend.”

~

They come back from Thanksgiving break to a chill that only seems to be fixed by holding Matt’s hand in his. He’d missed Matt more than he realized possible in that week, and the way Matt had thrown himself into his arms when they saw each other that first Sunday afternoon they were back was more than he could imagine.

“Come on,” Matt says, pulling away. “Nick’s doing, I don’t know. Something to do with class, probably. Let’s go get lunch.”

“Diner?” Adam asks, taking Matt’s hand. “I tutored over the break so I have extra money.”

“Ooh, are you going to take me on a fancy date to the local greasy spoon?” Matt giggles.

“We can get really fancy and buy the real maple syrup when you drown your pancakes.” Adam pulls Matt in and kisses his forehead.

They sit at one of the shiny vinyl booths for two, and Happy comes over.

“You’re a waitress here?” Adam asks. “Since when?”

Happy blows her hair out of her face. “Since I realized my bike needs repairs I can’t afford, and I wasn’t willing to wait until summer.” She clicks her pen. “Alright, dorks. What do you want?”

Adam and Matt order pancakes and hashbrowns and all other things that will make the chill outside feel a little more tolerable. Matt sips his hot chocolate with a smile on his face.

“What?” Adam asks.

Matt shrugs. “I missed you.”

Matt’s in the middle of a story about how Nick got his hand stuck in the turkey when his mostly empty mug of hot chocolate flies to the ground and shatters.

“Oops,” Matt says, eyes widening. “Uh. Do you see Happy?”

Happy whirls around the corner. “What the hell was that?!”

“Hi, Happy,” Adam mutters, sheepish under her furious gaze. “We, um. Broke a mug.”

She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, no shit,” she mutters. “Wait, pretend I didn’t say that. I’ll go get a mop, but go check in with the front to see if they have anything to clean up the mug.” She frowns at it. “I don’t think I’m allowed to tell you idiots to pick it up on your own, even though it was your fault to begin with.”

“Yeah, I’ll go check,” Adam says. “You can stay here, Matt. Keep your sneakers clean.” He grins a Matt.

“No, I’m coming with,” Matt says. “It’s my mug, after all. I should let them know I dropped it.”

They make their way to the front space of the diner with barstools and a window into the kitchen where…where Adam…sees…

Adam’s mouth drops open, and he barely has the sense to throw out an arm to keep Matt from stomping through the door to the kitchen, but it’s no use.

“I’m sorry,” Matt says, and Adam should probably not be turned on by how bitchy Matt sounds, “since when have you been banging Mox?”

Nick sighs and adjusts his shirt and hair. “Since, like, the beginning of the semester. Took you long enough to figure it out.” Adam thinks back to the semester – other than when it was time to sleep or play basketball, Nick was pretty gone. He’d put it up to hanging out with Reyna or Happy or something, but nope. “How do you know Mox, by the way?”

“Not important.” Matt says, leaning against the wall and folding his arms over his chest. “By the way, Mox is short for…?”

“Moxley,” the guy says, and his voice is sand and smoke in one. “Jon Moxley. You his big brother or something?” He sticks out his hand. “Shake it. I’m a cook, not a monster. My hands are clean.”

Matt throws a hesitant look at Adam, who shrugs, then shakes Mox’s hand. “Hi,” Matt says, still with a little frown on his face. “Are you – what are your intentions with my brother?”

“Jesus Christ,” Nick mutters, dropping his head into his hand.

Adam watches as Mox’s grin goes a little…weird. “You really wanna know?” Mox asks.

“I – no,” Matt says, blushing furiously. He grabs Adam’s hand. “We, um. If you hurt him, I’ll kill you. Just for the record.”

“Sure you will, sweetheart.” Mox winks at Matt.

“Hey!” Adam says. “Be less weird about my boyfriend.”

“You sure about that?” Mox asks. He’s weirdly confident, almost too casual, as he leans against the stove. Adam secretly hopes it’s on. “Anyway, I’m supposed to be cooking, so it’d be great if all of you left my place of work.” He smacks Nick on the ass. “Except for you, baby. You can stay as long as you want.”

Nick nods. “Yeah, goodbye, roommate and brother. I have someone – something – things to do.”

“I should have known you were out getting laid when you were late to our study parties,” Adam says, but he can’t make himself be mad about it. He grabs Matt by the bicep and turns, leading him back to their seat.

Matt fumes silently as he picks up the shards of mug without any hand protection.

“The hell are you doing?” Happy asks. “I told you to ask the front to take care of that.”

“Your cook is making out with my brother, so he appeared otherwise occupied,” Matt says, glaring down at the puddle.

Happy snorts. “Oh, you didn’t know? Oops.”

“You knew?!”

“Only so many times you can hear weird noises from the kitchen before investigating,” Happy says, mopping up the puddle. It’s mercifully small. “Plus, me and Toby tried to hook up in the supply closet and the two of them were in there last week.”

