#simply because the gay club is back

[wintersportism]

love how žiga made exactly one (1) appearance in the world cup so far, did not make a single good jump and now he’s on the team for four hills

[itsgivingmami]

Hi there! I have a request for established Rhea x Reader. Backstage at a WWE event, reader finally tells someone off which Rhea thinks is HOT. Rhea says “ ‘atta girl” all low and growly which READER thinks is hot and then they fuck in a closet or something 😇

No pressure if this doesn’t resonate with you. Thank you!

I loveeeee this🤭 Thank YOU for the request💛

Gay… and Taken- Rhea Ripley

Likes, comments and reposts always appreciated!

You were seething, white hot rage flowing through your body in waves. Your chest felt like it was stuck in a vice grip and everytime he continued speaking it would tighten.

The first time, you had thought nothing of it. He was friendly when you were introduced and you had shadowed him briefly when you were still learning backstage. He was polite and kind, as were you. When he asked if you wanted to grab drinks you’d figured it would be with some of the other crew members and politely declined.

The second time, you’d realized exactly what his intentions were. Nothing bad or malicious but you had figured out that him wanting to spend time with you had nothing to do with work, or included other people. So when he invited you out for dinner you had gently but truthfully told him you already had dinner plans.

The third time, you feared for his safety. In the first couple weeks of your relationship your girlfriend had become particularly possessive. So when you and Rhea walked into the building together happily chatting only to be interrupted by far too many questions about your weekend you could feel irritation falling off your her. When he asks you to lunch during your breaks you let him know that they’re not scheduled at the same time before quickly walking further into the building with Rhea on your heels. She finds a dark corner to remind you exactly who you belong too, as if you’d forget, and goes on with her day.

The fourth time you’re on your way to Rhea’s truck when your name is called from behind you. You stop and turn thinking maybe you forgot something but the look on his face says otherwise. He offers you a ride to which you simply say no thank you before leaving, hoping you’re assertive enough that he takes the hint. When you climb into the passenger Rhea is already watching you, a confident smirk on her face. She’s been encouraging you to tell him to fuck off, thankfully her jealousy had been quelled. “I know,” you sigh as she chuckles,

The fifth time, you decide, is the last. It’s a split second decision as he’s standing beside you rambling about this club he’s been wanting to go to. You’re slowly getting angrier, had four declines not been sufficient? All you want to do is semi discreetly stare at Rheas ass from across the room and his voice is really harshing your mood. “Apparently it’s pretty exclusive but I think you and I-“

“Dude!” You finally snap your arms uncrossing and coming up to press against your temples. He’s gone quiet, seemingly bewildered by your outburst. “I’m gay,” you explain shortly and you clench your fist as he looks you up and down,

“You sure?” He asks and you laugh, actually laugh in disbelief.

“Pretty sure I’m gay,” you tell him, you can feel eyes from the room on you but you hardly care, “and taken,” you add

“You could’ve said that,” he tries to back track and you scoff, running your hands over your face.

“I shouldn’t have to!” You challenge, “you should’ve listened when I said no the first time, no just because I’m unavailable,” he walks away from you silently and you feel the room go back to its normal chatter. As you’re debating if that was the right thing to do you feel someone walk behind you.

“Atta girl,” comes a husky voice in your ear accompanied by a growl before your girlfriends walking towards the door in front of you, you core aches at the tone and your feet move on their own to follow her. Speed walking you search for any sign of Rhea which shouldn’t be difficult with the tattoos and towering over most women. Damn her long legs, you’re internally groaning when you’re pulled harshly backwards. Everything’s dark around you as you hear a click, then your body gets pushed against the door stuck between it and a body you know all too well.

“Rhea,” you chide but her lips on your neck cuts you off, the sensation causing a warmth in your stomach to bloom,

“Fuck I’ve been waiting so long for that,” she murmurs and her inked hands find their way under your shirt and move upwards to cup the swell of your breasts, your back arches off the door into her touch and she chuckles,

“I wasn’t too much of a bitch right?” You ask and you feel the attack on your neck cease, she stares right at you as one of her hands retracts from your shirt to cup the side of your jaw.

“Baby girl listen,” her tone is serious and you nod as much as you’re able with her grip on your face. “That was one of the hottest things I’ve ever seen I mean-“ Rhea swallows thinking about it realising that she can’t explain it in words and goes back to your lips kissing them roughly.

“Rhea,” you moan in need as she’s pulling up your shirt to trail kisses against your sternum, lowering onto the floor.

“Yes?” She asks innocently and you open your eyes to glare down at her, “ah ah you take that attitude back to him,” she warns and you gently thread your hand in her coal locks, a nonverbal apology. In response she undoes the button to your jeans, pulling them and the black lace beneath them down and tossing them aside. The kisses to your thighs are feather soft and you moan,

“Rhea please,” you ask her and she feels your grip on her hair tighten slightly. So sensitive. She grins against your leg as she runs her nails down your skin eliciting another sound from your lips,

“So needy,” she degrades but it hardly sounds negative when she’s whispering it to you like a vow. Her hand runs down the length of your leg before her grips wraps around your ankle, she lifts it gently and throws your leg over her shoulder happily finding herself face to face with your glistening center. “You’re soaked,”

“You growled,” you respond and a light slap hits your thigh in warning, “sorry mami,” she smiles hearing her favourite apology before diving forward to lick the length of your cunt. You moan above her before your hand comes up to cover your mouth, all to aware of the closet she’s dragged you into.

“Let them hear you pretty girl,” she tells you and you shake your head, bad move. Determined to hear you again she inserts a finger into you and your head hits the door with a thunk. Rheas chuckle is soft as she watches you start to come apart. “He wouldn’t bother you if heard you scream for me,” she teases you as she adds another finger. Her mouth moves to work on the bundle of nerves that are already throbbing and you feel like your legs might give out when you feel her mouth.

She’s watching you through her eye lashes and she wonders why you two hadn’t done this sooner. The way you look sprawled against the door makes her want to photograph it for when she’s travelling without you. It’s not the first time she’s devoured you like this, more often than not you could find her kneeling on the shower floor while you writhe against the shower tiles. The sound of people moving outside the door spurs her forward as you continue to whimper against your own hand.

“Be good and come for me pretty thing,” she commands and her words send you hurling into an orgasm. She fucks you through it, enjoying the way your face changes while you ride the high. She stands quickly and as soon as you come down your body crashes into her own. “So good darlin’,”

She helps you redress and you part with the promise that you’ll reciprocate at home, not that Rhea cares whether you do or not but if it makes you happy to please her so won’t say no. She heads back before you, allowing you an extra second for your legs to stop shaking and your fuzziness to clear. When you come back in the man who you’d told off is standing by catering talking to some woman you’re debating on saving from him. When you catch him staring you down your gaze hardens ready to defend yourself before you see him gulp and turn away. You guess he took what you said seriously.

Rhea smiles when you look at her proudly and you’re so cute she swallows the sentence she was about to say. It’s incriminating evidence but she feels her own sense of pride watching you stand there with her lipstick print on your neck beside a decently purple hickey. She should tell you, you’ll probably be upset with her later, the thought causes a smirk to cross her lips. That didn’t sound so bad.

[poebot]

At The Gay Bar

tags: bouncer!abby, established relationship ellie, fem!reader, jealousy

a/n: no one wrote it so i wrote... based on this post i made a while back. i haven’t stopped thinking about it. sorry that i haven’t written anything in ages :( exam season was kicking my ass

taglist: (people who said they wanted to see this in word form) @rubycruzsbitch @elsgirl

“you’re serious... you’ve never been to a gay bar before?” you wore an incredulous look on your face as ellie awkwardly shrugged, trying to look nonchalant about it.

your girlfriend wasn’t the type to frequent nightclubs. if it was up to her, she’d be spending tonight high as a kite sat by her gaming set up. but you’d insisted that she had to tag along with you because it was a ‘mandatory queer experience’. ellie knew deep down that you just wanted to get shit faced and have her close by simultaneously. you always ended up blowing up her phone whenever you got too drunk at parties, whining that you missed her and begging her to turn up or take you home. one of the drawbacks she’d learned to accept of dating an extrovert.

“cmon. you’ll have a good time, i promise.” you leaned in close, dropping the pitch of your voice and staring into her eyes. her ears flushed pink as she slid her toned arms around your waist to draw you in even closer, and you knew you’d convinced her.

the next hour or so was spent with you trying on different outfits and forcing ellie to help you pick one. her opinion was pretty useless, mostly consisting of monotoned ‘looks great babe’s as she shamelessly ogled you dress and undress in front of her.

“dude. you’re such a creep.” you sighed, shimmying your way into a different skirt. ellie rolled her eyes, approaching you from behind to help you pull up the zipper. “what, i can’t admire my girl?” she murmured, peppering warm kisses across the back of your neck.

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

the heels of your platforms clack noisily against the sidewalk as you finally reach the front of the queue, the harsh bass of the music vibrating from within the club. excitement thrummed through your veins and you smiled brightly at ellie, squeezing her warm hand in yours. she smiled sheepishly back, returning your squeeze.

“gonna need to see some ID, princess.” a deep yet feminine voice captured your attention. you looked up to meet the gaze of the bouncer only to be truly taken aback by her appearance. she wore a fitted tank top that emphasised her ridiculously built upper body, her thick freckled arms folded across her chest and her expression stern. just as you were admiring her long hair neatly braided at the back of her head you realised she noticed you staring.

you squinted to read the blonde’s name tag, abby, before averting your eyes long enough to tap ellie’s arm, motioning for her to help you fish out your ID from your purse. you didn’t notice the way her eye twitched at the pet name. ellie dug into the bag and slapped the card into abby’s hand with more force than was probably necessary. abby didn’t react, simply flipping it over.

the woman analysed your license in silence with furrowed brows and her mouth downturned. you began to panic slightly, your glossy lips pursed. there was a slight chance that she was gonna turn you away. man, would that be a bummer. “it’s real.. pinkie promise.” you say in an attempt to lighten the mood. abby’s briefly looks up at you to meet your eyes before continuing to examine the ID card that you absently realise looks comically small in her large hands. ellie sighs impatiently, crossing her arms and staring up at the sky. you shoot her a look that screams ‘not helpful, babe.’

“hmm. can you smile for me?” the request caught you slightly off guard and you paused for a moment, chancing a glance at your girlfriend. her expression almost made you burst out laughing; you’ve never seen ellie look more aggravated. her eyebrows were raised in disbelief as she tries to make eye contact with abby to assert some form of control over the situation. when that doesn’t work, she lets out a perplexed ‘dude!’

the bouncer continues to completely ignore her and focuses her gaze on you, her brow raised expectantly. you relent. anything to get out of this line quicker. they’re playing your favorite song for fuck sake, and the longer you’re stood out here the higher the likelyhood ellie will change her mind about the night. so you beam up at her, flashing your best smile and abby’s stoic expression finally cracks into a grin of her own.

