“let me do this for you.”
“let me get that for you.”
“don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.”
when nanami was around, it was like being watched by a hawk. not in a bad way of course, just not a way you're probably used to. he is always on it, taking care of everything from beginning to end, hell bent on you not ever lifting a finger and actually bar you from doing it, even behind his back.
"seriously, kento, I can do it myself!"
"absolutely not, you worked all day, when you come home, I take care of you."
you try to bargain, dishing out facts that he, too, has a full time job that usually pushes him to the brink of exhaustion that he may or may not recover from, yet, here he is, elbows deep in dough, insistent on making pasta from scratch. according to a recipe that you may have briefly mentioned weeks ago that you wanted to try.
you tried to pick up the knife and dice the tomatoes or turn on the stove, he shoos you away.
"this is getting out of control, kento."
"you can help me by taking a nice warm long bath, honey."
nanami knows what he's doing, the majority of the time. but will he ever express that he fumbles from time to time? never. not that his ego is inflated, but because he has prided himself for being to care for you boundlessly.
so when you leave the bath and find kento with his hand in a bucket of ice water, you realize something have gone south in the kitchen.
"kento! what happened?!"
"nothing to worry about my l-"
"enough! tell me, now."
your stern voice and attitude stun him, he's never seen you like this before. his behavior is downright concerning, he hasn't always been this way though. sure, he loves by serving, but he isn't always this stubborn or ridiculously protective. you have always cooked together, why would it be different this time, or the last few times within the past couple of months. nanami isn't unreasonable, but he can be if something pricked at his pride.
"I may have burned myself with the hot steam."
"may have? your skin is having a terrible reaction! for a smart man you can be so clumsy sometimes."
"it's not that bad."
you glare.
"okay, it's pretty burnt and it hurts."
"I bet it does."
you slowly pull his hand out from the ice bucket and lead him to the kitchen table and command him to sit still when you fetch the first aid. his palm is raw from the burn and his face twists in pain when you apply some pressure.
there isn't much conversation exchanged between you and him, but something is definitely hanging above your heads. kento seems to be closed off to it, but you're willing to get to the root of things.
"you haven't been yourself lately."
silence.
"I feel like this is not just about providing for me, something happened, and it affected you."
kento looks saddened by this. you are spot on. something did happen.
a few months ago, during a dinner party amongst friends, kento found himself begrudgingly involved in unpleasant conversations with his colleagues, the way they audaciously questioned his ability to care for his partner when he was always away on work trips or spending extra time at work. he took it to heart, kento questioned himself. he realized, that even though his colleagues were terribly annoying and invasive, they made some considerable points. he made the executive decision to fully take over, spinning a complete 180 on you. at first you thought it was sweet, until it became authoritarian.
"that's really how you feel?"
"have I been absent to you, y/n?"
you contemplate for a while, you truly wish he is around more, but you always understand the nature of his job.
"I do wish I can see you more often, when you had that 2-week long vacation, I was able to spend such amazing quality time with you, and it was awesome, but I also understand how your job is. I didn't want to come in between that."
"so I have been absent." he moaned defeatedly.
"please don't blame it on yourself like this, it's not healthy, I still love you, kento."
"this is all my fault, y/n, I should have been there for you more."
truthfully, you wish he was, but once again, you are both stuck between a rock and a hard place.
"have you been doing all this to somehow compensate?"
"is it working?"
he is trying to humor you, although at quite a horrid time, you still crack a smile.
"I think it's very kind of you."
he sighs.
"please, forgive me, my love. I became what you called a workaholic, I tried to get more hours to provide for you, only to come short in other aspects."
"I'm not an unemployed housewife, kento."
“this isn’t my way of saying that you are incapacitated in any way, i just wish that you didn’t have to worry about anything,” he groaned from the incessant gnawing of the antiseptic on his burnt wound.
“kento, this is a partnership, you’re not my servant and i’m not a spoiled brat,” he felt a little silly, nanami knew this fact yet he felt impotent in this sense. he opened and closed his lips, hoping to get his point across even further but nothing seemed good enough at theis point, he’s done fighting.
“whatever you’re going to say, it’s not going to change the fact that i love you,” you silence him.
“then can i say that i love you, too?”
“that, you can.”
⭒˚‧ ︵‿⭒ཐིཋྀ ཐིཋྀ⭒‿︵ ‧˚⭒ ⭒˚‧ ︵‿⭒ཐིཋྀ ཐིཋྀ⭒‿︵ ‧˚⭒ ⭒˚‧
note: PHEEeewww… it’s really good to be back :33 this piece shall be the redebut as it is one of my cuter fics. going back with smut pieces after such a long hiatus didn’t feel right so – soft nanami is always the way to go!! more content will be coming soon (smut included >.>), stay tuned ( ˘ ³˘)
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for folks who don’t follow them on instagram— ally beardsley wrote part of an op-ed in the washington post for the 50th dnd anniversary about a moment playing dnd that really stuck with them and i wanted to share it here!