“And when did that start?”

“Me and Toby?” Happy asks. “Like, last year.”

“No!” Matt says, throwing his hands in the air. “The Nick and Mox!”

Happy pauses mopping. “Don’t know. Don’t really pay attention to things like that. Mostly I’m focusing on how to make people tip me more. Toby’s been teaching me psychology tricks.”

“I can guarantee,” Adam says, “telling people about your tip related psychology tricks is not a way to get them to tip you more. I’ll tip you, like, 25%, but that’s because you’re my friend.”

Happy grins. “Then it worked!”

Adam avoids the urge to tell her it didn’t work the way she’d intended, but he does leave the big tip.

As they walk back into the windy chill of the day, Matt ramps himself up again.

“I can’t believe Nick is – is sleeping with the diner guy!” Matt says, immediately going red. “I – this isn’t – why?!”

“Is this a classist thing?” Adam asks, walking down the street back to his dorm. At the very least, he knows it’ll be empty for a while. “Are you mad your brother for sleeping with a townie?”

“No!” Matt says, and his hair is getting in on the drama, too. “I – that’s – not it.”

Adam studies Matt’s face for a few minutes. “Oh,” he says grinning. “You’re mad because you had a crush on Mox first.”

“I – did not!” Matt says, but he won’t meet Adam’s eyes.

Adam flashes his ID at the desk attendant as Matt stomps ahead of him. “You did,” Adam says. “Oh, this would be so funny if you weren’t dating me.”

Matt gets to Adam’s door and gestures to it angrily. “Open the door.”

“Why?” Adam asks. “So you can tell me how bad you want Mox to fuck you?”

Matt whines and stomps his foot. “No, because I want you to eff me, okay?”

Adam pauses, key halfway twisted in the lock. “Come again?”

“I – I liked Mox, a while ago,” Matt says. “Okay? I did. I thought – shut up.” Adam turns away and keeps opening the door and decides not to mention he hasn’t actually said anything. He pushes it open. “You’re not allowed to talk right now. Let me explain.”

Matt shoves past him and throws himself on Adam’s bed. “Before Nick went here, Mox and I flirted a few times at the diner when I was a freshman and all, so, yeah. I kind of liked him. But then I met you at the beginning of this year, and now I like you.”

At least, that’s what Adam heard. Matt’s face is shoved into Adam’s pillow so he can’t be certain.

“I know you like me,” Adam says, sitting on the bed next to Matt. It’s strangely reminiscent of the night they kissed the first time. “I was just teasing.”

Matt rolls over. “That’s the thing, though,” he says. “I don’t just like you.” He presses his lips together, and Adam thinks he can hear his heart racing.

Adam leans in and kisses Matt without pausing to think about it, laying across Matt’s body. He – he can feel that Matt’s hard against him, and his entire body electrifies with it.

“You know what I’m saying, right?” Matt asks, pulling back and tucking rogue curls behind Adam’s ear. “I love you.”

Adam nods, head spinning with all of it. “I – I love you too,” he manages to say. He didn’t know he did, not yet, but now, with Matt under him, with everything.

He’s sure.

Their clothes disappear in favor of roaming hands and lips. Adam doesn’t know what’s going to happen next, but he knows he’ll say yes to anything Matt asks of him.

“Are you,” Matt asks, lips parted and eyes bright underneath Adam. “I mean, I want to – do you want to?”

Adam brushes Matt’s hair away from his face, suddenly so glad Nick is busy. “Yes,” he breathes. “Yes, anything, with you. I want to. But, um. I’ve never – I mean, I’ve, like, kissed. Obviously. And- well, it depends – what do you want to do?”

Matt smiles. “Am I gonna be one of your first times?” He reaches up and plays with Adam’s hair where it’s fallen out of the ponytail.

“First time,” Adam whispers. “When it mattered.”

Matt’s eyes widen. “Oh,” he says. “Oh, okay. If you want to slow down, we slow down.” He reaches up again and cups Adam’s cheek, and it’s so sweet that Adam almost loses it right then and there.

“Do you want to slow down?” Adam asks.

Matt shakes his head. “Not even a little bit. But if you want to slow – ”

“No,” Adam says. “I want – I want you.”

Matt exhales, eyes deadly serious on Adam’s face. “Okay,” he says quietly. “I’m all yours.”

Matt is immeasurable kind and gentle, talking it out with Adam, explaining what to do, all while their hands are lined and Adam kisses along Matt’s body.

“You – you’re incredible,” Adam mutters. Matt throws an arm around Adam’s neck. “You know that?”

“You’re not so bad yourself,” Matt says. “I – oh, okay. You’re doing so good at this.”

Adam feels himself turn pink. “I am?”

“So good,” Matt says. “And I’m ready, if you are.” He looks a little smug. “If you have what we need, that is.”