“yeah, there’s them pretty dimples. get in there baby.” abby motions into the bar with a wink. against your better judgment, you can’t help feeling flustered by the line. your mouth hangs open slightly as you stare up at her, rooted to the spot from the shock. you’re finally broken out of it by ellie shooting her a disgusted scowl and ushering you into the darkness of the bar. you try to school your expression before she notices the dopey smile spread wide across your face.

[denwritesandcries]

Later you'll laugh about this – H.C

Pairing: loser!hazel x fem!reader

Summary: Later you would say that you only got into this stupid situation because of a cotton candy. PJ and a cotton candy. A goddamn cotton candy you bought for Hazel Callahan.

Word count: 4,3k.

Content: cursing, fake dating, pining, kinda angst, insecure!loser!hazel, toxic situationships, dialogues. lots of dialogues, reader having a beef with pj, idiots in love.

Note: This fic is supposed to have 3 chapters, I didn’t mean it to be so long but I couldn't stop adding new things to the story and now it's a series cause it got out of control. So basically, Hazel is a loser and the reader is a loser for her. That's it. That's the plot.

English is not my first language.

>>

Coming across Hazel's sad face pressed against the precariously clean table you always sat at in the cafeteria, with her puppy eyes seeming to wander forlornly every damn day was becoming really depressing.

“I… I simply don’t understand.” Hazel starts and you let out a tired sigh when you turn your head to follow her gaze and find PJ gesturing to Josie in the lunch line, because of course she would be talking about this. Again. “It’s been weeks since the game and she just acts like nothing happened between us.”

Stella-Rebecca squeezes her shoulder in solidarity and you all exchange a knowing look without her noticing. None of this is really new, but it's getting more and more painful to watch now.

“I thought she liked me too, but lately she’s just acting like…”

You sip your juice audibly, absentmindedly nibbling on the straw in the box: “A bitch?”

Hazel gasps in alarm, “I wasn’t going to say that!”

You notice Sylvie stifle an incredulous laugh next to her as Isabel scolds you with a slap on the shoulder.

“Ouch! 'M sorry, Haze, but we've talked about this before.” You say gently, brushing aside a strand of dark hair that has fallen on her face. “PJ is a bitch. She's a bitch to everyone who's not Josie and especially to you, it's always been like this. You can do better.”

“Like who?” she whines and you huff.

Maybe it might seem a little rude the way you're talking now, but Hazel is your best friend and you've been having this conversation for months, even before the fight club, and it seemed impossible to give her any advice and talk some sense into her head. After the game with the big fight against Huntington and your group of friends grew, things only got worse, because now there are finally more people to hear about her longtime passion.

It turns out that there is no one to listen to you about your long-time passion for her.

It's ridiculous, sitting here next to your best friend, listening to her talk about another girl. The girl she likes.

Still, all you really take into consideration is the way her eyes shine against the sunlight streaming in through the windows, the way her hair falls in thick, unruly locks across her face, the way she rolls up her sleeve of the colorful jacket wrapped nervously around her wrist and the dreamy, yearning tone of voice with which she speaks so desperately about what ails her.

Isabel turns her attention to Hazel, looking almost apologetic: “Y/N is right. You have a crush on her since, what, third grade? And she’s being a bitch with you even after you guys made out in front of, like, the entire town.”

Annie leaned on her elbows to join in the conversation, holding a half-bitten apple in her hand indignantly: “She’s literally acting like a straight guy!”

Everyone at the table looked at her at that.

“What? It's true! She’s giving all those confusing signs: sticking her tongue on your throat after barely apologizing for calling your mom a whore, being nice with you for a while and then getting right back to her bitch act without giving you a word about it.” Annie rolled her eyes, “Aren’t gay people supposed to be more mature than that or whatever?”

Hazel shrank even more in place: “Guys, please.”

“Girl, what are you even talking about—”

“You could, you know…” You rest your chin on your palm, “Ask her what you guys are.”

Hazel seemed to suffer in anticipation just imagining this, “I don't want her to move further away and stop being my friend by insinuating anything. I just wanted her to be nicer.”

You shrug, looking away from her tiredly to unwrap your grilled cheese, “Then I’m afraid everything will stay exactly as it is, sweetheart.”

“Yeah, way to show some self-respect, Haze.” Annie added sarcastically.

Hazel dropped her weight back against the table, putting her face in her hands dramatically and you silenced everyone when you saw Josie and PJ coming towards the table, pulling Hazel a little closer and putting your arm around her back to push her away when PJ sat on the other side of her.

You change the subject quickly and you choose to ignore the look Isabel and Brittany exchange as Hazel gratefully leans into your touch.

“Why are you whining like that?” PJ asks, looking disdainfully at the scene. “Aren’t you going to eat anything?”

You thought you could get through the rest of the day, or at least your lunch, without any more arguments, but that unfortunately doesn't seem to be the case.

“Leave her alone, PJ.”

Hazel sighed, finally sitting up straight to cast a disgusted expression at the tray in front of her.

“I would,” she said, “but now my fries are all cold and limp and the texture gives me shivers.”

Already feeling another nasty comment coming, you decide to interrupt quickly, shrugging: “I’ll trade you for my grilled cheese.”

Hazel immediately brightens: “Really?”

You can't regret your impulsive decision when she looks so cute like this, pushing the package towards her and giving a little smirk in response to PJ's annoyed look.

“Yep,” you highlight the P at the end of the word, “I'm sure.”

Mind you, it's not that you hate the girl exactly. It's just that you hate the way she treats your best friend, which makes you not like being around her most of the time.

And maybe – just maybe – you're a little bitter, because you make a point of giving her a smug look from across the table to the sound of Hazel's excited exclamation of 'you're the best!'.

Your lunch goes without a hitch other than your sad fries and Isabel's eyes burning holes in your head and you're happy to remain quiet and listen to your friends talk for the rest of the time.

Isabel still looks thoughtful when the bell rings and everyone starts to leave for their respective classes. Luckily, the two of you shared the next period, so you could just go ahead and ask her if she had anything to say.

…Which ended up not being necessary, as Isabel pulled you aside with Hazel as soon as she said goodbye to Josie while you looked at each other in confusion as you were suddenly practically dragged through the hallways under Hazel's protests because that was definitely not the way for her to go to class – and your own too because, damn, the cheerleader had a surprisingly strong grip on your arm.

“Isabel, what the hell are you doing?” You ask, perplexed and worried, narrowly avoiding bumping into a random kid carrying a stack of books.

“You know, Hazel, about your problem,” she blatantly ignores you, “if you want PJ to actually choose to be with you and ask you out for real, you could, like, just make her jealous.”

You don’t know why you’re hearing that, “What?”

Isabel shrugged, “It worked for me and Josie, and we know they think kinda alike.”

Hazel stopped abruptly in the middle of the hallway, interested: “I’m listening.”

“Oh man.” You groaned.

Your head is hurting just at the concept of such an absurd idea, with the three of you standing in the empty hallway, talking about some crazy plan.

“Josie only made a real move on me when she saw me getting back with Jeff,” Isabel grimace in disgust as she recalled, “She got all tearful and jealous when the group broke up and I started ignoring her. That made her act.”

Hazel seemed to drink in every word of what she said, nodding her head at the reasoning as Isabel explained it as if it were the most logical thing possible.

You leaned your head against a locker behind you, crossing your arms around your body defensively. If Isabel brought you along for the conversation, it's because you're definitely part of what she's planning.

“And you didn’t bring this up when we were all arguing about it because…?” You asked.

“I would have said something sooner, but you two were so busy having a moment that I didn't want to interrupt.”

You gave the finger to the sound of Isabel's laughter and Hazel dismissed what she said with a gesture, even though you noticed how red her face turned.

“This is so stupid.”

“It’s brilliant!” Hazel grabbed your shoulder, shaking it excitedly, “It might actually work! What do you have in mind?"

Isabel shrugged, “You just have to, like, get someone to make out sometimes and show it to her face.”

“Like…?” Hazel asked, not understanding what she was getting at.

But you did.

“Like her,” she pointed at you.

“Oh.”

Oh, no. No, no, no, no.

“Oh, but no freaking way!” you exclaimed, face burning with embarrassment, “Don’t bring me into this. It’s not my problem!”

“But didn’t you want to help her?” Isabel asked, sounding too innocent and you realized that this was what she had been planning from the beginning.

“Yeah, with advice!”

This is stupid. This is really so stupid. You should have been in class for a good few minutes now, paying attention to anything on the board and counting down the remaining hours so you could put it all away and leave, because it was Friday, there were no club meetings to be at and it was your movie night with Hazel. That shouldn't change.

“No, she’s right.” Hazel walked in between you, shaking her head in denial: “It’s not happening. I thought about, like, flirting with someone in front of her, maybe making up a date or something.”

“PJ’s not gonna buy this. You, suddenly showing up with someone new? Very desperately obvious.” Isabel pointed out, “Besides, just flirting with someone probably won’t hold her attention long enough.”

She was right. Isabel was painfully right and you knew it. You two, by the way Hazel's expression changed. By the way she seemed to be seriously considering it.

“But I,” she stammered, “I can’t just ask someone to do that for me and use them like that.”

You took a deep breath, “Thank you!”

Isabel cast one last glance between you, before finally raising her hands in yield, “Well, it was only a suggestion. It's just that you guys already act like a couple anyway so I thought it would make more sense.”

She turns and resumes her walk down the now completely empty hallway – only now do you wonder where the hell the monitors were –, leaving you and Hazel standing there like idiots with distraught expressions, before shouting over her shoulder:

“At least it would be more convincing!”

Your movie night starts late and turns into a sleepover because you all got detention for being so late to your periods and now it's too late to be worth going home anyway, so you stay.

In all the years you've known each other, you've slept at Hazel's house more times than you can count as much as she has at yours, you know this huge place inside out. It's like your own home too. There's nothing weird about curling up in her ridiculously large bed, wearing an old sweatshirt you left there and a pair of sleep shorts she lent you, pulling the covers up so they wrap around you perfectly, and getting as close as possible with her laptop between you, playing some animation on it. Is not strange. It's familiar, it's recurring.

Except it isn't.

There's a tension, a slightly awkward silence that has hung between you since you left school and were alone for the first time since that conversation, that damn conversation, that leaves you nervous and upset with the expectation that something horrible is about to happen and change everything between you. Because Hazel seemed too quiet and thoughtful for someone who wouldn't do anything.

God, you don't like this, this stillness and how it affects you. You don't like how you can't help but notice the way her shoulder presses against yours every time she takes a slow, deep breath, how warm and soft her arm feels where it touches your skin, and how comforting is the weight of her chin resting on your shoulder. You hate it even more to see the soft features of her face illuminated by the blue light of the screen, making you squirm nervously because Hazel is all you can focus on.