“a character’s journey — and my own”
I was an aspiring comedian in Los Angeles and had just landed a salaried job at the comedy website CollegeHumor. My co-worker and friend Brennan Lee Mulligan was looking for six comedians to create a show that would be like an at-home game of D&D. Why not? “Dimension 20” became a weird punctuation to my day.
I remember there being too many rules to remember. I kept turning to my friend, Brian Murphy, to ask which dice I should be rolling. I wasn’t paid overtime, but I loved the group and was having a lot of fun.
For the second season, I had my sea legs. I created a character for the campaign who was transgender. I had started going by the gender neutral they/them pronouns at work and among friends, but sourcing hormones or getting surgery seemed equal parts expensive and invasive. A fun thing about fantasy is stripping away the crunchy, real-world limitations and asking yourself: “What would I do if I could do anything?”
That season’s arc for my character, Pete, was extremely euphoric for me. I had described him as a trans cowboy you might see at Burning Man, and the artist drew him dressed as a freaky Hunter S. Thompson in an open shirt to show his top surgery scars. He has wild magic — uncontrollable and dangerous in the game mechanics — which we used to explore the painful chaos of leaving a family that doesn’t accept you.
Since then, I’ve started testosterone HRT and had top surgery. It’s funny to listen back to myself playing a character who had transitioned in ways I hadn’t. It’s full of inaccuracies that make me smile. Pete takes a testosterone pill every day; I now know it’s a weekly injection or a topical gel. I see my face, one wrapped up in playing something so new but instantly right. It was like an oracle. A near-future me who has health insurance! Who’s talked to their mom about being trans and even spent a week post-top surgery on that mom’s couch in Temecula, Calif!
As I started transitioning my appearance, seeing that in front of the camera felt raw. I was starting hormones, and my voice was cracking. Realizing it was all being recorded felt naked at times, but it has been really nice to talk to fans and friends about how important it is to see someone that looks like you taking a big risk on themself.
With Pete, it was really important to me to tell a story other than the dramatic lead-up to a medical transition. So we started with him having just gotten out of surgery, but that’s all you see of that process. Part of his backstory is that he doesn’t have a relationship with his transphobic parents, and before shooting the first episode, I felt sick to my stomach. I’ve been on a journey with my parents, and our starting place didn’t have much common ground. When my character meets with his father, it felt as though I was actually running into my own on the street.
Brennan could sense that discomfort, and as my character’s dad was about to call Pete by his deadname, Brennan shut the interaction down, surrounding his dad with bubbles that carried him into the sky. Magic is the power and freedom to manipulate your reality, and you can banish the awful voices in your life — let them swirl away into the air.
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/•Harmless Fun 6•\
Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six | Further Parts
Everyone comes clean.
About this: some explicit talk about consent and non-consent.
-
Johnny insists that it will be easier for the three of you to talk in the ruined bathroom, which is how you end up in the bathtub. A part of you thinks that Johnny should be the one in the tub (he’s the one limping, after all), but he had taken the broom from your hands and insisted on sweeping up the remains of the ceiling tiles himself.
“Don’t need two good legs to work a broom, hen. Be reasonable,” he’d said with a roll of his eyes.
Simon keeps busy at the other end of the bathroom sopping up the standing water that threatens the bedroom carpet. With nothing to do and no one who would accept your help, you had minimal options: sit on the closed lid of the toilet or curl up in the empty tub.
At least in the tub you could draw the curtain shut and retain a little dignity.
“The bathroom needs major reconstruction,” Simon says, the close quarters and tiled walls making his voice sound as if it is coming from every direction. Not that you mind, with a voice like his. You take in this news while examining the bottles of soap and shampoo nestled in the nook of the wall, reaching out quietly to take one and pop the cap open. God, it smelled like Simon did after his post-run showers, woodsy and clean. You inhale deeply. “So we’re down to one bathroom for the next few weeks.”
Your belly swoops with relief: they weren’t kicking you out. You peek out of the shower curtain, soap held out of view, and maybe it is partly that outlandish relief that has you saying: “That’s not so bad.”
Simon stares, kneeling on the tiles, wet towels all around him. “It’s an invasion of your space and privacy.”
“Yeah, who knows the sort of girly things you keep hidden in there,” Johnny says.
Simon shoots him a dry, unamused look.
“I don’t mind sharing,” you admit (thank God you’d hidden the only real incriminating item before Johnny had used your bathroom). “My last roommate and I had to share while we lived together. We just locked the door and tried to respect each other’s time. I’m sure the three of us can make it work.”