Adam flashes back to the beginning of the semester, when he, Toby, and Piper had found themselves at Walmart.

“I, um. I do.”

Matt’s face lights up with excitement. “You do?”

Adam nods. “Piper told me and Toby we were too – I think she said vanilla?” He feels his face burn pink. “She made us get a bunch of lube. Condoms.” He forces out the last word. “There’s a couple vibrators in there, too.”

Matt giggles. “Yeah?”

He nods. “She’s very persuasive, Piper.”

Matt stands and walks over to his desk. “In here?”

Adam presses his lips together and nods. “Yeah.

“Can I open it?” Matt asks quietly. “I know you don’t like people in your stuff.”

“You’re not just people,” Adam says. “Go ahead.”

Matt takes out the lube and some condoms, wordlessly looking to Adam, who nods. Matt’s always got a way of getting Adam’s heart racing like this.

“I’m ready if you want to,” Matt says quietly, coming over to the bed. He sits down on the bed, eyes on Adam’s.

Adam has to steady his breathing. “You are?” It feels too soon, or too fast, for Matt. He doesn’t want to over do it, but Matt seems confident.

“I just – tell me what you want,” Matt says. “I want to make sure you know, so I know, and so we, like, understand each other.”

Adam laughs as he slots himself in between Matt’s legs. “I want to fuck you, you idiot.”

Matt beams at him. “Okay. Yeah, perfect.”

Adam’s never felt like this before, when he and Matt connect. There are fumbling fingers and limbs, some laughter, pauses to kiss. His entire mind is consumed with how Matt looks and feels, how he tastes when they kiss, how he sounds when Adam tries a different move with his hips.

He’s watched a lot of movies. He’s read a lot of books. But none of the words spoken or written are enough to explain how this moment consumes him.

Matt’s little encouragements, praise, gentle touches, anchor him to the moment. Without them, he thinks he’d float away somewhere else.

“Matt,” he warns. “I – I think I’m…”

“That’s okay,” Matt says. “I, um, I can take care of myself after.”

“Definitely not,” Adam says. “I’ll take care of you as long as you want.”

Matt makes an interesting, irresistible little whine, and Adam can’t hold it back anymore. His mind and body coalesce into spinning, whirling bliss with Matt’s name on his lips, and he gives himself a few seconds to breathe. It feels real, overwhelmingly so, and he has to lean down to kiss Matt.

“Hold on,” he whispers against Matt’s lips. “I – give me, like, three seconds.”

“Take your time,” Matt says, beaming up at Adam, and god isn’t that a sight he wants to see every day.

Adam ties off the condom and chucks it in the trash can, then comes back to Matt. “So, um, I’ve never – like jokes with popsicles and whatever –”

“I promise,” Matt says, “whatever you do will be amazing.”

Adam ducks down and tries his best to get this right. He will admit it’s messy, but Matt’s got a hand in his hair and is squirming, which makes him think he’s doing okay.

“Adam,” Matt whimpers, “you’re – oh my god – you’re really good at this.” He whines and twitches his hips. Automatically, Adam throws an arm across Matt’s hips to still him.

“You have no idea how hot this is,” Matt pants. “I’m gonna – Adam, I’m about to –”

He has a decision to make. Adam picks up the pace and grins when Matt cries his name with a hand resting on the back of his head. It’s not exactly what he expected, a little startling, but it’s worth it to hear Matt breathless and giggling farther up on the bed.

“You’re glowing,” Matt says, smoothing his hand over Adam’s hair. “Like, you usually have a sunshiney thing going with the long blond hair, but you’re really glowy right now.”

Adam ducks his head, the intensity of the eye contact almost too much. “I am?”

“Yes.”

Adam lifts his head to see Matt with an angelic smile on his face. “You are, too.”

They kiss and hold each other, and Adam decides this might be his favorite moment of his life. It’s important to him to remember it so he can keep it as his favorite memory, too.

“So,” Adam says. “You excited to go back to classes tomorrow?”

“I can’t believe you’re asking about classes right now,” Matt laughs, draping a leg across Adam’s. “You’re such a nerd.”

“And?” Adam asks.

“And that’s what I like about you,” Matt says.

The last bit of the semester goes by too quickly – two weeks aren’t enough time to study, take midterms, and spend time with Matt. They go to a few smaller parties, lose to Kenny and Piper at every video game known to Kenny’s game collection, and stay up to late studying in the library until they get so giggly they get kicked out.

On his last day, two hours before his parents are supposed to pick him up before winter break, he grabs Matt as he’s leaving his last final.

“You done?” Adam asks. His last final was the day before, but their little group had a study party at Toby’s apartment the night before and he and Matt had had some time of their own afterwards.

Matt nods. “It felt good. Must be all that tutoring you gave me.” He winks, and Adam blushes.

“I can’t believe you called sex ‘tutoring’ in front of your brother last night,” Adam mutters. “Like, that was so transparent even Happy picked up on it.”

