#shout out to oli for reference photo

[camakkuma]

Day twelve Theorionsound!

This look so long to sit down and finish but I'm pushing (≧口≦)ノ

[reggiesflannel]

You're You - Joe Sugg Imagine

Summary: You begin to doubt yourself when Joe's 'fans' take it upon themselves to point out that you're a little different.

Word Count: 1533

Warnings: None?

Author's Note: This particular piece is very important to me as the request came from a person who is extremely special to me, and I wrote the character traits as being quite similar to hers. So this is for her, because she matters a lot to me even if I'm a shit friend and we never see each other because we're lazy and live almost four hours apart.

For as long as you could remember, you’d loved tattoos.

Growing up going to heavy metal gigs, it didn’t come as any surprise that you managed to emulate that style of fashion, and the body modification that came with it. You had gotten your first the day that you’d turned eighteen, and had amassed quite the collection over your body in the following years. It had never bothered you that sometimes people would cast disapproving looks your way on the street, some people just didn’t like tattoo’s and that was their problem, not yours.

Things changed after you’d met your boyfriend, Joe, though. Suddenly you were consciously choosing clothing that would shield your tattoos, brushing off questions from your friends and family when they asked when you were going to get another one, all because of the attention that Joe brought with him everywhere he went.

You didn’t care that Joe’s name brought a reasonable amount of notoriety with it, you had met him backstage at an awards show after all. You had never been bothered by the celebrity that he brought with him, because you weren’t with him for that, you were with him because he was Joe – he was a dork and made weird faces in the background of other people’s selfies and you wouldn’t have it any other way.

No, it wasn’t the fact that Joe had a following that bothered you, it was just a handful of his fans that bothered you. As soon as it became public knowledge that you two were an item; when you started making more frequent appearances in his snapchats and vlogs, then the somewhat psychotic girls that followed his every move had something to say about seemingly everything that you did. Within minutes of you appearing in his snapchat that first time, they had tracked down your Instagram and own private snapchat accounts and you went from having a few hundred followers on Instagram to having thousands. And they all had something to say.

You usually just ignored the rude and unnecessary comments that would appear under photos of you and your friends on nights out or cute pictures of your cat that popped up on your feed sometimes. However, sometimes things went too far, and you couldn’t always just brush it off. Naturally you had never told Joe any of this, fearing that he would want out if he thought that you couldn’t handle a relationship with him, and he was one thing you were not willing to lose. So you pushed it down and pretended everything was perfectly fine.

You tended to stay out of Joe’s videos where you could, but had agreed to be in a video titled ‘Couple vs Couple’ with Oli and his girlfriend, wherein you both battled to see which couple knew each other better. You and Joe had ended up losing to the pair by a measly two points, but it had been a fun afternoon. You had known Oli’s girlfriend from long before you’d even met Joe and the rest of the buttercream squad, as they referred to themselves, you had actually been the one to push her and Oli towards each other, seeing as both of them were quite shy and non-confrontational.

As per usual, the video had blown up on YouTube, reaching over a million views within twenty four hours of being posted. While most of the comments seemed to reflect the humour of the video and how competitive you all were with each other, there were more than a few comments that were less than complimentary over you and how you didn’t look quite like the other three. The more you ruminated on it, the further into the comments you read.

You didn’t need them to point out that you were different to Joe and the girls he’d been linked to in the past. You knew that you were a bit different to the girls that the rest of the boys were generally linked to as well. You could recognise that you weren’t as clean cut or smooth around the edges as Joe’s sister, Zoe, was, and your skin wasn’t as unmarked as the rest of the boys who had adopted you as one of their own. You weren’t the only one with tattoos though, Jack had a fair few and Caspar had recently gotten one as well, you didn’t understand what was so bad about them.

You were so deeply invested in the comment section that you didn’t even hear the front door of your apartment open, nor did you hear your boyfriend’s voice calling out for you. It wasn’t until he appeared in the doorway of your room that you were pulled from your reverie.

“Babe!” his voice snapped you out of your self-deprecating induced daze, your eyes flashing up to him in alarm, before you plastered a large fake smile on your face. “What are you concentrating on so hard?” he chuckled as he crossed the room quicker than you would have liked, with you not being quick enough to shut the page you were on. “Are these the comments on my new video?” he asked curiously as he pried the computer out of your hands, not without your resistance however.

“I was just seeing what they were saying …” you trailed off awkwardly as you absentmindedly scratched your nails against one of the tattoos on your upper thigh. You hadn’t intended for Joe to walk in while you were doing this, nor were you planning on being 127 pages deep in the comment section.

Joe let out a soft sigh as his eyes flitted over the words filling the screen, his heart breaking for you as he read the awful words that people who claimed to love him were writing about the person he loved most of all. He turned his head to look at you, unsurprised when you didn’t lift your eyes to meet his, he wondered how long you had been dealing with this on your own and why he hadn’t noticed before now.

“They know nothing,” he told you softly, enjoying the way the corners of your mouth quirked up at the reference to one of your favourite shows, “Seriously, nothing that they say is even close to being relevant, love,” he said as he wrapped an arm around your waist, tugging you into his side gently.

You finally lifted your eyes to meet his, and were happy to see only the purest sincerity shining in them, but something was still eating at you. “They’re not wrong though, are they?” you pointed out, tugging the hem of your oversized jumped down over your thighs subconsciously, “I stand out when we go out as a group, I’m not like you or Zoe or any of the others, they make a valid point, I don’t exactly fit the mould of the girls you usually go for …”you trailed off, wishing that you could somehow go back in time and prevent this conversation from happening.

“Is that what you think?” Joe chuckled lightly, his thumb rubbing circles into your hip gently, “that you don’t fit in with any of us?” he asked, his laugh only growing when you nodded slightly. You elbowed him in the ribs and crossed your arms at his response, making him wrap both arms around your waist and pull you into his lap.

“Babe, we’re a gang of hooligans, none of us fit in anywhere. Conor makes dumb faces and Caspar’s naked all the time, Josh is a giant and Jack thinks he’s ripped, Oli gets into a strop if someone spills his tea on him and Mikey laughs too hard and too loud about the dumbest of things,” he grins as you begin to smile a little bit.

“Furthermore, I didn’t ask you to be my girlfriend because of your tattoos, I asked you because you’re you,” he emphasised, cupping your chin in his hand as he dragged your face up to his, “those people on there,” he started, gesturing to the computer that lay abandoned on the bed, “they don’t know you, if they did, they’d know that you’re the sweetest, kindest, most hilarious person in the world; don’t be ashamed of who you are just because of what some of the jackasses on the internet have to say,” he finished up, relieved to see you still looking at him with a shy smile on your face.

“Your tattoos are a part of who you are, and I love who you are,” he murmured softly, leaning his forehead against yours, “besides, why on earth would I want you to be like my sister?” he snorted, making you pull back and shove his shoulder, laughing loudly as you crawled off the bed, making your way out of your room and hearing him shout behind you, “Oh come on babe! This person just said that you and Y/F/N are just cover ups until Oli and I get married!” he called, making you snort in laughter at him.

People were gonna say whatever they wanted and that was their choice, but they didn’t have any power over how you felt about yourself, that was yours.