#something something love comes in many forms

[astrow1zar6]

Sun + Moon Hot takes- part 3

Sag sun Aries moon: this combo seems loud asf lol. No seriously though you definitely are one of the loudest people in the room normally. This gives big class clown energy. This gives those kids in class that always did the most to make everyone laugh and sometimes it’d work well but other times it can be obnoxious. Also if not balanced with any earth placements I can see these people being extremely impulsive and immature you tend to jump into things fast and get burned along the lines. But because of your impulsive nature you have a lot of fun stories to tell others and also tend to have a lot more fun than most in general because of how spontaneous you are. This is a combo that is always doing something wild. Usually big extroverts that love meeting new people and seeing new places. Doesn’t like to be in one place too long. Lives life in the fast lane. They usually live life in a very rockstar kinda way (drugs, sex, rock and roll) vibe. Which is something I admire a lot on how they make life look so fun. Usually go by the motto “I’d rather die young than live a long boring life”.

Libra Sun Virgo moon: giving princess energy. I can imagine these people to be very feminine (even the men). These are probably the most well kept people when it comes to hygiene. They usually always look put together and are normally really pretty people. This puts a more introverted twist to the regular social lite Libra sun energy. Usually big perfectionists and can get anxiety when they don’t look their best or are giving the best impressions on others. These people’s anxiety can be CRIPPLING. Your anxiety is your Achilles heel. You tend to worry about anything & everything. Your anxiousness can make you come off as almost “too perfect “ to others. You may come off as the type of person that people get shocked that you fart kinda thing lol. Although you prefer to come off this way it’s okay to be imperfect sometimes. You should learn to find more humor in flaws instead of taking them like it’s the end of the world. People will still like you even if you aren’t perfect 🫶🏽

Aquarius sun Leo moon: this combo is so cool to me. The people I’ve met with this combo are one of the funniest people ever. I’m usually not a fan of Leo moons but with an Aquarius sun I feel it balances the melodramatic attitude of Leo making them more cool like. They are really creative and usually can make a lot of $$ with anything social media related (highly recommended to get into YouTube, tik tok, podcasts) these people are so entertaining so normally they can get a big following. However many can have a difficult time forming relationships because they are very demanding and distant at times. Probably the most authentic person you’ve ever met. Their authenticity and rebellious streak is usually their golden ticket into getting such big followings and being so popular. These people are the definition of “idgaf” it’s so admirable.

Leo sun Capricorn moon: probably one of the most serious Leo combinations. I notice this combo is more anxious to shine than normal Leo suns. These people can surprisingly get embarrassed pretty easily. DO NOT clown these people or pick on them jokingly they will really crash out lmao. They hate when their character is diminished in any type of way. This gives big CEO energy, these people were the bosses of their family and friend groups. When they are immature this energy can cause a lot of issues in their relationships because of how bossy they can be. They can get carried away with controlling what people do and how they act which can be overwhelming for others. Allow others to be themselves you don’t have to control everything I know you like things to be a certain way but the world doesn’t go when you go. These people usually make really good managers and bosses. Are able to control any organization or business they have flawlessly with little effort.

Gemini sun Leo moon: I apologize in advance to anyone with this combo but this gives ANNOYING😭 I can tell these were those bad ass kids growing up with the silver caps in their mouths (iykyk 🤣). Theres a very child like energy to this combo that can either come off as very sweet and refreshing or these people are little devils lmao. This gives Micheal Scott energy from the office. I can see these people being so fun in non serious activities such as partying and drinking and karaoke night but things like working with them can be like babysitting. This is probably the employee that pisses you off all the time but is lit asf to bring out to do fun stuff. I can imagine these people to be really good humored as well, could’ve also been a class clown or hung around a popular crowd. Usually is pretty loud about their opinions and can have a very dramatic flair with the way they talk. Usually are very animated which can be very entertaining to those around them. This people can make great entertainers and talk show hosts. Are AMAZING story tellers even if you can tell if some of what they say is exaggerated it’s still so interesting to hear.

Pisces sun Sag moon: this is a very interesting combo, both Jupiter ruled but with such opposite energies. This gives a light heartedness to the normally deep spiritual neptunian. These people also have a crazy good intuition. This can make some pretty intelligent people (Albert Einstein has this combo) their mind tends to be very theoretical, spiritual and philosophical. However with all this mutable energy it can be hard for them to organize their thoughts properly you have a tendency to drift from reality when things get too much. Definitely a big picture person over details, too much details can stress you out a lot. If you learn how to implement all your fresh ideas you can earn a lot of $$ in your lifetime ! I’ve also seen it can be very difficult for these people to process their emotions. Neptune has a tendency of blurring emotions along with the sags tendency to avoid them it can cause them to act irrationally at times. When their feelings aren’t in check they can completely fuck themselves over with little consciousness of them doing it. When under pressure they can be really impulsive and naive. Can have a very out of the box sense of humor as well.

Taurus sun Scorpio Moon: talk about stubborn. No seriously it’ll take the hands of god himself to make these people move or change ways. They don’t budge until they want to (which usually takes awhile or never happens) they usually take a really long time to trust someone but once they do you’re theirs for life. They can be really possessive of the people they love and can struggle with jealousy if their person is close to others (even family at times if they are really insecure). They tend to come off as very chill and laid back but they’re usually hiding a strong intensity behind that down to earth personality. They have a tendency of suffocating those around them because of their fear of abandonment. I see people with this combo have a big thing with abandonment. They tend to fall for people that feel like home and allow them to be comfortable being themselves (cuz they struggle with this normally). Overall though very loyal and sensual people they will go to the moon and back for you if they love you.

Pisces sun Aquarius moon: these people are the real life ETs of the zodiac sun moon combos. Really though they vibe at such a different wavelength than the rest of the world. One word use to describe these people are “Woke”. Its was estimated that Jesus Christ actually had this sun/moon combination. (Surprise for all the people that thought Jesus was born in December). They have this deep inner desire usually to help humanity in some way, usually by using spiritual means. These people can excel in pursuits like reiki healing, crystal work, yoga/meditation instructor, music therapist, priest ect. Works good with healing the subconscious of others. Growing up however they could’ve been outcasted a lot for being “weird” or “off putting”. This rejection allowed them to grow such a strong wisdom when it comes to human nature. When they grow to be confident in their unique natures they are really able to heal themselves and those around them.

Pisces sun Pisces moon: one word DELUSIONAL😭 these people are never really in the now they are elsewhere in their minds floating off you can just see it in their face lol. This isn’t the most ambitious of combos and can usually sabotage a lot of good career opportunities by procrastinating and escaping their responsibilities. If not balanced with any earth placements you should learn techniques on grounding! If not you can neglect a lot of your responsibilities. Breath work practice and meditation usually help these people (anything spiritual really). Because of their imaginative tendencies they can be amazing artists and musicians (they especially love music). Big romantics at heart and is main goal in life is to find their soulmate, can sabotage their goals for love a lot. Usually ends up attracting toxic people sadly but this is usually a muse for their art.

i apologize for taking so long to make a part three. I did not forget your requests 🫶🏽♥️

[lovemomhatepolice]

lewis hamilton nswf alphabet (part 1) (minors DNI!)

navigation taglist requests

A = Aftercare (what they’re like after sex) Lewis is incredibly attentive during aftercare, making sure you feel safe and loved. He cuddles you close, whispers soft reassurances, and checks in on how you’re feeling. Whether it’s getting water, wrapping you in a blanket, or running a warm bath, he ensures you’re completely cared for.

B = Body part (their favorite body part of theirs and also their partner’s) What he likes most about himself is his arms - covered in tattoos and strong, which can easily lift you up whenever he wants. He also loves it when you often grab him by the arm or hold him somewhere and lead him!

Lewis loves your neck! He adores that he can kiss it and knows your soft spots, where he always knows you'll react more than others. He also loves how intensely your perfume smells on it, which he loves to inhale.

C = Cum (anything to do with cum, basically) He considers it a very intimate part, especially when you do it unprotected. He knows very well how much risk is involved, but with you he is able to overcome it. He loves to fill you with his liquid and watch it merge with yours to form one whole, which in a way is a proof of your love and boundless trust. However, after intercourse, it immediately helps you clean yourself so you don't feel dirty

D = Dirty secret (pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs) Lewis has a secret thrill for public teasing—brushing his hand over your thigh at a formal event or whispering something filthy in your ear when no one’s looking. The risk of being caught, combined with the fact that only the two of you know what’s happening, drives him wild. He loves the power of building anticipation, making you wait until you’re alone to finally give in to everything he’s been promising.

E = Experience (how experienced are they? do they know what they’re doing?) Lewis is quite an experienced man - he has had many female partners in his life before you, whether romantic or sexual, so he knows exactly what he is doing. He can perfectly caress a woman's body, focusing on certain areas that you immediately drift away from

F = Favorite position (this goes without saying) He loves it when you're on top. That's when he can read every expression on your face and see you dissolve in the delight of orgasm. It also gives him the opportunity to hold you tightly by the hips, moving inside you from below, which intensifies your sensations and gives you a completely different, even closer contact

G = Goofy (are they more serious in the moment? are they humorous? etc.) It depends - most often, however, he tries to throw in a joke, especially he did so at the very beginning, when you started making love with each other. Now it depends, he is not adversarial, he loves to laugh with you, however, he also cares about making it as pleasant as possible for you and it just naturally comes out that he is already less goofy, making it more tender

H = Hair (how well groomed are they? does the carpet match the drapes? etc.) Lewis doesn't give a damn - he shaves himself when he wants and doesn't pay much attention to it, just as long as it would be hygienic. And towards you? Hmm, he's not the youngest, which is why he gets excited when you have your bottom trimmed in some patterns. Oh gosh, he loves it when you have one stripe there

I = Intimacy (how are they during the moment? the romantic aspect) Lewis is terribly thoughtful. He whispers sweet nothings or full of encouragement to you all the time. He doesn't forget to leave the softer ones - on your cheeks or forehead - in addition to hot and passionate kisses. He also hugs you very often and tries to make you feel one hundred percent comfortable. He is also very fond of silence, which, according to him, gives a great deal to intimacy

J = Jack off (masturbation headcanon) Lewis doesn’t do it often, but when he does, it’s usually because he’s missing you. He’s not one to rush through it—he takes his time, letting his imagination run wild with memories of your time together or fantasies about what he wants to do to you. If he’s away from you, he might even text or call, letting you know exactly what he’s thinking about, making it all the more intense. K = Kink (one or more of their kinks) Who would have thought that our seven-time world champion likes to feel the thrill of being covered? As soon as he has the opportunity to do so and you are willing, he very much enjoys making love to you in places where someone can cover you. It's not the greatest advantage for him to do all this - but in the end, he still cares about his privacy and yours. However, being in a public place, such as the beach or the jaccuzi on the roof of your apartment excites him. L = Location (favorite places to do the do) He loves places with a view - such as the balcony or high windows you have in your apartment. He also eats when you're on vacation and have an outdoor shower, oh, then he loves to take you there

M = Motivation (what turns them on, gets them going) He gets very excited when you know what you want yourself. When you whisper to him how you would like him to love you that night, or when you come yourself and even beg him for it. Or vice versa - when you tease him by pretending to be acutely unavailable. One word and he is already yours

A/N: part two will be here soon! (If anyone wants me to tag them - let me know in the comments). WELL - it's the first time when I'm writing for lewis

I encourage you to give requests in the Christmas marathon! click here :) and in my celebration to the first thousand!

please do not copy and translate my works! in case of any issues related to this - I invite you to discuss privately :)

[theereina]

Big Mama Pt. 8

Pairing: Terry Richmond x Plus Size Fem Black!OC

Wordcount: +4.1K 🤫

Warnings: MDNI (18+) mature content, such as cursing, teasing, no smut (alluding to sexual situations), heavily dialogue-centered, use of Daddy, Mama, and other pet names (lil' mama, pretty girl, etc.), spanking, FLUFF, kinks mentioned

A/N: I don't know how many parts there will be. However, I'm open to critiques. I am a little 🤏🏽 sensitive about my writing. Please, don't be too harsh.🥺 Feel free to bring my attention to any typos. Divider by ME (theereina). Also, this work is not to be plagiarized or reposted (on any site other than here on Tumblr). I do NOT give consent for any form of republishing or rewriting.

Big Mama Pt. 1 => 🦋

Big Mama Pt. 2 => 🦋

Big Mama Pt. 3 => 🦋

Big Mama Pt. 4 => 🦋

Big Mama Pt. 5 => 🦋

Big Mama Pt. 6 => 🦋

Big Mama Pt. 7 => 🦋

*Masterlist: 🔥🔥🔥

“Terry, can you move? Damn. You don't have to be in my skin 24/7,” I laughed, hitting Terry through my moo-moo. He was underneath my nightgown and resting his face on my belly since we were both lying on the couch.