Matt shrugs. “And?”

Adam pulls him in and kisses him. “I love you,” he murmurs against Matt’s lips. “I’m gonna miss you so damned much.”

“Me too,” Matt says. “But it’s only a month, right?”

Adam nods. “Only a month.” They kiss again, then Adam reaches for his pocket. “I, um. I was hoping you could open your Christmas present now.”

Matt nods. “Okay.”

Adam did a terrible job of wrapping the picture frame, but he hands it to Matt anyway. Matt opens it carefully, unpeeling the crumpled paper with gentle fingers, and looking at it.

“It’s all of us,” Matt says, fingertips brushing over where he and Adam are next to each other in the cover picture of the photo album. “It’s the picture of all of us from the Halloween party.”

Adam nods. “That’s the first night we all took a picture together.” He brushes some hair from Matt’s cheeks. “Very found family of us. The rest is other pictures from the semester, so you – so you can look back if you’re lonely.”

Matt dives in and kisses Adam, arms thrown around his neck. “Thank you,” he murmurs. “This is the best gift ever.” He steps back. “Yours is in my apartment, though.”

“Oh!” Adam says. “That kind of gift?”

“Well, yes, that too,” Matt says, rolling his eyes with a smile. “But, like, the actual gift is in there, too. They wouldn’t let me bring anything into the test room.”

They walk, hand in hand, to Matt’s apartment that he shares with Toby, and Matt all but shoves him on the couch. “Wait here,” Matt says. “I’ll go get your gift.”

“Still feels like you’re gonna walk out naked and say I’m all you want for Christmas,” Adam yells after Matt, but he stretches out on the couch.

Matt comes back and holds out a smally, square box. “Here.”

Adam opens it and pulls out the keychain. There’s a picture of him and Matt at the top, and, below, a Spotify code etched into the metal.

“Scan it,” Matt says, bouncing on his toes. “It’s, like, a 2020’s version of a mixtape.”

Adam scans the code and sees a playlist called Adamantium.

“Adamantium?”

“Because you make me strong,” Matt says beaming. “It’s songs that make me think of you.”

Adam reaches up and yanks Matt down. “This is the best gift ever.”

He and Matt are really ramping up when the door crashes open with a bang and they pull apart to see Toby and Happy making out and running into the kitchen.

“Oh,” Matt says. “Alright, then.”

“Shut up,” Happy says. “You have an apartment, right Cowboy?”

“I – yes?” Adam says. “Cowboy?”

“You and the stupid fuckin’ belt buckles,” Happy says. “Out. I have a boyfriend to fuck.”

“I’m the boyfriend!” Toby says, and Adam is surprised he managed to bag such a smoke show as Happy freaking Quinn.

“We can go to your dorm,” Matt says, grinning. “I have it, unfortunately, on good authority that Nick is otherwise occupied.”

They fall together in Adam’s dorm, the lingering feeling of the last time until they see each other next sticking in Adam’s heart, but it’s good. It’s always so, so good.

And he’s always so, so in love.

Matt helps Adam pack up the essentials, and then Adam’s parents are texting to say they’re here. “Probably too soon to meet the parents,” Matt says, small smile. “Maybe next semester?”

“Okay,” Adam says, exhaling. “I’ll see you soon, right?”

Matt nods. “So soon.” He stands on his toes and yanks Adam in for what is clearly one final kiss, their hair messed up and hearts full. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.” Adam rests his forehead against Matt’s. “Thank you for being the best part of my semester.”

Matt tilts his head up and steals one last, perfect kiss.

~

Mini Playlist:

Nonsense - Sabrina Carpenter

Kiss You - One Direction

Look After You - The Fray

I Think I'm In Love - Kat Dahlia

[demonic-play]

THE ROOMMATE

It was 103 degrees and I was sitting on my couch trying to cool down with a boxfan. The air conditioner was acting weird and the earliest anyone could get out to fix it was Monday. It was Friday afternoon.

Jason, my roommate was home all weekend, and he was going to have his girl Tayla come over, but she hates the heat so she went out of town for 3 days with her parents...which meant he was home this weekend. He walked into the room, "Bro, it's fucking hot! Is there anything you can do about the air?" He flopped his 6'2" tall frame on the couch, wearing just a pair of basketball shorts and a white tank top.

I looked over at him, "Not this weekend brother, we are going to have to ride this one out. He was a skinny kid, probably about 170 lbs wet. "Well," he says, "do you mind if I take off this tank top while I'm in the house?"

I looked over at him and could see the head of his dick sticking out of his shorts. The head was larger than mine and if I wasn't mistaken, semi hard.

"Dude, I don't care if you run around naked but there is nothing I can do, sorry."