And the thing you hate most, without a doubt, is the fact that she must not have noticed any of these things, nor your behavior in general. There's no reason to do it, nothing should be strange to her. Because she doesn't like you that way.

You don't pay attention to a single minute of the movie until it's over and Hazel is moving to turn off her laptop, snapping you out of that trance you've put yourself in without realizing it. She gives you a smile and stretches her arms above her head, tired.

The two of you exchange a few words as you get ready for bed, getting around the elephant in the room, and then you're in bed again, this time without any lights, Hazel staring at the star-decorated ceiling and you with your back turned to her, fidgeting for what feels like the thousandth time and trying your best not to make things even more awkward. Anyway, you can't sleep, even with the tiredness of the day and you know she can't either.

“Hey,” Hazel calls out to you in the darkness, her sleepy voice suddenly startling you. “It was, uhm, really crazy what Isabel suggested, right?”

“Yeah,” You replied hesitantly, turning to her to see what she was getting at: “But you can’t stop thinking about it.”

She hums in agreement to her statement and turns to you as well, keeping her eyes on the sheet.

“It’s just that it seemed too good to pass up the opportunity, you know?” Hazel's hand traces meaningless patterns on the fabric, “As if in those fanfics and books where these things happen, the couple always ends up together and, I don't know, I guess I just felt like I was finally going to give a step and do something about it.”

The way she looks so upset and frustrated breaks your heart and you resist the urge to move even closer and take her hands in yours, seeing Hazel sad feels terribly wrong no matter how many times. You want to help solve her problem. You wish the problem didn't even exist in the first place, but man.

It would be so, so much easier to just be a good friend and support her if you didn't have these stupid feelings bottled up in your chest. Make crazy plans, smile and wave and encourage her to chase the person she wants. It would be enough.

“Things will work out, Haze.” You say it instead, because saying whatever is going on in your head right now might just make everything worse.

“You're right,” she turned around again, gesturing with her hands nervously: “I probably wouldn't even be that good of a girlfriend anyway. I wouldn't know how to plan dates or give gifts, or act all cool and smooth when I'm with her. What if I'm too embarrassing? What if she found me too annoying and ended up breaking up with me?! I think that would be worse. Being romantic seems so hard.”

“I think it should be something unconscious if it’s with someone you really love,” you shrugged, playing with a loose thread on your clothes, “But, no, you’re not like that. I mean, I think you'd be more of the kind of girlfriend who makes thousands of kind gestures to show that she cares without even noticing it, like, writing notes, opening doors, bringing flowers or something. At least I’d like to get flowers, I don’t know.”

Hazel turned her head to you, meeting your gaze hesitantly, with eyes so bright and hopeful that your heart swelled so much it could pop out of your chest at any second.

"You really think so?"

"Yes." You sigh, “Yes, I’m sure.”

The weekend had been relatively peaceful, with you having returned home by the morning after a very bad night of sleep that you spent mainly staring at the ceiling with Hazel sleeping next to you, the rest of the day passed in a blur and now it was Sunday night.

Sunday night and you and your friends were all gathered at the city fair, some event organized purely because there weren't many other ways to entertain yourself living in a small place like that, but there was a lot of junk food and stupid games to spend your money on, so of course everyone always went to it.

Everyone except Hazel, apparently, since she's late and you and your friends are all gathered together, waiting for her. Oh, and there's a cotton candy almost melting in your hand from where you're leaning against Brittany's fancy car.

Later you would say that you only got into this stupid situation because of a cotton candy; PJ and a cotton candy. A goddamn cotton candy you bought for Hazel Callahan.

“Hi, lads!” And there it is the source of your teenage angst.

One look and you know there's something wrong with Hazel. You haven't seen her since that night, but she seems a little distraught, panting and with her hands resting on her knees from running up to you.

“Finally!” Sylvie exclaims, fixing the beanie over her head, “The fair started already, I want to go before they take all the good prizes from the game stalls.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to hold you guys here,” she waves awkwardly and the group dismisses without further comment, you all heading towards the colorful event.

You walk beside her, noticing how nervous and distracted she looks, eyes focused on the floor and hands twirling the rings between her fingers. She doesn't seem to have noticed your presence.

“You're late.” You say, without the expected bite because you're honestly more worried than angry right now.

She squeaks in fright, making some of your friends look over the shoulders to check on you. She recovers quickly, however:

“No, I'm Haze.”

You let out a nasal laugh at the completely adorable, stupid, and alarmed expression on her face. Of course she would answer something like that.

“Here,” you hold out the candy toward her, trying your best to appear indifferent. “I got you one before the line got too long.”

Her jaw dropped a little before breaking out into a shiny smile: “Oh, you've got my favorite!”

You shrug, “Just don’t let anyone throw it away this time.”

“I won’t.” Hazel swears.

She seems to be strangely close to you as you walk together, shoulders side by side, your hand would probably brush hers if it weren't properly hidden in your pockets and Hazel still has that nervous look of someone who has something to say.

You turn your head to her when your friends decide to stop on a stand, frowning and placing a hand on her arm gently.

“Are you okay, sweetheart?” You ask and she gulps.

“Yes, uhm,” she clears her throat, shifting her weight from one leg to the other, “It’s just that I really wanted to ask you a favor.”

For a moment you don't even think twice about it, leaning back on her playfully.

"A favor? You know I don't do anything for free Haze,” you smirk, patting her on the shoulder, “Win me a stuffed animal or a goldfish and maybe I'll consider it.”

She doesn't smile and respond wittily like you expect, instead she looks even more shy, shrugging her shoulders as if she wants to disappear and folding her hands comically with the cotton candy behind her back.

“Look, I know we’ve already talked about this, but please.”

Oh, so it's about that then. Seriously.

“Haze,” you sigh.

“Please,” she repeats, “I just need you to—”

And that's when things derail out of your control.

“Guys,” Josie waves, pointing to the others, “let's go before Sylvie picks a fight with the stand dude.”

You hadn't even realized how long you spent standing around talking, but now PJ is staring at you, looking somehow uncomfortable.

“Are you done flirting there? We have more things to do, you know.” She points indifferently.

Hazel looks pleased for a moment, a determined look covering her face, which makes you suddenly nervous. A determined Hazel is an impulsive Hazel.

You clear your throat, “We weren’t.”

PJ rolls her eyes at your response and then she approaches, with Josie watching the exchange hesitantly before taking a step back and resigning herself to returning to her girlfriend, lucky girl.

PJ is too close, in a way that makes that bitter, unfair feeling come back to you, she reaches out to grab Hazel's cotton candy, just like she did at the last fair you all went to.

Except this time Hazel stops her from doing it.

“Hey, don’t.” She takes the candy out of her reach easily, looking upset, “Y/N gave it to me.”

"So what?" PJ protests angrily, “You act like she's your girlfriend or something.”

Oh god.

Hazel looks deep into PJ's eyes for a moment and whatever she was looking for in her expression, she seems to find exactly what she wanted.

“That—”

Oh my fucking god, this was exactly the opportunity Hazel had been waiting for. The opportunity to make an impulsive decision that may or not ruin your friendship.

“—Is because she is.”

You look at her in alarm, grabbing her free hand and squeezing in warning, which perhaps wasn't a smart choice of action for what you wanted to avoid.

“What?” PJ flicks her gaze between you and your hands repeatedly, as if she didn’t expect such a turn of events, “What?”

Hazel lifts her chin and pulls you closer, as if challenging her indignation, but you see the exact moment her breath hitches as you open your mouth to question all of this, her eyes meet yours, nervous and pleading, begging you to just play along.

And then, because that girl in front of you is annoying as fuck, because your best friend is convincing you with her sad puppy eyes, and because you spent 8 dollars on some stupid cotton candy, you stay quiet and let PJ think whatever she wants.

“Fine,” she huffs and turns around, “Whatever.”

You feel Hazel trembling slightly against your grip and she sighs audibly in relief when PJ finally leaves.

“Dude,” her shoulders slump tensely, “Thank yo—”

“Dude?” You repeat in disbelief, dragging her behind the nearest empty corner, “What the fuck were you thinking about?”

Hazel flinches at the sound of your screams, letting go of your hand instinctively, the false confidence from seconds ago immediately disappearing.

“I panicked!” she exclaims.

You inhale deeply, “Haze, I told you not to get me involved in this.”

“I know, I'm sorry,” she looks away, completely embarrassed and you notice that she inevitably dropped the candy along the way as she reaches her hands out to grab both of yours. They're cold and sweaty against your skin.

You know she didn't mean any wrong and you can't stay mad at her anyway.

“Why didn’t you talk to me again before making a scene like that?” You ask, as softly as you can.

"I was trying! That's what I was going to ask you. I—” She lets out, “Ineedyoutobemygirlfriendforawhileplease!”

It came out too quickly and all as if it was a single word, but you're sure you didn't get it wrong.

Hazel keeps talking to stop you from protesting – which is exactly what you were about to do –, letting go of your hands and gesturing:

“I had even prepared a speech to convince you that it was actually a good idea, seriously! It would only be for a while, just a little. But I was desperate because earlier Stella-Rebecca told me that Josie told Isabel that PJ is interested in that short cheerleader who just joined the club and I wanted to cry because I'm losing my chance and wha—”

“Haze, sweetheart,” you interrupt, grabbing her shoulders to stop her, “Slow down, okay?”

She mumbles another silent apology, squeezing the rings between her fingers and you don't know what to do. There's a warm feeling in the pit of your stomach from when Hazel pulled you close earlier, almost protectively, when she stated that yes, you two were a thing, and for a moment you think about being able to have moments like that with her every day, in her acting like this around your friends and you showering each other with affection all the time and a yearning in the back of your mind to show her that you could actually be a good partner for her.

“It was… it was pretty ridiculous, my speech,” she begins again, “I was going to say something like 'come on, don't you want to think about this a few years from now and be able to laugh and brag about how you were the one who helped put together your friend with her crush like that?'” Hazel chuckles awkwardly, “But I think it sounds too arrogant.”

Hazel tugs at the sleeves of her sweater anxiously when you don't answer, it's been getting a little cold lately and she's wearing the sweater you gave her for her birthday last year. You feel yourself giving faster than you could think.

“You know I wouldn’t ask that to hurt you, right?” she questions hesitantly and you instantly know it's true. “I just wanted to show that I’m worth it.”

You sigh, defeated, “You’re worth it, Haze.”

Hazel looks at you hopefully as you take her hand, intertwining your fingers and pulling her into the crowd.

"Let's do this." You agree.

Screw it. Maybe you'll laugh about this later.

