#of course the obvious solution to the problem is to just check the tag on ao3 for most recent

[mostlyihyperfixate]

I have decided I'm gonna just have to put down Spirit of Justice and play Investigations first. If I can't get into my tags without spoiling myself, how will I know when new fanfics get posted???????

But not tonight. I am exhausted, and also weirdly committed to making mundane things I've been looking forward to ~~~special~~~, so it's gonna have to wait until I have access to a bathtub again--or at least until I have had a good night's sleep.

[profoundbondfanfic]

Surprise! You get an extra list of fic recs. Fifth and final day of sharing our favorite aro/ace/demi fics. Tomorrow we will be sharing a masterlist of all 55 fics included in our lists this week sorted by tags, so stay tuned!

Part 8

Checked Out by whelvenwings [General, 27K, Demi!Cas]

Castiel Novak can think of many writers who would not be welcome under the roof of Heaven’s Gate library, where he is the librarian: Ayn Rand ranks highly (no explanation needed), as does Charles Dickens (he hasn’t forgiven Charles for the month he lost to The Pickwick Papers). And, of course, Dean Winchester. Dean Winchester, local author and obvious a-hole, who is entirely too handsome to be true and who is clearly totally lacking in profundity, intelligence, sincerity, and self-awareness. Unfortunately, though, Dean’s been invited to do a book signing at Heaven’s Gate - and Castiel’s about to be confronted by some unexpected feelings when he finally meets Dean for the first time.

space(dust) & fine metals by quillquiver [Explicit, 5K, Ace!Cas]

Castiel wonders, often, if his blue blood is not just as tainted; only a wild thing groomed to tame a wild people would flee. And flee, he did. The ship was called Impala, its purpose mysterious enough for its mechanic-cum-captain to take one look at the offered credits and nod. Or, On their eighteenth anniversary, Dean and Castiel retrace their steps.

Unbroken by SailorChibi [Teen, 3K, Aro!Dean, Aro&Ace!Cas]

Somewhere on your body, there's half of a shape that's unique to you and one other person on Earth. That person is your soul mate and together, you make a whole. But then there's the people like Castiel, the ones who are born with a whole shape, the freaks who don't have soul mates. Castiel grew up used to the pitying stares that told him he would always be alone. He's not sure why he thought Dean Winchester would be different, or why he had to ruin everything by trying to prove otherwise.

rejoining by sharkfish [Mature, 8,6K, Ace!Dean]

“You moved an alpha in and didn’t even think to ask me?!" “I didn’t ask you when I moved Charlie in.” “I didn’t live here then, jackass. And she’s a lesbian, so it doesn’t count.” “I thought it would be a little rude to ask Castiel his sexual orientation,” Sam says, being a fucking priss. “Maybe he’s straight.”

As You Walk On By by MercyBraavos [Explicit, 23K, Demi!Cas]

Dean and Castiel grew up together. Fell in love together. Lost their virginity together. Made plans for the future, their future, together. There’s only one problem: Castiel doesn���t remember any of it.

Plain and Tall by destielpasta & mtothedestiel [Explicit, 69K, Demi!Dean]

Dean is a Kansas farmer who only wants to work his land and care for his infant daughter. With his wife gone and his brother moving on to a life beyond the homestead, Dean finds himself in need of another pair of hands. Castiel, a lonely drifter freshly arrived in town, may prove the solution to Dean’s troubles. Over the course of four seasons, the two men face the everyday challenges of prairie life, and learn to overcome the betrayals of their past to discover a new definition of family.

Typecast by mnwood [Explicit, 74K, Aro!Dean, Ace!Cas]

Up-and-coming movie actor Castiel Novak knows he'll never be taken seriously if all he ever plays is betas, and as an alpha he certainly doesn't think it's a wise career choice to play an omega. However, when he's offered the omega role in a gay romance and learns that the much more famous (and his crush) Dean Winchester is playing the alpha, Cas decides maybe it's time to take a risk. But when they meet on day one, Cas isn't sure what to make of Dean's scent.

[krcdgamedev]

So here's problem.

As I've shown before, each project has a file of magical "script tags" used to pull from the dictionaries that store much of a game project's data- species, moves, possibly even the scripts used when you talk to characters. It's wonderful. The Mondo "engine" has a base scripttags class that contains very basic script tags that almost any project will use, like "name" and "type". Users are to create a scripttag file extending the base scripttags to add any new tags they might need. The project-specific scripttags can't be made into a singleton because of course it doesn't exist in the base Mondo project (of course the user could singletonize it themselves regardless, but I want to make it kind of Just Work as-is), so certain workarounds have to be employed. For example, the species files…

A base "species-handler" file is provided in the base project. This extends the base scripttags so it can check against them for things like getting base stats…

In the user's project, you make a species.gd file containing all your species data. This can of course extend the project-specific scripttags file; this scripttags file extends the base scripttags file, so you have access to all tags.

Finally in the user's project, a project-specific species-handler is created to add any extra rules that might need to be followed; for example, an additional base stat, or special checks. This extends the base species-handler. It loads the project-specific species file and sets a "species" variable to point to the species file's species dictionary so it can be easily accessed. (These variables are declared in the base handler so its functions can still "see" them.) Now this file doesn't have direct access to the project-defined species tags, but it does have… the loaded file the species dictionary came from, which extends the project-specific script tags. So just name the variable that's loaded into something handy (here it's "sp") and get tags with sp.whatevertag. Beautiful!

Now consider the following: battle scene. As explained before this is a chain of extends using battle script files available in the base project. The user can define their own battle scenes and insert their own file full of defined functions and data in between battle-utils and their own created scenes. But there's a problem- battle-basis, from which all battle scenes ultimately extend, is a base project file. And you know what base project files can't do?… That's right, extend project-specific script tags.

Actually, having typed all this out I've already figured out the solution, just give battle scenes access to species-handler. But let's discuss how that's to be done.

So the way data-handler works is that, after checking the specified project folder and replacing it with default-project if it's not found (that's so I can just upload the code without my own folders and it works right out of the box), it checks for certain predefined files and loads them up:

(These should probably each get their own error checking and load the default if not found; it won't have any useable data but that way it at least has a default stuff.) Data-handler is a global singleton, so anything can access it from anywhere. So like if you're talking to an NPC in the field and they're like, "oh your (species name) is so cool!" and you want it to get the same of the species instead of whatever nickname you've given it, you call data.sph.getname(partymon[n].species_id) or the like. Voila. So everything has access to the species data and getter functions (as well as moves, eventually abilities, etc). And you remember what we just got done explaining? Species-handler has access to species, which extends the project-specific datatags. So, all the battlescene needs to do is, on creation, grab a pointer to species from data, and it can use that to access the tags. Magical! Oh and it might as well grab a pointer to species-handler and move-handler and whatnot in the first place because it obviously is going to be using them a hell of a lot, might as well give them a bit of a shorter path.

Also, the way scripttags are handled right now is to give them a unique filename and class_name, so they can much more easily be slapped on an extends, so data-handler wouldn't be able to find it… could use a predefined file name but unique class names I guess. That would just give things like battle scenes a more direct access to them. Might be better to do that.

Also also this was all completely pointless because the dictionary setup is probably temporary and I should move over to using resources like a normal person.

Anyway, I've started working on what I talked about before, cleaning up the move-execution code and what to do with fainted mons, and have started considering what to do about project-specific battle code. Like, implementing special moves/attack/defense in a Pokemon clone, or changing up the damage calculation. I've come up with the idea of a battle-engine object, loaded by data-handler and instantiated by each battle scene either on creation or per-battle, that can communicate with and effect battle scenes. This object can hold variables for the user's unique battle field stuff, like field effects, and can hold the damage calculation functions. And since it's a unique file to the project, it can extend the project's own script tags. I like that, I think I'll do that.

... Which actually solves the above problem because battle-engine can and should have access to moves, species and scripttags, and is the main thing that will be using them! Ha ha.

[tibbinswrites]

Day 2 - No Vacancy

“Are you freaking kidding me?” Dean groused as they passed yet another No Vacancy sign. “That’s the fourth one in a row. Is Elvis back for a concert or something?”

“Elvis is dead, Dean.” Cas said calmly from the passenger seat. His head rested on his palm as he looked out the window, his elbow lengthways against the pane. It looked ridiculous. Dean jerked his head back to the road.

“Then why the hell is everywhere full? Sam and Jack didn’t have this much trouble, they’re in that Blue Crescent place two stops back.”

“Sam and Jack came down yesterday,” Cas said pointedly. “You were the one who insisted we watch that All Saints’ Day marathon in high definition. We warned you it’d get busy.”

Dean didn’t have a retort to that, so he just repeated Cas’ words in a high-pitched, mocking tone, to which Cas rolled his eyes.

“At least we won’t be too far out,” Cas said, pointing. Finally. Dean made the turn and told Cas to text Sam the name of the motel.

Unfortunately, when they went to check in, there was a problem.

“I’m afraid we’re all out of twins.” The woman at the desk said. She did look apologetic, her big cow-eyes blinked at them from behind thick-rimmed glasses. “Out of almost everything actually. We do have one room, but-”

“We’ll take it.” Cas cut in.

The woman (her name tag said Cheryl), blinked again, rather rapidly. “Of course,” she said after a moment, sliding across a check in form and a card machine. “If one of you will sign here.”

Dean groaned when they pushed open the door.

“It’s a single,” he said, tossing the bags onto the table and stepping aside to let Cas in to survey, as he had, the one, small bed.

“I don’t sleep,” Cas reminded him, draping his coat over the rickety looking chair before unbuttoning his cuffs. Dean had noticed him doing that more lately, tugging at his collar, foregoing the tie, getting comfortable. It was nice in a way that Dean couldn’t articulate.

“Bullshit.” Dean said, keeping his voice gentle as he said it. Cas got a little funny whenever his failing powers were brought up. Dean avoided the topic whenever he could, but they had hunt tomorrow and Dean didn’t want Cas running on fumes. “You don’t sleep as much but that doesn’t mean you don’t sleep. And neither of our backs can handle that sofa.”

Cas quieted a moment and looked at the moth-eaten maroon fabric of the ‘sofa’. The cushions looked threadbare and the frame even poked through in places. Plus they were both too tall to be able to stretch out.

Ten years ago, hell, even five, he would have shrugged his shoulders and dealt with the sofa. But he’d been spoilt by the bunker, and every uncomfortable motel room only reminded him that he wasn’t thirty anymore. If he twinged his back in the wrong way at the wrong time, it could get him killed, and he wasn’t willing to take that risk for the sake of pride.

“We’re just gonna have to cuddle,” he declared, as though it was the only obvious solution. He was pretty proud of himself that his voice didn’t shake, and he hoped that the shitty bulbs were dim enough to hide any redness that might otherwise show in his cheeks.

Cas squinted at him, as though waiting for the punchline. When it didn’t come he simply raised an eyebrow and nodded.

“Fine,” he said. “We’ll… cuddle.”

[bondsmagii]

as an autistic person, people who use tone indicators excessively always feel like they're talking down to or condescending me. I really feel like tumblr did that thing where it took something that maybe could've been useful for some disabled people and utterly ruined it and rendered it unusable lmao. like how tf am I supposed to remember 200+ niche microwords

I was just looking at the tone indicators stuff recently, actually, and I wondered the same thing. even just a basic list is really difficult to remember, and some of these lists are getting ridiculously long. I'm not sure what happened to just saying straight up if you're joking or not? or putting it in the tags of a post so people can check and see? if I make a post that's not immediately obvious as a joke (like it's satire or a fake headline or an exaggeration of current events or something) I'd generally tag it something like "not really but could you fucking imagine" or something similar. I can understand the need to confirm stuff like this, but everything else is just... I don't see why that couldn't be included in the post naturally lmao. like vagueing, for example. I've seen so many people just say "this isn't about anyone I know but..." or putting "not about mutuals" in the tags. there's stuff already in existence for this. communication is evolving online and it's been doing so for decades; the problem was finding its own workable solution, because it happened naturally, and natural courses are by default the most convenient. like a little linguistic desire path.

now you've got these huge lists coming in that are going to be a nightmare to remember, and some letter combinations already have multiple interpretations, and man. you want my honest opinion on this? it's going the way of content warnings and trigger warnings. something that used to be genuinely beneficial has been co-opted by people who use it primarily to virtue signal and show how sensitive and considerate they are; they've then blown it up into something completely unmanageable for the average person to remember, and when people refuse to do it or make a mistake, they then get to leap on them and do some more virtue signalling by acting like this person is some horribly malicious asshole they're calling out. once again something that was initially designed to be used in moderation to actually help disabled people has been commandeered by people only interested in making themselves look good.

[a-dragons-journal]

Hi! I was scrolling through the otherkin tag (as one does) and saw on an ask you answered that you hated DNIs and didn’t want to go into it on that ask. So I’m curious now- why do you hate DNIs? I don’t have a DNI, and I’m not out to try and change your mind. I’ve just never seen anyone say outright that they didn’t like DNIs, so I’d really like to hear your thoughts. Thanks!

I ended up indeed going into it later, because people kept sending in asks about it, so this tag exists now, but in summary:

- I don't necessarily hate the existence of DNIs, because they can be a useful tool in certain circumstances, but I hate that they're starting to become an expectation/requirement and that it's now considered "creepy/suspicious" in a growing number of communities to not have one. It should not be an obligation to basically list your political stances, discourse opinions, and triggers - you know, things you can be attacked for/people can use to hurt you - in any circumstance, least of all on the Internet where anyone can see it.

- For that matter, putting a list of things that can hurt you in public where anyone can see it and know exactly how to target you if they want to hurt/harass you is a bad idea, whether it's a social requirement or not. Full stop. Unless you are in a relatively small group where you know the intentions of the people there (and often not even then!), it is not a good idea to tell people how to effectively hurt you on the Internet.

- I hate it when people put "[x bigoted group] DNI" at the bottom of actual discussion-type content posts (as opposed to, like, aesthetics and stuff), such as people putting "TERFs DNI" at the bottom of posts about feminism, because a) if you're worried about your post appealing to that group, maybe you should reexamine your post's content, b) I've seen firsthand more than once that those groups, TERFs especially, will purposely put "[x] DNI" at the bottom of their crypto-rhetoric posts in order to turn people's critical thinking skills off and make them more likely to accept the crypto rhetoric (foot-in-the-door tactic), and c) even if it's not intentionally malicious like the last point, it still makes it so the OP's post is suddenly immune to criticism, because "hey this comes off a little transphobic" can be met with "how dare you call me a transphobe?? I said 'TERFs DNI' right there!!1!", which, again, has to do with the whole "turning people's critical thinking skills off" problem.