"It's all good bro..." He got up and went back to his room. I felt bad for the 19 year old, but I was sweating my ass off as well. I'm 25 and in great shape at 165 lbs, 6 foot even. No body fat at all and thank the cock genies, I was hung like a small horse. Eleven inches long and seven around, I did quite amazing in the sack, even if I did say so myself. I grabbed my cock through the leg of my shorts and started rubbing the head. It sprang to life and I was stroking the shaft when Jason burst into the room, naked and carrying a cold Coke for each of us.

"I decided to take your advice and lose the shorts bro. Still kinda hot though. Also I was noticing that my hair has grown back all around my cock and in the Crack of my ass. I don't want to go around sweating and smelly if I'm not going to have shorts on. Do you think you could help me manscape, Tayla won't suck my dick if there is hair down there. She gives good head too bro, and she don't even gag haha."

"Yeah," I answered. "Do you have a shaver or a razor?"

"Yessir I do, brb." He ran to his room. He had a hairy ass, I could imagine what his crack looked like.

"No homo bro!" He stated as he handed me the clippers and a razor. That was the last thought on my mind. I was supposed to have Inez over for a movie and popcorn, but with the air out, I had canceled.

"Trust me 'bro,' you do nothing for me!" I rolled my eyes. I spread out a towel to catch the falling hair and plugged in the clippers. Jason squatted down like he was about to crap on the towel.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Making it easier for you to shave my hole and crack bro!" He smiled.

"And how do you propose I do that while you are squatting down with your ass about a foot from the carpet?"

"It's easy, just lay down under me and shave me like that!"

"IDK 'bro," it seems like there would be an easier way?" I responded.

"We could try this way?" And the position he then got himself in, made my cock stir in my shorts a little.

To be continued....

[lesbianslvt666]

400 lux

Ellie Williams x f!reader

tw: mentions of alcohol, weed, cigars, bars, idk what else

pd: I was listening to lorde when i wrote this lol (not proof read)

I usually do come to bars quiet often.

After the first day we met I thought of her almost every night, she promised I wouldn't see her again, though I pretend to not hear that part.

It was the day after my birthday, a few of my college friends and I wanted to hang out free of the dreadful week that we survived, the air was specially cold that night so I took my favourite leather jacket with me.

she was already there when we enter, by her side, her best friend was flirting with a guy, we exchanged a few glances for some time, my friend Jesse pushing me to approach her, she smiled when I spoke

"hello beautiful"

"I thought you were never going to come"

"I guess I am a bit shy"

"do I make you shy?" moving her hair back with her hand, making it obvious she was joking, unintentionally, a chuckle scaped my lips

"your next drink is on me, choose it wisely" I looked at her eyes, but her plump shiny lips where calling me so loudly

"too much pressure for a drink" propping herself straight in her stool "I guess I'll go with a classic appletini"

"an appletini? Really? The fruitiest drink of them all?"

"what do you mean? Is a fun spin on a cult classic" she said with a comically fake offended expression

"two apple martinis please" I told the bartender, a tall guy with lots of tattoos, he was eying my friend Jesse very hard, up and down, "dude, don’t eat him up like that" she said after following my eyesight "my bad" the bartender said with a small chuckle "two apple martinis"

"I guess my friend Jesse draws attention to himself" I said jokingly while we took both our martinis 

"your friend huh? Are you near as good at twerking as he is?" she said while slightly laughing at the weird moves he was pulling on Dina my roommate, his girlfriend

"not even in my wildest dreams" we laugh, her hand reached mine to put our martinis on the bar table near us

"well, Ms wild dreams, what is your name?" she ask in my ear while getting off her stool

"Ellie Williams"

"wanna dance Williams?" she said with those big siren eyes.

The song was some sort of EDM song mashups

She was moving her body against mine, I was trying so hard not to touch every inch of her, I saw her getting frustrated with the second, "don’t mind if you touch me" she said in my ear

"smoke brake?" I asked, she grabbed my hand dragging me through the ocean of burning bodies dancing against each other.

The city air hit my face as soon as we stepped out of the place,  a few cars here and there would pass by and few people were out smoking too, the faint sound of the music could be heard from afar, the atmosphere was surprisingly sort of relaxing.

"you never told me your name"

"Y/n"a slight smile planted her lips, fitting really, her name somehow made sense

She took out a small tin box, "mj or cigs?" she said without looking at me, "mj is better" "absolutely correct" she opened the tin box, a small pack of rolling paper, some filters, a tic-tac box fill with weed, I chuckled,  a glass pipe with the shape of a cigarette, a pen cap, and a cleaner was seen on the box. "give me your hands" she said while grabbing my hands, I extended them slightly on front of me, she used me like a table, filling her pipe and pressing the weed with the cap "fuck I forgot my lighter" she said closing the box and saving It in her bag.

I took out my lighter and put the pipe in between her lips, didn’t miss the chance to touch her bottom lip with my fingers, she looked deep into my eyes, I lit up the weed and she drag the thick smoke while looking hard into my hands, so she was into that huh?