[bisnes-socks]

okay let's go bananas 🍌

what jumps out at me about bananas is how fruity it is. in many ways lmao.

first of all, i want to talk about his skill once again. because these lyrics are skilled.

so in rap music there are rhyme schemes and there are thematical schemes. a rhyme scheme is about rhyming words and how you alternate between different rhyme types. a thematical scheme is about what you're talking about and how you bake one lyrical theme into different meanings through metaphor. most rap songs will have multiple thematical schemes through the song, and holding on to one thematical scheme for several bars let alone verses takes skill.

well. bananas holds on to one thematical scheme through the whole entire song. and that theme is, basically, fruit and vegetable.  there are ten different fruits and vegetables mentioned in the song and multiple of them are not only there to help a rhyme scheme but because they have metaphorical or innuendo meanings that fit the lyrical content, the subject of the song. they further the plot, so to speak.

on top of that, i'd say at least three of them also work to multiply the fruit theme and lift it into a different level, but i'll talk about that more a bit later.

he is really skilled at using this fruit and veg scheme to "further the plot" and paint a picture. so let's look at some of the bars.

"pokella on mandariinit kainalossa" meaning "the bouncer has mandarins under his armpits". if you understand the line, it's not only hilarious but informative. if you don't, let me explain. this line refers to a finnish slang term mandariinikana, mandarin chicken. mandariinikana is someone who pretends and acts like their biceps are bigger than they actually are. mandariinikana will hold their arms a bit further away from their torso, to make it look like their muscles are so big their arms simply cannot just rest at their sides and touch their body - but in reality, there is no muscle there. in fact, what is actually between their "biceps" and their torso is just air, empty space. so much space you could fit mandarins in their armpits. hence -> "pokella on mandariinit kainalossa" is not only a clever bar in the fruit scheme, it also tells us so much about what kind of character this bouncer is. a very smart line!

"en ole greippi, en ole lime, olen makea ja onnelline" meaning "i'm not a greip fruit, i'm not a lime, i'm sweet and happy" excellent use of the fruit scheme! what does this bar tell us? greip fruits and limes are sour. he denounces being sour, and underlines that he is sweet. which, by the way! in finnish makea works the same way as cool in english. if someone is makea (or makee) that means they are cool. i think he uses makea here to mean both sweet and cool at the same time.

second verse "aamulla kurkut silmillä ja mun otsaan on kasvanut tatti" again, such a cool and informative way to use the thematical scheme. "aamulla kurkut silmillä" meaning "cucumbers on my eyelids in the morning" paints a vivid picture and gives us so much information about where we are in the story. "otsaan on kasvanut tatti" now we're once again deep in finnish territory but i'll try. tatti otsassa (bolete mushroom on the forehead) is a cleaner version of kyrpä otsassa (cock on the forehead) and, do not ask me where this comes from, but kyrpä otsassa means you're very annoyed and put out. so again, using the thematical scheme in a clever way, he has informed us of the mood in the story now.

and so we get to the eggplant. now. eggplant, peach and banana (and the way he's been using bananas in his live shows..) are what i meant before, when i said some of these fruits are opening up another level to this fruity thematical scheme.

because like.

this song is pretty gay. and i don't think that's an accident.

it's not just that the bouncer is checking him out, it's that he notices. giving the bouncer the good old look back, hm? and his DM's are full of eggplants, dick pics. is this a gay club, where everyone is "going bananas"? because hear me out.

jere would have grown up at a time where fruittari was a term used to describe certain type of men. and yes the word fruittari comes from the english word fruit. fruittari men weren't necessarily gay, they were just sort of.. male fashionistas? at a time where it was, i guess, so unusual for men to care about their looks that it needed a term lmao.

now like i said, fruittari men weren't necessarily gay, but then that word isn't really used anymore, not in that way. and i would argue that to refer to any man as any type of fruit, in today's finland, would come across as calling them gay.

so for him to build an entire fruit scheme to describe both himself and other (male) charcters in the song? yeah that's kinda fruity in the gay way lmao.

now, i'm not saying this is a coming out song. i'm saying he's clever to recognise the implications of the fruit and veg scheme and to lean into it, rather than trying to no-homo the scheme. i don't think he cares what people make of his sexuality. i mean hell, it could be a coming out song! or it could just be him being gay for 3 minutes for the thematical scheme of it all. who knows! either way it fucking slaps.

my unpopular(?) opinion is that bananas doesn't have a deep secret meaning behind it, i think it's about what it says on the tin: partying. but of course, when you look at the placement of the song on the album, you can make conclusions if partying also works as a metaphor of some sort in the album narrative. or it could very well be the sort of partying that ultimately has had to end, part of the toxic lifestyle that snuck into his life after the whirldwind of 2023.

however. this song sounds kinda old school to me, for multiple reasons. the sound itself fits this new käärijä era, but thematically and lyrically this also has the ghost of like välikuolema or even like puuta heinää or something. this sounds like the bratty yapper käärijä.

and towards the end of the song you hear these synth hits that remind me of early 2000's, idk like in da club by 50cent etc. so even more old school.

and there's one detail that kind of dates this song. at the very end he says "paita auki Copacabanas". i don't think he means the actual real copacabana in brasil, i think he means a club in helsinki that had a famous dance floor that could fit like hundreds of people. and the club was known for letting absolutely no-one skip the queue, because you could not reserve tables on the restaurant side of the establishment after nine - and in the beginning of the song he is queuing.

well, copacabana hasn't existed in years. i don't remember exactly when it closed, but a new club opened to where is used to be in 2016, so it's been at least 8-9 years. 

so maybe it's a nostalgic song? or maybe it's about slipping into old habits? i don't know.

what i do know it's damn clever either way.

this post is dedicated to anon, who asked me about bananas, got me thinking about it, and so i wrote like the entire thematical scheme bit at 1:30 am

[halfwayunder]

𝐒𝐡𝐚𝐦𝐞

Summary: Some old tweets come out and it puts you between a rock and a hard place.

Warning: Internalized Homophobia

Word Count: 2.6k

Arsenal Training Centre, St. Albans

///

You could sense the tension in the air before you'd even stepped through the doors.

...

The past few days had made you a bit of a nervous wreck. The result of some Sam Kerr fan account on Instagram posting a collection of old tweets you'd made nine years ago, back when you were 13.

Old, profoundly homophobic tweets.

And while some fans, mostly those already partial to you, had taken that substantial amount of time and your youth into account, many others had not. Instead, they hurled abuse alongside calls for the club to drop you at the earliest possible opportunity. You'd even tried disabling comments on your most recent social media posts before quickly realizing that the comments would simply move to older ones. Despite how bad some of them had become, you still found yourself not quite willing to disable the comments on every post you had ever made.

It was your own fault anyway. You had been signed by Arsenal a few months ago, having spent the years before that going from one mediocre team to the next until your international performance in Australia had seemingly caught the attention of several larger clubs, the Gunners included. You'd been positively over the moon when your management agency had called to give you the good news. It should have been your big break, and for a period of time, it was, but a position in such a prestigious club came with a level of increased publicity that you hadn't been fully prepared for.

You knew that you should have purged your Twitter before the contract had even been made public, but you'd long forgotten about those posts, those awful comments, and bigoted 'jokes' that your massively insecure thirteen-year-old self had felt the need to put out into the world to try and convince everyone that you were certifiably straight. To convince yourself in some deluded way that you did not frequently lose sleep over the increasingly intrusive and borderline distressing thoughts that plagued you every time you were around some of your friends at school and the teammates at your youth football academy.

Those thoughts just hadn't been you, of course. Because you were straight.

Or, at least that's what thirteen-year-old you had wanted to think at the time.

In the teenage years that followed those tweets, you had eventually been able to come to terms with your sexuality. It had been a slow, long, and painfully drawn-out process, but while the influence of your conservative family had worked to reinforce the close-minded worldview you had been raised with, being around so many openly gay women in your football career had ultimately proven to be a much stronger force in your life. To see that contrary to what you had been told, these supposedly evil and degenerate people were in fact perfectly ordinary and typically far kinder than the 'just' and 'moral' types you had been surrounded by in your childhood.

But, while you had gradually been deprogrammed from the more outwardly hostile and bigoted elements of how you'd been brought up, you had never quite gotten around to being proud of who you were, to being able to let yourself embrace what you felt and to let yourself be happy. Even today, all these years later, you still struggled to imagine yourself feeling the warmth of another woman, a woman you could love as more than just a friend, and a woman who you could feel comfortable telling the world about.

So, you had simply tried to ignore your feelings. Even as you went from teenager to adult and semi-professional to professional, you resigned yourself to a world in which love was an impossibility, where every teasing question from a friend about your romantic endeavors was expertly deflected with a non-committal answer and a change of topic.

You had learned to be happy for the women in your life who were openly gay and celebrated their relationships sincerely like a good friend would, but you could never deny yourself the reality that every time a close friend announced their new partner, you would feel a twinge of remorse, pain that was sourced from fleeting, quickly suppressed thoughts of a life not lived, an opportunity not taken, and a romance denied its potential. It was a sad way to live, but as sad as it was, the thought of telling the world that you were gay was even worse. It had always been worse.

...

And so now, as the sliding doors of the training centre's lobby parted, you found it a difficult task to keep your nerves from becoming overwhelming.

Management had already spoken to you about the tweets and the response on social media to them. Fortunately, no proper news outlet had put out an article on the 'situation' yet, but the club's PR people had seemed pretty nervous that eventually, one of them would. You'd told them that you hadchanged since you were thirteen and that you'd be more than willing to put out an apology. But, ultimately, their advice had been for you to simply stay quiet and hope it all went away on its own. Something that you had been less than thrilled to hear, as if you were ever confronted by a scenario in which it didn't just go away on its own, and eventually you were told to put out an apology, it would likely be too late by the time that you did.

"Morning, Y/N." you were taken away from your thoughts by the young woman at the front desk, Catherine. She was smiling, but you could tell it was a bit of a sympathetic smile, like the woman was trying to show that she was on your side. You appreciated the sentiment, of course, but being treated differently at all because of this was only making your nerves worse.

"Heya." you tried to greet back casually with a smile of your own, and despite your best efforts, it came across as an 'I know' type of smile, a visual confirmation that you acknowledged what had been happening on the Internet these past few days, and her small attempt to make you feel better.

You had almost passed her, ready to head deeper into the large facility when you abruptly stopped and asked, "Any of the other girls here before me?" To which the shorter woman behind the desk nodded, her demeanour steady in its sympathy towards you, knowing why you would be asking. After all, you were on a team with two gay relationships within it, let alone the number of players who just swung that way in general. And aside from the occasional joke or tease (the latter of which often hurt you to an extent that none of your new friends could possibly know), you were pretty certain that none of them actually thought you were a part of that category.

None of the girls had messaged you in the past twenty-four hours, which, while a little uncommon, wasn't an immediate tell that you had been made a pariah. The last message you'd gotten had been from Steph asking if you were available for a coffee date on Saturday, and that had been just over a day ago. Late enough to have been after that stupid account had posted those screenshots, but early enough to have been before many people knew about it.

Fuck, this was really getting to you.