- On a similar note, I hate this recent trend toward performative activism and "racists/transphobes/homophobes/etc. DNI!1!" feels like another permutation of that; I don’t like people demanding/expecting me to announce all my political opinions right out the gate. It should be my decision whether or not I want to share sensitive information about myself (and if you’re scoffing at the idea of a political opinion being “sensitive information” - if it can get you, again, harassed and attacked by a complete stranger, it’s sensitive information).

- People seem to forget that people can, will, and do lie on their DNIs and bios. Predators will lie about being "under 18” in order to make minors they’re interacting with feel safe and let their guard down. TERFs will lie about “transphobes DNI!” to ensure their crypto rhetoric spreads and gets a foot in the door of trans-supporting people’s thought processes. All “it’s to let the people affected by [bigotry] know I’m safe,” which is something I hear sometimes, really means is that the bigot in question only has to put up a DNI to make the people they’re planning to target lower their guard. There is nothing guaranteeing that someone actually believes what their DNI implies they believe. It’s an illusion of safety that just doesn’t - and, really, can’t - exist on the internet, by the internet’s nature. And people thinking they’re safer than they really are is what gets people hurt because they stopped being careful. I’m not saying people need to (or should) live in fear, but relying on DNIs is not a sustainable solution, imho.

- I hate people using DNIs/BYFs as an alternative to blocklists because it often becomes essentially them forcing other people to curate their internet experience for them, and then getting mad (or hurt) when that doesn't work out for reasons that should be obvious. Especially when you take it to the extreme of trying to regulate anyone who reblogs your posts, which I have seen sometimes - you can't seriously expect people to check the OP of every single person whose post they reblog to make sure they agree with your opinions on fandom discourse; that's untenable and it can only lead to people getting hurt. You are the only person who is - and the only person who can be - responsible for your internet experience. Curate your own space.

- as a minor point, "standard DNI criteria" is becoming a popular phrase and it's frankly a useless phrase because there's no such thing. Beyond "racists/homophobes/transphobes" there's literally no telling what a given person includes in what's "standard" - pro- or anti-ship? SFW agereg/petreg blogs? DDLG? Steven Universe fans? inclusionists or exclusionists? There is no "standard." (But then, I feel like how common that phrase is becoming says something about exactly how performative and empty the trend of DNIs is as a whole at this point in time.)

- also as a minor point, I am frankly just not a fan of how often DNIs put things like "Steven Universe fan" and "neonazi" right next to each other like they're the same level of bad. I recognize consciously that this is not the intention, but it sure does come off that way sometimes. It reminds me a bit too much of those callout posts that have six pages about the person's bad opinions on anime or whatever and only then go "oh yeah and also they sexually abused, threatened, and sent their friends to harass a minor and we have screenshot evidence of all of that. anyway here's three more pages about why their art is bad because they drew a 16-year-old in a crop top one time".

And, let me be very clear here: I do not hate people who have DNIs, nor do I want to act like they're never useful. They are, sometimes! But I do feel they're being misused and they're starting to become an expectation and that's a huge problem, for the same reason that people trying to force everyone to put their age/basic personal information in their bios is a problem - it's a safety concern. I am honestly convinced that at this point, in most circumstances, DNIs are doing more harm than good.

If you want to use a DNI, that's up to you, and it's not like I'm gonna harass people about it ('s why I started that "dni critical" tag, so people could who don't want to read this stuff could avoid it) - but I want people to at least understand the risks they're taking depending on how they go about it. If it's useful to you, then good, I'm genuinely glad! It just concerns me how it's being treated by the larger Internet right now.

(And, of course, that's all just my personal subjective opinion - take what you like, leave what you don't. You're more than welcome to disagree with me; this is not a make-or-break argument for me, just one I have strong feelings about xD)

[foreverunfound]

What happens when you restrict too low - horror stories that may haunt you under the microscope 4.0

Hello! This is part of series that recently has been appearing on my blog named “Horror stories that may haunt you under the microscope”. These posts are about things that involve weightloss, training and similar stuff. If you’re intrested and don’t wanna miss out follow me (yikes I know). Today’s post is about dangers of low restrictions - not the great ones that comes more later than sooner - cause everyone knows them. It’s about this smaller dangers that can really affect you bad after a short while of restricting too low. Today’s topis is:

  “What happens when you restrict too low”

Firstly it is important to explain what hides behind phrase “restrict too low”. We all got some nutritional needs that need to be fullfiled in order to allow our bodies’ proper function. It’s obvious. When we try to lose weight we usually eat less and that’s okay. The thing is you need to know how much to restrict in order to benefit from it instead cause suffer. You should never go below your BMR which is amount of calories your body uses only to keep you alive. Nothing more. But eating your exact BMR isn’t too good either. The best way to tell how much you should be eating to lose weight is to check your TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) which is amount of calories you use throught all day on everything you do including basic body functions, spontanical movement, work outs and other stuff - there are a lot of good free calculators online which will help you in that - when you know how much it is you should eat around 200-500 kcals less.

But what happens if you not enough, when you restrict too low?

There are a lot of risks and I will divide them into categories - you can choose only the ones that are somehow intresting for you cause I know not everyone really cares that much for health here (but you should!).

1. VANITY - If you care about your looks here’s what can happen:

*skin - at first it will get clearer. Less pimples yay. You will  probably get more pale. Then your skin gets dry. Not like “less oily nice matt dry” - it gets really freaking dry. It’s yikes.

*hair - no one likes excess hairloss right? Well you might wanna get used to that. You will loose a bunch of hair - the longer you diet like this the thinner and less shiny your hair will appear.

*figure - will you get thinner? Yes. But you will be dehydrated and will lose a lot of muscle in proccess. It means you probably will have flabby skin - of course if you don’t start binging like most of people and gain all (or even more) of the weight you lost back. Lack of muscles might seem great to some of you but I’m not talking little dainty cindirella, I’m talking about flabby small legs without shape. It’s yikes. You will likely get skinny-fat even if you work out cause you will keep loosing muscles.

*brittle nails

2. EMOTIONS - when you’re hungry your emotions at first will escalate. You will get irritated easily. Weary mentaly and physicaly. Then comes more downsides as when you don’t really give your brain energy you can start to feel “depressed” - I’m not telling you that you will get real depression because of that but you can feel sad. Feel not enough of emotions daily. You can get kinda anhedonic.

3. SEX DRIVE - Sex what? You will probably lose your sexdrive (or most of it) because you will be too damn tired and angry/sad/numb.

4. G-I TRACT ISSUES - If you eat not enough after some times your body gets unused to some products. You will bloat more often when you eat a decent meal. You will find it hard to take a d*mp cause you just don’t have enough food in your belly. Did I mention belly aches? God they’re awful. Not even hunger pains, but pain and nausea after eating literally anything.

5. HEADACHES - it’s self explainatory. Low glucose levels tend to trigger the worst kind of headaches possible.

6. BINGES - If you’re restricting too low you will likely binge from time to time. It will lead to weight fluctuations that can make you uncomfy (even though it’s mainly water weight if binges are not repeated a lot or huge), nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, bloating and eventual real weight-gain if you get stuck on binging. It’s common among people who restrict low to end up in binge-restriction cycles and not really lose a lot. It can afterall lead to full-on eating disorder which is living hell.

This post is a little bit different from the others but I know there are a lot of teenagers here (I was one of them back in time) that are easily influenced. I added some tags I never use on purpose so it would reach more people in need. If you’re reading this while thinking about starving yourself/restricting really low I promise you you can lose weight healthily. You can have just the body you want. No matter your age, gender. This is all in your head. Starving yourself is never the solution - it’s just coping mechanism and it will never solve your problems. If you really need to lose weight do it healthy way. The things I wrote about - they’re the smalles risks really that appear rather soon. Later it just gets worse. My DMS are always open to people who need advice, support or just simple talk.

Please stay safe guys xox

[emkay512]

Once Upon A Time

Chapter 3

Summary: This starts at the beginning of TRR book 2 with the Fydelia ball but with a different series of events. This AU is based off the show Once Upon a Time with Riley and Liam mirroring Snow and Charming. Characters belong to Pixelberry.

A/N: I felt like I needed to still post this, even though I’m terrified with living up to my own hype. Let me know what you guys think.

A/N 2: thank you for pre-reading @queenrileyrose and @sfb123 both of you have given me such encouragement and I really appreciate it!

Warnings: This will contain NSFW adult language and content. By reading, you acknowledge you are 18 and over.

I’m keeping the same tags from my earlier post, please let me know if you want to be removed, absolutely no hard feelings! If you’d like to be tagged, I would be happy to add you!

Tags: @burnsoslow @ao719 @kat-tia801 @callmeellabella @charlotteg234 @neotericthemis @bbrandy2002 @kingliam2019 @iaminlovewithtrr @amandablink @iluaaa @jared2612 @sfb123 @twinkleallnight @tessa-liam @secretaryunpaid @ladyangel70 @gkittylove99 @texaskitten30 @shanzay44 @ofpixelsandscribbles

“Wait.... what!?” Drake’s face had gone white with shock. “But, we all saw! We all saw her fall in love with you. She loves you for sure Li, what the hell is going on!?” Despite his best efforts, Drake had come to accept Riley as an important person in his life, she was a truly trustworthy friend and she was a chance to see his best friend marry for love. Surely she’d never give up on hope and love, she was the epitome of both.

Liam wasn’t sure how much time had passed since he watched the latch on his bedroom door shut with Riley’s departure. He had dropped to his knees unable to stand with the weight of his broken heart still staring at the door trying to unsee what just happened. He was so sure of her love for him, he had never seen such happiness and sincerity exist in his life than when she told him she loved him in the hedge maze at his coronation ball. All this time he’d been apart from her was spent planning for a solution, clinging to the memory of her smile the last time he saw her before getting engaged.

Getting engaged. Then he started to think about the effect this had on her. He hated himself, she was vulnerable and abandoned, of course she’d fall out of love. Liam’s head was still foggy, but he remembered pouring two glasses of whiskey and calling Drake to meet him and briefly telling him what happened and now getting his reaction.

“You.. you don’t understand.” Liam was still just only choking out words. It was bad enough to live in this reality, but to have to utter the words and make someone else understand what was happening was like living his nightmare over again. “She said she did love me, or that maybe she did, or that she couldn’t love me anymore... God, it feels like it all happened so fast! I can barely get my head straight!” His tone was clearly crossing into frustration, he lifted both hands to his head and balled his fists into his hair while groaning out his hurt and anger. “This is my fucking fault.. in so many ways, Drake. She said I let too much time pass, that it convinced her that I should forget about her, and that she didn’t love me. I should have protected her from those goddamn photos and fucking Tariq. I never should have gotten engaged to Madeleine, and I shouldn’t have kept her away.” Liam was huffing his words.

This was difficult for Drake. He’d never seen his best friend so defeated like this. Liam always knew how to maintain his stoicism keeping an air of calm and rationalism. But that was not the man before him now, Liam was completely disheveled with eyes bright red from all his earlier sobbing, he looked completely broken. Drake understood the pain, he knew all too well how easy it was to fall for a girl like Riley, but like he said, their entire gang watched them fall head over heels for each other, and that was what he wanted for both of them.

Drake knew he needed to reel Liam back in, and once he could get the full picture, he’d know how to return Liam to his sharp tactical self. “Ok, ok, ok. I know your feelings are all mixed up, and judging by your overall behavior it looks like you hit the whiskey long before I got here, and I’m sorry, but I need you to get a grip and tell me everything.”

Liam nodded and sucked a breath in recalling everything. How she walked in his room, how he thought he was protecting her, how she said he didn’t want to know who was responsible, how she noticed the missing lock on the door, and how she walked out. Drake felt like he hadn’t blinked once after hearing everything and he could see it seemed these obvious clues hadn’t dawned on Liam. “Li, it sounds like she gave you like a dozen red flags. You didn’t press on any of those strange things she said and did?”

Liam wrinkled his eyebrows in confusion. “I.. all my instinctual strategies were out the window. I couldn’t focus on anything at fucking all except the sound of being dumped. There’s no tactical training on having your heart smashed since this bloody institution snuffs out the idea of love from day one. I feel like my mother was the only exception, and look what happened to her.”

Drake sighed and pinched the top of his nose with closed eyes. He himself was having a hard time comprehending things, he couldn’t imagine Liam’s anguish. “Look. First of all. This is not your fucking fault. There is clearly something large at play here, and you and Brooks seem to be the center. I think... I think Brooks knows something. She’s a smart girl and I think she was leaving you clues.” Liam could feel the gears moving in his mind as Drake went on. “It’s odd that she just walked in through the door.. how would she have just walked through the halls undetected? Weren’t you expecting her on the balcony? Which, by the way... wild expectation, bro. Shouldn’t Romeo be beckoning Juliette on the balcony, not the other way around?” Liam side eyed him hard, yes they’re best friends, but really? Was now the time to bust his balls? Drake couldn’t help himself and continued, “When you told her you wanted to find out who was responsible for the tabloid photos, why did she try to convince you to stop? It would be one thing if she just wanted to end things, but why mention that you wouldn’t want to know who it was? To me, these suggest that she either knows or has an idea who the culprit is. Then, the smoking gun. Another lock-less door and her freely walking out again.”

Liam shot up, determined and clear headed. “You’re right. I won’t play victim to this scheme and I sure as hell won’t let her be one either. Ok. We need to get a hold of Maxwell, either she’ll talk to him, or we can have him check on her without any suspicion.”

“Then I’ll call him so it can’t be immediately traced to you.” Drake pulled out his phone and clicked Maxwell’s name putting the line on speaker.

“Yo, Drakester! What’s up? Hate to break it to you, but the party’s over, you missed it.”

Already annoyed, Drake responded, “Cut the crap, Beaumont. We got a problem, Riley is gone, have you seen her? You need to check her room, but for the love of god, do it quietly.”

“What the hell are you talking about, I just left her, she was on her way to see Liam. Drake, please don’t tell me you’re cock blocking the king.”

Drake and Liam had no time for Maxwell’s carefree antics, they were both on strategy mode. Hearing this, Liam spoke first, “Ok so we know she was always on her way to see me with the intention of actually being with me. Something happened between her leaving Maxwell and her walking into my room.”