“Leave me the hell alone, woman. I’m comfortable,” he said, squeezing the back of my thighs.

“Too fuckin’ comfortable, and that's the damn problem. Get up!” I said, attempting to push him. I tugged the nightgown from over his head.

“Hell, no! Move again and see what happens. I dare you!” Terry said, tightening his grip.

“I would be wrong to whoop your ass. Wouldn’t I?” I asked. Terry smacked his lips and pulled the nightgown back over his head.

I leaned up on my elbows and pushed Terry on the floor. “I’m hungry! I’m hot, and you won’t leave me alone!” I pouted.

Terry looked at me from the floor. “Now, if I whooped your ass, would I be wrong?” he asked while standing.

“Yes. Yes, the hell you would. Would you really whoop your baby?” I said, batting my eyelashes.

“Hell yeah. Now, come on!” Terry said, lifting me off the couch. I was cradled in his arms like a baby. “Spoiled ass. I can’t even be mad. It’s my own damn fault,” he said as he carried me to his kitchen.

He leaned over to place me on my feet. “You cooking, or am I?” he asked, kissing my forehead. I pointed towards him. “Aight. Whatchu want?” he asked, crossing his arms.

This was a no-brainer for me. I turned towards the counter and grabbed the loaf of raisin bread, holding it up in front of Terry. “French Toast, again. Really, mama? You ain't tired of it, yet?” he asked, grabbing the bread.

“Nope. I can eat it a million more times as long as you make it,” I said, hugging his abdomen.

“Aight. It’s whateva you say, love. Extra cinnamon, right?” he asked, looking down at me.

I smiled while shaking my head yes. If there was ever a moment that showed how much I had Terry wrapped around my finger, this would be it.

30 minutes later

“Do you want eggs, mama?” Terry asked while standing at the stove.

“Yes, scrambled. Oh, and with cheese!” I said, sitting at the kitchen island.

“I know, baby girl,” Terry said, cracking the eggs into a separate pan.

“So, what are we gonna do today? It looks like it’s gonna rain,” I asked, rising from the chair.

“Hmmm… I don't know. We’ll figure something out,” Terry said, shrugging his shoulders.

I walked to the fridge and looked around for the ingredients to make my iced coffee. I pulled out the coffee concentrate, almond milk, and creamer.

“Can you make me one? Same as last time. I liked the syrup you used,” Terry asked, looking over at me.

“Sure. Just so you know, I used two syrups— white chocolate and sugar cookie. Oh, and thank you again for buying them,” I said placing everything on the counter.

Walking around the kitchen, I opened the cabinet to grab two glasses. “Where are the syrups?” I asked, biting the inside of my lip.

“Cabinet by the fridge,” Terry said, nodding his head.

I opened the cabinet and saw the syrups on the third shelf— the shelf I couldn't reach. I reached towards them to see if I could knock them down. I leaned on the counter and tried to get closer, but nothing worked. I hoisted myself up so that my thighs were on the counter.

As soon as my knees were on the counter, Terry’s arm looped around my waist. “No, ma'am. I think not,” he huffed.

“I could've reached them. I almost had it,” I said while Terry grabbed the bottles from the top shelf. With me still cradled under his arm, he placed the syrups down and closed the cabinet.

“You know I'm not a kid, right?” I said, crossing my arms.

Terry put me down and looked at me before speaking, “Yeah, but that doesn't stop you from bein’ clumsy. Now, does it?” he asked frankly.

I stood there in shock. “Move!” I laughed, pushing past him to grab the syrups. Terry walked around me to go back to the stove.

“Watch ya’self. You playin’ wit’ fire, mama,” Terry said as he continued to make breakfast.

“Try me,” I mumbled under my breath.

Terry’s head snapped to look at me. Our eyes locked in a playfully tense gaze. We both began to smirk at each other. It was clear we were both in a goofy mood. I fought to hold my gaze but couldn’t. I was never going to win a staring contest against this green-eyed bastard. I looked down at the ingredients for the coffee, fighting the urge to laugh.

“That’s yo’ one free pass. Next time, it’s me and you, mama. Understood?” Terry grumbled continuing to cook.

“Maybe,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. “I don't know. I'm feelin’… feelin’ a little…,” I mumbled while making the base for our coffees.

“A little nothing. Havana Rose… You skatin’ on thin ice, girl. Watch it!” he said without looking back at me.

I could hear the smile on Terry’s face. Honestly, this wasn't doing anything but putting me in a playful mood. Terry moved all the finished food to the opposite side of the kitchen island. I stopped making the coffee and walked to the cabinets where the plates were. I opened it and pulled down two large plates. I walked back over to Terry. I could see him tense up a bit because he immediately knew I was up to no good. I wanted to play, so I slid in between Terry and the island, letting my butt rub against his groin. I pushed my hips back, making sure to press my ass against his dick.

“Here you go, Daddy,” I said, putting the plates in front of us.

As I began to slide from in front of Terry, his hand came down on my left ass cheek. It felt like like my ass was on fire.

“Ow! That fuckin’ hurt!” I screamed while holding my hands over my butt.

Before I could turn around, his other hand came down on the back of my uncovered thighs.

“Havana! Language!” he said, turning back to the food. He picked up a spatula and began plating the French Toast and eggs. His ability to just continue doing shit like nothing happened always pissed me off.

I walked back over to the unfinished coffee, sporting a full pout. I loved hated when he did that. I was only joking with his overly serious ass. Sometimes, I wished Mr. Ex-Marine would lighten up with his mean ass.

“Cute,” Terry laughed, clearly picking at me pouting.

I wanted to cuss his ass out, but I knew better. I chose to hold my tongue and say nothing in return. I just continued to finish the coffee.

15 minutes later

“You almost done?” Terry asked, reaching across the island to stroke my chin.

“Yeah,” I said, finishing the last pieces of strawberries on my plate.

I looked up at Terry. His elbows were propped up as he ate while scrolling on his phone. His mouth was doing that cute little twitch when he was thinking. Damn, he was even fine without trying to be. Ever since that night, I’ve been getting caught up over the smallest things— the way his chest flexes and jiggles when he moves, the way his ears wiggle when he's laughing too hard, the way he… Aw, shit. Here I go again.

“Havana! Mama! Hey, you listenin’?” Terry said, getting my attention.

“Huh? What? I was…” I said, biting my lip in embarrassment.

“You were lookin’ at me, but I felt like you were lookin’ through me. You good?” Terry asked, leaning to stand up straight.

“I’m fine. I was just thinkin’,” I said, pushing my plate away. I was honestly fighting the urge to jump across the island and fu— let me chill.

“Just checkin’ on you, mama,” Terry said, smiling at me. He grabbed our plates and put them in the sink.

“Don't worry. I got the dishes,” I said, sliding off the stool.

“You sure?” Terry asked, watching me closely.

I nodded my head yes. I stood at the kitchen sink and began quickly doing the dishes. I could feel Terry’s eyes lingering on me. I didn't want to turn around and look. As if he could sense the tension, Terry walked up behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist.

“You look so cute, but I know that face. Where’s your head, ‘Vana?” he asked, leaning down to kiss my neck.

“I don't know. Daydreamin’, I guess. I wanted to go out, but…” I said, shrugging my shoulders.

“We can always go out later, mama. It’s just after 10 in the morning,” he replied.

“I know. I’ve been in the house for days— baking and getting out orders. I wanted to be anywhere but inside today,” I pouted.

Terry began kissing me repeatedly all over my face. “I know. We'll just try later. I promise. Alright?” he said.

“Okay,” I said, huffing in slight frustration. Terry tapped me on the butt before walking off.

I silently finished washing the dishes and cleaning the rest of the kitchen.

I turned to see Terry sitting on the couch, staring out the window. The rain was pouring. I knew it wasn't going to slow down any time soon. My mood was instantly dampened.

“You know when we were kids the rain used to ruin our whole day. Now, I can stare at it for hours,” Terry said, leaning back with his arm over the couch.

“Didn't we all? I used to hate it because of my hair. Well, that and I couldn't run fast enough. I always got wet no matter how hard I tried,” I said, leaning against the counter.

“What you mean?” he asked, looking over at me.

“Terry, I been big my whole life. Imagine my thick, clumsy ass running through the ran. I got so tired of getting my ass beat for ruining school clothes because I slipped and fell somehow. After a while, I just stopped trying. I'd rather be wet than dirty,” I laughed.

“Damn. So, you really have always been clumsy? Here I was thinkin’ it was me making you nervous. That's kinda disappointing,” he said, pouting and sticking out his bottom lip.

“Terrence Richmond, I know damn well you aren't pouting. So, you really don't like the fact that I'm not swoonin’ over yo’ ass. Get the fu—,” I said before Terry's eyes cut to me. He raised his eyebrow as a warning. I raised my hands as a sign of an apology.

“I see we still got some work to do when it comes to that mouth of yours,” Terry said, glaring at me.

“What?! I caught it. I didn't even say the last one. How are you still mad? I’m a work in progress, remember?” I asked, rolling my eyes.

“Roll’em again. Go ahead! You really been tryin’ me today, love. You want Daddy's attention, huh?” he asked, laughing at me.

“Nope, I could care less. Sorry,” I said, shrugging my shoulders.

Terry instantly rose from the couch. I knew better than to stay where I was. He was much faster than me, in every aspect of the word.

“Don't even think about runnin’!” Terry commanded.

I took off towards the hallway, sprinting into his bedroom. I slammed the door behind me. I locked it right when his hand began twisting the doorknob.

“Ah ha! Gotta be quicker than that!” I yelled, giggling like a child. I stood in the middle of the room, holding my stomach from laughing so hard.

Before I could even celebrate my small victory, the door swung open. Terry's large frame came around the door like a prowling lion.

“You gotta remember I'm an ex-Marine, love. This silly lil’ lock ain't stoppin' shit,” he said, turning around to lock the door again.

“Oh, come on. There's no way. You couldn't let me win this one time?” I said, folding my arms. I began to walk backward into the room.

Terry was quiet. His posture resembled a stalking predator, and I was more than prey. I had unknowingly trapped myself in a fuckin' room with a damn savage— a deviant. The back of my thighs hit the bed.

“Terry…” I whined, sitting on the bed. I began scooting to the center of the bed.

“Nahhh, what's wrong? Scared?” he asked standing in front of me.

He climbed on the bed and positioned himself between my legs. He used his knees to push mine apart. He grabbed the back of my thighs and pulled me closer to him. I squealed out in content.

“Would you stop? You psychopath!” I yelled, trying to push Terry away.

“Nah, let's have fun!” Terry said, sliding his hands under my gown.

I instantly thought his hands would go to my breasts or pussy, but they didn't. This fuckin’ bastard was tickling me! His hands were all over my body, torturing me and sending me into a fit of laughter. Tears were prickling my eyes, causing my vision to blur. Terry’s large frame became nothing more than a shadow as he hovered over me.

“You done?” he asked, gripping the collar of my gown in a closed fist.

I looked away from his face. I was trying to buy myself time to breathe.

Terry gripped my collar tighter, “Oh, you don't wanna talk?” he said, leaning on top of me.

His hands were back on me as his lips kissed my neck. My laughing was the only thing that could be heard throughout the apartment. Besides low muffled grunts and shallow breathing, Terry wasn't making a sound. His sole mission was to tickle me to death. I don't know what was worse, his hands or lips, but unbeknownst to him, this was setting off a fire that I wasn't sure we could stop. With every kiss, I craved more. Luckily, the intensifying yearning for more than a quick kiss was fizzled out by the enjoyment of the present moment. I felt like a kid— a happy one.

I screamed as loud as I could. Terry's hand flew over my mouth. “That's not nice! We have neighbors,” he said, kissing my cheek.

“Please!” I yelled through his hand.

Terry removed his hand from my mouth. “What you say? I ain't hear ya’, mama,” he said, kissing my lips.

“Please! I have to pee! If I piss myself, imma make sure I piss on you. Then again, that might be a kink for yo’ nasty ass!” I said lifting my leg between us.

“We don't kink shame in this house, ‘Vana, especially considering what you had me doin',” he said, grabbing my leg. He pushed the back of my thigh so my knee was in my chest.

“Oh, stop it. You act like that was the wildest thing ever. You sure weren't complainin’ when you had me on that barn floor wit’ my ass in the air,” I said, squirming underneath him.

“Oh, you wanna be a smartass. Unh unh, stop movin'!” he said, pressing me deeper into the mattress.

“Terry, I have to pee! Please, we can continue this lil’ game right after, honey. Just give me a break,” I begged. If I didn't get up in the next minute, I was going to soak this bed and not in a “good” way.

“Fine!” Terry said, letting me up.

“THANK YOU!” I said, flying off the bed. I ran to the bathroom, feeling like I wouldn't make it.

After relieving myself, I entered back into the bedroom. Quickly scanning the room, I realized Terry was nowhere to be found.

“Terry?!” I yelled.

“I'm in here!” he yelled from the living room.