You continued your way down the corridors of the training centre, each heartbeat feeling a little heavier than the last as you drew closer to the locker room. Knowing that at least a few of the girls would be there this early in the morning, getting changed or having a shower or just socializing as they waited for others to arrive. You wondered if they were talking about you, and if they were, what they were saying. You were wondering if they had already agreed to shun you, or even speak to Jonas about getting rid of you. Fuck, this was fucking getting to you.

You gripped the handle of the bag slung over your shoulder a little tighter as you approached the locker room and took a breath before opening the door, a hundred different scenarios having crossed your mind from the time you'd left the lobby to now.

Stepping into the locker room, the atmosphere was a stark contrast to what you had braced yourself for. It was business as usual—some of the girls were chatting casually, others were prepping their gear. For a fleeting moment, you allowed yourself the hope that perhaps they hadn't seen those tweets or had chosen to ignore them.

But as you made your way to your locker, you could feel eyes on you. Some were quick glances, laced with uncertainty or curiosity, while others held longer, more contemplative stares. No one said anything directly, but the air was thick with unspoken questions and possible conclusions. It was hard to tell.

You kept your head down, focusing on getting ready. The sound of your locker door clanging shut seemed to echo louder than usual, and as you changed into your training gear, you pondered over your next steps. Ignoring the issue didn't feel right, but neither did addressing it without a plan.

"Hey," just then, your attention was taken by the sound of a voice that you quickly recognized as Katie's, her Dublin twang thick as always. The defender's expression was hard to read as she approached, and she sat down next to you, continuing after you replied, "Morning." Your voice was small, and your throat tightened a little, Katie was one of the closer friends you'd made in your somewhat limited time at the club, and her opinion mattered to you.

"Listen, I heard about the tweets," she started, and while you braced yourself for what might come next, you couldn't help but notice her tone being somewhat gentler than you'd expected, but still straightforward. "And, I wanted to say..." she continued, and you felt your heart beat a little bit faster. But, then she stopped, if only for a few seconds, and frowned slightly, though seemingly more to herself than to you. She looked like she was thinking about something, something about you, perhaps.

"Well, I don't know what I wanted to say exactly... but I'm here if you want to talk, or if you need anything, really."

Wait.

What?

You must have had a look on your face because the Irishwoman spoke up again. "Like, if you have anything you wanna get off your chest. I'm here for you, all of the girls are." She remained gentle, but you could tell that heart-to-hearts weren't exactly Katie's style (not that this surprised you) from the way she looked a little awkward, but her sincerity remained all the same.

Breathing just the slightest bit faster, it took you another second or two before you replied, "A lot of the girls?" One of your brows lifting curiously. Was... she implying what you were beginning to think she was implying?

Did Katie know think you were gay?

"Yeah. We care about ya, dummy. And unless you really are some horrible bigot, nothing you say is gonna change that." Katie smiled at that remark and you couldn't help but reflect her, shaking your head lightly in response. "I'm not," you confirmed, your eyes connecting with Katie's. "I was just... different then... I was—" You went to continue, but cut yourself off, your breath almost hitching as you caught yourself at the last moment from finishing that sentence.

I was afraid.

You could virtually see the defender's gaze softening on you in real time and you couldn't bear the sight of it anymore, glancing away and turning your attention to your shoes. The locker room around the pair of you was beginning to fade into the backdrop, although you got the feeling that it hadn't just been Katie's eyes on you. Even as you observed the details of your trainers, you could practically feel the woman next to you's gaze wandering off every few moments to the others in the room, maybe looking for assistance, or trying to convey her unspoken suspicion.

"You were what?" You heard, and this time it wasn't Katie who spoke. It was Beth, who was standing a short distance away by her own cubby. Immediately proving that your heart-to-heart with Arsenal's number 15 hadn't been quite so exclusive, and the locker room's sudden silence ironically brought it right back to the forefront of your attention. Everyone was listening, and many of them staring as well. Was this what they had been talking about before you'd shown up? Had they been in here putting together dots you hadn't known existed? A longing gaze you hadn't suppressed or one too many comments about the eyes or legs of another woman that you'd thought would simply slip under the radar as casual observation? Were those tweets the final confirmation they needed?

Was this the supposed 'gaydar' you had heard about?

"Nothing." you retorted swiftly, shaking your head again as you reached into your locker to resume getting dressed. You hadn't really paid attention to the fact you'd stopped when Katie had come over to talk to you, but the girls didn't seem intent on letting this moment slip away, and you could see Beth approach from your peripheral vision even as you tried to focus on getting changed. You were beginning to almost feel trapped, though you were certain that the culprit behind that particular feeling was more likely to be yourself than your teammates.

"Y/N, we're your friends." Beth said, kneeling down to eye level, while Katie still sat beside you, staring into the side of your head with an expression that was unusually gentle and almost unnervingly so. You still couldn't look at her without feeling your throat close up.

"Trust me... none of us are going to react like how that silly little brain of yours thinks we might." she continued softly and with a warm smile, and now you knew. You knew that they knew.

Your head tilted slightly up to look at Beth, who was now squatted a small distance from you, hands clasped together and blue eyes looking right into your own. You could still sense the looks of the other girls on you too, only now you didn't feel that they were judging, far from it actually. Your leg bounced up and down nervously, and you didn't even have it in you to try to stop it. You felt like you wanted to cry. Why was this so hard? Even now, when it was clear that everyone in the room knew. You just couldn't say it.

Your eyes started to glisten as the first tears threatened to push their way out, and you gave Beth a small, sad smile. Your throat began to hurt in the way that only a sob—or an imminent one—could provoke.

"I think you know already." you finally managed to get out, your voice as small as your presence in that room, and Beth only nodded. You could see some of the other girls nod too, but you were distracted by the feeling of Katie's hand taking your own and clutching it safely. A breath escaped you and it was shaky, uncertain, afraid.

"Yeah, I think we do, pet." the forward replied, closing the gap between you and pulling you in for a hug, her arms finding themselves at home wrapped around your torso. It was as if she'd given you permission to cry, the tears finally beginning to flow, as you buried your head into the other woman's shoulder, quietly sobbing into the fabric of her Arsenal jacket. Katie's hand tightened around your own, and you heard the sound of cleats and shoes closing in around you. You weren't sure how you were going to deal with this new reality moving forward, this world in which people other than yourself knew of your sexuality, but at least you wouldn't be alone.

///

End Notes: Hope you liked this one, guys! I promise not all of my fics will be angsty! I'm also in the process of writing an OC for a self-contained multi-part storyline. But, with how busy I've been with uni, who knows whether I'll actually finish it or not. Thanks for reading!

[the-whispers-of-death]

MINORS & AGELESS BLOGS, DO NOT INTERACT!!

Imagine going to a pride parade and bumping into Ghost.

He's obviously not wearing his mask or his gear because he's just out and about as a civilian, so you can see his scars and tattoos. He's intimidating even if you're the same height or taller, but there's something about him that draws you in.

So you simply apologize for bumping into him and then you compliment his tattoos, saying they look cool. He looks taken aback because people are usually too intimidated by him to compliment his tattoos, which gets him talking to you about the wonderful tattoo artist who did the tattoos.

You two are so engrossed with your conversation that you end up walking with him throughout most of the pride parade, asking him all sorts of questions about the symbolism and meaning of his tattoos.

As the day turns into night, you invite him to come with your friends to a nearby gay club and Ghost surprisingly takes the offer. He doesn't dance in the club, but he enjoys watching you dance.

Eventually, someone comes up to you and tries flirting with you despite you being uncomfortable, so Ghost comes over and scares off the guy. He's so close to you now that he's on the dance floor, still not dancing along to the beat of the music because he had just come to help you out.

And you pull him close when he tries to go back to where he was standing and watching you, practically begging him to dance with you as a way for you to repay him for helping you out.

Ghost reluctantly agrees, mostly because his body warms when his hands settle on your waist. So he dances with you, following your lead.

One dance turns into several, the rest of the crowd seemingly to melt away as you two dance against each other. You both take turns twirling the other, just doing whatever dance moves the music calls you to.

When it's two in the morning, you and Ghost stumble to his shabby flat because your flat is too far away and his is closer. You two collapse onto the bed together, too exhausted to do anything but sleep.

You wake up in the morning to him spooning you, holding you tightly.

Separator made by @une-femme-de-lettres

Reblogs are welcomed & appreciated! Asks are open, feel free to pop in and request something! (Check the rules in "Rules for Requesting NSFW" before requesting.)

[doberbutts]

We have a little free pantry in our front yard (toothbrushes, tampons, shelf-stable snacks bottled water, etc.), and I read a lot about people's experiences having one online before we put ours up re: expectations about potential interactions with people using it, but nothing prepared me for how weirdly aggro *other* people sometimes get about us having it as a form of "activism" as opposed to some other, more nebulous idea of broader social change. "Don't you think it'd be better to volunteer at or donate money to a homeless shelter, so those people can get the actual help they need?" "Shouldn't you focus more on trying to campaign for policy changes that will help more people than one street corner if you care about this problem?" "Isn't doing that a waste of time?" "Aren't you just encouraging people not to get help?" I do that other stuff when I can. This is something small I can do - in addition to raising awareness and fighting for bigger change, when I have the time and money and spoons - and at least, when I don't. It's crazy to me to approach social justice issues with such an all-or-nothing mindset as some people seem to. I've met enough of the individuals who utilize it to know it makes a difference in a very tangible way for the people directly around me.

No, I agree entirely.

Corny and dated as it is, there's a reason the saying is "be the change you want to see". If no one within the community puts in the work to fix the community's problems, even in little bits and pieces, then how will anything change? Raising awareness only goes so far. What happens when all anyone is, is aware? Aware, and still doing nothing, waiting for someone else to put in the work.

Sometimes, that someone is going to need to be you. You can't just wait around and wait for someone else to do it for you.

If I see someone digging through the trash for food, I wave them over and offer them food from my house or fresh food from a store or take them to a restaurant where they can order whatever they want. If I'm getting groceries and I see someone very obviously homeless struggling to pay for their food, I tell the cashier to add it to my bill. No one starves in front of me. Ever since I stopped needing to rely on food stamps, no one starves in front of me.

This past summer I saw someone splayed out on the sidewalk in 95F weather in direct sunlight. I couldn't tell if he was unconscious from drugs or passed out from the heat or just simply had fallen asleep in the shade and then the sun moved. I was getting groceries so I added a bunch of hot chicken to my order plus several bottles of refrigerated water. I went over to him and woke him and explained that I was worried he needed medical attention. He'd passed out because he was tired, he told me. I offered him the hot food and the water and he thanked me, telling me he'd run out of water the night before and food the day before that and didn't have any money to get any more.

Everyone else had been walking around him like he was just an obstacle on the sidewalk. No one had thought to offer any help. When I walked away, some folks who saw me told me that that was very nice of me. I don't think it was nice of me. I think that's just what you should do if you see someone obviously in distress. They agreed that he seemed like he needed the help. They didn't act. They agreed that the compassionate and right thing to do was to offer assistance and make sure he was okay. But they didn't do it. They waited for someone else to do it.