Maxwell was completely shocked to hear Liam’s voice on the line and started to panic that what Drake had said might be true, “Liam!? So she’s really gone? Last I saw her was getting her outside, as she was on her way to your balcony..”

She does love me. Was Liam’s immediate thought when Maxwell said she was on her way to his balcony.

As Maxwell recounted his interactions, Drake and Liam ignored any of his inquiries and focused on each other, working out the information they were getting.

“So she had to have been intercepted..” Liam realized. “Someone TOOK her!”

“Guys...” Maxwell was still being ignored on the line

“...And convinced her to say those things to you. Blackmail. It’s the only explanation.” Drake was finishing out the same conclusion Liam was getting to.

“Guys!!” Maxwell screamed and got their attention. “I made it to her room, we’re too late, it’s been ransacked. She’s on the run. What. Happened?”

Drake filled him in with strict instruction to keep this a secret, they would have to investigate quietly to prevent getting caught. He disconnected the call and looked at Liam, “Ok, she’s MIA, which only supports the theory of blackmail. If she was making a voluntary move back home, she would have said goodbye. We just need to find out where she went.”

Liam squared his shoulders and steeled his expression, now knowing he was on a rescue mission, “I’ll find her, I will always find her.”

[nevergonnasimpyoumikey]

Just my personal thoughts on the way I use Tumblr and the unity of this fandom based on the recent discourse here on Tumblr.

tl;dr: I appreciate every creator in this fandom but no one can like everything in this fandom. Also don't bash ships or send hate.

I came to Tumblr originally to interact with people who enjoyed my fics. I stayed to post about my fics and also to find content that makes me laugh or inspires me to write, and that's the content I reblog. I don't aim to reblog everything about GTA or V. My idea for my blog is that at any time I want to be able to go through it and be entertained and/or inspired. And I often do scroll back on the old posts (I have a bad memory :D) so that's working for me!

But sometimes I do feel about that. Just because someone's art or fic doesn't personally speak to me, doesn't mean it's bad or not worthy of a reblog. It's just not for me but I appreciate everyone creating content because it's not easy AT ALL. And it's nothing personal against people: even if my dearest friends post about something I don't care about, I don't reblog.

So I've been wondering if should reblog posts just to lift up other people's works, but how could I do that and also keep the original idea of my blog? Likes don't increase visibility (also I use my likes as bookmarks :DD) so they don't help. I'm too lazy to tag things. I played with the idea of making a side blog where I reblog everything but I just don't have time to do that, and I don't think I'd even enjoy that all that much. But if anyone does have time, please feel free to steal that idea!

So I didn't find a solution to this other than doing my thing and trying not to stress about fandom stuff. I like that this fandom is so diverse, but I don't have time or interest to engage with everything, nor should I or anyone feel obliged to. Unity in fandom doesn't mean that everyone should like everything. Just looking at AO3, there are different ships for story mode and online, fics about RP characters and OC's...... We're all into different aspects of these games and that's okay.

So I don't know what could connect such a diverse fandom, except the obvious: be friendly to everyone, ACCEPT that other people are into different things, and don't be a fucking asshole and send hate to people or post negative stuff. I hate people bashing ships, whether that's Michael/Amanda or Trikey or some smaller ship, and the casual misogyny in the fandom (although in my experience, this is definitely a bigger problem in the fandom outside Tumblr, but I don't wanna see any more hate for Amanda here either).

In conclusion: If you don't like something, trying to convince other people not to like that thing gets you nowhere. You can't "convert" people because this fandom is so diverse, even if it is small. Pointing out problematic stuff and taking action when someone is acting in a hurtful way is different, of course, but in general, just let people enjoy what they enjoy!

It's of course sad that some ships don't have much content, but the best way to deal with that is to post things about it anyway and hope that someone thinks "Wait, that actually works". I'm saying this as someone who would love to read more Michael/Steve but isn't inspired enough to write about it, not yet, at least... People need to feel safe talking about smaller ships. And if you don't want to see posts about something, blacklisting is easy and I recommend it with all my heart. This is your free time, you gotta spend it the way you want to spend it. Block out stuff that makes you uncomfortable with no remorse.

All that being said: if I ever made anyone not feel safe or welcome in this fandom, I'd appreciate you messaging me, anon or off-anon, so I can check my behavior.

[keelywolfe]

FIC: Knick Knack Paddy Whack (BAON)

Summary:  As far as Stretch is concerned, there's only one solution when you're addicted to thrift stores. Selling all the crap you bought so you can buy more!

Notes:  Stepping outside of the main storyline for a moment, we'll get back to the aftermath we're all expecting in a moment. 😁

Tags: Spicyhoney, Established Relationships, Domestic Fluff

Part of the ‘by any other name’ series.

~~*~~

Read it on AO3

or

Read it here!

~~*~~

Stretch was a bonafide thrift-a-holic, he honestly was, and he knew it. It was an important thing to know about yourself, really, because certain problems arose from bad case of oooh-shiny-itis.

Sure, one ceramic zombie hand thrusting up from the dresser to hold his rings and change was an awesome thing to behold, but an entire collection of zombie hands was a tough sell to the person you were living with, especially if that person was Edge. Not that he’d managed to find a collection of zombie hands and if he had, that thrift store would have been on the weekly check list, for sure. But the same premise applied to ‘zombie hand plus an entire horde of other bizarre ceramics surrounding it’.

Stretch wasn’t bitter about the limitations when it came to his collection, nah, he got it. There were certain things you couldn’t ask for from the person you love, and a house filled up with weird tchotchkes that looked like they belonged to the grandmother of the chainsaw massacre family was a step too far. Plus, asking Edge for more space would be unfair. He’d either agree because he didn’t want to tell Stretch no, or he’d say no and feel bad about it. Nah, the set of porcelain dragons playing instruments in a rock band he’d found wasn’t that important, not if it gave Edge a case of the guilts.

Problem was, Stretch really couldn’t resist sometimes. How was he supposed to turn away a wedding painting of Yoda and Kermit the frog? Or a coffee mug with a penguin orgy on it? He couldn’t, that’s how, but his allotted space was filling up in the house proper and soon he’d started to amass quite the collection in his lab, too. It was when the overflow expanded enough to start infringing on his erlenmeyer flasks that he decided he needed a new strategy. Science waited for no one and definitely not anything with the word ‘taxidermy’ included.

That’s when Stretch came up with the plan. Okay, it wasn’t a plan, exactly, more like a flash in the pants of brief inspiration, but hell, he’d been flying by on those his entire life, why stop now?

One of the places he frequented was an antique mall, which was a fancy way of saying one rung on the ladder above actual thrift store, except they rented stalls for people to sell their stuff, so maybe it was more like a glorified garage sale. People carted in their junk for other people to buy and the cashier up front handled all the transactions. Minimal time, minimal effort, that was exactly what he and his kitsch needed, so Stretch went ahead and rented a stall of his own.

The not-exactly-a-plan worked out pretty well. He could buy something at the thrift shop and proudly display it for a while around the house, and then when it came time to replace it with a new find, he’d add it to his stall and whatever money came from it, he donated to the local kid’s charity that the Antique Mall supported. That meant he got in his kicks and joy without looking like a prequel to a Hoarders episode and Edge only had to deal with the octopus tentacle ashtray for a few weeks.

Seriously, it was a win-win all the way around.

A few things did take up permanent residence, of course; he couldn’t give up his zombie hand. But so long as it wasn’t a clown, (clowns were disposed of by Edge immediately and with great prejudice), he was allowed things like his nested Matryoshka dolls of Nicolas Cages for a time.

About once a week he went down to add new things to his stall, mostly during the weekday hours when the buses were on the empty side and he could take up an extra seat with his box of additions. It wasn’t exactly a secret, Andy came along a few times to help, but he never really mentioned it to Edge. Not until today when Stretch realized he’d let things go a little too long and he had some extra boxes to haul down.

Better to take care of it while he was thinking about it, otherwise it tended to turn into an endless cycle of ‘oh, I should do that today’ and him forgetting, but aside from the extra lugging required, it was also Saturday and the bus would be loaded. Hitching a ride would be required, plus a little extra muscle, and his husband was his favorite source for both.

He found Edge in the kitchen, sitting at their temporary table with his laptop and yeah, it was Saturday, time to drag him away from whatever bullshit work he was doing. Stretch put on his best wheedling face and asked, “babe? can you give me a lift today?”

“Of course.” Edge didn’t look up, what a total waste of Stretch’s beguiling charms. His gloved fingertips were soft against the keyboard as he finished whatever he was typing before glancing up at Stretch, and maybe his schmoozing wasn’t entirely wasted; the way Edge closed the lid on his laptop spoke of a guilty conscious for working on his day off. “Where are we going?”

“downtown,” Stretch tucked his hands into his pockets and rocked on his heels. “i need to hit up my junk and disorderly shop.”

That got him a pause, “Your what?”

“heh, you’ll see.” Stretch curled a finger at Edge in a ‘come hither’ motion that his husband didn’t follow, only watched suspiciously. “c’mon, i need you to help me carry some stuff.”

“This ride is starting to sound less like transport and more like a chore.” But Edge followed him to the basement for the boxes, and, surprise surprise, his willingness to help went up a few notches from wary to eager when he figured out what Stretch was doing. Eh, couldn’t blame him. At the top of the pile was a plush frog with the top hat that played ‘hello my baby’ whenever you pushed on its foot, something Red did every single time he walked past it, plus anytime he’d felt like shortcutting in for a quick press. Time to let it damage the sanity of another family.

The boxes were tossed into the trunk of Edge’s car, frog and all, and soon they were on the road, heading downtown. Truth be told, Stretch wasn’t sure what Edge would make of the place. He tolerated thrift stores well enough, but the antique mall was a different kind of beast. An entire building of obscure collections cluttered together into eclectic displays that others were trying to barter and sell.

There were stalls filled with milk crates of old records, shelves and shelves of antique glassware and dishes. Some stalls had vintage clothing, feathery boas mixed in with disco pants and ruffled aprons. Old instruments, rusty farm equipment, strange kitchen gadgets that looked more dangerous than useful, this place had everything and then some.

Plus, the mall had a certain sort of smell, a musty, dusty scent verging on decay that settled into the sinuses and hung around for a while. Stretch thought it was the smell of a life well-lived and he kinda liked it; after years of thrifting, he associated it with finding treasures, but who knew if Edge felt the same. His tastes in smells (heh) ran more to clean and green, not old-timey funk. Could be it reminded him of shower mildew.

Whatever his opinion of the odors, Edge kept it to himself. He helped with the box carrying and checked out Stretch’s stall curiously but didn’t say much. Probably recognized the stuff on the shelves as having once been on a table or Stretch’s nightstand, until the glee wore off and it ended up gathering dust in the basement. He wandered off at some point, heading into the depths of the mall, and left Stretch to restock his meagre wares.

It took longer than he’d expected. Since he’d opened up his stall, not everything Stretch found thrifting found its way into the house proper anymore. Some of it he bought as a straight-to-video option and he was getting pretty good at finding interesting doodads at the thrifty places that might sell better here, location, location, location, that was the ticket.

Stretch always priced his junk reasonably, usually not much more than he’d paid for it. Wasn’t like he needed the money, and besides, Stretch knew himself pretty damn well, therapy did that to a guy. At the end of the day, he knew what this was really about; all an elaborate scheme to satisfy the inner packrat in his soul that struggled sometimes with giving things away.

Bartering had been built in him before he could say the word; in the Underground, he’d gotten damn good at getting deals for what he could scrounge at the dump. This was the same thing, really, just with slightly different stakes. Dinner wasn’t riding on his latest stash of dvds anymore, always a plus, and these days he could simply look at the empty shelves, content in the knowledge that his Smeagol cardboard cutout had found a new home.

Hey, therapy wasn’t the only way to work out a few kinks in your internal lines.

When the last box was emptied, Stretch wandered up to the front desk to give the lady who ran the front register his new inventory list. That was when he heard it.

There was an old piano up front with a sign on it that said, ‘Do not ‘play’ if you cannot play’. Most of the time it sat silently but someone up there was giving it a good try today. The notes were slower, with obvious hesitations as the player searched for the correct keys, but the song was one Stretch knew. Gently melancholy, a match to the cautious playing.

His curiosity piqued, Stretch wandered over to watch and he wasn’t entirely surprised to see Edge sitting on the piano bench, his attention on his hands as he slowly played. It was a tough choice between watching him play and simply listening to the song and Stretch found himself trying to do both. The uncertain skill in hands he knew so well as they coaxed the music free.

When the last note faded, a faint smattering of applause came from the different stalls around them. Stretch waited for it to end before sitting on the bench next to Edge.

Quietly, Stretch said, “i didn’t know you played.”

“I don’t,” Edge said. He smoothed a hand over the keys, not pressing down, simply touching them. “Not really. I can’t read music, but I know a song or two by rote. A friend of mine pushed me to memorize them.”

Welp, Stretch didn’t have to ask what friend, now did he. An old friend back in another world, and people weren’t replaceable even if they wore the same face. He didn’t say anything, didn’t need to; Stretch understood in a way only a few people could, and he settled a hand on Edge’s leg, squeezing his knee gently.

“that was really good,” Stretch offered, “you have a good memory, babe.”

“Some of my memories are better than others,” Edge said. The words were more contemplative than sorrowful, and he didn’t look at Stretch, only touched the back of his hand briefly with his gloved fingertips. “You tend to feature in the best ones, love.”

He reached for the keys again and started to play. The song was more confident this time, bright and cheery, with only the occasional missed note. A handful of other people drifted over, some pausing to watch and some moving on, going about their day with a song to carry them along.

Stretch only tapped his toes and listened as Edge played, more than willing to let him go on until he was ready to stop. If Edge wanted to take a brief dive into the past, then the antique mall was a place for it, where memories and times past mingled with the present.

Besides, a new memory to take home was better than any knickknack.

-fin

Note:  The first song Edge was playing was 'Clair de Lune' by Debussy and the second was 'The Entertainer' by Scott Joplin. In case you were wondering. 😁

[ickle-ronniekins]

just friends

request from anon: I desperately need a fake dating trope with our fav Georgie boy with a cutie Gryffindor girl <333 pls?!

word count: 6.7k holy hell mates

A/N: WAIT OMG i’m obsessed with fake dating trope stories—they’re so cute! and i’ve never written any before! i don’t think, at least lmao. thank you for blessing me with this request, am so excited, also sorry i got a tad carried away

tag list: @mintlibri @georgeweasleyx @seppys-return-to-madness @fopdoodledane @fredd-weasley @iprobablyshipit91 @darling-details @laneygthememequeen @lupinsx @keoghans @helloallthethingsilove @bobduncanlover | message me if you’d like to be added!