I walked out of the bedroom and into the hallway. As I rounded the corner to the living room, Terry stood in the doorway. He was leaning to the side with his shoulder pressed against the doorframe.

The smell of rain flooded my nostrils— salty and fresh. I've always loved the smell of rain, especially when I was a little girl. It reminded me of the summers I spent in the country.

“I remember when I was younger, my brothers and I would get suited up in our raincoats and boots just to play in the rain. Mama hated it with a passion. She used to complain about how hard the mud was to get out of our clothes. Daddy, on the other hand, he’d just say we were boys bein’ boys. Hell, he’d even encourage it. I miss those days. Days when we didn't give a damn about how we looked or what we were doin’. We just did the shit— without a care in the world,” Terry said.

Terry’s shoulders dropped as if his memories began to weigh him down. I walked up behind him, letting my hands wrap around his waist. I hugged him tightly. I felt his body shake softly from a silent laugh.

“You know… sometimes, as adults, we care too much. Who gives a fu.. I mean, who cares what other people think?” I asked, pressing my body into Terry’s.

“Mama, we too grown for that kinda stuff, now,” Terry said, laughing somberly.

I paused for a minute, falling victim to my own poignant thoughts.

Had we really become that displaced from happiness? Why was it so hard for adults to indulge— in joy, playfulness, and excitement? Grown-ass adults who were so afraid of being called childish that we were denying ourselves the simplicity of pleasure and gratification through laughter and smiles. We were victims to the parameters of supposed “free will”— an idea of free will that was bastardized by the voices and perceptions of others.

Fuck that! If Terry wanted rain, Terry was gonna get it!

I released my arms from around Terry, grabbing his hand. I pulled him towards the top of the stairs.

“Havana Rose!” Terry yelled.

“Don’t… Just trust me,” I said as we slowly descended the wet stairs. (Apartment exterior)

Rushing from the second floor to the first, I didn't want to give Terry any time to overthink. I pulled him into the rain, praying he would enjoy this moment.

“Babygirl!” Terry said, attempting to shield himself from the pouring rain.

“Just enjoy it, baby. Who gives a… who gives a fuck, huh?” I said, spinning around in the rain.

Terry let his head fall back on his shoulders. I stopped to watch this moment. He raised his arms above his head, reaching for the rain. Finally! He was letting himself be a kid again. His head slowly dropped to look at me. The biggest smile I had ever seen was plastered on his face. A smile so wide that it caused his eyes to close.

“That’s my baby,” I whispered to myself. I was seeing Terry through a completely different lens.

Terry lunged towards me, picking me up. He tossed me over his shoulder and began spinning me around. His laughter booming through the air around us.

“Terry!” I yelled out in laughter.

“WHO CARES, REMEMBER?!” Terry yelled back through the rain.

Putting me down, Terry pulled me into his body. My chin rested against his chest. He grabbed my face in his hands, drawing me closer to him. His gaze was piercing and intense.

“I love you, Havana Rose. Do you understand me? I love you with all my fuckin’ heart, and don't you ever forget that!” he avowed passionately.

I stood there, taking in every word like my life depended on it. Terry would have seen the tears streaming down my face if it wasn’t raining. I wish he could see how much his words were affecting me.

“I love you, too!” I said, jumping into his arms.

My legs wrapped around his waist. Our eyes were locked into a gaze that encompassed a million emotions— love, happiness, passion, lust. My hands went to the back of Terry’s head. His lips met mine in what felt like a kiss orchestrated by Cupid, himself.

We stayed right there in the rain and in love, for what seemed like hours. Kissing and loving on each other like two naive children, unaware of the world around them.

“Y’all gone be sick as dogs out there!” yelled Mrs. Geraldine, Terry’s next-door neighbor.

We pulled away from each other, laughing at her statement. Terry slowly put me down. My feet sloshed in a small puddle beneath me.

“Alright, babygirl. I think Mrs. Geraldine is right. We need to head inside and get you warm, mama. I don't want my baby sick,” he said, picking me up bridal style.

“Oh!” I squealed.

Terry carried me to the bottom of the stairs. I tried to get out of his grasp.

“What you doin'? I got this, lil’ mama. Sit tight,” he said, ascending the stairs carefully. He took his time with each step, handling me like a delicate flower or a small child.

I looked into Terry's eyes, getting lost in the different hues. I had looked in his eyes many times before, but none of those times ever felt like this one. It was as if I was committing every detail to memory. I never wanted to forget how his eyes looked right now— sparkling and wild.

Terry's eyes looked down to mine. “I can't focus wit’ you lookin’ at me like that,” he chuckled.

“I can't help it. You look so… so… so damn pretty. You're one gorgeous man, y’know?” I said, playing with his ear.

He moved his head away. “Ah, here you go with that! Leave my damn ears alone!” Terry rasped through gritted teeth.

“No,” I said stroking both of them.

“Get down! I'm not finna play wit’ you!” he said, putting me down at the doorway.

Walking into the apartment, I was hit by a harsh chill that sent a shudder down my spine.

“Go get out of those clothes and warm up,” Terry said, pushing me on my behind. I swear this man treats me like a child.

“What about you?” I asked, turning back towards the door.

“I'm coming right behind you, mama. I promise,” he said, grabbing my hand and kissing the back of it.

“Better be,” I said, taunting him as I turned around.

And once again like clockwork…

smack

His hand lands right across my ass. How didn't I see that coming?

“Ow, I'm starting to think you just like spanking me,” I said as I rubbed my stinging ass.

“Yeah, I do. It's something ‘bout that recoil and the sound. Ouu… dear sweet Jesus, it drives me crazy,” he exclaimed with joy.

“You're a sadist. You're a fuckin' sadist. Terrence Richmond is a goddamn…,” I started before Terry picked me up, tossing me over his shoulder.

“That's it! That mouth is too loose today. You don't know when to quit, huh?” he asked, rubbing me on my ass. I was beginning to anticipate another spanking.

Unfortunately, his phone rang. He turned around suddenly with me still over his shoulder, thrashing me around.

“Whoa! I don't think I like this ride anymore,” I said through laughter.

“Sorry, love. Here,” he said putting me down. “Go ahead. I'll be right behind ya,” he said, kissing my forehead.

I simply nodded my head yes and began to walk towards the room. Once I was in the bedroom, I walked over to the laundry basket and began pulling off my wet clothes.

“Babygirl, change of plans. I gotta make a quick run to the site. They’re havin’ a problem. I’m sorry!” he yelled from the living room.

“Okay. Be safe. Love you!” I yelled over my shoulder.

“Love you more, mama. I’ll be right back,” Terry said as I heard the front door open and close.

With that, I decided to take a hot shower to warm myself up and relax while Terry was gone.

Taglist: @brattyfics @persethegawd @kimuzostar @avoidthings @5headsupremacist @insidefeelingofanadult @creartivefairy @kirayuki22 @nayaesworld @nahimjustfeelingit-writes @ariiijestertheklown @nayaxwrites @miyuhpapayuh @megamindsecretlair @jimmybutlrr

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@curvyambitions @iburias @geee3bayyybeee3 @episodes-ff @ineedmyaccountback @rebelrel0987

[nimnia]

𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄 𝐈𝐍 𝐌𝐈𝐋𝐀𝐍

pairing ── pham hanni x female reader

summary ── in which hanni falls for a mysterious stranger by a milan lake, their brief connection leaving her heart racing.

contains ── pure wholesome, non idol au, photography, softest first love, sentimental, traveler-photographer hanni, photographer reader, flirty reader, adorable italian nickname

taglist ── none

[masterlist]

── ── ꒰ 📸 ꒱ ── ──

the late afternoon sun casts a golden glow over the tranquil lake, its surface rippling gently as ducks glide across the water.

the scene was mesmerizing, beautiful, a perfect blend of nature's serenity and autumn's gentle embrace. the breeze carried with it the faint scent of fallen leaves, stirring a calm rhythm that seemed to harmonize with the soft quacks if the ducks.

standing near the edge of the lake on the bridge, your figure stood out in quiet elegance.

your hair flower freely, catching the breeze in graceful arcs. every so often, a strand would fall across your face, and you'd tuck it behind your ear with a graceful, absentminded motion.

your hands were steady as you raised your camera, focusing intently on the ducks paddling near the shore and the orange leaves floating on the water's surface.

hanni stood a few feet away, her own camera hanging loosely around her neck.

she had been capturing the picturesque scenery of the famous lake when she caught sight of you.

her breath hitched slightly at the sight—the way the sunlight framed your gorgeous figure, the ease with which you moved, and the quiet focus in your expression as you framed your shots.

she felt her heart skip, her ears turning red as she gripped her camera nervously.

she had seen beauty in many forms before, through the lens of her travels and photography, but something about you held her attention in a way she couldn't quite explain.

she swallowed hard, taking a tentative step towards you.

her palms felt clammy against her camera, and her mind raced to come up with something—anything—to say. still, as nervous as she felt, there was an undeniable pull that drew her closer.

when she stopped a short distance away from you, the space between you felt almost tangible, like an invisible thread linking her to your presence.

the soft rustle of leaves and the quiet lapping of water filled the silence as hanni tried to calm her nerves.

hesitantly, she turned her head to glance at you, her heart pounding in anticipation.

but to her surprise, she found your captivating gaze already on her, curiosity flickering in your eyes.

"oh—!" she stammered, snapping her head away so quickly she nearly dropped her camera. her cheeks flushed a deep crimson, and she cursed herself for getting caught staring.

you blinked, your curiosity deepening as you studied the flustered girl beside you.

there was something endearing about this stranger—her shy demeanor, the way her hands trembled slightly as she adjusted the strap of her camera.

a small smile tugged at your lips, and you decided to break the silence.

"buonasera, bella," you greeted warmly, your voice soft and inviting.

hanni's breath hitched again. the way you spoke—your voice like a warm melody, paired with that endearing italian nickname—sent her head into overdrive.

she turned back to you cautiously, her eyes wide and unsure.

"uh... hi," she managed, her voice barely above a whisper.

your smile widened ever so slightly, and you tilted your head, your gaze never leaving hers. "you're not from around here, are you?"

hanni shook her head, trying to steady her voice. "n-no, i'm just.. visiting, from south korea.."

"ah, south korea.." you repeated thoughtfully, as if savoring the words. "that's wonderful. milan must feel so different, then."

"it does," she admitted softly, her nerves easing slightly at your gentle tone. "but it's... so beautiful here."

"it is," you agreed, glancing back at the lake. "especially during autumn—it's my favorite season out of all seasons."

hanni nodded, her grip on her camera tightening. "...mine too."

you looked back at her, your eyes softening. "do you come here often to take pictures?"

"i.. travel a lot," she explained, her voice gaining a bit more confidence. "photography is.. kind of my thing, and i love exploring new places."

your smile deepened, and for a moment, you seemed lost in thought. "a kindred spirit, then.." you mumbled.

hanni blinked, "kindred spirit?"

you lifted your own camera slightly, gesturing towards it. "i love capturing moments too. the little details that most people overlook."

she couldn't help but smile at your words, "it's certainly the best part, isn't it? finding beauty in the small things..."

you nodded, your gaze returning to the lake. the two of you stood there for a moment, an unspoken understanding settling between you.

after a while, you adjusted your camera and captured a shot of the orange sky reflected in the water. then, with a quiet confidence, you held the photo out to hanni.

"here," you said, your smile warm. "a welcome gift—for milan, and for you."

hanni hesitated, her eyes darting from the photo to your face. "f-for me?"

"of course," you said with a playful glint in your eyes. "a woman like you deserves to feel at home here, bella."

her cheeks burned, and she fumbled to take the photo from your hand. "t-thank you..." she stammered, holding it as if it were the most precious thing in the world.

you chuckled softly at her reaction, the sound making her heart skip again.

despite the brief conversation, something about you felt so familiar. hanni couldn't place it, but there was an ease to talking to you, as if she had known you in another life.

"milan suits you," you said suddenly, breaking her thoughts.

"it.. it does?" she asked, her voice tinged with disbelief.

you nodded, "you have.. a warm energy, even if you don't realize it. this city loves people like you."

hanni's heart swelled at your words, and for a moment, she couldn't find the right thing to say.

she simply stared at you, wondering how someone she had just met could make her feel so seen.

as the sun dipped lower, casting the lake in shades of amber and rose, you glanced at your watch. "i should get going," you said reluctantly and sadly, your gaze lingering on her.

"oh.." hanni said softly, disappointment flickering across her face.

you noticed but didn't comment, offering her one last smile instead. "enjoy your time here, bella, and maybe... we'll meet again, someday."

before she could respond, you gave her a small wave and began walking away, the breeze catching your hair as you disappeared down the path.

hanni stood frozen, clutching the photo you had given her. her heart raced, and her mind replayed every word, every glance, every smile.

as you glanced back briefly, your soft eyes meeting hers one last time, she felt her breath hitched.

once you were out of sight, hanni let out a shaky laugh, pressing her free hand to her chest, feeling it being thumped by her heart.