I've mentioned in passing that I volunteer for the local teen LGBT club, helping lost gay kids find their way and maybe not kill themselves about it. It's not much. I mostly just text back and forth with whatever kids get my number from the adults that run the thing. Sometimes I give them tips and advice. Sometimes I'm just the cool gay uncle they tell about their latest school drama. Once or twice I've served one of them lunch on my couch while my dogs smother them with affection and they cry about their latest heartbreak. I don't do speeches or history lessons or anything like that. I don't think I'm qualified for it, in honesty. But if even one of them doesn't commit suicide, if even one of them doesn't self-harm, if even one of them no longer feels all alone in the world because I'm there when they reach out to me, that's enough.

Today on my commute to work, the guy in front of me had a major wipeout on his motorcycle. I stopped my car in a position that none of the other cars could hit him, and asked if he was okay, and waited until his friend (also on a motorcycle) had circled back around to help him off the road and check him over. I left once his friend waved me away. I offered to call an ambulance but he refused.

A couple weeks ago, also on my commute, a woman was stopped on the side of the road, waving her arms at drivers, shouting for help. I stopped. The other drivers didn't. Her car had died, she was new to town, and she was somewhere that notoriously doesn't get cell service. I helped her call a tow truck. It wasn't a trap. She didn't want to hitchhike. She just was stuck and panicked about it.

I stop and help animals get off the road. I've lost count on how many turtles I've carried to the other side. I helped my neighbor search for a dog he saw get hit by a car so he could take it to the vet. I shoveled my elderly neighbor's driveway for her, and talked my boss into giving her a major discount for her little dog's dental in which pretty much every tooth needed extraction or he would die. When I still lived in that rental with my roommates, we were surrounded by kids. Every kid on the block knew we were a safe house to go to. If they needed food or water, if they needed entertainment, if they needed just somewhere to be, they could be at our place. When covid started, I did a "reverse halloween" since Halloween was canceled, and I put bags of candy on every doorstep that I knew had kids inside. I've done a "neighborhood santa" putting a small toy plus a small gift card for the parents on every doorstep that has kids, for as long as I've lived around kids.

When I say activism requires action, I don't mean that every single person is required to save a thousand lives. The honest answer is, unless you have a lot of disposable time and money, you probably won't. But you can still make a difference. To one. To ten. To twenty.

And you know what? I'm not saying black people specifically came up with this- but how can you be surprised to know this is how I live my life when I say over and over that I was raised by black activists who lived during MLK Jr and Malcolm X and knew community action would have the longest-lasting effects? Of course I do all this. That's what being part of a community *is*.

[burnthatbridge]

forgive me, father (for i feel no sin)

eddie/father brian (+ kinda buddie) | E | 4k | hot priest hookup Eddie finds religion in a gay bar. Or, rather, he finds a man of religion in a gay bar.

Because Eddie is trying this new thing where he doesn’t blame himself for everything, he would like to blame it all on Buck instead. And, honestly, what happens probably has a whole lot more to do with Buck than he’s ready to acknowledge. But, as much as he wants to say it is, it’s not Buck’s fault. The night out might be for him, but Eddie was the one who suggested it.

Only, when he’d said they should all go out for drinks, as way to cheer Buck up after allowing him a couple of weeks of sulking over the breakup, he’d thought it would be their usual: he and Buck and Hen and Chim and maybe Bobby at a badge and ladder joint, drinking beers and splitting fries and shooting the shit. Casual, relaxed, familiar.

He hadn’t expected to end up at a gay bar.

Bobby isn’t in attendance but in his place are Karen and Maddie and Ravi and his boyfriend, Seb, and — to Eddie’s minor displeasure — Josh. It’s been a lot: the music loud and the lights colorful and the energy around them electric.

It’s been a lot, but it’s also been fun.

They had crammed into a booth together and done shots with outrageous names that Eddie would have blushed to say aloud. Thankfully Chim had been all too happy to order for them and get Maddie a soft drink with a somehow even cruder title. Buck has been well and truly pep-talked by a drunk Karen and a tipsy Ravi and an always shrewd Josh, sober or not.  And they’ve all had a turn on the dance floor: Buck demonstrating that he has two left feet, Maddie proving it’s an affliction that doesn’t run in the family.

Buck’s still out there now, with Hen and Karen, though Eddie’s lost track of them amongst all the other patrons, bumping and grinding to the music, the strobe lighting casting everyone in frozen snapshots. He’s retired back to their booth after fighting his way to the bar for a glass of water, sweat dampening his armpits, the small of his back, from his prior dancing and the hot, humid air of the club.

Maddie and Chimney have gone home — Maddie lamenting that the morning part of morning sickness is a big fat lie — but Seb and Josh are seated in the booth, chatting — or almost yelling, really, to be heard over the blaring pop music. Their glasses are almost empty of the cocktails Josh had left the dance floor to order them about the time Buck was boogieing to Beyoncé and no amount of fruity juice could have tempted Eddie away from the sight. There’s no sign of Ravi and Eddie wonders if he’s off braving the battle to the bar that he’s just been through, trying to win them the victory of another round.

He collapses onto the padded seat of the booth, perched at the end, unfortunately on Josh’s side to leave space for Ravi to sit next to his boyfriend when he returns. Downs his water, maybe a little too desperately — feeling some of it spill from the side of his mouth, track down his jaw — but he’s parched, fluids sorely needed to replace those lost while twirling Karen around, while proving he has better moves than Josh, while shouting along to the NSYNC song he knows all the lyrics to because Sophia was obsessed with them when they were kids (and maybe, secretly, Eddie liked them too — just a little bit).

Ravi appears as he’s setting his empty glass back on the table, but with no cocktails in hand. He looks freshly sweaty enough to have been out on the dance floor but, with the heat in the building, that could simply be the result of a walk to the bathroom. He leans into Seb’s side, says something that Eddie doesn’t even try to hear with how loud the intro to the Katy Perry song that the DJ has selected is playing.

Josh shifts closer to Eddie, conversation interrupted by Ravi’s return. He speaks loud enough and with his mouth close enough to his ear that Eddie hears every word, clear and fully intelligible. “That guy is watching you.”

read more on ao3

[skrunksthatwunk]

one kill la kill detail that's particularly dear to me that ive never seen anyone talk about is how blatant mako's crush on ryuko is from the get-go

like, mako doesn't really go out of her way to make friends. she's sometimes friendly with people, especially when she happens to be around them (i.e. maiko, gamagori, satsuki), but we don't really see her seek out friendship in the way she does with ryuko. they meet briefly before school, but ryuko doesn't even say a word to her. but then mako does stuff like immediately eagerly waving ryuko over in class, trying to tackle-hug her, declaring them besties because they're desk neighbors. do you think she and that guy ryuko replaced were bffs bc of this? or any of the other people mako has sat next to? no. and while one could argue that maybe she tried and failed with everyone but ryuko, her persistence when it comes to ryuko (which ryuko herself comments on and which is evident before ryuko really accepts her company (i.e. before she moves in with the mankanshokus)) doesn't seem to be present with anyone else. mako knows what it's like to be lonely, but she has no reason in particular to latch on to ryuko, other than, perhaps, that shes someone she hasn't tried yet. but she meets new people pretty often, and that doesn't lead to much interest on her end.

it seems more likely that something about ryuko caught her attention from the jump, likely how cool and pretty she is (something she talks about a LOT.) she talks (with her family) about how hot ryuko's body is, how good her old pajamas look on her, compares her tit size to satsuki's (which means she was either staring at both of theirs or that she simply feels that ryuko's are bigger, likely out of loyalty or respect for her (think big dick energy)), etc etc etc. like she's always fawning over her and cheering her on and showing her off as her "bestest friend" to mikisugi and aghhhghdfhgdjdjdh she's so gay man. what the fcuk

this isn't really present throughout the series, but she's often seen blushing or sprouting nose bleeds or ogling ryuko in early episodes. like any time there's a WOAH!!! HOTTIE BOOBA NAKED crowd reaction shot there'll often be a little mako alongside the horny guys blushing or peeking between her fingers or whatever like. she checks her out

she also is immediately very welcoming and supportive of ryuko. she tells her family to leave her alone when she's talking to senketsu and that it's not that weird, defends her in the fight club episode, literally invites her to uhaul on day one (classic lesbian maneuver) like. and she's also always talking about how close ryuko and senketsu are, that ryuko and senketsu are closer to each other than anyone else, that, while she's in ryuko's corner, she never really asserts herself as ryuko's best friend, even though she's very clear that ryuko is her best friend. she thinks she comes second. she's a very good sport about it, but something about that natural assumption that she's not her #1 is a little sad to me, though maybe she's just giving ryuko space and understanding in a very generous way. again, she's very supportive. like she's always doing what she can to cheer ryuko up or help her along, like bringing her lunches and standing up for her when the students of honouji bend the rules in their favor (like in the tennis episode). she's very "ily!!!! no pressure. but you're great :D" and i love that for her (though occasionally when shit gets dire she'll put her foot down, especially as the series goes on, i.e. rebelling against satsuki, the wedding dress scene, insisting this and that about the ryuko she knows (esp right after the time skip)

she's also got her cuddly streak. about half of it's reserved for hallelujah moments but there's also the scooter ride and her calling back monster-ryuko and the post-recovery nuzzling (i love that scene ehehhehdhdhshdgcvzkzh) and the epilogue moments and her GLOMPS

anyway my point is she loves ryuko and she does from the jump and she's great and i love her and ryuko loves her too but that's a separate post and yeah!!!!! girlfriends <3

[stolasdearest]

Good afternoon, may I ask for hcs for lucifer, husker, and angel with a fem! Goetia reader? Maybe some general stuff and something [not including Lucifer considering there’s not much he can’t defend himself from] where the reader is defending him in her demon form, for simplicities sake let’s imagine her demon form is the same as stolas.

Reader x Husk & Angel & Lucifer (Separate)˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥

ׂׂૢ Pairing : Lucifer x Fem!Reader, Husk x Fem!Reader, Angel x gn!Reader

ׂׂૢ cw : Not Proofread

𝐍𝐨𝐰 𝐥𝐨𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠. . .

A few days a week you make special time for your Boyfriend, Angel; Being a Goetia doesn't exactly give you a lot of time to exist outside of your royal duties so this time with him was your time. Spending it in Pentagram city window shopping, talking and about anything you two get your hands on to do together, this time was precious to you. Now you're riled up at a "super fan" as he called himself trying to get to Angel who was standing behind you visibly uncomfortable yet Angel still tried calming you down but with no success; the situation quickly escalating as the dumb sinner tried rushing past you to Angel; with a swift hand movement you grabbed a hold of the sinners neck opting to just throw the freak against a building wall across the street, however quickly snapped out of your rage you looked back and saw Angel hunched against a club wall holding his stomach as he hysterically laughed. You looked for the sinner with no signs of him and looked to Angel to ask what was so funny.