“Quick! Hide me!”

George Weasley normally doesn’t mind the fame, if you will, that comes with being part of the most well-known duo Hogwarts has ever seen.

In fact, he welcomes the attention. Maybe not as much as Fred, but he welcomes it, nonetheless.

That is, until a boisterous Ravenclaw is doing everything in her power to grab his attention. How many times can he possibly tell her, in the nicest way possible, that he doesn’t fancy her?

Maybe being nice, Fred explains to him, isn’t the way to go. He doesn’t need to be rude, but he needs to be aggressive—or, blatantly obvious in a way that she won’t be able to ignore. Why can he not seem to shake this girl? She’s undeniably obsessed, Ron laughs one day, as George does his best to push his headache away, his eyes tired from constantly looking over his shoulder to make sure that feisty Ravenclaw is nowhere to be found. He was finding it harder than usual to concentrate in classes—and not in a good way.

George is used to the teasing by now—from his brothers, from Ginny, from Harry, from you—the friendly, fellow Gryffindor prankster—giving Fred and George a run for their money.

He ducks closer to you when he spots her peering, and you nearly choke on your soup during the feast, as the Ravenclaw twirls her hair, watching George with what can only be described as googly eyes.

“Oh dear,” you begin sarcastically, elbowing George next to you, “someone’s in rare form tonight.”

“Ha-ha,” he replies sarcastically as he shifts in his seat uncomfortably, doing his best to block her out by adjusting himself so that Ron’s head covers her face. She notices this, and schooches over in her seat, until George is in her line of view again.

“Merlin’s beard,” he says through gritted teeth, looking down at his food, “I laugh at one of her jokes one time and she can’t seem to let it go.”

“These girls are crazy,” Ron says as he sips on his pumpkin juice, only to receive death glares from you, Hermione, and Ginny. “I—I mean, just that girl—not all women—” he uncomfortably clears his throat and smiles, the tips of his ears turning a bright shade of scarlet.

“Have you tried landing yourself in detention more often than not?” Seamus Finnegan pipes up, “in me own experiences, girls don’t fancy a lad who’s always getting scolded,”

George shakes his head. “The more outrageous the prank, the more brutal the scolding, the more obsessed she becomes,” he tells you all begrudgingly, “I can’t bloody take it anymore.”

As the feast ends, George’s admirer stands up, eyeing him curiously, ready to make her move, yet again—but he finds himself scurrying out of the Great Hall as fast as possible—he’s flying up the staircase and it doesn’t even register with him that he’s not breathing until he enters the common room and lets out a huge sigh of relief. Only narrowly escaped that Ravenclaw, he did. He’s resting in an armchair as the rest of you wander inside a few minutes later, laughing at the flustered sight of him.

George doesn’t know what he’s going to do to get this girl off of his back. It seems as though he’s tried everything.

Unless?

A solution pops into his head very late at night whilst laying in bed, staring up at the curtains of his four poster in the darkness. He jumps up, checks his watch, and groans when he sees the time. In the bed next to his, Fred is sprawled out over his bedsheets, snoring quite loudly as if to say, I’m having a lovely sleep, thank you! George sucks in a breath and lays back down—his mind now swimming with ideas, his smile cheeky, his eyes widened. If this doesn’t give her the hint that he’s not interested, he doesn’t know what will.

It’ll just have to wait until morning, he supposes.

— -

“Y/N!”

You jump a little, not expecting to hear your name yelled across the Great Hall so very early in the morning. George spots you from the entrance, and after making sure there are no other unwanted guests around, he calls out to you and rushes toward the table.

“Hi, George,” you begin, smirking a bit, “you’re up early for someone who has a free period.”

“Needed to catch you before your Herbology lesson,” he places himself across from you and pours himself a bit of coffee—it’s aware to you now that he still needs a little bit of a pick me up. “I need your help.”

“Ah,” you reply and clap your hands together. “The time was quickly approaching—I’m in need of a good prank, you know! It’s been a bit since I’ve gotten involved in a bit of mischief, classes have been so bloody draining lately—so what were you thinking?”

George laughs at this. He does admire your sense of adventure and your equal love of pranking, but no. That isn’t what this is about. He sucks in a breath as he shakes his head, eyeing your curious look before opening his mouth again.

“I think I’ve figured out a way to get… you know who,” he eyes the Ravenclaw table suspiciously, “off of my back.”

You gasp audibly, bringing a hand to cover your mouth as your eyes widen. “Blimey, Georgie—you know who? Why didn’t you tell me that Volde—”

George nearly spits out his coffee due to a snort. Thank goodness he doesn’t. “Ha-ha, anyone ever tell you you’re absolutely hilarious?” He sinks into his seat and rubs his hands over his eyes, as if to brush away tears from laughing too hard. He then continues, after a bit of a laughing fit, “She just needs a push in a different direction, is all.”

You furrow your brow in confusion and bite into a piece of bacon. “And you need my help for that?”

“Precisely,” George tells you, scooping some eggs onto his plate. “Just hear me out.”

“That’s not a great way to start things out, you know.”

He scoffs and then grins cheekily at you. Then, he says, “You need to pretend to go out with me.”

You nearly choke on your piece of toast. “I beg your pardon?” you ask, completely stunned by his request. As you begin to laugh, George feels his insides tighten, and he wants to say, What the bloody hell is the big deal? but instead, he waits, and ends up laughing too.

“Oh, George,” you say after regaining your composure, spreading some more butter onto your toast, “you’re a riot, you are.”

When he doesn’t answer, but instead licks his lips impatiently and takes another sip of coffee and peers at you, as if waiting for your answer, you freeze.

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“You’re bloody right I am.”

“So you want me to pretend to be your girlfriend so she’ll end up stalking me too?”

The two of you erupt into a fit of laughter. Then he peers solemnly at you with wide eyes, as if to beg. “Pleaaaase, Y/N?”

You eye him suspiciously. “What’s in it for me?”

He scoffs again. “Extra time spent with me,” a loud crunch comes from his mouth when he bites into his piece of toast, and he winks. “I know you can’t get enough.”

You snort. “Don’t flatter yourself, Weasley.”

He picks up his cup of coffee, holds it up across the table to you and asks before you have time to think things through, “We have a deal?”

You roll your eyes at this gesture, but he’s patiently waiting for you to agree. What will this mean, exactly—pretending to date one another? You’re about to ask him, but it’s almost as if you know—it won’t last long. Soon she’ll get the hint, and the shenanigans can end. You go against your better judgement, acting on the very fearlessness that landed you in Gryffindor house to begin with, pick up your cup of tea and clink it with his. Feeling very pleased with himself, he leans back in his chair and grins cheekily, wiggling his eyebrows at you. You narrow your eyes and say, “Fine—but only because you’ve asked so nicely.”

Just then, you both notice a giggling gaggle of Ravenclaws enter the Great Hall, and George is already feeling his insides begin to swirl nervously. He’s doing things before he can even fully register what’s going on—

He leans across the table and takes a chunk out of the piece of bacon you’re currently also biting into, his face just inches from yours. You nearly choke on it due to surprise of how close he is to you, and he can’t help but begin to laugh, yet again. Always laughing with you, he is. “Erm—excuse me! Eat your own breakfast, you git!”

Just then, you notice her eyes flicker back and forth very quickly between the two of you, before she slowly passes you both by on her way to the Ravenclaw table, careful to listen to whatever the two of you are speaking about.

George can hardly contain his nerves, but figures he might as well get started on this fake dating thing. The sooner she leaves him alone, the better off he’ll be, “Love it when you talk sweetly to me, darling.”

— -

“You two’re out of your bloody mind.”

Fred does not hold back his laughter later that evening when George divulges your plans. The unmistakable sound of Ron snorting bounces off of the walls in the common room, and he turns red in the face.

“You two? You two?”

“What?” you and George chorus together. George continues explaining to the younger redhead across from him, “It’s perfect—we’re best mates already, and we’re all in a bunch of the same classes together—maybe this will finally give her the hint,”

“It’s not going to work.” Ron replies, looking rather amused. He shoots you a look.

“Well, can’t make any promises, of course,” you tell the lot, “but I reckon we put in the work, it’s bound to fix the problem eventually.”

Ron, Harry and Fred continue to roar with laughter in the common room. “She will never fall for that!”

“Why not?” George asks a bit angrily. He’s nervous now—if this plan doesn’t work, he doesn’t know what the bloody hell he’s going to do. Transfer to a school on the moon, at this point.

“Because,” Ron starts, holding back a snort, “Y/N’s Y/N and you’re—you.”

You and George glance at one another, and then back at Ron. The common room is now buzzing with chatter and gossip and it’s becoming hard for everyone to focus on the conversation. “Meaning?”

“I dunno,” Harry pipes up. “You guys just don’t really look like you’d be a couple.”

“Exactly,” Fred agrees, “you’re too—close. Friendly. You’re just.. friends,” he leans back casually in his chair with his hands behind his head, “it wouldn’t work. But, by all means—” he puts his hands up in surrender, chuckling before he continues, “—go for it and embarrass yourselves. I’m in a good need of a laugh.”

— -

Charms is, by far, George’s favorite class at Hogwarts. If he could take that and only that, he reckons he would. But with Little Miss Obsessed on the other end of the corridor, watching him as if her life depends on it, he can’t help but count down the seconds until the lesson is over—or, at least, the seconds until you get here.

You walk up next to him, finally, with Fred on his other side. “Morning, you two,” you tell them through a yawn. Your few cups of tea haven’t seemed to help your exhaustion from the night before—multiple games of exploding snap and copious amounts of butterbeer until the late hours of the evening did not do you good. You lean against the wall and close your eyes. “Are we awake yet?”

“Morning, Y/N!” Fred says brightly, patting you on the shoulder, waiting for Professor Flitwick to arrive and open the door to the classroom.

“Merlin, Fred, it is far too early to be this bloody excited about anything.”

Next to you, George laughs sleepily and nudges you with his elbow.

“Oh,” Fred replies. You can hear the smirk and mischief in his voice, even with your eyes half closed, “I just thought you’d be more excited to see your boyfriend this morning.”

This certainly wakes you up. You jump slightly and peer at George, who’s rather alert now, as well. You’d almost forgotten. Nearing closer to the classroom entrance, you eye the Ravenclaw, who’s watching you both very suspiciously and whispering to her cronies around her. Before any of you can register what’s happening, you lean over and place a kiss onto George’s cheek.

Fred stifles a laugh, Flitwick is opening the classroom door, the Ravenclaw is fuming, but all George can focus on is what just happened. Through gritted teeth and a very cheeky smile he’s trying his hardest to suppress, he asks you, “What the bloody hell was that?”

“Just abiding by the rules of your request,” you whisper back, grinning at him. “If she’s going to think we’re a couple, we better act like it, haven’t we?”

George hadn’t really thought about this—embracing you, kissing you, holding your hand. If he was being honest, he didn’t think about it because everyone had already mistakenly taken you two for a couple just a few months prior, when all you two had been doing is exactly what you’d done all along—be friends. He kind of just assumed the same thing would happen.

“Right,” he says, the heat of the fleeting moment dying down. “Yeah, of course.”

The three of you waltz into the classroom and take your seats near the middle, with the Ravenclaw sitting a few rows ahead, trying her hardest to peer stealthily over her shoulder at the two of you. It seems as though she’s definitely noticed something.

Flitwick begins the lesson and you lazily lean your head against George’s shoulder, sticking the back end of your quill in your mouth and listening as Flitwick tells you the desired page to turn to in your textbooks. Teasingly, George asks, “What am I—your pillow now?”

You turn to peer up at him. In a low voice you tell him, “If I’m going to be your fake girlfriend, you’re going to let me lean on you when I’m sleepy. Deal?”

You turn your focus back toward the front of the class and George can’t help but smile at you, shaking his head in admiration. He slings an arm around you and props himself into a more comfortable position.

“Okay, then. Deal.”

— -

George is now finding it incredibly easy to pretend to be your “boyfriend”. The hand holding, constant embracing, and laughing into oblivion seems to come naturally—it doesn’t even feel strange to him, and he’s amused to see that you’re taking it the same way. Probably because you got on so well with one another before all of these shenanigans started. Right?

While his admirer’s persistence has seemed to die down a bit, she still winds up watching and cornering him in corridors from time to time—but it’s easier with you arm in arm with him. She doesn’t linger too long, or continue to flirt obnoxiously with him. It seems as though your plan is working. Now, if only she can find a significant other of her own to pay attention too—

You’re sitting in Transfiguration, working on the bird conjuring charm you’d been dying to perfect in your free time whilst McGonagall steps outside for a moment to meet with Professor Sprout, and you’re doing your best to ignore the glares from the other end of the classroom.

“How d’you reckon the plan is working out?” Fred asks you both.

“Well, she’s certainly not as persistent,” George tells his twin in a low voice, eyeing the Ravenclaw stealthily across the classroom, “but I’m not sure she’s entirely convinced.”

You break your focus on the charm and turn toward the twins. “Reckon she will soon.”

“Yeah?” they chorus together.

“Yeah,” you reply, picking up your wand, not giving them any further information.

Fred crosses his arms and looks at you quizzically. When you neglect to continue, he asks with a twinge of sarcasm to his voice, “And how, may I ask, do you know this?”

You stifle a laugh and practice your flourishing movements without conjuring the charm. “—‘cause.. she’s just got to, hasn’t she? I’m telling you—we keep this up for a bit longer, and she’ll forget all about you. Mark my words.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“Avis,”

A puff of smoke emits from your wand, along with a loud blasting sound, and then a flock of birds twitters in front of you and you stand up straighter in front of your desk, feeling extremely pleased with yourself.

“Bloody hell,” Fred and George say together, peering admiringly at the flock of birds you’d managed to conjure. George continues, “That is N.E.W.T Level stuff you’re doing, Y/N!” He picks you up and spins you around, your hair flying into your eyes. You’re weightless to him. When he places you back down gingerly on your feet, he brushes the hair gently out of your face and says, “You’re brilliant, you are.”

Breathlessly, you answer him, “Thanks,”

His hand is still in your hair, his fingers delicately brushing your cheek. George can suddenly feel his insides tighten and his face go rosy—but why?

The entire world seems to stop around you both. It’s as if nobody else exists.