“We’ll have to,” Simon says, sounding about as thrilled of the prospect as a man might be of the electric chair or other unwilling euthanasia. He turns his dark, all-seeing eyes on you. “What is it that you needed to talk to us about?”
You pull the curtain shut abruptly. With care, you sneak the soap back into its former position and hope that Simon won’t notice it’s been moved. Your hand shakes while you do. You’re horrified to feel tears of embarrassment and shame filling your eyes, grateful for the cover of the shower curtain as you palm the tears away before they can fall. Even if they weren’t planning to kick you out, it made you feel no less shameful about what you had done on the car ride home.
“I just feel terrible about last night. What I did to you, Johnny—and you, Simon—it, it was trashy to say the least. I mean, it was predatorial—”
The soft rasp of the broom’s filaments against the floor stops.
“Preda—? Alright, I’m coming in there.” Johnny draws the curtain back, frowning down at you. You don’t want to imagine the sight you make: curled up in his bathtub, eyes red from rubbing them raw. He turns himself sideways and sits on the ledge, wincing as he does so. Ever attuned to Johnny’s needs, Simon reaches out and helps him adjust his leg into a more neutral position. “What’s all this? Yer no predator.”
“You tried to stop me.” Your voice is thick, cracking at the edges.
“I didn’t say no, not in so many words—”
“You didn’t say yes either, Johnny,” you remind him. “If a man had done to me what I did to you last night, you’d break his teeth in.”
Johnny’s face twists into a grim expression. “Aye. Maybe you’re right. Maybe it wasn’t right what you did—but I get a say in it too, don’t I? I get to decide what happened to me, and I don’t feel like I was taken advantage of. Jesus, I could have stopped you if I hadn’t wanted it so bad.”
“I think you’re—” you pause, blinking as Johnny’s words make it through the fog of your own self pity. Your eyes flicker to Simon, unsure if you had heard correctly. Simon gives nothing away, his eyes reminding you of cool dark rooms, if only you could find a lightswitch to illuminate them. “Johnny, did you just say—”
“Is it easier if I shut the curtain again?”
“Might be.”
“Alright.” Simon helps him stand and Johnny tugs the curtain shut again. “Let me preface this by saying that you can say no to the likes of us, fer any reason, explained or otherwise, and there won’t be any consequences! But since the day you moved in, we’ve felt a chemistry with you that we haven’t felt with many people before, and we wanted to know if you felt the same way.”
Chemistry. That was one way to put it. Overwhelming attraction and unshakeable fondness was another. While you knew that the three of you got along well enough (and more than once Johnny had referred to you all as friends), it loosened some tight, anxious muscle in your chest to know that they felt the connection too. It wasn’t just wishful thinking on your part; there was chemistry.
“What sort of chemistry?” you ask, adjusting yourself into a more comfortable position.
“There’s more than one?” Simon mutters.
“I mean, there’s chemistry in a friendly way or a more romantic way—”
“A sexual way,” Johnny suggests. You jolt and accidentally bang your knuckles against the porcelain of the tub. Hissing, you cradle them against your chest, mulling over his words.
Your mouth feels almost too dry to speak.
“Right. Well—yes, I feel…that.” In the back of your brain, a tiny fire burns, fueled by disappointment. You try to smother its flames before it grows out of control and threatens to burn up your higher reasoning. Not every relationship needed to be centered around romance; this was the twenty-first century. You were perfectly within your rights—some would consider it smart, even—to have physical relationships without the complication of emotional aspects.
You’ll keep working on convincing yourself. In the meantime: “So you’re saying you want to have sex.”
“I’m open to taking things slow and seeing where they lead,” says Johnny.
Dimly you remember something: some night spent curled up on the couch, your head lighter than air, listening to Johnny and Simon talk beside you. Something about their conversation reminded you of this moment, but the more you tried to remember, the more it slipped through your fingers like sand.
“All of us?” you ask, noticing Simon’s pointed silence.
There is shifting on the other side of the curtain. You see shadows moving through the thin plastic and fabric, like the two of them are trying to have a silent conversation with only hand gestures. It does nothing for your nerves. At length, Simon says: “Not me. Just you and Johnny.”
Your heart does a strange dip, like a bird changing course and soaring toward the ground. You feel strangely, stupidly hurt by this, though you couldn’t put into words why, and you wouldn’t want to even if he asked. It was within his rights to say no. Hadn’t you just learned that lesson?
“Are you sure you’d be okay with that?” you ask. Simon had never come off as a jealous sort of type (and you imagine that a jealous type wouldn’t last long with Johnny anyway, not with the way the other man liked to flirt), but everyone had a limit. You weren’t sure that if the situations were reversed you could be so affable.