"...damn it, i think i just fell in love..." she murmured breathlessly, her cheeks still flushed and her heart racing so fast.

for the first time in all her travels, it wasn't the scenery or the culture that had left the deepest impression—it was you.

── ── ꒰ end ꒱ ── ──

[304files]

you don’t understand how mc is literally me and i am here. she’s me to a molecular level. no joke, i never read an mc that was so deeply similar to me it hit me like a gut punch.

reading this while listening to the playlist was truly an experience (which was so good btw i LOVE your music taste). can we talk about how absolutely gorgeous your writing is for a second??? the way you craft your sentences are so satisfyingly beautiful it’s insane!! some of my favorite quotes:

“It flutters frantically in it, making a grand fight to reach that false moonlight, only to drop away when it realizes that it’s being burnt. You watch it rinse and repeat, relentless and sure, for who knows how long. It’s no special moth—no luna moth or the ones with the pretty pink wings—but the light falls down on it and colors it a pleasant stardust silver.”

“Taking those steps, the massive and terrifying ones from adolescence into adulthood, meant agreeing that this form of your life was over.”

“That passion and love wasn’t gone from you, it blazed strong in your veins. This blaze wasn’t the kind that kept you warm and excited to push forward into life, though. It had morphed into something that scalded you when you got too close or started imagining yourself pursuing its call. It’s a taunting silvery glow, no longer a guiding north star.”

“You clutch childhood to your chest like a wild animal guarding scarce food; you refuse. You refuse to acknowledge its end.”

“‘You don’t get it. You are the music. Every single song is about you. Every single fucking song is about you. I want you to come with me, please. I love you, I have always loved you, and I will always love you, and I thought you’d loved me too, and I don’t want to do this alone. I can’t do it alone.’”

i don’t know if you’ve ever read this book, but the vibes of this fic reminds me a lot of the starless sea by erin morgenstern!! literally my favorite book EVER. if you haven’t read it then i think you would like it a lot!! ^^

this is truly one of those types of stories that you come across and it just makes you absolutely fall in love with reading. the type that makes you want to pick up a pencil and feverishly write out the story that’s been in your head for years. if this story was a song, to me it would be dog days are over by florence + the machine. it just gives you that feeling that everything will work out and everything will be okay and this too shall pass. i love it so so much and i’m so happy that you decided to share it with the world so that people like me and so many others could come across it and read it for themselves! ♡♡♡

𝑯EART 𝑊ORM ⸺ hueningkai ℘˒´ˎ˗

  ⨾𓍢ִ໋ ˒˒ 𝚑𝔢art𝚠𝔬rm

[𝑛]. a relationship or friendship that you can't get out of your head, which you thought had faded long ago but is still somehow alive and unfinished, like an abandoned campsite whose smoldering embers still have the power to start a forest fire.

⸺ listen to the playlist .ᐟ ‧˚

〝﹙ 📼 ﹚“I was just... wondering,” you say, blood roaring. "Well, Yeonjun wants me to come over to his place this weekend, and... I’ve never...” Sucking in a quick breath, you just spit it out to get it over with, “Would you be my first kiss, Kai?”  ˛ ､､

wc ➛ 17.9k

𝔭airings childhood bsf!kai x reader (lowkey soulmates?) ⤷ ft. asshole!yeonjun x reader

𝒢 ‎; smut ˒ angst ˒ some fantasy

𝔴arnings angst, family issues, fingering, jealousy (i’m sorry i just love ts), yeonjun really is an asshole, orgasm denial, thigh fucking, unprotected sex (they're stupid!), strength kink a lil bit, breeding kink, possessiveness, creampie, choking... i think that's all, lmk if i missed any

✎୭ ashlynn's note omg. this was such a fun palate cleanser to write. this wasn't supposed to be as big as it is, but it just kept getting bigger and bigger, and i got super into the story. this kai is SOOOO!! yeah. i’m so nervous posting this because i’ve only ever posted TSFAWC, but…. here you areee (^^;; this is not proofread, so if you see a mistake... give me a sec. i'll get to it. hehe

Though you fan your hand furiously over your face, the little breezes washing over your clammy skin are not enough. The air is thick and heavy with summer’s heat. So thick that you almost feel it each time you swallow. It’s better than just letting yourself melt away, though. The cushion at your back doesn’t help much. It holds your warmth and returns it to you the longer you sit slumped back into it. You suffer it though—you’ve gone too sluggish to move.  

You let a leg dangle over the arm of a chair, watching a hopeful moth dance in the light of the buzzing porch light overhead. It flutters frantically in it, making a grand fight to reach that false moonlight, only to drop away when it realizes that it’s being burnt. You watch it rinse and repeat, relentless and sure, for who knows how long. It’s no special moth—no luna moth or the ones with the pretty pink wings—but the light falls down on it and colors it a pleasant stardust silver.  

You delight in letting your conscious brain turn off to watch it. It lets you forget the sweltering under your skin, and also that Kai had drug you out here. His dad gives him shit when he plays inside, but it’s way too hot to be out here. Isn’t it supposed to cool off after the sun goes down? It doesn’t feel like it. The deep acoustics are drowned out each time a car whirrs by. Playing outside should be the best option, but you and Kai live right on a busy road.  

When the roar of some car going ten miles over the speed limit doesn’t obscure his playing, though, you admire the intricacy of it. His fingers work up and down the neck, jumping frets that you imagine would be impossible to anybody without those long fingers of his. You had always been a loud supporter of his playing, even way back when the most he could play were simple chords, but you became especially so when a few years back he put a guitar in your hands and tried teaching you. Even with his fingers guiding yours, it was quick to learn that the effortlessness with which Kai handles the instrument is hard earned.  

He practices on the acoustic guitar, but that’s not his domain. With houses just a dash across the street from each other, Kai had grown up at your home more than he had at his own. So vividly, you remember the stars in his eyes when he’d listen to your dad’s music. Metallica, The Smashing Pumpkins, Linkin Park, any of it. He had fallen in love with it a long time ago. Your whole life you knew that it was only a matter of time before he was in his own band, chasing his dreams with a boundless mind and an indelible vision of himself on stage. How had that time come so soon, though? You don’t know if the notebooks full of inky lyrics that live wherever he deems inspiration might hit him make you proud or nervous. He’s making good on his dazzling aspirations, and you? 

You speak finally into the air, cutting through heat waves and his music and the night. “Isn’t it weird that we’re not going back to school after this summer?” 

He doesn’t have to even stop playing to answer you. Playing comes to him as a second nature. “Kinda,” he answers, brown eyes flitting up to you. “But it’s not like you won’t be back to it in September. College is the same shit.” 

The leg you’d been dangling and bouncing pauses. That’s right; you’re supposed to be going to that college you’d chosen because it was only a three-hour drive away from here. You pluck at the seat’s threadbare fabric, and the moth, still there, becomes oh-so-interesting once again. When his playing stops, you drop your head back with a cushioned thud and a groan that you wrangle in your throat. 

“Why are you acting like that?” he says, voice gone sharp like accusation. He doesn’t even know the truth, but he’s known you too long.

Can’t you just keep secrets for yourself, sometimes?

Kai, arms clad in a well-loved hoodie even in this dreadful weather, lays the guitar down. You maintain your silence. “Seriously, what?” 

Some secrets have timers, though. This one could only last you until about September, or even August when he realizes that you’re not preparing to return to school. A controlled sigh from your chest isn’t enough to soothe the nerves that sparks. “Nothing.” 

“Secrets, huh?” Kai says. When you do finally look to him, black spikes of hair frame his eyes and the accusation in them. 

It’s a simple poke, but it gets under your skin as sharp as any thorn might. It’s not like you don’t keep secrets from him, and you’re sure he keeps some from you too. But those are the little kinds, the inconsequential ones—like I ate already when asked why you’re not eating or like Yeah, I’m fine when it’s been a bad day. You don’t hide this kind of stuff from each other. Usually, you’d run over to his place to tell him whatever’s bothering you. Why not, when he’s known even the worst details of your life for almost the entirety of it? You’ve been holding this one close to your chest since somewhere around the end of senior year, though. The longer you let it fester, the worse your nervousness snowballs. “C’mon, Kai. Let’s not do this. Can you keep playing?” 

He doesn’t like that, of course. But you watch recognition dawn over his chocolate brown eyes, helpless to stop it. “You’re not going,” he says. It’s not a question nor a suspicion, it’s a bone-dry fact.  

Well. There that goes. You want to tear every hair on your head right out. Why had you even thought you’d keep him in the dark about it? When he’s not out in some garage making music, you two are together. The conversation was going to stroll by at some point; this was only inevitable. His disappointment radiates off him in waves and blisters you. He hasn’t even said anything yet, but you know exactly what he thinks of it. It’s why you kept it from him in the first place.  

Your silence is enough confirmation for him. “Why?” he says. “I thought you were excited to move out.” 

Wincing, you nod slowly. You were. Even went through the whole application process, along with most other kids your age. Ultimately, you never went through with declaring a college. You don’t exactly know why, but somewhere weaseled down in the shadowy recesses of your soul, you know. Taking those steps, the massive and terrifying ones from adolescence into adulthood, meant agreeing that this form of your life was over. It meant that at some point, you’d be moving away from here to where living your days away in Kai’s room would not be a choice. Everybody has to do it eventually, you know that. Kai’s music gig could take off any day, too. He’s going to make it happen. And then what? All this stalling and wishing on just a bit more time would mean nothing, he’d be off and chasing that dream. As excited as you are for it to finally become reality for him, there’s a nasty bitterness that’s budded in your chest, infecting your person.  

Can’t things just stay like this? 

“I was,” you say. It comes out of your mouth heavy.  

“Then why aren’t you going?” he says. Crickets, never seen but always heard, sing their song into the night’s darkness. “You didn’t get rejected. You’re too smart for that.” 

An ache sits heavily somewhere near the center of your chest, maybe over your heart. All those good grades, nights spent bent over a desk and AP paperwork—you’re wasting it. You shake your head. “No... just...” It’s an effort to dress your thoughts in a way that might appease him. A quiet moment stretches with your thinking before you continue, “I don’t know what I want to do.” 

He doesn’t like that, the yellow wash of the overhead light dancing over his taut lips and hard eyes. “Don’t know what you want to do?” he says, bringing his legs up onto the seat to crisscross them. He wears his favorite jeans. They’re heel-bitten and baggy enough over his legs that he can wear them around the house without any bother. “You’ve wanted to be an artist your whole life. You know exactly what you want to do.” 

Your chest only seems to ache harder. When the both of you were only young and hopeful, you both had big dreams. Kai was going to be the face of a metal band, and you were going to be an artist. A painter, potter, sculptor, even doing animation for those big companies like Dreamworks and Disney. You wanted any of it, just as long as you were doing art. You’d even promised him that you’d do the cover art for his albums with interlocked pinkies and flushed, hopeful cheeks. That passion and love wasn’t gone from you, it blazed strong in your veins. This blaze wasn’t the kind that kept you warm and excited to push forward into life, though. It had morphed into something that scalded you when you got too close or started imagining yourself pursuing its call. It’s a taunting silvery glow, no longer a guiding north star. Taunting words of family members stamped down on that hope hard. When you were little, it was said lighthearted and in passing. The older you got, though, the more serious their faces became. They wouldn’t say it outright perhaps, but you hear what they think well enough. Art is a dead-end career.  

Shifting in your seat, you tell him, “I don’t know.” 

“What do you mean?” Kai says. “There are good colleges for that.” 

“I just... don’t know.” 

Shaking his head, he tells you, “But you love it.” 

You do. In its every form, you love creating. But loving it doesn’t mean that it’s right for you, or that you should trust your future in its hands. “I think I can do it in my own time,” you say, finally pushing yourself upright from the cushion. “Don’t wanna kill the passion by doing it for a living, you know?” 

He thinks on that for a moment. “If you love it, you should do it,” he says. 

An awful frustration bubbles in your chest. Kai has always had a clear life path, the steps ahead of him set in stone and waiting for him to follow in them. It’s hard for him to see why you might not want to do the same. There’s nothing that makes you as happy as the fact that he has it all figured out, that he knows just where he’s going and that he’s so incredible at it that he doesn’t have to worry about meeting the requirements, but your path seems obscured and untrodden. Punctuating a deep, resonant sigh, you say, “It’s not that easy, Kai.” 

“If you’re not doing that, then what are you going to do? Are you just going to settle for a nine-to-five?” he says full of accusation, the tapping on his knees gone still.  

A dry laugh, you say, “Maybe I’ll marry a super rich guy and just do my art for a living. No nine-to-five.” 

His face flashes. He’d always been a bit reserved, especially around others, but he bared his emotions freely around you. You hold them dearly to your chest and made sure to do your best to make good on that trust. He says, “You’re more than some guy’s housewife.” 