Thankfully, though, when both of you snap back to reality at the sound of McGonagall re-entering the classroom, you both see that nobody else has seemed to notice your small intimate moment.

You pull nervously at the edges of your sleeves and take your seat again next to George, who is running a hand through his hair. When he turns to look at Fred, who must’ve noticed this small exchange, George is relieved to see that there’s no cocky or amused expression on his face—he’s merely pouting due to the continuation of the Transfiguration lesson.

— -

The weather is surprisingly warm for a winter day. George is seated up against a tree near the water’s edge, fiddling with something in his hands—an invention, no doubt—when you plop down next to him with a slight groan.

“Long day?”

“Why in the hell did I decide to take Double Herbology?” you whine, letting your bag sink into the ground next to you. You place your head into your hands, grinding your knuckles into your temples to rid yourself of your headache. You elbow him slightly, “How come you didn’t stop me?”

George laughs, looking back down at this knick knack in his hands yet again. “You were pretty adamant about taking doubles,” he recalls, thinking back to when you’d originally picked these few classes, “don’t you remember?”

“Yeah, well,” you begin, breathing in the smell of the sweet air, picking at the grass in between your fingers, “I suppose it was sort of a silly decision, wasn’t it? I’m bloody exhausted.”

Up near the castle, Ron spots you two and is about to run down to join you both, when Fred tugs on his robes and holds him back, nearly choking him. “Oi!” he exclaims, turning back toward his older brother. “What the bloody hell was that for?”

“Before we all head down there to join the lovebirds,” Fred begins, grinning cheekily at Ron, Harry, Hermione, and Ginny, “I’d like to pick your brains.”

“About what?” Ginny and Hermione ask together.

“Well, precisely what I’ve just said,” Fred tells them, leaning against the entrance of the castle, his bag slung over his shoulder. “The lovebirds.”

Ron and Harry glance at Fred quizzically. “What about them?”

“I’m starting to believe this whole fake dating nonsense isn’t really fake at all.”

Harry laughs at the site of Ron’s agape mouth, when Ginny just shakes her head at her older brother. “You’re off your rocker, Fred. No way they’re really together. They would’ve told us, no?”

Fred crosses his arms. “I’m not so sure of that.”

Harry asks him, “How d’you reckon?”

“I was watching them in Transfiguration the other day,” Fred begins to tell them, watching to make sure the two of you are still out of earshot. “We were all chatting whilst McGonagall needed to step out, Y/N was doing some really advanced type of magic—N.E.W.T Level,”

Still, Ron’s jaw is dropped. He’s seemingly impressed. “Blimey—really?”

“Not the point of the story, Ronniekins.”

Ron turns a bright shade of pink and goes very silent at everyone’s slight snickers. Fred continues, “Anyway—we were all talking about how this plan of theirs was unfolding—to be honest with you, I haven’t seen much of that Ravenclaw around, but George swears she’s still pining over him. So, Y/N does this really advanced charm and George nearly topples over, picks her up and spins her around—you know,” he turns toward his brother and sister, “like those scenes in those silly Muggle movies mum watches. Then, everything went really quiet between the two of them, and they were just—looking at one another, for a really long time.”

Hermione asks, “Like how, exactly?”

Fred thinks on this for a moment. Then he replies, running a hand through his hair, “Like they’re in love.”

Ginny narrows her eyes. “So? Doesn’t mean they’re actually in love. I mean.. they are supposed to be acting like a couple—that’s the point of all of this.”

“So,” Fred says, ignoring everything else Ginny has just mentioned, “I’ve got a plan.”

Ginny turns toward Hermione, “Never a good sign.”

Fred nudges his sister playfully through bits of hearty laughter from the group. “I think we should slip them both a love potion—see if anything changes—if it does, we know they truly are faking. I’ve got the antidote all ready to go.”

“A love potion?” Harry asks.

“Those pink bottles you’ve got all over your room at home?” Ron adds.

“Yes,” Fred says brightly. “Admittedly—it’ll probably be one of our most popular inventions in due time. But Merlin, they are dangerous—you know, when it comes to love, and all that.”

After nearly everyone agrees, Fred begins to put his plan into action—when it will happen, the time of day, just exactly how they’re going to pull it off—when Hermione decides to interject her opinion.

“Nothing’s going to change, you know.”

Ron nearly drops his bag onto the ground. “D’you know something we don’t?”

Hermione laughs. “No, of course not, but—well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?” But clearly, it isn’t quite as obvious as it should be. “They’re already in love!”

Before Ron, Ginny, and Harry can interject their thoughts and objections, Fred turns toward her and says, “Cheers, Hermione.”

“You agree, do you?”

“I do,” Fred replies, now focusing his attention on the two of you down by the lake. It seems to him, he realizes, that while your love may be obvious to some, it’s the two of you that are completely oblivious. He watches as you sink back into George’s chest, his arm slung around your shoulder as you both continue to laugh animatedly about something. Fred points and says, ”Just look at them, would you! D’you see the Ravenclaw anywhere near here? No.”

“Fred,” Harry begins, “if you think they’re faking, then why in the bloody hell d’you want to waste a love potion on them?”

Fred just smiles evilly. “So it’ll be easier to get them to just admit it already.”

— -

“Okay then—enough homework for one evening, I’m absolutely knackered,” you tell the twins, folding up the parchment of your Potions essay and slipping it carefully into your bag, “you two coming back to the common room?”

“Yeah, in a bit,” Fred says, a look of absolute disgust on his face as he flips through his spell book, “this assignment is a right pain in the—”

He stops himself when he notices Madam Pince in the corner, eyeing him suspiciously. You ask them both, “You sure you don’t need any help?”

“Nah, that’s alright, I know you’re exhausted,” George tells you, appreciative of all the help you’ve given them already. “You go on.. we’ll meet you before you head off to bed.”

“Alright,” you reply sweetly, leaning in to place a featherlight kiss to his cheek. His hair at the nape of his neck feels so soft beneath your fingertips, “See you later.”

The Ravenclaw at the next table, Fred notices, isn’t quite as angry at this exchange as she would have been a few weeks ago. Has everything truly been working in their favor?

But George hardly notices—he just looks back down at his bit of parchment and continues to work on his conclusion, trying very, very hard, in Fred’s opinion, to suppress a grin. It’s rather noticeable alongside the cherry red color of his cheeks.

Only a few minutes pass by of silence between the twins before Madam Pince is hurrying everyone out of the library. The group of Ravenclaws make their way, albeit slightly reluctantly, to the opposite end of the castle toward their common room. George has never been so happy to be heading up to bed.

“Oi, Georgie,” Fred begins as they trudge through the corridors, “how long d’you reckon this thing between you and Y/N is going to last?”

“Dunno,” George tells his twin truthfully through a yawn. His four poster is so close, just a few more corridors to get through… “Until that Ravenclaw stops showing up everywhere I go, I suppose.”

Fred snorts at this comment. “Well, you can’t help class, mate.”

“Yeah, but, I mean everywhere else.”

Fred tugs on his brother’s robes and gets him to stop right before the entrance to the common room.

“C’mon, just be straight with me,”

George just glances at him with a confused look.

“About Y/N,” Fred prods.

“What about her?”

“You may be fooling everyone else, but you’re not fooling me.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Fred’s feeling slightly annoyed at his brother’s obvious denial now. “I know how you feel about her, Georgie. I see the way you look at her. Why don’t you both just come out and say it so you can be together for real?”

George actually has to place his bag on the ground. He rolls his eyes—somehow, he knew this was coming. “What the bloody hell are you on about? We’re just friends, like you said—this is purely strategic.” George turns around, picks up his bag, and is about to say the password to enter the common room, but—

“Strategic,” Fred echoes his twin. “Right. So I guess I can go along with my plan, then, slip you both love potions, make sure there’s definitely a change in your feelings toward one another so we know you are truly faking—”

This certainly grabs George’s attention. He can feel his heart thundering in his chest. He turns back toward his twin with narrowed eyes and asks, “What plan?”

“Oh, sorry—forgot to mention,” Fred jokes, careful not to wake any sleeping portraits, “I told the rest of the lot that I’ll be conducting a.. bit of an experiment, if you will—for research, you know. Don’t worry—got the antidote ready to go for when you both, of course, fall madly in love—”

“Fred,” George says through gritted teeth, but lets out a laugh, as well, “I’m not taking a love potion. First of all, those are prototypes for the store, remember? Reckon I’d need to be barking mad in order to take one of those anyway—we know full well how powerful they are.”

Fred’s been ready for George to argue about this. “But I told you, I’ve got the antidote—” Fred’s grinning cheekily at his twin now, he doesn’t even mind getting cut off completely.

“The answer’s no, Fred. You’re out of your bloody mind.”

“What are you so afraid of mate?” Fred laughs and punches George in the arm. “Are you scared that your feelings are going to change?”

George doesn’t want to answer this. He quickly runs a hand through his hair and suddenly seems a bit on edge. He absolutely hates getting cornered like this—he can’t shake the feeling that there’s something sharp lodged in his throat. He opens his mouth to argue, but once again, Fred takes him by surprise.

“Or, I wonder—are you afraid of them not changing at all?”

— -

George hasn’t slept in days. Weeks, maybe. No, that’s being too dramatic—maybe three days, tops. But to him, it certainly feels like a much longer time.

He drags himself, quite reluctantly, toward the dungeons. He’s looking forward even less to the Potions lesson in front of him. He can barely pay attention on a normal day—now, when he’s sleep deprived and running on not much other than caffeine and his own musings, he’s almost certain he’s going to fall asleep just walking there.

Until he spots you, of course, strolling down the other end of the corridor. You see him, too, wave frantically, and bounce your way over to him. Perhaps, he thinks, Potions won’t be so bad after all.

“Hey,” he says brightly, nearly over the moon to see you.. even if it is early in the morning.

“Georgie! I’ve got news,” you say excitedly, poking him in the ribs and wiggling your eyebrows at him. “Guess what I’ve found out?”

George is peering at you, as if in a dreamlike trance. His voice floats through the air between the two of you. “Tell me.”

“It’s about you know who,” you tease, “got herself a boyfriend, she has.”

George suddenly feels very warm. Blimey, it’s hot. He loosens his tie a bit, a hitch in his voice, “Wait, r-really? Where’ve you heard that?”

“Saw them together in the Great Hall—some Slytherin bloke,” you tell him, clutching your spell books tightly in your arms, “she was nearly drooling all over him—reckon her obsession will move to him now, no?” When George doesn’t share the same enthusiasm you do, you prod him with your wand and joke, “What’s the matter? Don’t tell me you’ve actually fallen for this girl.”

“Merlin, no,” George answers quite quickly. You watch as his expression changes from sullen to chipper within a matter of milliseconds. “That’s great news! Gets her off my back, doesn’t it?”

“Exactly,” you reply, “and now you don’t have to hang around little old me all the time. Not that I don’t enjoy your company—” you add quickly when George furrows his brows, “I just mean, now you’re able to go after any girl you fancy, not worry about her anymore—”

“Yeah,” a laugh escapes his lips, “yeah.. reckon you’re right! Blimey, have got to tell Fred.. he was starting to get freaked every time she so much as glanced over at us.”

Students begin to walk a bit more speedily, and you both realize the sound of the bell is drawing nearer. You push playfully on his chest and say, “Anyway—wanted to tell you before class! Meet me in the common room before dinner, yeah?” And before he can answer, you flash a toothy smile and turn in the opposite direction, making your way as quickly as you can toward the library.

You want to tell him. You want to tell him that you’d heard him and Fred that night when they’d been discussing love potions and whatever Fred has up his sleeve—you’d gotten caught up in the corridor around the bend, chatting with another student about an assignment, and had heard the entire exchange. You reckoned it was best to just end it now, before things get really messy.

Things seemed to be working in your favor, though. You hadn’t lied. That Ravenclaw did find herself a boyfriend, so, it seems as though the plan you two had formulated had worked, and that’s a good thing—right?

It’s the first time in—weeks, months?—that you and George part ways without a kiss on the cheek, a tight, romantic embrace, and it makes him feel weird. Off balance. He doesn’t like it. Is he really.. missing those times? Doing those things with you? He shakes his head in defiance, begrudgingly making his way toward Potions. Fred’s words ring in his ears. Just friends. Even if he does feel those things, it’s obvious that you don’t, he realizes. You’re nearly bouncing off the walls knowing that this fake relationship is over. So, why doesn’t he feel the same way? Why does he feel so sad?

He swallows thickly before bumping into Fred. They make their way into the classroom, George’s head and heart feeling heavier than they have in weeks.

Little does he know, you’re sitting in the library, staring into space, a piece of blank parchment in front of you, feeling, if not more so, the exact same way.

— -

A few days later, George can finally sit in the Great Hall in peace without ducking behind anyone, crouching down in his seat, or skipping feasts altogether. His prior admirer seems so wrapped up with her new love, that George Weasley might as well not even exist. He feels relief wash over him.

He’s sitting with Fred, Ron, Ginny, Harry, and Hermione, but you—you’re nowhere to be found. In fact, he hasn’t seen all that much of you in a few days time. Guess he sort of got used to always having you around. Loads of Herbology assignments, you told him the day before with a cheeky grin, reckon Doubles is catching up with me.

“So Georgie,” Fred says brightly through mouthfuls of potatoes, “reckon we should get back to our regularly scheduled mischief now that our unscheduled hiatus has been lifted, yeah?”

“Oi, Fred, can’t you see that he’s not listening to you?” Ron asks before lifting a hand to slap George right across the face.

“Easy, you two,” Ginny scolds them and grabs Ron before he can do anything. Then she taps her older brother on the shoulder, “Hey, earth to George.”

“What?” George says, finally joining the group, the haze above his head lifting slightly, “oh, erm, sorry.. was—distracted.”

Fred eyes his twin curiously. There’s a tiny bit of sarcasm in his voice, “What’s going on, mate? You’ve been awfully quiet since your little plan wrapped up.” But even in his delirious state, George knows what Fred is trying to do. And he’s so bloody exhausted and tired of fighting everything that he doesn’t even argue. Instead, he takes the group by surprise, and stands up without touching his meal. “What’re you doing?”

“Something I should’ve done months ago!” he calls as he flies toward the entrance, maneuvering himself between students and professors alike. He’s doing things without fully registering what’s going on, he’s taking steps three at a time, he’s jumping through the portrait hole in a huff, he’s panting heavily with a very confused you in front of him, baffled at his state.

“Hey there,” you say brightly, “you alright?”

When George catches his breath, he takes you by surprise. “‘m doing just fine, love.”