"I love your tattoos" she said after a few drags

"I have more in other places"

"underneath that pretty jacket of yours?"

"would you like to see them?" and up until that point I realized we were inches apart

"wanna go to my place? "she said looking at me, her eyes were starting to gloss up, my mouth started to feel dry

"I feel like my feet are sand" she laughed, I couldn’t stop laughing either

"mine too"

We actually never went to her house taht night.

Did you actually liked this lol??

I feel like I am shit at writing first interactions lmao

I actually have a pt two for this and possibly a pt 3 :>

[mlobsters]

supernatural s6e13 unforgiven (w. andrew dabb, daniel loflin)

flashback soulless!sam is just beating the shit out of this cop. grandpa. really. just gonna let that go too huh

(looks like the black desktop background is here to stay)

he looks so young in his silly little suit and bright lighting with his new(er) hair. and yes the little joke about how tall sam was endearing

DEAN And how would you... characterize their relationship?

NICOLE'S ROOMMATE Relationship? No, they weren't having a --

DEAN just the -- the -- the tone or the nature of their conversation.

NICOLE'S ROOMMATE Well... loud. And... athletic.

he went on a little face journey there

here i thought i'd seen the last of the guys having problems with the law, that particular variety of conflict stresses me out. and this time, robosam really fucked up and now our sam has to deal with it? agh

i've been reading this fic that focuses a lot more on kind of lingering effects of trauma that the guys have been through and just now watching sam have this very impassioned conversation with the lady that leads to her unlocking the cell he's in, got me thinking about like. changing gears so quickly from robosam to regular sam, i'm watching him waiting for the con. and i wonder if dean would catch himself having similar thoughts

so soulless managed to bang 5 ladies in this little town on a job. that seems... logistically challenging

(robo)SAM Well, Samuel wasn't really around when I was a kid. We have more of a, uh, business relationship.

BRENNA Uh, do you have any other family?

(robo)SAM Family just slows you down.

he was sweating after that flashback. i mean, objectively terrifying having sudden intrusive memories of an event you don't remember and with yourself being so cold and cruel.

(wiki) Sam and Samuel use the aliases "Roark and Wynand." Sam's alias (H. Roark) is a reference to the main character—Howard Roark—in Ayn Rand's novel The Fountainhead which embodied the philosophy of objectivism, where individual self-interest was held as the purpose of one's life (and so it is interesting that this is associated with soulless Sam). Samuel's alias Wynand refers to Gail Wynand, another character in the book.

oh my god that's hilarious. it is ~interesting~ supernaturalwiki 😂

i adjusted the lighting on this because it was so dark and the quality is laughable but anyway again squatting in a place with power and a janky lampshade. i liked dean's plaid, in this shot it looks more like black and white plaid which is a little bold for him (but it's more of a subdued blue in better light)

DEAN We are not the only hunters on the planet, okay? We can call Bobby. He and Rufus could come and wrap up.

he makes a good point. give bobby and rufus some quality time together

DEAN Really? You get that every time you scratch that wall, that you are playing Russian roulette?

SAM Dean, I get you're worried, okay? And I know what you think is gonna happen. But you know what? It will or it won't.

i get where dean is coming from but also sam makes a good point that it's gonna happen or not.

DEAN Sam --

SAM --look, I'm starting to think that -- that I might have done some bad stuff here, Dean. And so I don't care if it's dangerous. I have to set things right, 'cause I got a frigging soul now, and -- and it won't let me just walk away. I'm staying here. And I need you to back me

DEAN All right. Why not? Well, let's "memento" this thing, shall we?

(two memento references in as many episodes)

oh the flashbacks got even worse. using this dude as bait for the monster, which clearly went above bait to just plain food. oh, and "mercy" killing them. right. GREAT.

giggling over these weird contacts. it wasn't until after i'd been staring at them entranced for this entire speech that i realized they're probably supposed to be like. another pupil? cuz he's a spider lol 🕷️🕷️🕷️

so he's upset she ignored his sorry and went inside but i was just thinking to myself, well you got her husband killed (again) and kind of killed him (again), it's unforgivable. and then i remembered the episode title. ha ha. queuing up the unforgiven by metallica (love that album, and they totally played this at a middle school dance i attended)

did you sleep on that gross ass bed, samuel winchester

DEAN Sam, you got to understand that all that crap last year -- all of it -- none of it was you.

SAM Let's be crystal clear, okay? It was me.

DEAN Well, can I get you anything?

SAM What are you now, my waitress?

DEAN I'm just trying to make you feel better. Don't be a bitch.

SAM Yeah, I'm fine.

DEAN Yeah, you look fine. All I'm saying is everything's gonna be okay.