Cheeks radiating in the heat, you snort. “I know, dork. I’m a rockstar’s best friend. It’s my personal favorite achievement.”  

His face sours when you reach out and pinch hard at his cheek, but he doesn’t pull away or brush you off. The skin there is warmed and clammy. Really, the two of you should go meet the cool AC inside before you suffer heat stroke. But this moment feels so nice—your shoulders feel tons lighter without something to hide. If you had it your way, things would stay like this forever. Just the two of you, sat here like you have so many times before, just taking for granted the time you’ve got together.  

His mouth opens to banter, probably something about how he’s not a rockstar yet or to get you back for calling him a dork. Wingbeat and sterling dashes about your face send the image into a blur, though. You’re a quick mess of limbs and a whipping head, as if it’ll chase the thing away from you. 

“Seriously?” Kai says. You’d climbed halfway over him, elbows digging into him and knee doing a number on his thigh. “It’s a moth. You’re not scared of moths.” 

Lingering for a few moments later to ensure the flying thing was nowhere on you or around you, you hold back a laugh before you climb off him and fix your hair with undignified tucks behind your ears. “He was in my face,” you say around a laugh, because you know it was a bit too much. Nobody likes wings in their ears and spindly legs in their face, though, and you’re in no control of what you do when anything with six legs tries and get too friendly. Even moths.  

“You just wanted me to protect you,” he says. A sarcastic, shit-eating smile tugs at the corners of his mouth.  

“Oh,” you scoff, batting your eyelashes and clasping your hands together all saccharine-sweet. “Yes, Romeo, won’t you kill that bug for me? This girl’s heart just can’t take it!” 

Kai’s nose crinkles, and the playful light twists into a glare. “Nasty.” 

“That’s how you sounded,” you say. “I only reacted accordingly.” Laughing, you kick your legs out over his lap and sprawl back out. He takes the guitar back into his hands. 

As much as you want to escape the mugginess, you’ll survive it for just a little while longer—if only with the force of an indulgent heart. The eternal moments are those you allow to linger.  

⚝⭒ 

Some things, you forget when you’re older. Maybe it’s time’s hand, eroding memories down and stuffing more in the longer you live to experience them. But also maybe because they’re the sort of things you can’t say in the adult world without a laugh in the face and a look from down their noses.  

This memory is one of those forgotten things. It’s moth-bitten and dusty, something you one day folded up in a moving box and decided to never revisit. 

You’d been down at the creek. Kai and you had spent so many summer days there. It wasn’t too far from home, just past the filbert trees and into the shallow neck of the backwoods, but there you were out of sight and free to get up to nothing good. It was a wonder your mom ever let you do it. Kai’s dad didn’t care too much where he went or what he did, but your mom dug her claws in deep. You like to think that she imagined you two would have each other, if anything ever happened. 

Usually, you’d be there holding your jeans up from the stream and Kai would be letting his jeans go dark with it. The bite of water was nice as it washed over warm skin. Fun was a simple thing to find, then. You dug your fingers into the mudbanks and tossed stones way too big to be throwing at each other, just because you two remembered how much the adults hated it when you did. Then, you’d drag tired limbs home avoiding sweetgum tree spikes that had fallen to the ground and dug splinters out from your feet.  

This day, you had been in the blackberry bushes. It was maybe late July or early August, and they’d gotten heavy on their branches. You’d waited until the smell of them, summer-warmed, was sweet and cloying in the air to pick them. With buckets in your hands, you plucked only the fattest berries from their bunches. Your fingers were stained a delightful purple and perhaps a bit thorn raw, but you didn’t mind much then. You plucked for hours, and it was dusk before you could catch it. Dinner was no doubt waiting for you back home. 

“There’s a bunch over here,” Kai had said. He reached a long boyish arm, still awkward and lanky with puberty, up high for ripe bush. You finished off picking before climbing around thick branches sticking out to take a peek. A bunch, there was. 

When you went to drop a handful of them into your bucket, Kai hissed. He’d been snagged by a vicious looking branch, those ones as thick as a finger with thorns to match and you’d warn each other tongue-in-cheek to watch out for that one. He’d worn those ridiculous shorts that day, the ones that looked half pants half shorts with how long and baggy they were, and the claws of the bush had jumped at the opportunity. At first the scrapes were white, but then red blood crawled out and down his leg.  

“Kai,” you said, some parts chiding and some parts just wondering how he’d managed that. You surveyed his leg for a bit, and then determined that he should wash his leg off in the stream. He walked there strong, but of course you noticed the hobble beneath his acting. When you squatted down into the dry grass and cupped water to wash off his leg, you laughed. 

“What?” he had said, holding the shorts up. You covered your laugh with a hand, but it erupted past your palm. You remember the glare on his face very well.  

You still laughed. “You’re stupid,” you had told him. 

“I didn’t see it,” he said. “I tripped over it because it was sticking out.” 

That time when you brought your hands to catch some water, there was a twinkle in its surface. You didn’t notice it for a second. The creek moved fast and you could see a lot of things in its reflection. When it lingered, that’s when your brows furrowed. It seemed to twirl, dancing around like alive over the stones. 

The sound of Kai’s voice remains with you. “Hey,” he had said, strong to call your attention but also wavered with uncertainty. 

When you looked up, there was silver dust dancing around you. 

It was fluffy and whorling, fine silver stardust. It’d moved weightless in the air, as though it barely existed. In the center of it were a few moths. They seemed to be made of sterling powder just as the dust was, and they glowed against dusk’s backdrop. If your memory serves you right, there had been a sweet hymn of coos from them. They beckoned you. Summer’s heat felt lighter, and so did your chest. You wondered where they had wanted you to go. 

Almost afraid that if you spoke they might have fluttered away, you whispered soft and low to Kai. “What is that?” He was stood frozen there, pant leg still scrunched up in his fist. Stardust glowed soft in his brown eyes while he took it all in, you remember. It wasn’t a scared frozen. You weren’t scared, either—rather, it was as if that lightness had found its way into the core of your being and brushed over it with mending hands. 

He whispered back, “I don’t know.” How could he have known? It was absurd. 

Those whisps had beckoned you, flowing toward the deeper woods. The soft moths, their murmuring brushing up against your ears, seemed to wait for you to follow. You remember a pull, soft tendrils wrapping themselves around your heart and the yearning it planted there.  

But there was also this reluctance, a bone-deep answering that had told you: No. You’re not ready. 

“Kai, I wanna go,” you told him. 

You didn’t even need to tell him twice. Berry buckets forgotten; the journey home was a stranger one. When your dad asked why you returned from berry picking emptier handed than you had left the house, Kai and you only shared a look. You pair kept that evening at the creek hidden so well that it became more forgotten than shared secret.  

⚝⭒ 

Once, you had been the type of girl that loved being around family. Some of your favorite days of your life were spent in this living room, T.V. roaring over bouncing conversation. Some of those nights ended in rosy cheeks and laughs, and some ended with words thrown angry like fireworks. You never knew which you’d be getting, but you endured the fear of not knowing because it was a simple love—the basic kind built with biology into you the moment your infant skin touched your mother’s. You endured it because eventually, sleep washed away the bad taste left in your mouth and you forgave them quick, sometimes quicker than you ought to, and things would go on as if it hadn’t even happened. You endured it because you could handle its burden, if only to feel the warmth you feel when it’s a good day.  

Kai was always there—his dad was hardly home, so he found family in yours. When you were younger, you’d been embarrassed he was there for caustic, spitted words and intimate fights. Now, you’re just grateful for his shoulder.  

So, yes. Once, you had loved being around your family. But things feel tenser now, nights spent all together less frequent and when they do happen, they’re tainted by a strange air. You think that this strangeness is new, but an awful worry also makes you think that it’d always been there, that you only feel it now because you’ve grown into your adult mind. A hollow ache stakes its claim in your chest, declaring that it won’t leave until you find that youthful ignorance and joy once more. You think that it might stay there forever. 

Bare feet bounding down the stairs, you make a rare appearance downstairs. The cupboard is only half open to make way for a snack raid before your mom’s voice cuts through the air. You know quickly just by the look on her face that you should’ve stayed upstairs. 

“Hey,” she says, gathering laundry into a basket. “You’ve been applying to jobs?” 

With an anxious belly, you tell her, “Yeah. A few. They’re not really, like, ideal, but I sent applications.” You don’t remember when it got hard to look into your mother’s eyes, but you can’t bring yourself to do so now.  

“Not ideal?” she says. “It’s not like you can be picky. Mcdonalds or wherever, I don’t care, you’re going to need to get a job if you’re staying here.” 

“I know. I applied,” you reiterate around a mumble. You close the cabinets, not so interested in a snack anymore. “I just... I don’t know, ma. I don’t want to do that for a living, going between those sorts of jobs.” 

Face hard and abrasive against the truth you bare, she does that awful taunting smile that makes you feel small. Stupid. “You’re not going to college, so that’s what it’s gonna be. You can’t sit up there and draw for a living. You’ve gotta get into the real world, get some real experience.”  

There’s a burst of hurt in your chest, dazzling and gnawing. She’s getting closer to saying how she really feels about your dreams out loud every day. Your face burns and so do your eyes, knot thick in your throat. “Yeah, okay. Got it,” you say, nodding. You’re at the front door before you even know it, slipping on shoes and fighting the greatest internal battle to will back tears. She’d use those against you, no doubt about it. “I’m going to Kai’s,” you throw over your shoulder.  

Whatever she barks back at you, you’re glad you don’t hear. Bells on some old Christmas decoration hung on the door that had yet to be taken down, even into summer, jingle and wash it away for you. 

Kai’s brows shoot up when he opens the door to your face crumpling. You’d done so well at damming it up, but the wall cracks and the water crashes through once you see him. If it were anybody else, you’d feel icky and attention seeking, but you’d held Kai to your chest through gut-wrenching sobs as much as he’s done it for you. Without question, he takes you into his arms, warm hand running up and down your back. The warm soothing is so familiar. You melt right into it.  

He keeps you there for a long moment. Then, his chest rumbles as he tells you, “Come on.” The walk through the AC to his bedroom is nice. Having a house like Kai’s to come to where it can just be you is nice, too. You step around the mess of clothes and scattered belongings on his floor like you have a muscle-memory roadmap of his room. Boxsprings creak and hard mattress welcome you back home. His room is dark as always, a night-dweller you call him. The array of peeling band posters plastered over walls you two had painted blue some years ago, when it’d been his favorite color, don’t help to lighten it up. He keeps a low lamplight on.  

“She never listens to me,” you say, crying gone to occasional sniffles from your chest. You rest your cheek on your bent knee. 

“I know,” he says. “But at least she cares about you. Pays attention to you.” His voice is soft and deep and right next to you. Always right next to you, there for you even when you might not appreciate it as you should.  

His dad cares too little what he does, and yours care too much. The grass is always greener on the other side, you know it. Still, you hold a fantasy where you’re able to do teenager stuff. Where you’d allow yourself to do bad things, because you weren’t so intent on painting yourself with their will. You two hold eyes for a long moment, your twinkling ones caught in that steady brown. “I just want to get away. Be my own person.” Your words are muffled in the softness of your skin. 

“You had the chance to do it,” Kai says, hand playing with your fingers. “But you didn’t.” 

Holding your legs closer, you lick your lips. What do you say to that? Would it ever be the time to tell him that you did it because you think that your soul is pathetically intertwined with his, and that it might snuff your lifeforce out to even try pursuing life without him? Without this? How do you tell him that you’re so frozen and unwilling to pursue any sort of future because it means accepting that this chapter is over? You clutch childhood to your chest like a wild animal guarding scarce food; you refuse. You refuse to acknowledge its end.  

“Kai,” is all you say, trembled and thick. It’s not just your mother’s words that dig at you and tear to shreds the last bits of what dreaming you had left in you, but so many other reality checks too. This isn’t the first time you’ve heard those sorts of words, urging you forward. You can only dig your heel into the ground for so long before you’re swept away in time’s ruthless, endless moving.  

He understands. Lifting your face with warm fingers against your cheeks, he says, “Hey. How about we go get ice cream, or something?” 

Ice cream does sound nice. “Dairy Queen?” 

Smirk tugged over his mouth, he says, “Yes, Dairy Queen. A blizzard. C’mon, let’s go.” Sliding off the bed, he offers you an urging hand up. 

But you falter. “I don’t know if we can. She’s mad at me. I don’t think she’ll let me go.” 

“Let you go?” he says, eyes narrowed. “She doesn’t have to let you go. You’re an adult now, you go if you want to.” He offers his hand to you again. 

It’s so him, freely going wherever he ordain it. The bullheadedness is very him, as well. Always the devil on your shoulder, he was the root of any rebellious thing you’ve ever done. He could never understand your apprehension, or why getting in trouble was such an awful thing to you. “I have to ask to get money.” 