“Love?” you ask teasingly, “you missing what we had, Georgie? Our fake little relationship?”

“It wasn’t fake.”

You shoot him a glance and freeze completely. George is almost certain he can hear the pounding of your heart reverberating off of the common room walls. He’s thankful, now that he’s recognized, the two of you are completely alone. “It—it wasn’t?”

“Of course not.”

You offer a nervous grin, and George knows he’s said the right thing. The tension between the two of you is rising and you ask him jokingly, “This isn’t a love potion talking, is it?” Realization hits him like a ton of bricks and he lets an exasperated laugh escape his lips. Damnit, Fred. He shakes his head no and waits with bated breath for your next words.

“So this,” you say, pointing back and forth very rapidly between the two of you, “it’s..it’s been real this entire time?”

“Of course it’s real, it’s always been real,” George is finding it difficult to breathe correctly now, “hasn’t it been real for you?”

But you realize, as you’re choking back tears, that by saying yes, you’ll only be delaying the inevitable—which is, of course, to kiss him into oblivion. And you’d both waited bloody long enough already, hadn’t you?

So instead of saying anything, you bite back a very large grin before stepping forward and pulling on his tie and pressing your lips to his. He’s not even surprised—if anything, he’s relieved, to finally know what it feels like to have your lips on his after many moments having dreamt about it. Immediately, you want to ask him why you two haven’t been doing this the entire time, but you can’t bring yourself to break from him now that you’re intertwined together. It’s slow and warm, his lips molding perfectly with yours, his thumb brushing gently against your cheek, soft moans escaping his lips, the rest of his fingers making their way through your soft hair. It sort of feels as if you’re floating, actually, bouncing delicately from cloud to cloud, high above the trees and the castle. Breaking slightly and pressing his forehead to yours, he says, “So, erm, silly question—but are we—?”

“If you even have to ask if I’m your girlfriend for real now, you’re out of your mind, Weasley.”

George’s head is spinning. He leaves trails of kisses along your cheeks, your neck, and your collarbone, all before finding your lips again, and as they form a smile against his own, he can’t seem to shake the feeling like he’s coming home.

A very amused voice startles you both, making you part at the mere sound of the clearing of a throat. “Alright then, Ron, Ginny, Harry—you all owe me two sickles each. Hermione—cheers again, reckon you did well to agree with me on this one.” And then, when he notices you two watching, Fred says, “Oi—well it’s about bloody time.”

“I’m sorry,” you begin, doing your best to not think about the scarlet color of your face, or the fact that they’d all seen quite possibly the most intimate moment you and George have shared together, “you lot placed bets on us?”

“Sure did,” Fred replies, looking rather pleased with himself as he’s handed his earnings from a very grumpy looking Ron and Harry. He slides the sickles into his pockets and crosses his arms in delight.

As Ginny and Hermione squeal excitedly and wink at you before heading up to the girls dormitory for the evening, George pulls you back into his arms, confidence engulfing him, and says to the others, “If you don’t mind, we were kind of in the middle of something here.”

The tips of Ron’s ears turn extremely pink and he smiles warily. “Guess you didn’t have to use those love Potions after all, Fred,” Harry says.

With a wink at you both before making his way toward the stairs, Fred replies, “Was never going to, actually. Just had to make them think I was. Knew these two would break eventually.”

“Hate to admit it, but you’re kind of brilliant,” Ron says admiringly, but continues to pout when Fred slings an arm around his shoulders and tells him,

“Next time, Ron, just side with your wiser, older brother, yeah?”

You turn back toward George, your arms around his neck. When you make sure the others are finally out of earshot, you say to him, tugging gently on his tie again, “He’s outrageous, he is.”

“Got us together, though, didn’t he?”

“I suppose I’ll give him that one.”

“Oh,” Fred calls from the top of the stairs, “and Y/N? No snogging my brother until the wee hours of the evening, alright? He needs his beauty sleep.”

“Shove off, Freddie,” you call. A cackle of laughter floats down from the boys dormitory, but you find it easy to ignore. What do they know? The two of you have tons of lost time to make up for. You stand on your tippy toes, press your forehead to George’s before he kisses you again. He lets out a soft laugh when you say against his lips, to a Fred who can’t hear you, “Can’t make any promises.”

reblogs & feedback are greatly appreciated, thank you for reading & requesting x

[neojeno]

I really wouldn't mind you aiding me with some tutorials love

giffing tutorial/resources

hi anon! sorry it took me so long to answer. i figured this might be helpful for others out there who have asked me similar questions, so i’ve compiled a pretty comprehensive list of tutorials/resources. idk about others but when i was new to giffing, it took me a lot of painful effort to go around and look for resources, so i’m putting it all here to make it a little easier!

i download videos using 4k video downloader. it will download very good quality 1080p videos in .mp4 format. if you’re downloading a 4k video, make sure to change the setting option to .mkv so that you get 4k and not 1080p—for obvious reasons since you want the highest quality.

i rely on kpopexciting to get .ts files — which are basically raw, very high quality video files for live performances. they are much less grainy than .mp4 versions of live performances—which are the ones you’ll see uploaded to youtube. i’ve found that 4k videos (in .mkv) are just as good quality as .ts, but obviously you will rarely see live performances in 4k, so get .ts when you can!! you can also try to find .ts files on twitter, but you may have to do a lot of digging. i wish i could recommend you twitter accounts, but the ones i used to go to have been very inactive/taken down all their drives :( but this website is really nice and updated frequently so i would recommend it!

vapoursynth links + download. the reason you would use vapoursynth is to resize your gif, while maintaining the optimal quality of the gif. if you gif without vapoursynth (.ie only using photoshop), it will still be fine, but the image quality may be grainier. also, you will definitely need vapoursynth to gif .ts files —more will be explained in the tutorial i’ve linked below. i would recommend that you have a high processing/lots of ram/newer desktop or laptop to use vapoursynth so that 1, your computer isn’t fried and 2, your vapoursynth process will go a lot faster. i am using a 2017 macbook pro for all my work, and it runs pretty well, but my laptop still gets pretty hot so just make sure you’re not running a million things in the background while using adobe products and vapoursynth lol. i used a pretty old and beat up 2011 model macbook air back then, and i will say that yes vapoursynth worked and ran on it, but it took much longer, and basically fried the laptop’s battery (aka i had to get the battery changed twice and the laptop would die randomly) but issok it was a school borrowed laptop so i didn’t feel too bad lol. im just saying this as a precaution, to preserve the health of your electronic devices!! but don’t be afraid to use vapoursynth! you should still try it at least once.

thank you to @realstraykids for this super detailed, really nice tutorial! it includes how and where to download videos, how to gif using vapoursynth, using photoshop, comparisons, coloring, and pretty much all you need to know. 10/10 would recommend

thank you to @dreamcolouring for this lifesaver!!! the best and easiest way to blur out unwanted captions/objects in your gifs. i recommend doing this step after converting your frames to video timeline and before you do sharpening and coloring. another tip i’ll add is to feather the selection you’ve made right before you click on “add vector mask” —this will make sense once you’ve read through the tutorial. feathering it will make the blurred spot less noticeable and more subtle.

i use this generator to create gradient colored captions! copy and paste your text, then select the colors you want. generate the code, and copy it. change the settings of the text editor on your post to HTML. paste the code, preview, and voila! add elements <blockquote>,<b>,<i>, etc as needed. see more on colored captions in this tutorial by @kylos​ --i believe op mentioned a different and better color generator but for some reason it won’t work for me :( hopefully it works for u! basically same idea as the previous generator i mentioned.

my own mini tutorial/workflow process of making gifs. this includes working with a .ts file, vapoursynth, photoshop, coloring, watermarking, etc. and a few of my own tips below:

if you are working with an .mp4, you do not have to make any changes to the preprocessor/denoise filters/sharpening in the resizing part of vapoursynth—it doesn’t make that big of a difference if you do. but if you are working with a .ts file, definitely do make those changes,, that’s the whole reason you have vapoursynth. with an .mp4, i like to use vapoursynth to just resize, but i don’t add any additional settings. i use smart sharpen in photoshop to sharpen it, which is pretty good on it’s own (at least in photoshop 2020!).

my rule of thumb is to do add .02 seconds when i am setting frame delay. so if when you first import the frames, they are at 0.04 seconds, i usually change them to 0.06. of course, this is my personal taste—you can make all your gifs faster or slower depending on how you want em to look.

if you are on a mac, you can screen record by pressing Command+Shift+5 (it’s a shortcut to quicktime screen recording). I only screen record for things like the beyond live concert or other live streamed events. the image quality of the screen recording, in my experience, is actually pretty good. when you gif the screen recording however, you may notice that it adds extra frames that you don’t need. by that i mean duplicate frames. you could keep the duplicate frames but that just means the size of your gif is going to be much bigger (keep in mind the limit is 8mb). in order to remove those duplicates, my only solution has been to remove them manually (by holding Command while selecting), or when you are importing the video to frames, select the option to “limit to every 2 frames”—but this method will be less precise and still not as good as manually removing frames. if you remove the duplicate frames, this means you will need to set the frame delay even slower, to make up for lost frames. in my experience, fps(frames per second) and frame delay work in conjunction. so for example, if i delete every other frame because they are duplicates,  but the starting frame delay is 0.02, i am now going to change it to something like 0.05 (so i added 0.03 seconds rather than my usual 0.02). if the duration length and the image dimensions of the gif are short/small, feel free to keep the duplicate frames in—i only delete duplicate frames in order to keep my gif under the 8mb limit. then, if you keep the duplicate frames in, continue with your standard frame delay preferences.  now that i’m writing this im realizing this might not make a lot of sense lol.. but don’t worry about it for now and if you run into trouble w screen recorded gifs then you can come back to this for reference. again, this is only my experience recording on a mac—it may be a lot different if you use a screen recording program or are on a pc.

i don’t really use .psd templates because i like to give every gif/gifset it’s own unique coloring—so i remake the coloring every time, but if you get into a rhythm it’s pretty easy. there are a lot of nice coloring tutorials out there, too! my personal coloring adjustments in order: levels, exposure, color balance, selective color (if needed), vibrance, photo filter (if needed), color lookup (i use 2strip most often and i put it on ‘color’ blending mode). don’t forget to adjust the opacities and fills of the ‘color lookup’ adjustment layer in case it’s too strong. go back to correct each adjustment layer as needed. then, when you’re done and satisfied, group all those layers, copy the group (you can do an easy command+c), and paste it onto the next gif you’re working on for easy workflow.

if for some reason you can’t see the frames when you import your layers/video, it’s likely because your ‘timeline’ window isn’t showing up. just go to the window menu on photoshop, go to the bottom and you’ll see ‘timeline.’ make sure it has a check next to it.

i recommend watermarking your gifs because a lot of people like to repost tings these days 😠 - so make sure u got your brand on it! i keep my watermark saved to my ‘libraries’ in photoshop so it’s ready when i need it. i use the blending mode ‘overlay’ and adjust the opacity, but if you don’t want to do that you can also add a stroke/shadow to your watermark/do all sorts.

tag #nctinc for your nct creations and #jenonet for your jeno creations!!

here’s my own mini tutorial (well not much of a tutorial ig more like a work process vid?): took about ten minutes including the time to search and download the video (but i didn’t record that part i trust yall know how to do that), vapoursynth, and exporting. i hope this helps somewhat! feel free to ask more questions whenever :)

keep in mind that giffing takes a lot of patience, energy, and experience—so don’t worry if it takes you a bit to figure things out or if your gifs don’t turn out the way you want them to the first time around. we all start at the same place and all run into problems. i know giffing can sound intimidating and seem like a lot of work, but i promise, once you get into a routine, giffing is going to happen in minutes—and you’ll get beautiful gifs. have fun! 😊

[huearmy]

My definitive masterlist is here and I’m proud of it. I’ll keep it updated, but feel free to tell me if there’s anything missing or not working well :)

There’s a lot o Fluff and Angst here :D

Please don’t repost or translate my content without my permission :(

   〜(꒪꒳꒪)〜〜(꒪꒳꒪)〜〜(꒪꒳꒪)〜〜(꒪꒳꒪)〜〜(꒪꒳꒪)〜〜(꒪꒳꒪)〜

I’m part of Bangtan Shadow Family, check it out.

Alley Cat.

Pairing:  dog!Namjoon x cat!Reader / hybrid!au / FLUFF / angst

Summary:  “ You have been living in the streets since always, poor and free cat. Namjoon is a house dog who call his owners Mom and Dad. And you two love each other in all the purest and sincere love. You just believe he is the best thing ever happened to you, and all he dreams of is to protect  you from the terrible things the stray life can bring. The solutions, for him, is obvious: you join his family.”

You Won Die.

Seokjin x Witch!reader / Fantasy 

Summary: “Y/N is a witch dealing her on business, caring for her on life in her isolated shack, until during a storm when she saved a man named Seokjin, and moved by all the magic in her heart, she gived him the Bless of a Witch, changing both fates of them.” 

Chapter I hiatus

Not My Friend.

cat!Yoongi x human!Reader / FLUFF, angst,  slight smut. / One Shot 

Summary: “Yoongi is a ordinary house cat hybrid with an ok life and a huge crush in his ower’s friend. Even if Y/N always treated him lovelly and as an equal he is all insecurities and thoughts of  rejection about being a hybrid, without imagining that the feeling can be reciprocal.”

Clumsy

Soulmate!au Hoseok x Reader. Fluff, ANGST

Summary: “Of all the possible ways in which your connection with your soulmate could’ve manifests, such as birthmarks or dreams, you and your person share physical pain. It would be enough for the two of you to want to get to know each other soon, but the problem is that you are the most clumsy person Hoseok doesn’t know yet, and all he wants is to find you and protect you from the world.”

This is Soulmate Series. I’ll be doing one for each member.

Life is Beautiful

Vampire!au: Jimin x reader x Taehyung

Summary: “You are a glass half full person, your life motto is “Life is too short to… Insert something and anything here”. During your whole life you wanted something more, and even not knowing what it is, you put yourself to find out and get it, experiencing everything  brilliant that the world offers - within the measure of what is safe, of course. The curious thing is that your way of living ended up rousing  the interest of two vampires. One who sees beauty in everything and  loves to exist, currently working with suicide prevention; and another one who no longer sees grace in things, in that boring immortality that never ends, and only complains about the Netflix catalog all the time.”