“Someone needs to keep a clear head,” he says. “I’ll be the designated driver.”
Maybe he’s right. If you truly plan to sleep with Johnny, maybe it will be best to have someone in the apartment still as detached as possible.
“Thanks, I guess,” you say, trying to force a little humor into your voice. “I think I proved last night that I don't make the best decisions under the influence.”
“You did make the best decision,” he says solemnly. “You called me.”
Johnny’s hand appears from around the edge of the shower curtain. Grinning, you stretch out to touch his fingers with your own and lace them together. It’s a little awkward, but most new things are. His hand is warm and gentle, and you could get used to it.
“We’ll take it slow, yes?”
“Alright.”
“Glad we’re on the same page. Lunch?”
“Definitely on the same page there.”
“Get out of my tub then.”
-
“Hey. Stay back.”
Feeling a little like a student asked to stay behind after class, you watch with envy as Johnny slips into the living room to call for takeout, leaving you alone with Simon. You don’t get to spend a lot of alone time with Simon, and that time is usually spent in companionable silence as he reads. Nerves bubble in your belly, wondering what else he could have to talk to you about that he wouldn’t want to say in front of his husband.
“What’s up?” you ask, aiming for nonchalant.
“I’ve got a rule,” he says. “One for you.”
“I’m all ears.”
“Don’t fall in love with Soap.” You blink up at him. Of all the things you could have imagined him saying, this hadn’t been on the list—though perhaps it should have been right there at the top. “I know how easy he is to love. But I also know that this is going to end at some point, one way or another. Let's not let it end up a mess. That’s my advice. As the driver.”
“Just friends,” you clarify around the knot in your throat. “Believe it or not, I was thinking the same thing. This is all just for fun, right?”
Simon stares at you hard, like he is trying to see through you to the door behind you. You hope your face is arranged into something neutrally appropriate but know that if it isn’t, it’s already too late.
“Right,” he says at length.
-
The night ends softly, with something mindless and easy on television. Simon sits on the floor with his back against the base of the couch, head against Johnny’s knees. Johnny lays outstretched across the couch on his side, one hand reaching down to rub at his aching thigh now and again. All while you sit curled up in the armchair, watching the television half as often as you watch the two of them.
They’re beautiful. There’s something about the way they contrast with each other, the darkness and the light, which you find aesthetically pleasing. Sometimes Johnny slips his fingers into Simon’s hair and scratches softly at his scalp, and you get to watch the relaxed, blissed-out expression creep over Simon’s face at the stimulation.
The domesticity of it does something to you. Deep in your chest—in between your legs. It’s time for you to call it a night; there’s a toy in your room with your name on it (not literally). Joints creaking from disuse as you stand, both their heads swivel to look up at you, making your heart squeeze fondly.
“I think I’m tapping out for the night,” you admit.
Simon wishes you a goodnight.
Johnny says: “Where’s my goodnight kiss?”
You feel zapped, suddenly wide awake. “You…want one?”
Johnny nods. He tries to sit up but can’t find the leverage, face twisting in pain.
“No,” you tell him, “You stay there, I’ll come to you.”
Walking around the coffee table, you come to kneel beside Simon at Johnny’s head. Your chest feels tight, blood thrumming with nerves. You can’t help but glance toward Simon who hasn’t changed positions except to angle his body towards you both a fraction more, his eyes dark and shadowed.
“Alright, hen?” Johnny asks.
“Yeah,” you murmur.
He reaches out to cup your cheek, his palm warm, thumb stroking along the length of your cheekbone. Steeling your nerves, you lean down and press your mouth against his. His lips are soft, warm as you give him the simplest, chastest kiss. He keeps you there, searching for more, tilting your head with his hand until the angle serves him best, parting his lips until you can taste the lemon from the tea Simon had shared with you both earlier that night.
His tongue sweeps across your bottom lip and your thighs shake, weak in the knees from holding yourself up. You grip a fistful of the couch cushion beside his head and meet his tongue with your own, a soft little dance, familiar steps but a new partner. He exhales, the breath fanning across your cheek, and something about that makes the ache between your legs so much worse.
You break away. Your fingers find his hair, soft dark strands that slip through your fingers like silk. You whisper: “Johnny.”
“Just a little more, please,” Johnny begs, and you can’t say no when you want it so bad.
You meet him open mouthed, shifting on your knees to make yourself more comfortable—and you brush against Simon seated beside you. It has you pulling back, sucking in a breath. You can’t help but look at him with wide, guilty eyes, only to find him watching you with quiet, earnest intensity. His mouth curls at the edges into the ghost of a smile, though why he would be smiling, you couldn’t say.
Meanwhile, Johnny sighs, brushing his thumb against your lower lip.
“Chemistry,” he says, mouth red and kiss-swollen.
You silently agree.
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