"Babycakes! Ya didn't see the fatass truck drag the weirdo with him?!"

"..no?"

"you should've holy shit! It was hilarious his fucking face!"

You often didn't need to worry about Husker getting into fights or trouble, mostly because he stayed out of it at all costs not wanting to be bothered with the annoying fucks. So when you and Husk sat at a bar Laughing and drinking you were taken aback by some sinner who claimed to know Husk in his "glory" days and said Husk still owed him some money; Husk told the guy to simply fuck off and went back his whiskey, your instincts reacting almost on their own when you noticed a bottle fly past you and right into the dudes face; only after realizing he tried to attack Husker. Husk looked at you bewildered as you nervously smiled and used a little sprinkle of your power and throwing the now passed out sinner from the bar, apologizing to the bartender for breaking their booze and turning back to Husker.

"you're full of surprises aren't you?"

"I guess you could say that"

There wasn't much Lucifer needed protecting from, especially not anything in hell so you both had pretty calm lives together, everyone respecting you or being straight up afraid of you. You both laid in bed, cuddling and talking about your days and just general stupid things; Lucifer was in one of his Duck tangents when you heard a loud crash outside the bedroom and you instantly went on alert mode, your demeanor changed instantly and you went to check whatever it was with the scariest most threatening form you could put on, Lucifer simply following only a few steps behind you so when you found it was just some wind coming in from a open and forgotten window you immediately deflated, Hesitating to turn around as you started to hear Lucifer snicker behind you before he quickly rushed to hug you from behind, a smug giggle in his voice

"thank you for defending our home..~"

"go fuck yourself"

Authors note : Tumblr deleted my draft TWO TIMESSSSS omg...Anyway I decided to make Angels reader Gn because he is infact, Gay..If this was meant platonically I do apologize for making it romantic alas the ask didn't specify and I default to romantic :P <3

Taglist: @k1y0yo @ihavetoomanyfictionalcrushes @anni1600 @d0nutsaur - send an ask to be added -

[octuscle]

So we went to a santa bar crawl and I bet my buddy to show off at a local gay bar to try and get some free drinks. Well guess they really enjoyed the show because before I know it, he's all muscular and stupid and basically putting on a strip show. He's not even gay! Well I talked to the manager and they won't change him back unless someone takes his place. I feel bad for putting him in this situation but I'm not sure I can trust the manager to make good on his promise.

You don't really have a choice. To get your friend out of this predicament, you have to run the show. The manager shows you where the dressing rooms are, you are to put on your friend's costume for the next show, after which your friend can return to his old role. You knock on the dressing room door and hear a rather groaned "Come in!". Your friend is standing in front of the mirror. Damn, he looks hot. The long curls, the flawless skin and those fantastic muscles… That alone is enough to give you a hard-on. But with the chest harness and the hot briefs, he's simply stunningly hot. He looks at you, licks his lips, grins and asks if you like what you see. You can do no more than swallow with a dry throat and nod. He opens a drawer, throws you a harness and a pair of underpants and says that you should try them out too.

The idea is simply ridiculous! You with your weak upper body and small belly in a harness. Anyway, the way he looks now, you can't refuse him anything. You're standing next to him in front of the mirror in briefs and a harness.

"I'm so jealous of your tattoos," says your boyfriend. Yes, you're really proud of them too. They just make you look a bit more brutal.

"Do you think I should cut off my curls too? I really like your buzz cut." You first run your fingers over your short hair and then through his curls. You tell him not to even think about it.

"You're right, of course, the good-boy-bad-daddy story works much better that way," he replies. Daddy! What a cheek! Okay, you're maybe six years older than him. More mature. But damn, he's in no way inferior to you when it comes to muscles. Okay, he's a few centimetres shorter than you, so you always look bulkier. Unfortunately, his cock also looks bigger. Although in your regular cock comparisons, he always comes off the same. Okay, you're a little bit bigger than your buddy when you're flaccid. But when are you both ever flaccid?

The show starts in a few minutes. You both push each other up again. You're about to bring the club to the boil. Most of the guests are only here because of you. Your boss knows that, you know that. And you're both proud of it!

Hot clip of you two found at @musclemark

[chaifootsteps]

tbh one thing i liked about the instas that i dont think the series will bring back is him wearing casual clothes outside of work. the concept of a gay male sinner from the 1940s embracing modern day fashion from the current era because of how cute it is without anyone caring because its hell, (with the implication he mightve been doing this for decades beforehand before he came to the hotel,) is just really cool concept to me :3 it gave him a fashion identity outside of his sex work (something the show really doesnt do at all,) and it let him explore a more cutesty side to his character, but in a really natural way! i also just liked it because most of the sinners we saw tended to stick to dressing from their era, which made angel stand out more.

but this isnt present at all in the series, and even weirder, the one time he has a chance to put on pajamas in episode 2 like the girls have, where hes alone in his room with fat nuggets, he doesnt. maybe we wouldve had time for that if there wasn't a joke dedicated to showing how tone deaf and christian charlies morals are for the bisexual daughter of lucifer morningstar.

all the clothes he wears, there's more of a focus of his outfits from posion rather then anywhere else. i hardly see as much fanart of that stupid ugly ripped finale suit, as much as i see fanart of the latex suit angel wears while singing about being unable to help swallowing poison. either that, or the outfit he wears while dancing with val. love the fluffy spider butt, but cmon. we can get an angel dust design thats more spider in a natural way, but we can't see him wear casual clothes when he isnt working? or even see him in a full suit? (i really miss the purple suit from the instas, no stupid pink stripes, full suit for both arms, and his boobs were out w his tie instead of being hidden away like they are in the finale, which was perfect for his character </3)

him wearing clothes separate to his identity as a pornstar also helped him reclaim some of his freedom under his contract, obviously being unable to choose what val makes him wear on set. that's what angel dusts actions reflected in the instas and the comics too. (the "work shit" box comes to mind, i hate that borderline on screen rape is fine for an amazon funded show, but a box of dildos is too much,) even the addict mv shows this, with angel wearing just a pink sweater and some purple shorts when laying with cherri. or even just the casual, but cute outfit he wears when he blows up that club with her.

its just one of the few things that made him feel human, especially when fashion is bound to change in so many ways when youve been in hell for 77 years like he has. this part of his character being missing (along with the implication he even has a life outside of his work in the series; pilot ad was coping with work with hard drugs, being an teasing asshole as a defensive mechanism, getting into turf wars and murdering mafia goons. but still dresses cute and gets to be cute w his friends in his own time! series ad is coping by self destructing and letting people drug and fuck him so he'll be "broken" but then gets better by going out once after being waterboarded at work, only to not relax and be a mom to a joke character at a club called fucking consent,) is one of the reasons im still bitter about the instas being nuked. but not the only reason.

viv will always takes the credit for them anyway, no matter if she feels they do or not, because her fanbase isn't smart enough to realize someone else wrote these stories they still love. even if theyll be the first one to remind you they arent canon, because the creator said they arent. but my honest to god confession is that sometimes the instagrams feel more like the canon hazbin hotel to me, even months after s1 dropped, simply due to the nuance and detail it has compared to the actual series. it wasnt perfect, but you could tell there was passion there- passion that now, only the leads are allowed to put in hazbin so their favorite character can get more screentime and attention.

Thank you, Anon, for this absolutely beautiful writeup. It was true, seeing the difference between the outfits Val forced him into versus the outfits he chose to wear on his own time was one of the most interesting aspects of Instagram Angel Dust. It was a more safe-for-work extension of the "work shit" dildoes that didn't make it to Amazon Prime (while his graphic on-screen gang rape did) and it was powerful.

Of course, there are practical logistical reasons why cartoon characters wear the same outfit, but if only one character in HH was going to have a big wardrobe, it absolutely should have been Angel. But of course it wasn't, because as far as Viv and Raph were concerned, the only Angel outfits that mattered were the ones that fed into their shared fetish.

[gg-university-if]

At Prince Leopold University you are expected to be the best because remember the best are made not born and you are expected to get good or get lost.

Play as a scholarship student at Prince Leopold University attempt to balance attending classes, make rivals, meet lifelong friends and pursue budding romances all the while dealing with the administration of a major university. Or don't.

Getting a place in PLU is hard, getting a full scholarship is harder. You did both. So perhaps it's no wonder why everyone seems to have such high expectations for you, expected to maintain passing grades, attend your club and be a forward face for the school, it's not like it's anything you haven't done before right? But can you pull it off again?

• Play as male, female or non-binary with options to be straight, gay, asexual or not pursue a romance at all.

• Experience a university that takes itself a little too seriously and expects you to do so as well – define your main character's personality, appearance, history and demeanour.

• Choose what scholarship you're on and which club you're in while training and playing like your scholarships on the line – because it is.

• Choose from track and field, music club, student council and drama club.

• Romance a hot-headed high-school rival, the brooding lead musician, the friendly student president who happens to be your brother's best friend, the charming but distant actor or your awkward roommate or the rebel with equally big dreams.

• Focus on or ignore your relationships with your teammates, acquaintances, family and friends back home, school staff and the public.

The Hot Headed Rival A

Aqil/Aaliyah Radwan, 19

The Vice Captain of the PLU Track-And-Field Club and your highschool rival, they are intense and arrogant with the talent to back it up and they'll let you know it.

In the heat of an argument they find that they don't know why they're shouting anymore and that look on your face stirs something they'd rather not discover.

tldr; rivals to lovers and enemies to lovers.

The Brooding Musician H

Hader/Hetti Jasanoff, 19

The moody, brooding leader of the Screaming Diamonds and the PLU music club, they hate those who see their passion as nothing more than a hobby but they'll allow you to prove yourself.

In the midst of a performance they find their heart skips a beat but they don't want to face the music just yet.

tldr; everyone wants the bad boy and everyone likes musicians.

The Brother's Best Friend B

Beck/Belle Torres, 21

The social, spirited and amiable President of the Student Body and your brother's best friend, with much enthusiasm they're taking care of you at university although it's supposedly a favour.

Despite their popularity they seem to have held most people at arms length when asked they simply laugh and talk about their playground love.

tldr; brother's best friend and friends to lovers and the boy/girl next door.

The Distant Actor F

Frédéric/Frederica Jame, 19

The flirty but distant lead of the school play and the aspiring actor in the drama club, they're more than happy to have humour your whims but when you think about it you don't know all that much about them.

Despite that when you're on stage they only have one command "keep your eyes on me."

tldr; master of the mixed message.

The Awkward Roommate R

Rudra/Rania Punyamurthula, 18

Your roommate for this year at PLU, awkward, excitable, intelligent they seem to be unaccustomed to life without someone else around and they're infinitely excited to make their 'first real friend'.