Chapter I II III   {on going}

Life is Beautiful

Vampire!au: Jimin x reader x Taehyung

Summary: “You are a glass half full person, your life motto is “Life is too short to… Insert something and anything here”. During your whole life you wanted something more, and even not knowing what it is, you put yourself to find out and get it, experiencing everything  brilliant that the world offers - within the measure of what is safe, of course. The curious thing is that your way of living ended up rousing  the interest of two vampires. One who sees beauty in everything and  loves to exist, currently working with suicide prevention; and another one who no longer sees grace in things, in that boring immortality that never ends, and only complains about the Netflix catalog all the time.”

Chapter I II III  {on going}

The Smell of Truth.

pitbull!Jungkook x human!Reader /  fluff, angst, future smut maybe.

Summary: “After years being forced to fight in clandestine hybrid rings, Jungkook is now living in a shelter, but life remains bad, the place is abusive, and nobody seems to want adopt him. Until one night a pro-hybrid activist group invades the shelter, and a woman in black smelling like truth promises that things will get better, and he decides to follow her wherever she goes.”

Chapters: I II III IV V VI VII {on going}

If you want to be tagged to any of my stories, let me know. And don’t be shy on telling me something about my writing, no matter what. I am open to criticism, advice and corrections  especially with grammar and vocabulary, since English is not my first language.

♡ AND this fanarts were made by my friend @minikolima​, she is new on tumblr, give her some love. ♡

    (♡´౪`♡)(♡´౪`♡)(♡´౪`♡)(♡´౪`♡)(♡´౪`♡)(♡´౪`♡)(♡´౪`♡)(♡´౪`♡)(♡´౪`♡)

Thank you. 

[gottawriteanegoortwo]

Marmien - Confrontation

This won’t make much sense without reading the first part. Click here to read ‘Confession’ to catch up!

It isn’t like Damien to not talk to his sister, and she’s worried. Celine takes matters into her own hands to solve the mystery of Damien’s sudden withdrawal, even if it means talking to the friend who harboured a misguided crush on her.

Word Count: 1,550

(shout out to my friend @jvnusanders because their reblog reminded me that I actually started this months ago on a scrap of paper in work and completely forgot about it!)

Disclaimer: There is no appearance by Damien in this. But since it’s regarding that ship, I’ve tagged it as such.

--

A week came and went. Celine had not heard a peep from her brother. Their Wednesday afternoon catch-up even resulted in Celine discovering that Damien had ‘accidentally’ scheduled meetings until late that night and would have to cancel. He was not the kind to clam up and ignore people for childish reasons, especially his sister. Something happened, and Celine knew something needed to be done, even if she got no response from him. A quick interrogation revealed that William hadn’t seen the Mayor in over two weeks, so he was clueless about any potential problems. Celine herself had met Damien three days before he withdrew, and he was in good spirits with no obvious problems. Before she started trying to question Damien’s secretary, there was one other person to ask…

-

“Ah, Celine! Marvellous timing. I was just about to have someone fetch you.” Mark’s outstretched arms emphasised his dramatic greeting. A quick hug was shared before she found herself being dragged into the spacious living room. It wasn’t what she wanted - something about Mark’s new home made her feel rather uncomfortable for reasons she couldn’t quite explain - but she decided to ignore the feeling in favour of trying to find out how to help her brother.

“I don’t intend to take up much time, Mark. I wanted to check if you -”

“So I’ve had this problem nagging at me all week and I haven’t the foggiest notion of how to fix it.” Celine had to repress a heavy sigh at the interruption by Mark. It was a miracle he was allowed to continue without a scolding on basic manners. “I took your advice and decided to take time to understand myself and what I want for myself. I even asked a fine young gentleman I rather admire out for dinner the following night. Trouble is, he rejected me so harshly and has refused to talk to me since. I’m afraid I’m at a loss on how to have a second chance with him.” As Mark explained his woes, Celine slowly massaged her temple with two fingers.

“You said this was a week ago.”

“Correct.”

“The day after you spoke to me.”

“Also correct.”

Celine sunk her head into her hands. She was no detective, but even a fool could piece this together. “Mark… Did you invite Damien to dinner that night?” Her simple question cracked the bravado clean in two, and Mark slumped forward. A hand brushed through his hair as he tried to regain some sort of composure.

“I… I didn’t think through my actions. Of course it was a terrible idea, in hindsight. I honestly did want his company, but he -”

“Let me guess. Your big mouth mentioned that you had spoken to me the night before?” Mark gave a guilty nod at her conclusion. “And now he won’t talk to any of us because he feels like a spare. Fantastic.”

--

“None of you?”

“No, genius. He has refused to talk to both myself and William all week. In case you haven’t realised, the three of us are involved in this mess, and you weren’t the only one confiding in Damien about me. Then, when you realise I’m not available and you might not be interested in women at all, you suddenly gain interest in the man who looks very much like me. I’d bet your head was so far up your own ass you didn’t stop to think how horrible that would be for Damien. I had just reached a stage where Damien felt comfortable talking about his sexuality and the idea of dating, and you’ve gone and ruined all that with your impulsive selfishness!”

“My selfishness?” Mark barked, clearly offended. “I was acting on your advice! You told me to talk to another man and see how it went.”

“I never said to chat up Damien the next day, you fool!” Even if her temper was short, she at least could refrain from cursing like a sailor to keep some sort of focus on the matter at hand. “I know Damien better than anyone else, and all your short-sighted ‘me first’ mentality has achieved is cementing his own fear of being used because of it. I would bet good money that he is now convinced that you only wanted to talk to him because he was the next best thing to satisfying your obsession with me.”

“You don’t get it. If he had stayed longer, then he would have seen that I was trying to express my interest in him!”

“Oh, so it’s his fault. Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

“I’m not saying that. I’m trying to tell you that if he were to have dinner with me, all this could be brushed aside as a big misunderstanding.” Mark’s words hung in the air for several agonisingly long seconds. Celine rose to her feet, face devoid of any warmth or friendliness.

“You better be joking, Mark. For your sake, this better be some twisted joke. My brother is not some pawn for you to experiment your sexuality with. He is not some ‘spare’ because I’m not interested, for God’s sake!” She snatched up her shawl instead of following her idea of slapping Mark on Damien’s behalf. “If you know what’s best, you’ll stay away from him.”

“Then what do I do if I think I do like him, Celine? You can’t possibly expect me to avoid him forever while unsure if I missed a wonderful opportunity or not.” It was Mark’s turn to pull himself off the couch to stand his ground.

“You keep away from him. You’re only interested in him because you’re trying to reflect your feelings for me somewhere else. I’m not letting you break his heart and make him too wary to ever consider a relationship. He’s sacrificed his personal life enough for this city and I’m not letting you take away his only chance at happiness.”

“Ugh, you’re being ridiculous. His ‘only’ chance. What are you, six? I do care about him, and I want to prove that by inviting him out to talk! What is so hard to understand about this? Your brother is a very attractive young man and I would be honoured to spend an evening in his company!” That was something he didn’t intend to admit, but out it slipped. He crossed the room to the fireplace to pick up a photograph. It was the four of them not long after Damien won the election. “And it’s not because he looks like you, before you remind me yet again. You aren’t identical, and that’s what I notice. For instance, your smiles are different… I never realised how I loved seeing him laugh until he stormed out last week. It brightened the room, Celine. Did you know that? I used to find myself at a loss for words when we were left alone. He’s so intelligent and charming, and when he smiled at me like I was the most important thing in the world… How did I not recognise these feelings sooner?”

“Because you were raised to look for it in a woman’s gaze?” Celine suggested, calming herself enough to follow after him. “Did you tell him any of this?”

“Of course not. Admitting I liked men to him was hard enough. I was going to, had he stayed… But you’re right. He probably wouldn’t believe me now.” The frame was returned to its rightful spot with care. “If I can be honest, I don’t know what to do. I’ve tried telling myself that it’s something that will blow over, or that it will take little to at least have us on speaking terms again. It won’t be that simple, will it?”

“This isn’t one of your plays, Mark. It’s going to take time for Damien to trust you again. Life is there for the taking, but you need to give it time before doing anything. Promise me that you won’t do anything reckless?” Celine gave Mark a hopeful look, and he was reminded why he believed he loved her. Maybe, in a way, he still did; but he needed to accept it wasn’t the same as what was bubbling in his heart for the soft-spoken politician. “I’m going to try and talk to him this weekend. I’ll let him talk about everything that happened. If you mean what you’ve said, and you genuinely care about him without any fake pretence, then you will not make any attempts to woo him next time you meet him.” It wasn’t an ideal solution for Mark, but he had to accept it. Celine did know better, and he knew better than to cross her. Before he could respond, she wrapped her shawl around her and made her way to the front door.

“Celine, wait!” Mark scrambled after her, not wanting to see her go without saying goodbye. “Thank you. For not simply slapping me and leaving, I mean. I’ll be more cautious if I’m granted a second chance.”

“What can I say? Damien brings out the patience in me.” Also her protective streak, which was quick to follow. “He is my little brother, Mark. If you screw up that second chance, I’ll personally see to it that you spend New Year’s in a wheelchair. Have a good day.”

[caslikescoffeeandfreckles]

Do you have fic recs of your favorite destiel fics? I haven't read destiel give in a while and since I can not leave the house I might as well read some and I only trust you for recs

I am honored??? That someone values my opinion???

You didn’t specify any tropes so I just dug through my AO3 bookmarks and picked my favorites lately. They vary by length and rating so just make sure you check the tags for each one before you start reading!

1) La Hantise by @wanderingcas

Summary: Castiel’s mother dies, leaving him the family home that sits abandoned on the moody coast of Maine. He’s forced to return to the past ghosts of his trauma, as well as meeting the mysterious and nomadic Dean Winchester. Dean offers to help Castiel fix up the house so he can sell it, which quickly becomes problematic as Castiel begins to develop feelings for Dean; especially when details of Dean’s troubling past come to light.

This is a story about the sea, second chances, and two broken, forgotten people building a love between them while restoring a broken, forgotten house.

Note: I love Sam!! She’s a wonderful writer and her current project is an infuriating suspenseful maybe ghost story???? maybe not??? WHO KNOWS! But Dean and Cas are well-written and both have very interesting backstories. Definitely recommend!

2) While You Were Sleeping

Summary: A Destiel version of While You Were Sleeping! Castiel is alone and floundering. He has a crush on one of the passengers who passes through his subway station every morning. When the man gets pushed onto the tracks, Cas saves him. But when they get to the hospital there's a mix up and Cas finds himself engaged to a complete stranger. Enter, the rest of the family, including big brother Dean. How will Cas navigate the relationship with his supposed future in-laws? What will he do when Sam finally wakes up? And why can't he stop thinking about Dean?

Note: this was such a sweet read, just enough angst with a satisfying ending

3) Not a Bad Thing

Summary: In which Bela makes a bet that Castielle can't have a one night stand. Castielle proves her wrong, of course, and wins the bet, but then she ruins it all when she asks the girl to spend the night.

Note: this is a femslash AU which are really hard to find but I LOVED this one so much I scarified by already limited sleeping time

4) Undercover Boyfriend

Summary: Two men, one lie, and a whole bunch of trouble.

Castiel Novak’s in serious trouble. His sister’s destination wedding in Mexico filled with several days of activities, is in only two days. And everyone expects to meet his underwear model Alpha boyfriend — the one he invented. Now Cas has to produce a half-naked hottie or suffer the worst humiliation of his life. But Cas just doesn’t date those kinda guys! Or even know any for that matter.

Undercover FBI agent Dean Winchester’s cover is blown and he needs to disappear fast. When he ducks into a bar he runs into Castiel, a comic book artist, one very hot, but geeky Omega. And as luck would have it he just happens to be looking for an Alpha.

Could they be the solution to both their problems? Or will trouble find them on the sandy beaches of Mexico?

5) The Purrfect Catch

Summary: Alpha Dean Winchester is surprised to see a newspaper ad written by his neighbor, Omega Castiel Novak, requesting potential Alpha mates. The challenge is simple on the surface: the Alpha who can obtain the single key from Novak cat’s neck, will be Castiel’s new mate. The cat spends a good amount of time lounging on Dean’s porch, though Dean’s half convinced its only for the snacks he feeds him. Dean isn’t the kind of Alpha Castiel wants, but at least Dean can enjoy watching Alpha after Alpha chase after the feline in the hopes of winning Castiel’s heart.

Note: this is one of my new favorites! I really love this trope and I’ve reread it several times!

6) What Greater Gift

Summary: Story idea: The most wanted woman in town has announced that she’ll only marry the one who can open her front door with the key around her cat’s neck. Many men try to hunt the cat down, chase and trap it, but to no avail, the cat is simply too quick, smart and clever, and always finds a way to evade and avoid them.

You are the first one to figure out the obvious: Do not chase the cat. The cat is befriendable. Get the cat to trust you, to genuinely enjoy your company, and you can hang out with the cat. You may eventually be allowed to touch the cat. The cat will freely let you take the key.

Note: this is the same trope as #5 and I’ve reread is several times too!!

7) The Ed Sheeran Effect

Summary: Dean and Cas—inseparable best friends since sixth grade—find themselves dateless only weeks before their high school prom and eventually come to the realization that the only option left is to go together. Wanting to give his fresh out of the closet best friend the date of a lifetime, Dean pulls out all the stops and soon discovers what he's always felt towards Cas is a lot more than friendship.

Note: I’m not usually one for long form high school AUs (they remind me too much of my students) but I really latched onto this one

8) Poisk Istiny (Finding Truth)

Summary: A rival family is stealing the Patricolo Family’s Boston shipments and collecting a neat payday five hours away on the streets of Brooklyn and Manhattan. Their Don, Dean Winchester, is wary about reaching out to a long-time New York ally. The Russian Bratvas do things differently. The young Pakhan, Castiel Krushnic, is hard-nosed and violent and while violence is mainstay in any underworld family, this boss has a special flair for it. It leaves an uncomfortable taste in Don Winchester’s mouth.

Encouraged by his Consigliere, Bobby Singer, he finally relents. The Pakhan is quite different from what he was expecting. Dean learns the man’s secret by accident and decides to keep it to himself. They have bigger fish to fry as they discover traitors in both of their organizations while their enemy ups the stakes for each of them. After members of each family are kidnapped, the stakes get even higher.

Betrayed from within leads to exposing long held secrets and when long denied desires are unleashed it puts each of them on a path that will change their lives forever.