SAM I don't know, Dean. If I did this here, then who knows how many oth-

didn't know he was gonna have hell creep in so soon. so i guess they were like well when dean went to hell it was 40 years and we had to make it even worse by breaking his will and him enjoying torturing people. so, how can we make this even worse for sam... hmmm. not only does he get the multiplied years of torture (from what i gleaned it was a lot longer too?) but a bonus year of being a monster topside where he can suffer for feeling guilty about getting people killed etc etc. sam is totally going to win the trauma olympics

[horselvr1996]

Fin is watching sanders sides. He has a few beers in him and he’s pretty sure it’s not that much more than he would normally have but he’s too wasted to care at this point. It’s been a shit week, as usual. He’s been so busy with work that he hasn’t seen any of the guys in months. He can only imagine how fucked he looks.

He wonders how Sanders is doing these days. They haven’t really spoken since he moved out but Fin knows they live together now so maybe he’s there? Thomas Sanders has aids in his neck like some kind of pervert that would actually be into men being so close, which was fucking sick. No one who’d look at Fin could see anything sexual about that situation except maybe Sanders himself. Maybe even him, he thinks, remembering what he said about Fin being gay. Maybe he’s a straight man, though he certainly doesn’t act like it. Maybe he likes men. Maybe they don’t even like boys but just girls or something. Who the fuck knows. It doesn’t matter anymore anyway. Fuck all of them. The only person Fin is interested in right now is Thomas Sanders. Fin hears a knock at the door and goes to open it just to find Thomas Sanders staring back at him from outside his apartment door, wearing a long hoodie with Insane Clown on it, sweatpants, and bare feet. Fin is confused for a second but then remembers they used to share an apartment together until Fin finally decided not to move out because his place was tiny, he had shitty TV, and it was way too expensive to get another. His place was better than his roommates anyways so Fin figured why bother staying when the place couldn’t hold two people anyway? So here they are. Fin opens the door wider and pulls him inside.

Thomas walks in without hesitation and Fin closes the door behind him. “Are you ok?” he asks in a soft voice.

“Yeah,” Fin says, feeling stupid. Thomas’ eyes linger on him for a moment before he turns away to look around the apartment. Suddenly the door yanked wide open and the guys from insane clown posse were strutting in and throwing hachets everywhere and were screaming out homophobic slurs at Thomas. “Oh my god,” Fin whispers. There must have been five of them and they weren’t all tall enough to reach Thomas, who was now standing awkwardly by the kitchen table in the living room trying to keep his distance while avoiding making eye contact with anyone. The group of 5 was Dark lotus without Monoxide, The reason Monoxide wasnt there was because he was at home with his mother (which was weird considering he’d just spent hours with his friends drinking in a bar) but also theyre not in any other group. They were all there for each other but they didn’t look like a happy band. There was no bassist and no drummer. Shaggy then started breakdancing as an intimidation tactic towards fin and Thomas stepped forward to try and get rid of the guy dancing, only for him to be tackled and kicked in the chest and fall backwards onto the sofa. Fin rushed forward and helped pull Thomas off of him. The guy was unconscious and blood dripped steadily from a gash on his head that was bleeding quite profusely. The gang continued to scream homophobic things at fin, though, so he picked up the dude and threw him into the wall next to Thomas. Then he tried to hit him again but Shaggy jumped on him. The guy grabbed Fin by the arm and started swinging him around like a helicopter but Fin blocked everything out until he got dizzy. Eventually the guy collapsed on top of him. When Fin looked up he saw the rest of the Crazy Clown Posse looking down at the guy with disgusted grins plastered all over their faces. Fin and Thomas then stared at each other before reaching out to start making out in front of Insane clown posse

. Fin was shocked and felt slightly violated, but then it turned into relief and happiness and love. The kiss tasted like the beer Fin just bought and he felt his skin heating up. Thomas’ mouth left his lips and made its way downwards to Fin’s throat where he bit his adam’s apple and sucked lightly. The Insane clown posse groaned in disgust and yelled out "what the fuck are yall doing" but Fin wasn’t listening. All he cared about was Thomas. Thomas, whom he adored with every fiber of his being. Thomas, who he wanted to kiss all over and make feel good. Thomas, who kissed him slowly as his hands slid down Fin’s body, tracing every curve and line and muscle and… then Violet J "Yo wtf thats shits nasty" one of the other members of the group says " Ayo aint that one a child?" gesturing at fin.