Brows pinching, he says, “You think I’m not gonna pay for you? You don’t need them to give you money, I’ll pay. I’ll take care of it.” He drags you up from the bed this time. “Live a little. Do you want to go?” 

It was never the punishments or the getting in trouble that you were scared of, though. Disappointment was a scarier word than grounded. Sneaking out and those sorts of things, it’s not like you had angel wings at your back and never considered them. It’s that you are deeply, utterly terrified of changing how they look at you. You begin to tell him, “I do, but—” 

He cuts you off, adamant. “Then do it. Let’s go. If you want to go, then go,” he says. “At some point, your life needs to become your own. It’s not sneaking out when you’re graduated and eighteen years old, it’s going wherever the hell you want. You’ve... You’re gonna end up stuck here, in this town, forever. You don’t deserve that.” 

That sounds like both the best and the worst thing you’ve ever heard. You take his hand.  

⚝⭒ 

Your frozen fingers nurse your ice cream. The cup itself is cold, but the Dairy Queen on your side of town is always thirty degrees below what it should be. It’d always been that way. Even way back when you two couldn’t drive, you’d get dropped off here to escape the melting weather and get a frozen treat with a handful of dollars. Each time, you’d start off sagging with the relief of summer’s weight off your shoulders and left the place shivering and sugar-mouthed.  

It’s really only you two in here. You crinkle your nose when he takes a spoonful. “Out of all the flavors...” 

Unbothered and no doubt expecting you to say it, he offers you a flat, “You get your flavor, I get mine.” He makes a point of taking an extra-long bite. His lips linger around the red plastic of the spoon and his brows rest high in silent challenge.  

The corners of your lips twitch up. “Hmm. Well. I just have a hard time believing that Oreo... or, like, brownie fudge, is right there, and you actually want M&M. I don’t get how M&M your favorite.” A familiar banter falls over your tongues. Your heart buzzes and your cheeks radiate. This is the first you’ve done this all summer, and it’ll be weaning off into fall soon. Any other summer, you would’ve been here on all the hottest days. You hate that Kai’s been so busy with his music; you hate that you can hear the resounding ticks of the clock counting down your time. You also hate that the stubborn depths of you still believe that if you freeze yourself here in stasis that the world will relent and stop along with you. 

You look over the sharp lines of Kai’s jawline as it feathers with his chewing, and the broadness of his shoulders where his jacket stretches around it, and the starkness of his collarbones against his chest and the bobbing of his adam’s apple when he swallows. No, time doesn’t stop. Some of him remains the same, though. In it, you see the boy that had love creeping up on you so long ago, with all its aching and all its hope. That freckle on the column of his neck, the bump in his nose leading down to the button tip that beckons your lips to steal a quick kiss.  

And, those lips. They’re as soft as ever around the discontented grimace he pulls. “M&M isn’t my favorite.” 

With a pursed mouth and patronizing brows arched over your eyes, you say, “Oh, huh. That’s funny, because if my memory serves me right, it’s the only flavor you’ve ordered for the past... six years.”  

Kai husks a laugh at that. “That’s because they haven’t had my favorite for years,” he tells you, scooping up the final bit and then pushing it off to the side. “It was a blizzard of the month that they discontinued. The blackberry cheesecake one. I made peace with it, though. It lives on in my heart.” He grins, arms crossed over his chest and his back settled into the booth seat to let you finish your cup.  

“Blackberry cheesecake,” you say, voice made taunting. Your nod is slow and taunting, too. “Well, forget M&Ms.Why would blackberry cheesecake be your favorite? Ever?” 

His face falters, a moment where something flows over his eyes as if reliving a memory in a few short seconds. Then, he shrugs. “It just is.” 

You roll your eyes. “Whatever,” you laugh. “Maybe my palate is unrefined.” Imagining the tarte fruit in purple swirls of ice cream, you’re taken back to a humid July day and the scent of churned mud.  

The strange memory unfolds itself quick. As if it were waiting for you to find wherever it’d hidden itself away. With a sharp gasp, you say, “Oh my god, Kai. Do you remember that one day? That weird stuff we saw down at the creek?” 

He nods. “Yeah. I was just thinking of that the other day, actually...” 

Less interested in finishing your cup now, you let the spoon rest. “What?” you say, the word peaking in the middle. That day hadn’t crossed your mind once since it’d happened. “How weird is that?” 

Scoffing a laugh, he says, “Weird, yeah. Just as strange as two kids high on fermented berries.” 

That draws a breathy laugh from you. “Is that what you think it was?” you ask him with knitted brows. The berries had been fresh, and you two had popped plenty into your mouth. But no doubt, you’d have spat them right back out if they were that ripe. “I mean, we saw the same thing.” 

“It happens to animals all the time. Squirrells, and stuff.” He lends you a gallic shrug. “We just freaked ourselves out. Like that one time you said you saw the shape of something in the dark and we freaked out. And it was clothes.”  

Well, hallucinating, in tandem, a glowing mist because you two by chance ate fermented berries is a very long shot. However nonchalant he acts about it, he seems to have thought long and hard about it. Enough to reason it away with some far cry explanation. Would you have even been able to get drunk off a handful of fermented berries? And, god, you’re really sure that you’d have noticed. That taste isn’t really one you just don’t notice.  

Whatever. Maybe you were just drunk idiots. That’s a lot easier to swallow, anyway. 

“Okay, but you saw that. Did it not look sinister?” you say. With your spoon back in your hand, you punctuate the sentence pointing it at him. “You freaked out with me, too.”  

An unsatisfied scowl on his lips, he steals a spoonful of your dessert. You don’t even swat him away—your phone buzzes in your pocket. 

Catching sight of who’s calling, you share a long look with Kai. It’s funny, how fast those three white letters scramble you up. When you hesitate to answer, Kai tells you, “Answer.” 

You hope she can’t tell you’re not at Kai’s by the refrigerators’ dull buzzing. It’s an effort to tussle that invasive worry back. You’re at Dairy Queen. Getting ice cream with the boy she’s known since childhood. She should clutch her hands and thank the sky that you’re here, not out in some nasty frat house like you could be. You thumb the green button. 

Her voice comes through the speaker crackled and asking you to run over to do a quick dish load. For a heartbeat you consider telling her that you will and then start rushing home. Instead, you fork out the truth through resistant lips. 

The hangup tone sits heavy on the air between you and Kai. Having listened to the whole thing on speaker, he says, “What was so hard about that? The world didn’t end, did it?” 

The plush of your lip takes a hard gnawing. No, it hadn’t. “I know she’s not going to get mad at me for just going here,” you say as you rest your elbows onto the table. “It’s that they’re supporting me right now. I still live under their roof. The more I go around and insist I can do whatever I want, they’ll start reminding me of it.” 

His face drawn, he lets his mouth twitch to one side. “Yeah,” he muses. “I never thought yours would be the type to kick you out.” 

Kai’s dad had started threating him with getting kicked out years ago, when he first started telling him that he wanted to do music. How many times had he let reluctant tears flow into your shoulder over it? Because music wasn’t a real job? Back then, you’d whispered in his ears that he’d become everything he’d dreamed of and more as your fingers carded through shaggy locks of hair.  

“I don’t know,” you say, humming it out noncommittally. “Is your dad still... y’know?” 

Nodding slowly, his eyes tell. “Yeah. Always.” 

“Because you’re taking the band seriously, now?” you ask.  

“Probably. I don’t give a shit what he thinks about it. If I’m just his goddamn problem, I’ll give him what he wants soon enough.” His eyes blaze with promise of it.  

It takes a bit out of you to not wince. Kai living anywhere but in the house across from yours is wrong. “I don’t think he necessarily wants that, Kai...” You take his hand in your icy ones, the urge to reach out to him thinly veiled under the guise of searching out warmth. He’d always run warmer than you—your personal heater. “It’s probably because he can see that you’re doing it for real. Not just saying it anymore.” 

“Yeah, well,” he spits, “I can’t fucking wait to see what he’ll say to me when I make it. That piece of shit, though, he wouldn’t even care. It’s not like he ever gave a shit about me enough for it to matter.” 

But, it matters to you, you want to tell him. You understand his need to throw it all in his face. Though. “Is that one label going to sign you? The one you were talking about?” 

His tongue darts out to wet dry lips. “They haven’t yet. I don’t know. But I don’t need that money to get out of here, I’ve been working on it.” 

“They will,” you say. “But, where would you go? Not too far?” You try and keep it light and playful, even as your heart aches. 

“Come with me,” he says. It’s painfully blunt, as if it were that simple. “Let’s go get and apartment; you and me.” 

“Kai...” you say. “You don’t have to drag me along because you feel bad.” 

The idea doesn’t sound half bad, though.  

“What?” His face tightens, as if somewhere under the surface your words had scraped somewhere tender. “You don’t have to stay here forever. Please. I want... I want you to come with me. You wouldn’t have to even tell them; just bring all your stuff and go together. We could do it together. Like we said we would.”  

“We were like, five. Everybody tries to pretend running away at five,” you deadpan. It’s a washy attempt at lightening things back up. 

Living with him, moving out together, should feel like everything you’ve ever wanted. And, maybe it is. But, he’s not asking you to live with him the way you want him to. Not in the way that your aching heart wishes he would.  

Kai doesn’t share the laugh you give him. “Yeah, okay,” he says, leaning into the table.  

Perhaps you should consider the potent disappointment he’s terribly masking with a face of indifference, though. 

⚝⭒ 

Slowly, the knots in your belly have worked themselves out. When Kai had dropped you off, they’d been so awful that you felt borderline sick. You sat the whole ride there in his old beat-up truck picking at your nails and rambling to him. He listened to you the whole time. And then when it was time to walk in, it had least felt a little easier to do so with his eyes on you, watching to make sure you made it in safely. 

You’d gotten a job. It’s not too bad, folding clothes out on display. It would be nice if they kept the lights a bit brighter, but you’ll get used it eventually, you hope. 

Most of your coworkers are around your age, but the one showing you the ropes... your heart had fluttered. 

“You’ll get it,” Yeonjun says. The smile you find on his lips once he straightens up from placing product on a display is smooth and smug. Sleek strands of black hair fall over his eyes. You fluster under his gaze.  

With arms crossed over your chest you say, “Yeah, probably.” You reach into the cardboard box for stock to practice on. 

“Where’d you work before this?” he asks, leaning back into a wall to watch you. Suddenly, you make sloppier work of your folding. “Your first retail job?” 

Some obnoxious pop song falls down from the speakers over the store. Nobody’s in here yet, thankfully; you’ve got some time to try and get a handle on everything. “No, this is my first job. I was so nervous walking in.” 

Interest catches in his eyes. It encourages that smooth smile on his lips further. “Don’t worry, sweetheart, I’ll show you the reins.” 

Your mind stalls. The suggestive, sly flicker to it—are you looking too much into it? Maybe that’s just how guys like Yeonjun act. It’s hard to pretend that you don’t see how he’s looking at you, though. It has your belly twisted up in fluttery knots. It’s not like you hadn’t had your share of his type. But, for some reason you’d rather not address, he’s got your heart thumping in your chest. 

He laughs at your fifth attempt to fold up the shirt. When he takes it from you to help, he smells of musk and vetiver. “You going to college near here?” he continues.  

“Nah, just doing this, I guess,” you answer, watching him fold it up to try and soak it up.  

“Really? Why not?” he hums, crossing his arms about his chest. “You seem like a smart girl.” 

Buffering, your blood buzzes in your veins and your cheeks burn. “Dunno. Not really sure what to do. Are you in college?” 

“Nah. I’m trying to figure things out, too.” 

The both of you pop your heads up when the bell rings to announce the arrival of a customer.  

“Yeah,” you say, eyeing him. He’s a few years older than you, no doubt, and yet his life hasn’t fallen apart because he’s not done anything grand yet.  

Time’s hand around your neck loosens. Just a little bit.  

⚝⭒ 

You sit crisscrossed on top of Kai’s bedsheets. He’d thrown the windows open because the AC died, but it’s no help. The hot air wafting about the room sits heavy on your skin. You’d dressed in as little material as possible to let it breathe, bare thighs clad in a pair of loose shorts and a thin tank top, but it’s still miserable. 

Perhaps you two should be going over to yours, but you haven’t had time alone with him for a few weeks now. You hate this busier life, where you struggle to make room for this. 

Your new job isn’t so awful, though. Especially with Yeonjun there. A bout of nerves flows up through your stomach. That reminds you. 

Sitting up a bit straighter, you consider not doing it. In fact, you really shouldn’t. But your mouth moves before you can put a stopper on it. 

“Hey, Kai,” you say. The thickness in your throat makes you believe that your heart’s jumped up into it, caught. God, what are you doing? The unsure waver in your words has you regretting. 

His eyes flicker up to yours. He hums out a, “Huh?” 

No, this is wrong. You mess with the thin cotton strap of your tank top where it’d slipped down. “Never mind,” you tell him, trying to shrug it off.  