Note: THIS ONE IS SO GOOOOOOD. Cas is a total badass I would die for him and I love the way he and Dean bond just fuck yes all around

Hope you like any of these! If not, just let me know what kinds of fics you like and I can try to find more specific ones for you!

[needtherapy]

soaring, carried aloft on the wind...continued 17

A story for Xichen and Mingjue, in another time and another place.

The Beifeng, the mighty empire of the north, invaded more than a year ago, moving inexorably south and east.

In order to buy peace, the chief of the Lan clan has given the Beifeng warlord a gift, his second oldest son in marriage. However, when Xichen finds out he makes a plan.

He, too, can give a gift to the Beifeng warlord, and he will not regret it.

Part 1: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12 / 13  Part 2: 14 / 15 / 16 / 17 … HOME

It’s complete on AO3 here.

Notes: Check the tags if you’re concerned about the pairings ;)

For translations of the entirely fictitious Beifeng language, you’ll have to scroll to notes. I’m only going to translate something that’s not clear in the text. Sadly, there’s just not any other good way to do it on Tumblr!

Chapter 17 Earlier

Xichen didn’t see Jin Guangyao again for days, largely because Mingjue barely let him leave his tent, as though trying to reassure Xichen that Jin Guangyao’s presence created no change. It was less reassuring than he intended, because Xichen thought that if his position here with Mingjue was wholly secure, perhaps he wouldn’t need so much reassuring.

Still, he couldn’t pretend he didn’t enjoy Mingjue’s presence seeping into every empty space of his life. Xichen had already learned that it was as earth-shattering to give pleasure as it was to receive it, and he had spent the winter months making a very thorough exploration of Mingjue’s body. There was almost no end to the things Mingjue was willing to let Xichen try, and he was, himself, remarkably inventive.

But he loved the small domesticity of Mingjue in the morning almost as much, of waking next to him, listening to the way his breathing shifted so suddenly from asleep to awake. He always seemed surprised to find Xichen with him, surprised and delighted, stretching his arms and pulling Xichen to him the same way every day.

With the siege temporarily eased, Mingjue was less busy, and most of what he did was familiar to Xichen, the work of running a city rather than commanding an army. There were internal conflicts to settle, supplies to organize, and plans to make for the future. Mingjue did most of it from the comfort of Xichen’s bed, to the great amusement of his generals. As Mingjue’s grasp of Yuyan and Xichen’s skill in Orera improved, Mingjue began asking Xichen’s opinion about everything, from the small issues of disagreements between the horse trainers and romantic entanglements gone awry, to the bigger and less exciting problems of crop rotation, food storage, and waste removal.

It wasn’t all work. In the down times, he fed Xichen rare mountain plums, massaged his back with jasmine cream and sweet-smelling oils, and braided Xichen’s hair in complicated twists and plaits, as doting a lover as Xichen could ever have imagined, and he reveled in being cared for. The only indulgence Xichen truly felt guilty about involved the copper tub.

Prior to winter, the huge tub had been used mostly for washing clothes. When it had been warmer, Xichen had bathed the way the rest of the Ikarahu did: very quickly in the cold river. Once the weather shifted, bathing tents were set up near the river and a team of Ikarahu mages moved and warmed water for baths. It was still cold, but warmer than Xichen’s bathing at home would have been in winter.

It was not, however, Mingjue’s preference. He liked hot baths and decided to convert Xichen to his point of view.

It took dozens of people to move water from the river on the eastern side of the camp to the huge cauldron that sat on a magical fire in the center of camp. No one seemed to mind obliging their commander, although Xichen found it embarrassing that everyone knew when he bathed. Mingjue had just laughed and asked how it was different than bathing in the communal tents, and Xichen didn’t have an answer for that.

He was immediately won over when he sank into water hot enough to sting, and he nearly cried with happiness. Apparently, the sound he made was such that Mingjue stripped and joined him, settling Xichen in front of him and washing his hair with gentle fingers until Xichen could no longer stand the positively provoking way his body was rubbing against Xichen’s under the water. Xichen rolled over to provoke him back, sloshing water over the sides of the tub in a flurry of kisses. Mingjue’s solution was even messier, pulling Xichen out of the tub and tossing him onto the bed, which made Xichen laugh and shiver at the heat in Mingjue’s eyes. Luckily, the copper tub kept the water warm enough to still be enjoyable after their not-so-brief interlude.

It was almost enough to make him forget the flutter of Jin Guangyao’s long eyelashes when he looked at Mingjue.

Despite Mingjue’s efforts to keep him distracted, Xichen had seen and even talked to Guangyao in the common areas of camp, usually with Huaisang hovering nearby. But sometimes Jin Guangyao was sitting alone, always watching the men and women around him but never interacting. Xichen couldn’t help wondering what Jin Guangyao did to occupy his time.

Xichen finally decided to take the initiative. He couldn’t ignore the man forever. The next time he saw Jin Guangyao alone, leaning on a hitching post and watching the munaku training, he stopped.

“Jin-gongzi, I notice you are fond of the munaku. Have you seen the eagles hunting as well?” Xichen asked, and Jin Guangyao’s smile filled his face.

“Zewu-Jun, this one has only seen them in the distance. Oringa’anhu Ikira says they are too dangerous to approach. They are magnificent, even from afar, although this one would be willing to take the risk.”

He seemed to be watching Xichen’s face carefully, as though gauging his reaction, and Xichen wondered what he was looking for. He made an impulsive decision.

“Jin-gongzi, would you allow me to share a pot of Zhao tea with you tomorrow? I do not know if you have had Ikarahu tea yet, but...it is likely not what you are used to, and it is always a pleasure to drink good tea with someone who appreciates it.”

Jin Guangyao blinked in surprise and then chuckled. “Indeed, Zewu-Jun, this one has tried the...tea. It would be an honor to avoid sampling it again.”

Xichen laughed despite himself. At least they had that in common.

He’d taken Jin Guangyao one of the many potted plants Mingjue had gifted him in the autumn along with the tea. When he arrived, Jin Guangyao was writing at a table piled high with books, something else they had in common. Even though Xichen still found Jin Guangyao more cautious than necessary, always correcting his course to avoid any offense, he was easy to talk to, never at a loss for words, and Xichen’s dislike thawed. It was harder to hate someone he didn’t know.

However, the first time Jin Guangyao visited Xichen, more than two weeks after he arrived, was entirely without warning on a bath day. Jin Guangyao had shown himself to be so unflaggingly proper in every other way, his unannounced appearance at the tent entry came as an unwelcome shock. It wasn’t precisely rude, but it set Xichen off balance, and he had to scramble to recover.

“Zewu-Jun, the camp is so large! There must be a thousand tents. This one struggled to find this tent, only to discover how near it is after walking down many other rows,” Jin Guangyao laughed, bright and winsome as he shook snow off his clothes, and it helped erase Xichen’s annoyance at being interrupted.

And then Jin Guangyao saw Mingjue sitting cross-legged on the bed, his still-damp braids loose around his shoulders. It was obvious the moment Guangyao noticed him, because his posture changed slightly, as though a rope was pulled taut inside his body, and he bowed respectfully.

“Ipira’orhew Ikira, this one did not expect such an honor.”

Mingjue was eating a plum, cutting into it with the sharp blade of a small curved dagger, and he nodded at Jin Guangyao with a smile. Xichen took that to mean he didn’t mind Jin Guangyao’s presence, so he invited the man to join them. Xichen had been playing the guqin before Jin Guangyao arrived, and he wasn’t sure if he should continue, but Mingjue grinned beseechingly at him.

“Edas ahora, will you finish the song?”

Xichen sat back down behind the instrument, settling his fingers against the strings. Jin Guangyao chose one of the large cushions in front of Xichen to sit on, but only after darting an assessing look at Mingjue that was altogether too interested.

“Zewu-Jun is a master musician,” Jin Guangyao exclaimed, his dark eyes alight with what looked like genuine admiration when Xichen finished a song about peonies fading in summer.

“Thank you, Jin-gongzi,” Xichen replied, unable to be informal in the face of this man’s unflinching politeness.

“Do you play?” Mingjue asked, laying back against the bed pillows and crossing his ankles.

He popped a piece of plum in his mouth and raised his eyebrows curiously. He looked relaxed and decadent, and, in Xichen’s opinion, gorgeous. Xichen was not surprised by the minute flare of Jin Guangyao’s nostrils and fleeting lift of his eyebrows before he shook his head regretfully.

“Only a little. This one’s skill is minor by comparison. My talents lie elsewhere.” He looked away with a flush, and added, “I write poetry, sometimes.”

Xichen played through two more songs before Mingjue stretched, back arched, arms above his head, catching both Xichen and Jin Guangyao’s full attention. He got up and kissed Xichen’s forehead, touching a thumb to his lips. “Da iko auha, Ahora’ipa.”

To Xichen’s surprise, he ruffled the top of Jin Guangyao’s head on his way out. “I see you, too, Guangyao.”

The look that passed over Jin Guangyao’s face was mostly baffled. But not entirely.

“He does have that effect,” Xichen murmured, trying to repress the flare of irritation.

Jin Guangyao instantly schooled his expression into neutrality. “He is different than this one expected,” he said flatly, and then added with a deferential tip to his head, “Zewu-Jun, may this one ask? What does Ahora’ipa mean?”

It was an interesting question, as Xichen was quite sure Jin Guangyao knew precisely what the endearment meant. But perhaps he was asking for the deeper understanding of the phrase, which Xichen himself was still not fully sure of.

“It means ‘well loved,’ and it seems to be the Ikarahu equivalent to Zewu-Jun. When my family arranged the treaty with the Ikarahu, one of the terms was that I would be given…” Xichen paused, trying to be mindful of the lie he is about to tell. “I would be given ‘equal status.’ I believe it is in acknowledgement of my rank as my father’s heir and commander.”

Although it was true that the contract specified that he was “given in equal status,” Xichen had never understood why he was granted a title, as he knew perfectly well the title was not part of the agreement for Wangji, nor was it part of the rewritten contract Xichen created. Perhaps it had been in an earlier draft of the negotiations, but to ask would make it clear that he deceived the Ikarahu without his family’s knowledge, and he was still not certain how that news would be received. If nothing else, it would disclose how he had lied to them, and he was not eager to face that revelation.

Jin Guangyao nodded thoughtfully, a small crease between his eyes. “It is a title, then. Undoubtedly one that has been earned, given the way it is said around camp.”

Xichen felt his cheeks heating, and he was quick to soften the possible insult that, despite their similar status and station, Jin Guangyao was given no title by the Ikarahu, “Ipira’orhew Ikira is fond of endearments for people he knows well. Ahora’ipa, treasured one, beloved man…it is just his way.”

Jin Guangyao smiled, wider than Xichen had seen before. “You are different than I expected as well,” he said, creasing the dimples into his cheeks.

The shift to informality took Xichen by surprise, as did the implication that Jin Guangyao had expectations of Xichen. How could he have known anything about Xichen other than gossip?

“Your brother sends his regards,” Jin Guangyao said softly, and Xichen jolted upright, standing before he could take a breath.

He dropped to the ground next to Jin Guangyao and gripped his hand. “You have seen Wan...Hanguang-Jun?” he asked, hoping, hoping.

“No, Zewu-Jun,” Jin Guangyao said kindly. “I wrote to him to congratulate him on being made heir of the Lan clan and again when my father...when I was asked to come here.”

He has already been announced as heir. Of course his father would not delay. Wangji must hate it, Xichen thought, and his heart sank when he realized that all he had done was lock his brother in a second prison instead of the first.

No, he could not believe that. At least at home, Wangji would have the chance for happiness with his archer. Here, there would have been no hope. Wangji was fair and just, and he would learn to be a fine leader of the Lan clan.

“Did he...send anything...for me?” The question feels childish, and he knew it was unfair to expect his brother to send a message when Xichen had not, but he was filled with an overwhelming sense of loss for the conversations he would never have with his brother. This was the closest he had been to Wangji in months; he couldn’t help asking.

Did he imagine the hesitation?

“No, Zewu-Jun, but he did say he had not heard from you since you left?” Jin Guangyao said tentatively, the question in his voice inviting Xichen to explain.

Xichen felt guilty for suspecting him of hiding something. It was Xichen who was hiding. He couldn’t even explain it. He couldn’t explain all the letters he wrote and discarded, the words he did not dare share with his brother. Wangji would never believe him. I am sorry I deceived you. I am happy here. And even if I was not, you are safe.

In the end, he had written only once to his father, shortly after his birthday, saying the words he knew would protect his brother and the Cloud Recesses. This is my choice. I am safe. Evidently his father had not chosen to share that with Wangji, which is an anger Xichen can not show Jin Guangyao. For the first time, he wonders if he made a mistake in not trying to convince Wangji that he was happy. He hadn’t wanted to drive a wedge between his father and brother, and he hadn’t been certain if Wangji would believe anything he said. No, he knows Wangji. He would be angry with Xichen for deceiving him, but he was prudent and thoughtful, and he would never endanger the Cloud Recesses. A contract was a contract, no matter how much he might hate it. Understanding of the ramifications and his natural cautiousness would keep Wangji from taking any action.

“I left abruptly and...I was angry,” he said, hoping Jin Guangyao would accept his equivocation. “Anything I said now would be a disappointment to them.”

Jin Guangyao’s peals of laughter sounded forced from him, and he covered his mouth. Xichen raised his eyebrows, puzzled.

“Oh, Zewu-Jun,” he finally managed, “It is only that...I have never considered what it would be like to not disappoint my family.”

It was such a terrible thing to say, Xichen felt it must be the truth. He wanted to reassure Jin Guangyao, but he didn’t know this man or his family, and he didn’t want to appear either cruel or condescending.

“My brother would not be disappointed in me, but I did not want to put him in the position of having to tell my father that I was not unhappy,” he said, exchanging a truth for a truth.

“No, you do not seem to be.”

Jin Guangyao looked around the tent speculatively and Xichen flushed. He was not ashamed. He was not. He had not expected to ever feel anything but loneliness and resentment, and what he had found was, at the very least, friendship and acceptance. Xichen didn’t think there was any nobility in seeking out unhappiness, but it was difficult to admit his contentment to this man who was his countryman.

“Of course, I mean no judgement, Zewu-Jun,” he added, understanding Xichen’s reaction. “But if you would like the company of someone who can, perhaps, appreciate your situation, I would take comfort in having a friend who can appreciate mine.”

The words meant one thing, Xichen thought. But the slow smile and the sidelong look said something quite different indeed.

Notes: Da iko auha, Ahora’ipa. = I will return, Ahora’ipa