When they're at every practice with snacks, every event cheering you on from the sidelines you get the sneaking suspicion that there's another reason for their enthusiasm.

tldr; roommates to romance and lonely rich kid.

The Singer Who Made It Big Sid

Sid Diver, 19

The lead singer of the other band on campus who seems to have a rocky relationship with both authority and a certain other musician, despite that he seems more than happy to welcome you into the fold as a new friend or maybe more with a laugh, wild grin and a dangerous look in his eyes.

You can't shake the feeling that they're angry and bitter when you hear them singing but in those hidden moments and stolen kisses behind the curtains, they feel different.

tldr; tenor boy and unreplaced departed.

Demo: Click here (word count: 56k)

References: Click here

Ko-fi: tbd

Portraits: tbd

Next update: tbd

[itsclydebitches]

We've all rightly been gushing over Trent listening in on the parent-teacher conference and there are a lot of cool interpretations for why he'd eavesdrop: a crush on Ted, a tendency towards gossip (as seen in "International Break"), the fact that you just can't take the journalism out of the boy, Trent is clearly picking up personal tidbits for the book if the group's initial "Don't print that" worries are any indication, etc. So yeah, it's clear why he'd want/be okay with the door staying open.

Meanwhile, I'm slightly feral over Ted letting the door stay open and what that conveys to Trent.

Based on what we've picked up about his personal life and the direction of this season, we have good reason to believe that Trent was a deeply isolated man prior to Ted arriving. His job makes enemies simply by virtue of the profession itself, especially when you "bring the heat" as hard as he did. Roy flipping the press off at the gala in Season 1 and Nate sneaking out at dark this last episode shows us how journalists are treated on the regular: ignored, dismissed, told to "fuck off" as a matter of course. That's often well deserved, as Roy's two personal stories (Trent's article about him + the response to Isaac's attack) attest, but the end result is still a profession that alienates you from anyone other than your peers. When you're a "colossal prick" in your articles, people hate you all the more.

So Trent at least has other journalist buddies, yeah? Well, not that we've seen. I always think back to that chorus of "--The Independent" in the press room when everyone knew what Trent was going to say and how it... wasn't entirely fun ribbing. I think there's a fair bit of mockery there. Even if others disagree, I doubt that was received well by someone who wears their professionalism as an armor, who takes off his glasses as soon as they're complimented, who was, notably, closeted into his 40s. Trent is a man who is deeply aware of how others perceive him (pointing out his "vibe" feels quite calculated now: highlight what you want people to notice rather than waiting for them to find something on their own) and he is likely to read the worst of most interactions. Cue his shocked, "You really mean that, don't you?" when faced with someone like Ted who is not only genuinely nice, but blunt about it in a way that Trent can't misunderstand, or brush off via denial.

What's his home life like? Married to a woman when he's gay and that's putting a serious strain on them both. He tries to come out and isn't believed. The only other family members we know about are a toddler (who, while lovely I'm sure, can't provide Trent with the kind of emotional support an adult needs) and a father who, if we read the series through Lance's headcanons, may not have been very supportive of his son. Who else does Trent know? Uhhh... other subjects who hate him? Owners like Rebecca who want to use him? A random, potential date that he felt so little for he ditched to get a quote?

(EDIT: I can't believe I forgot to mention the strong implications that Ted was bullied in childhood/as a teenager, based on how he reacts to the whole of the club ignoring him -- resigned but unsurprised -- his reaction to Roy telling him to fuck off after he tries to mend that relationship -- disappointedly awkward "I can't believe I even tried that. What was I thinking?" -- and his body language during the locker room scene -- jumping, furtive glances towards Ted, backed up against the shower stall because shit, he's been in this situation before.

So uh, yeah. Trent may not have had a lot of friends growing up either! That was not the response of a social butterfly, but rather someone who is already very used to being ignored/dismissed/cursed out/threatened, not just within his profession, but within the school-like atmosphere of Richmond's family too.)

I'm by no means reinventing the meta wheel here, but Trent has truly undergone a STAGGERING transformation in Season 3 and the result of that is the reframing of his Season 1 and 2 scenes as, frankly, more depressing than they originally seemed. Seeing him now smiling, singing, gossiping, dressing just in t-shirts, casually snacking, making jokes, letting go enough to be a complete, hyperactive "dork" in front of others... it just hammers home how deeply unhappy Trent was before. How closed off. How closeted--in more ways than one.

So what must it mean to someone like Trent for Ted to leave the door open?

It's not just an open invitation towards community--sit near me, listen in, quietly participate, there's literally no barrier between us--but a staggeringly personal one too. I don't care if a 10-ish year old failing science is inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, the fact remains that letting anyone hear a parent-teacher conference with your ex is a hell of a show of trust. That would mean a lot to Trent in general, this acknowledgement that someone trusts the ex-prick journalist with that amount of personal information, but Ted in particular? Oh boy. Ted is the one Trent betrayed with that article! And yeah, Ted forgave him the instant he learned of it, but Trent himself was obviously feeling a lot of guilt, hence him burning his source and orchestrating a firing. Toss in the fact that Ted, despite being a VERY open man on the regular (I still laugh at his "I don't mind" to Rebecca when over-sharing about Michelle) has in fact denied Trent information in the past. No, I won't tell you that was a panic attack. Yes, I will continue the lie that it was food poisoning. Perhaps for Ted it was less about Trent knowing and more about anyone getting at the truth, but at the end of the day it amounts to the same: there was a time when Ted did not fully trust him and Trent justified that fear by writing the very article Ted was looking to avoid, even if Trent approached that situation with as much grace as he could.

So this moment, beyond the humor, just makes my brain go !!!!!! for Trent. Ted Lasso, of all people, has left the door open for Trent Crimm, also of all people, to hear the messy details of his, Henry, and Michelle's life. He is not at all afraid that this information will be spun in a bad light--Local Gaffer's Son Suffers While Father Plays at Coach Across the Pond--despite the fact that Trent is actively writing a book about him. Trent himself is so unguarded in this moment, dressed only in a t-shirt, playing around with his orange, making little quips. The Trent of Season 1 would NEVER. I mean, I think we see small glimpses of the real Trent back then, especially when Ted amuses him enough to coax his guard down for half a second (Trent's reaction to “Make like Dunst and Union and bring it on, baby!" comes to mind. That's a gesture we're seeing a lot now that he's comfortable around the club), but on the whole he was still so, so, so isolated. No one knew the real him: gay, funny, dorky, inquisitive, longing for companionship and using the artificial 'closeness' of journalism to cover that ache up.

Now? Trent is fully a part of the Richmond community and he knows he's a part of it because everyone--Ted, Beard, Roy, Colin, Rebecca--are going out of their way to tell him that, notably in very overt ways. Trent strikes me as someone who wouldn't fully believe it when he's told someone enjoys his company; the kind of wounded, anxiety-prone person who, if casually invited to participate, would assume they're just being polite and he'd actually be an annoyance to them. Trent needs overt, obvious, beat-you-over-the-head-with-it reassurance, which is why Ted is so very good for him because Ted is composed of THE most over-the-top positivity you've ever seen. (Compare that need of Trent's to Michelle thinking that Ted is too much...) When faced with a defensive journalist Ted says explicitly that he liked spending time with Trent. When faced with a still unsure writer who thinks of himself only as an observer--never a part of the team himself--Ted literally begs with monkey noises to hear Trent's opinions. He's blunt to the point of absurdity and someone like Trent who has likely spent the majority of his life hiding/being told that his true self is inadequate needs that level of constant, neon-light reassurance.

So Ted leaves the door open to a personal conversation, refusing to literally bar Trent from his life. The best part? Colin re-opens the door because he understands Trent and he knows his coach; of course Ted wants him included. Colin asks permission to CLOSE the door, not open it, and Trent is seeing this openness again and again over the course of several months, with each episode bringing him further out of his shell as he slowly unlearns that self-doubt. Yes, please stay, please tell us what you think, please offer your advice, please join our Diamond Dogs, please ask us questions (they're no longer perceived as a threat), please become an integral part of our lives. We trust you and we like you and we want you here.

Everyone's waiting for Trent to catch the door again because, you know, the rule of three, but what if he doesn't need to? What if he's past slipping a hand or a foot through the crack and scraping by on what that gets him? He caught the door before it could close to get closer to Colin. He caught the door before it could close to get closer to Ted. Now they've both kept the door open for him, his presence welcomed from the get-go.

Trent doesn't need to sprint for that opening anymore.

[le-panda-chocovore]

Toji and Shiu are probably the LAST people you expect to see at Pride, and they probably never went before but Megumi just came out as gay and they want to be supportive so they go with him and his bisexual boyfriend to the parade.

Megumi thought they'd just walk a few meters behind them or wait at a bar nearby with a view on the whole thing, but of course they never do what is expected from them. The boy left them 10 minutes to chat with his friends and when he looked back they're both on the BDSM Float, Toji dancing shirtless and Shiu filming him.

Imagine the distress on that boy's face when Maki says "Hey isn't that your dad there ?" and when Yuuji whistles because "Man he's not bad at all !" He doesn't even know how they went up there.

They continued the parade pretending to not acknowledge the two middle aged chaotic mess who wear less and less clothes everytime the group turn to the float, and they simply try to enjoy the wholesome vibe and the blasting music and the beautiful colors.

At the end of the afternoon they wait at the meeting point and the two adults join them with huge smiles. They visibly just had the time of their lives.

Toji now wears a black leash (Megumi does NOT want to know where that come from and who decided to put it on him) around his neck, has several kiss marks on his face, and few words written in pink and purple on his bare chest, including "NAUGHTY BOY", "GAY WHORE", "DADDY", and "NICE ASS". He shrugs when Megumi asks him where his clothes are and shows him the invitation for a swinger club he got instead. Megumi winces and looks at Shiu, hoping the man would give him better explanation.

He shouldn't have too much hope for the man who married his father.

Shiu still got his shirt, which was already a good point, but it was completely open and crumpled, even though the man didn't seem to care. Megumi did care, particularly when he had a VIP view on the three hickeys and two bite marks his step-father got on his neck. There was a bisexual flag painted on Shiu's right cheek, and a gay one on the other. He lightens a smoke with a rainbow lighter he clearly didn't have before that day and laughs when Toji says he could share a fag.

"Did you have fun kid ?" He later asks in the car.

They just dropped Nobara and Yuuji at the bus station and were now driving home.

"You sure did," he mumbles, still unable to look at them in the eyes.

"Yeah that was fucking fun," Toji claims. He finally put a sweatshirt on after Megumi insisted, but he kept the leash. "Let's do that again next year !"

"Sure Doll. You were so pretty up there, I'm not going to say no to see that again ~"

Megumi shrinks a bit more in his seat and wishes he had been abandoned as a kid. It was the first and the last pride parade he went with them.