That piques his interest. “No, what?” His brow pinches.  

You lick your lips and shake your head. “Nothing, never mind. Really.” 

His eyes search you from where he sits up against the wall. “Tell me,” he demands. 

Really, you shouldn’t have said it in the first place. It was a ridiculous idea. But now you know he’s not going to let it go. And, ridiculously, you say it. “I was just... wondering,” you say, blood roaring. "Well, Yeonjun wants me to come over to his place this weekend, and... I’ve never...” Sucking in a quick breath, you just spit it out to get it over with, “Would you be my first kiss, Kai?” 

Insects buzz outside as he looks at you, frozen in spot. You reject the urge to dart away or throw up. You’re honestly just as shaken as him. But really, who else could you trust with something like that? You don’t want Yeonjun to be disappointed if he kisses you, or to seem inexperienced to him. 

And, perhaps, the hopelessly in love part of you hopes to at least feel his lips on yours at least once. If you’re going to be alone forever in your longing, you just wish that you can have this. 

“What?” Kai says. He looks rattled.  

Of course, he’s shocked. You shift. “Forget I said that,” you tell him, unable to meet his gaze.  

String-roughened fingers wrap around your upper arm. “I didn’t say anything,” he says, voice strained and face less shock-fallen and more darkened. “But... I mean, you want me to teach you to kiss for some other guy.” He spits out the last bit as if bitter in his mouth.  

“You don’t have to do it,” you say. “I just... thought that I might ask you to do it. I don’t know, I’m sorry I said it. I’ll just wing it or something.” His room’s grown ten degrees hotter, if that was possible. Especially where you feel his eyes on your face.  

Almost imperceptibly, his hand tightens around you. He swallows hard. “You want to learn how to kiss?” he says. “Fine. I’ll teach you.” 

In a heart-stopping moment, your eyes snap to his. Brown and familiar, they hold you with an intensity that turns your limbs into jelly. The air is stifling. “What... do I do?” you ask when the silence becomes too heavy.  

A muscle feathers in his jaw, reflected in the low light of his room. It’s quick and so easy to miss, but it tells you everything you need to know about how this is making him feel. How much disbelief he’s in. “Come here,” he says, stilted around the absolute absurdity of it. He pats on his lap. 

You make a hesitant crawl across the bed toward him. It seems as though your elbows might buckle beneath your weight, but you make it despite the odds. A fog settles over your brain when you rest your hands on his shoulders and bring your legs to straddle his lap. 

But you shove it back; you want to live and breathe every last second of this. No matter how unbelievable or blistering it is.  

Breaths fan out over your face. It’s seizing your mind like undiluted liquor. “Where do I put my hands?” you ask him. It’s breathless, the air stolen right from your lungs though your mouths haven’t even touched.  

“There is fine,” he says. His words sound breathless, too. The weight of his touch on you as he runs his own up to support your back is unsure. “And then...” he says. It falls out on your mouth slowly, and then he’s taking your lips onto his. 

The walls melt away, sound does too. All that is real is the taste of his lips and how they move against you. Your lips start tentative, but you try his mouth movements yourself. It feels like a timid dance—it feels like deep, deep down, finally everything is right. That mist, thick and blinding, falls back over you. 

Something changes. Something in it, where you two meet, changes. He becomes hungry. Softly locked lips turn biting and nipping, shaky breaths exhaled slow through your nose. His hands on your back become surer, and one even ventures off to grab your chin. The other holds you to his chest, melded together despite the intense smoke and flame rolling off your bodies. You wonder if he can feel your heart beating a mess there. 

Reluctance paints you both when you pull back. You’re panting deep drinks of air. It’s hard to think; your mind’s run off and sits just out of reach. Licking your messy lips, stained with illicitness, you can only manage to brush your fingers against it to form words. “How... was that?” you say, searching his eyes. You find his pupils blown so wide that they consume the warm brown. You’re ready to jump out of your skin with that look pointed at you.  

Kai doesn’t answer, though. He slams your mouths back together as if starved by just the brief moment you’d parted for air. Nips on your bottom lip and emboldened hands—he moves like roaring water through a dam. A dam that he’d worked hard to fortify, and yet, at a crack it’s all falling down. Fingertips digging through the fabric of your shorts down to your soft hips, his chest rumbles. You feel it reflected in your core, electricity charging there and shooting up your spine and down your thighs. 

You kiss him for all the times you wish you would’ve, but didn’t. The slight rolls of your hips down onto him come easy. You love how it has him making a sound into your mouth and taking the fat beneath his fingers harder into his hands. He helps you. 

He drops his head into your neck. Your head swims for air and he has you shuddering with just the brushing of his nose against the column of your neck. The walls of his room spin around you. “Kai,” you whine, every bit of friction his jeans provide, even clothed as you are, just enough to rile you but not to give you what you need. 

“God,” he growls, thumbs hooking under your waistband. “You always fucking run around dressed in nothing,” he says, letting his fingers linger like a suggestion of undressing you. “Did you do it on purpose? Expect to make me crazy, knowing I couldn’t touch you?” 

And, in those words, it seems that he steals every last bit of breath from you. How often had you gone braless or worn something like this around him? Laid here, in his bed, like that? 

Grown tired of your fruitless grinding, he brings a hand down to support your lower back and says, “Turn around.” 

Though you explode with the prospect of what he might be intending to do or what’s next, if you’re really going to do this, you do so in a flash of eager limbs. His chest is solid against your back, you melt against the feeling of it. He’d become such a man lately, filled out, and you watched it happen. It was hard for your eyes not to catch on muscle-corded forearms while he picked at strings or to not appreciate the timbred rumble of his voice when you’d feel it come from his chest. How could it not do things to you? Now, he’s dragging your shorts down your legs and you’re in disbelief.  

“Fuck,” he breaths out. His fingers find your panties soaked through. “So, you’re the type to get dripping wet.” 

An embarrassed blush decorates your cheeks. Kai drags his index finger in circles around your clit through the fabric as if enamored with how much of a mess you’d made of it. Your hips twitch every time he rolls right over it. It’s strange how he’s got your body acting on its own volition with his touches. Even stranger that it’s your best friend doing it. “Sorry,” you tell him, wavering.  

He continues those terribly slow circles. “Sorry?” he says, chin on your shoulder. He’s got you wrapped up in him, with nowhere to go but to melt back into him and let his fingers work. Free hand on one of your inner thighs digging divots into the plushness there to hold it still, he tells you, “It’s nothing to be sorry about. It’s hot as fuck. You’re so excited for me to touch you, huh?” 

The words wreak havoc on you, feeding the flame that has your belly twisted up tight and the ignition point between your thighs pounding. To hear them coming from him, reserved Kai, has you digging your fingers into his forearm to prove that it’s real. You’d never have imagined him being so... filthy. You imagine him behind falsely nonchalant eyes, devouring you with a perverted mind all the times you’d spent innocently sitting together in this room.  

Your cheeks squish beneath his fingers as he takes your face and turns it to him. He wants to make sure you’re look at him as he asks you, “Do you want me to finger you?” 

Like a record, your brain skips. Between the blunt, lewd question and his hand on you, it’s in overload. How could ask something like that so simply? Stunned as you are, of course you want him to. You want him to do anything to you. You nod.  

Every last nerve and neuron in your system, just below the skin, cry out when his fingers slow down to nothing. “Hmm?” he says, ignoring the chasing of your hips and the opening of your thighs to invite him into paying your poor pussy the attention he’d ripped from it. He wants to hear you say it.  

About ten minutes ago, you lost your mind. It does not return to you now. “I want you to,” you say, chest beating in tandem with your cunt. 

“You want me to, right? Not some dumbass you met a week ago, huh?” he says. “Because you know that this is what it’s meant to be. Me, doing these things to you. Not some twenty-five-year-old piece of shit. He doesn’t deserve you, baby. Understand?” 

His fingers slider under your panties. Dumb brained and cognition gone muddled, you nod. All you can really think about is the moment his fingers slide over you. Fire licks up your lower belly and your insides as he brushes calloused finger tips finally right against your clit. 

Puffed breaths of a scoff raise goosebumps over your skin. “Teach you to kiss so that you can go over there and get his hands on you,” he says, middle two fingertips prodding at your entrance. “As if you were ever anybody’s but mine. You’d come crawling back to me, baby, because it was always meant to be us. He could never satisfy you.” 

His words might alarm you or have you asking questions if he hadn’t pushed his fingers into you and begun curling them with strong, pointed presses, pulling soft mewls and hums from you until he finds a spot that twists up your insides. Even through the palm you press over your mouth, your moans come out more like wavering grunts and croaks. Your thighs quiver and twitch, threatening to snap closed against your own will with each. Only your feet stay planted to the mattress. Like a cone of soft serve under the sun’s blistering attention, you melt down him. Just his frame keeps you upright. 

“Right there, huh?” he says. The smirk on his mouth filters his words into something taunting. “That’s where you like it.” It’s like he’s learning your body step by step, fulfilling all the questions he’d been forced to only guess at before this.  

“Uh-huh.” It comes out whiny and cracks in the middle, but you can’t find even an ounce of you to care right now. If this moment had been a long spiral, a fall from grace, down into a dark pit of forgotten inhibitions, you’ve just hit the bottom. Cheeks blazing cherry blossom pink and with your fingers curling into his pant leg, you don’t doubt that you are a picturesque mess. The kind of mess that’s beautiful because it’s dirty. Your teeth are not gentle on your plush bottom lip. It stings, tugged back and bitten and still a bit swollen with kisses. Perhaps you taste the tang of metal on it, but you pay it no mind. 

Kai redoubles his efforts. Now that he knows exactly how to play you, he’s fucking you on his fingers without mercy. The sounds coming from your cunt were wet, but now they’re different— nasty squelching. The only noises coupling with your pathetic keening. Forget anchoring yourself on his thigh, forget muffling your sounds. Instead, your hands fly to encircle his flexing forearm. Under your nails, angry red crescents dig into the muscle there. What had been a languid, building pleasure suddenly becomes everything. Your breaths run away from you, and you chase them frantically. Deep down in your core, the muscles spasm and rage against his fingers. “H—oh god,” you groan. Even the muscles in your thighs and tummy tighten up. 

“So whiny...” Kai mumbles, voice taut with the effort of eroding you down into pure, blinding-white pleasure. 

And then, in a swoop of mercy, your belly tightens. You hover here, on the precipice of something so consuming and voracious that your muscles and bones reject it, and yet your heart sings. Your eyes and cheeks and lungs and belly burn, the flame charring the edges of you in a beckon. You answer its call. Kai doesn’t mind the snapping of your legs shut around his arm, nor does your bucking or shaking deter him. He just holds you through it, arm like a metal bar around your waist. He’s everywhere, in this moment—the smell of him, leather and utterly familiar, his mouth dusting hot kisses over your skin, his fingers guiding you through orgasm. Where you’d gone silent in the initial crash of it, you devolve into mewls and grunts as you come down.  

He holds you even as you slump against him boneless. Afterglow simmers in your veins and has your brain all lethargic and lazy. Neither of you speak for a while, your pulse thumping a rhythm. His breaths rise and fall against you; it grounds you in this moment where you feel all spacey and gone. You become aware again of how disgustingly sweltering it is in his room, your skin sheened. 

That brainless bliss only lasts you for so long, though. When rational mind returns to you, no matter how you wish it wouldn’t, you’re hit in the chest with regret so hard it knocks the wind out of you. 

How will anything ever be the same after what you’d just done? Stricken still by the thought, you barely register him pulling his fingers out of you. After all your worrying about making sure no wedge comes between you two, look what you’ve gone and done. No; nothing ever will be the same again.  

⚝⭒ 

A couple of weeks ago, you ruined the one friendship you were supposed to have forever. It presses down heavy one you while you sit sprawled out on Yeonjun’s couch, his arm around your shoulder. His phone casts a glow over his features with all the lights out. 

It doesn’t smell like home. He, pressed against your side, doesn’t smell like home.  

Some stupid movie that he’d picked out, yet somehow you’ve ended up the only one still watching it, weaves a hum into the quiet of his apartment. Tangy hurt wells up in your throat. Even the moments when you and Kai would sit in mutual silence on your phones never felt like this. This is different.  

You haven’t seen Kai since that night. He’s been busy getting ready to move out, and you’ve been here most days. How fast all of it had changed. You wish you’d feel whiplashed, left empty, by the drifting that you’d been so terrified of. But you don’t. It’s just been you, locked on land, watching him being taken away by the ocean’s tide with no way to change its course. You tried and screamed to call him back, but now your voice has gone hoarse.  

And instead of watching him go, you choose to look elsewhere. It’s all you can do to protect yourself from the hurt. 

“Hey,” Yeonjun says, finally addressing you rather than whoever’s he’s got in his phone. “Did you bring anything to change into?”  