Thomas immediately stops kissing Fin and turns his attention to the group, glaring daggers at them with fiery red eyes. Fin felt his cheeks burn and Thomas put a hand on either side of his face and pressed foreheads together. Thomas whispered, "they're not going to say anything, I've got you." There was a loud knock at the door, bright holy lights shining outside the windows, Violent J turned the door knob and slowly opening it, to reveal a bright figure. This figure was Jesus Christ , the one with the power of life and death. He was smiling kindly at the crazed Insane clown posse. Fin heard someone whisper, "What the hell does he want?". Jesus Christ smiled wider and asked, "Do you all know me? And if so, do you know me well?". He waited patiently and eventually everyone nodded and said hello as if to a friend. Jesus Christ smiled sweetly at them all and said, "Very well, then let me introduce you to the most powerful and righteous God ever created, your savior, Jesus Christ!" The entire crowd gasped and started cheering and clapping. But Jesus Christ didn't notice and carried on talking to them. "God blesses you with your very own son, who will lead you on your journey to victory, through hell itself." Everyone cheered and chanted and Jesus Christ took the mic. "Let's give it up for our son, Thomas Sanders!" Everybody screamed his name and clapped and whistled. Thomas smiled and raised his hand as high as he could. "I hope everybody will welcome him with open arms because it is I, Thomas Sanders, your new leader, who will take you on a tour to conquer you, kill you, enslave you, rape you" He began to rap, The crowd of insane clowns began to spew out rap music, laughing and shouting along to it. He continued his rap speech, which was followed by the Crazy Clown Posse singing along, which caused the whole mob of idiots to laugh hysterically. Fin stood there in shock. He had just witnessed Thomas perform for hundreds of fans in front of thousands of people and they were all cheering him on. He felt tears prickle in his eyes but didn’t allow them to fall. Instead he wiped them harshly away. Fin’s jaw clenched tightly. These people should never have had a chance with Thomas Sanders. ‘My son’ indeed.

Jesus Christ looked over at Fin and said, "that clown posse trulywas really insane wow epic" Thomas smiled softly in response. Jesus Christ seemed genuinely amused and looked back at the crowd. "As it stands, we are not going to destroy these people, because we are the ones who brought us peace. Our only enemy is evil, not these clowns! So I'm taking over now, and we shall go on tour to conquer you!" Jesus Christ grinned at the mass of people in front of him and shouted, "LET'S GO!" And suddenly Jesus Christ began chanting "let's go let's go lets go" loudly causing everyone in the mob to begin moving in sync with him. It didn't matter whether it was crazy or sane, they all wanted to go.Jesus Christ smiled widely and Violent J stared at him with admiration and love. Violent J walked towards Jesus Christ and kissed him passionately, his tongue entering Jesus Christ's mouth as he wrapped one of his hands around his neck. Fin watched them both from the doorway and felt his heart ache for the first time since he’d met Thomas. The smile on his lips disappeared but the tears kept streaming out of his eyes. He hadn’t cried this much since he was a kid. He felt like he was going to cry forever. He felt like he was going to die. He felt like he was going to lose Thomas. He felt like he was going to lose himself. He felt like he was going to lose everything. Before Fin could be anymore emo Shaggy comes over and hits Fin across the head with a frying pan . “You need to chill bro” he yells “Get your fucking shit together! You don’t have any business being sad”. Fin vision procedes to go black and he died.

Later Jesus Christ and the Insane Clown posse annouced the Fin is dead hooray tour. Jesus Christ and Violent J had annouced their wedding and everything was going well until the insane clown posse's natural enemies, giant stingrays tried to infiltrate the tour. The tour became dangerous when two giant scorpions attacked and killed half of the crew. When they were finally freed from the sea of venom they all hid to discuss the chaos. "Man them scorpions are like terrorists", Said jesus."Oh yeah this shit is like 9/11 2.0, we need to kick their asses" Shaggy said . "Well I'm not letting stupid giant bugs fuck up our wedding day" Violent Jay snarled while holding Jeuss Christ's hand. The group then got up, grabbed a bunch of pipes and other possible weapons before teaming up against a giant spider creature. They beat its ass and saved everyone else. As soon as they got back to camp they were greeted by the sound of screaming girls. It was the girl's choir. After fighting off the remaining stingray creatures that had invaded the concert, they went to see what happened. Everyone was sat watching TV watching Spongebob when someone mentioned Fin. "Oh yeah he's dead isn't he". The girls had been too busy trying to stop themselves from screaming at seeing the bodies of the others. "Yes, he was stabbed in the chest" Thomas responded. "No I mean he's dead" they replied. "What are yo-" "He's dead, Thomas, we've seen them bodies!" Someone shouted. "No way, I thought they died in the fight" Thomas said looking around at his friends. Everyone gave Thomas disbelieving looks and they started arguing amongst themselves. Thomas then began shitting his pants profusely. Everyone stared at him like he was a disgusting pig. He cried and shit his pants more and more , then he started hyperventilating as he started to shake uncontrollably. His breathing became irregular and ragged and he began choking. The whole group began yelling Thomas's name and comforting him. Thomas then collapsed, he was dead. Finally joined in Hell with fin where they had many sander sides babies.

Jesus Christ and The insane Clown posse used this entire situation as a way to promote their new album "Buttfucking vampires from outer space" an ode to the Insane clowns lost in the ICP and Big Scorpion War. It hit platinum and got them on the billboard top 100.

The End