“I brought stuff to sleep in,” you say, eyeing him. You know that’s not why he’s asking. If it came down to it, you could just steal something from him and pull it on. He means going out clothes. Your jaw tightens. “But nothing nice. Why?” 

He stretches his arms behind his head in a flaunt of long arms and tanned muscle. Hours spent at the gym lent him those; you appreciate the look of it with a watering mouth. Kai had earned his build by hours spent outside with your dad, because his own could care less, helping him fix up cars and vehicles of all ridiculous sorts. You remember when Kai had first gotten his truck—junk on wheels, honestly—he’d spent so much of summer out there getting it running. And, well... the sun-kissed bronze of his skin and frame that came with it, you had no qualms with. 

But those memories only sit heavy in your chest as you’re sat here beside Yeonjun. You banish them elsewhere; you need to let him drift off. If you can’t have each other, and your feelings won’t permit just being friends, then you have to. You want him to do amazing things, and you fear that it’s your presence in his life that will interrupt that. As much as your feelings are real, they are selfish. You, your unsure direction and all your dead weight, should let him go. Because you love him. 

“The guys want to come over,” he tells you, pushing off from the couch. “You should probably into change into something less showy.” 

Less showy. Your mouth drops into a scoff of disbelief, looking down. A pair of shorts and a shirt, showy? You have to laugh, or else you’ll succumb to the strange embarrassment crawling at the back of your skull. What’s he trying to say? Is that what he thinks of you? “What’s that supposed to mean?” you say, face tilted up to him in a twist of distaste. “I’m wearing something comfy.” 

He shrugs, hands shoved into the pockets of his black sweats. “Don’t want to give them the wrong idea about you, that’s all, baby. They’re guys; I just want to protect you.” 

“No,” you say, the word falling out in a barked laugh. “Why would you even be bringing over dudes that you think will look at me like that? Why are you even friends with people that you think are gonna make moves on your girlfriend?” He holds a hand out to you, but your hands stay right where they are: crossed solidly over your chest. 

Throwing that hand up in audacious exasperation, he gives you a look that makes you feel small and petulant—like you’re throwing an overblown fit. And, maybe you are. You should probably just do it; him seeing you as some overbearing or high maintenance girl has that embarrassment flaring like wildfire that’s found dry brush. “C’mon, baby,” he says, a lazy smile on his mouth that gets under your skin. “Let’s just have an easy night. Don’t make it a big deal.” 

Let’s just have an easy night. As if you’re the one ruining the night. Something snarky tries to seize your tongue, but you hold it down. “I thought it would be just us. We wanted to watch the movie together, Yeonjun. Can’t you wait to hang out with your friends? Let’s enjoy our time together; you’ve got your shift tomorrow.” 

“My fucking god,” he groans, running a hand through his hair furiously. “You’re needy, you know that? The neediest I’ve ever had to put up with. I don’t put up with needy, baby. Can’t you just chill out a little? My last didn’t mind when I’d have friends over.” 

Your eyes burn. Your cheeks burn. He’d been with plenty of other girls before you; that, you’re well aware of. It’s been a corrosive source of self-doubt for you. You don’t want that title: the neediest he’s ever had. Don’t want him to think of you as some prude that won’t let him have fun. Just... hearing him bring up the other girls he’d been with before you stings and leaves welts no different from a slap in the face. Feelings of inadequacy shackle you and have you saying, “Fine. I’m gonna borrow some of your clothes.” 

Heavy resentment blooms on your skin where he bends down and presses kisses to your cheek, and then mouth, and then down your neck. “Thank you, baby.” 

And, where those ugly, wilted flowers of it bloom, you hear echoes of something. Something that tells you that Kai wouldn’t treat you like this. But you’ve made your bed, decided to do it yourself, and now you’ve got to lay on it. 

⚝⭒ 

The frat parties are the worst kind of social outing that Yeonjun insists upon. The smaller kinds, more intimate gathering with just his closer friends, you tolerate much easier. You’re not fond of the circles he chooses. Breathing in thick, smoked-out air surrounded by alcohol-coated breaths is not your type of fun night. Somehow, you end up doing that more than date nights. But that’s better than being here. The base rumbles up through your feet and makes your stomach sick, and it reeks of grinding bodies and body odor, and condensation coats your fingers from the red solo cup as full as when you’d first gotten it. 

But, still, you come along. Not every time, but when you don’t, you lay in his bed sickening yourself with images of what he might be doing here. How pathetic is it to attend parties with your boyfriend because you fear that otherwise, he might stick his tongue down the throats of other girls? 

You’re looking for him right now, awkward and left alone. He’d promised to stick around; you had begged him to. That was pathetic, too. You know that you put up with too much. If he loved you, or honestly even liked you, you two would be in the thick of the throngs dancing or off somewhere talking with others. Together. The frantic skimming and weeding of your eyes through the blur of faces is not right. That’s not how he should make you feel. It’s not how Kai would make you feel. 

Well, Kai would never have you here in the first place. 

Venturing out from your little corner, you sift between the bodies of people have a hell of a lot better time than you. Drunken, some you bounce off of like bumper carts. You press your palm over the round face of your cup to spare the floor from spillage threatening to pour over the lip. It’s not like a splash from yours would matter much, though. The linoleum has already been made a fetor mess of dirt off shoes and the sticky sugar of liquor. Your shoes peel from it as you walk. God, what would your parents think of you being here? 

You peek around corners and eye big groups. He’s not in the kitchen when you look there, either. Your stomach feels sick in a knowing way—a gut feeling that doesn’t justify anger or tears just yet, but you know. Right in the center of your chest, you know. 

It’s in some room that you find him. Sat on the floor along with a few faces you don’t know, he pulls from his bottle. And on his shoulder, he lets a girl with shining curls and pink cheeks rest her head. At your busting in on the intimate gathering, Yeonjun’s eyes slide to you. Recognition flashes over them and wars with bleary drunkenness. 

“Hey, baby,” he says. Their gazes all fall on you, but you can hardly see them through blurry eyes. 

The girl lifts her head from his shoulder. She’d caught the memo. 

“I think I’m gonna go.” You make it sound resigned, try to not let them see your shame, but your voice betrays you and crackles. Maybe it’s better to pretend it doesn’t feel like you’ve just been kicked in the stomach and left to reel against the force, but you can’t. You’re nowhere near shocked, nowhere near blindsided, but still you hurt. 

He follows you down the hall. “What’s your problem?” he says, the few, plain words mending and waving into a slurring. 

You’ve got one goal: get to the front door, away from the shitty music and him. His words, sharpened, fall off your skin despite his efforts. What good would fighting do you, anyway? It was always going to end up this way. This is just who he is, and he doesn’t give two shits enough about you to want to change that. 

“Baby, seriously? That made you this mad? I didn’t even fucking do anything. Stop being insecure,” he says. At the gritting of your teeth, he sees an opportunity and pounces on it. “You don’t need to be jealous. I don’t do jealous shit. We can dance, or something. Shit, I don’t know what you want! Just stop throwing a fit.” 

Didn’t do anything? You have to laugh. Maybe you didn’t walk in on him fucking someone else, but that’s not what this is about. Not even a little bit. You’ve checked out, and the fact that he thinks he can make you believe that it’s your fault this time only drives the killing stake in harder. 

Maybe you’re bitter. It claws at your insides—turns your face hot and screams in your face that you’ve been used. But beside it sits a sadness. Not the slow kind, but the quick sadness of hurt. Why hadn’t you been good enough for him to love you? To like you? You’d left behind Kai and rested your new life on Yeonjun’s shoulders. You’d wanted so badly for his approval, or for him to want you. You did your best to try and make this work out because you needed it to. You needed so desperately proof that you could fall in love with somebody else. But your best was not what Yeonjun was interested in.  

Pins and needles prick your skin as you step outside, like jumping into an ice bath. It shocks you out of dizziness. Words surge up and out in a flash flood like hard reality. You spin on him. “Jealous?” you say, choking out a scathing laugh. “The last thing I’d ever let myself suffer over you is jealousy. Get over yourself. I’m going, stay here if you want. I don’t care.” 

“How are you gonna do that, huh?” he says. The flickering yellow of the porchlight paints his features. The shadow of something fluttering around it cuts dark spots in the light, and then a small little moth comes down and jumps around in his face. He waves it off. “Gonna have bitch boy come pick you up? You can’t leech off him forever; he’s gonna get sick of picking up another man’s girlfriend.” It seems like you walking in on that had sobered him up, but his breath still curls out onto your face with the reek of alcohol. “It’s not a big deal. You’re making this a bigger deal than it has to be. Do you not trust me?”  

“You are such a piece of shit,” you grit out. “I don’t know what I was thinking. Ever. I don’t know how I let this go on for so long.” You don’t like him having Kai in his mouth, don’t like him trying to act like you’re conflating things, and especially don’t like that face he’s making. As if you’re acting crazy and overblown. “No, I don’t trust you. You didn’t fuck her, but come on, Yeonjun. Seriously? You think I’m stupid, and I’m sick of it. You thought this would be easy because I didn’t have the experience you have, but I’m sorry. I don’t like being walked over.” 

“If you’re gonna be so goddamn jealous, then maybe we aren’t gonna work,” he says. 

That moth, floating light in the air, is right back in his face. Yeonjun takes two hands and smashes it between a clap of his hands. He shakes its flattened, broken body off his hand. Looking down at it laying there on top of dirt-caked concrete, you get this... feeling. A tickling around your person.  

“See if I care,” you snap, throat aching against the onslaught of emotion and held back tears.  

⚝⭒ 

Rivulets of raindrops dilute the tears on your cheeks. Your hair plasters to your face and your clothes to your body.  

For a week, you’d went about it all as if it hadn’t happened. And then you came here.  

It’d not been this rainy when you first got down to the creek—just a gentle trickle, really. You hadn’t been crying then, either. But, watching the water work at babbling over stone, you let yourself feel it. Here, where you’d had so many good memories. You’ve gone and tainted it, now. But for whatever reason, you’d just wanted to be here. Arms curled around yourself and fingers digging into drenched sleeves, you don’t wipe away the tears or cover the sounds of your crying. You let the stream hear it; it’ll sweep it right up and down the way. Somewhere far off, where you don’t have to feel it anymore. 

You realize that, usually, you’d be over at Kai’s right now. The fact that his room was not the first place you thought you could go to anymore is a punch to the gut. You drop your face into your hands and cry harder. Really, you’ve got to stop doing that to yourself. Thinking of sad things—putting your hurt under the microscope to see it closer. It’d be easier to just fold it up and tell yourself that it’ll pass, and that relationships end all the time. 

It’s not him that you cry over. Well, maybe some of it is. Rather, it’s that you have absolutely no idea where you’re going. Where you are. Finally, you’d built yourself a raft to get off the shore and go out to sea, because that’s what you’re supposed to do, and it’s breaking apart right beneath you. And, stranded and alone in the water, you’ve got no way to get back to shore to build yourself another raft. You’re stranded, and the scariest bit is that you’re doing it all alone. You weren’t supposed to do this alone. You two made promises back then. 

You suppose that a promise is one of those things you were supposed to leave faith in back on shore. 

The raindrops are heavy over you. The fall of it roars against the ground, a torrent downpour. It’s not coupled with whipping wind or flashes of lightning—just straight, still falling. It’s a somber feeling no different from the gnawing in your chest. 

Like chimes, there’s a distant, gentle sound. Maybe water falling over creek rock, but it’s more like suggestion. A sweet sound that you shouldn’t even be able to hear over the rest of it, it’s as if it’s right in your ear. A whisper.  

You fix your blurry eyes with a wet sleeve. Rain falls right back into its place, but you see it: a silvery, whimsy haze. And the moths. They jump and call you, this time. Their glow bounces off the rainy mist against the grey of night’s arrival. Then, all you can hear is the whispering. Where you stand frozen, your feet beg to move. To follow them. 

So you do. 

Their entourage of moondust trails them where they go, wrapping you up and weaving between raindrop and space. You don’t worry where they’ll take you, or even try to wrap your head around this happening again. You just follow, mind glossed over and entranced with how beautiful it is. When you’d seen them before, it’d made you uneasy. Mostly because it looked so unearthly and unbelievable. But this time you just follow. 

A far-off voice, one oh-so-familiar, peaks through the haze. It’s not enough to stop you, but then you hear it again, louder and closer. 

You blink a few times. Once to break away the fog, and then twice to focus your eyes on Kai stood in front of you. His hair lays in wet spikes over his eyes and beads of rain trace the planes of his face. He’s as soaked as you. 

“Kai?” you say. Looking around you, you’ve ended up somewhere in the field between your houses and the creek. But you’ve got no recollection of walking here. Whatever that mist is, sentient or not, had swept you here.  

His voice is strained, but you appreciate hearing it. “Break up with him,” he tells you. 

In his eyes, as you search them, there’s stardust glowing like reflection. Your face twists up. “What?” you say, breath a puff of smoke ahead of you. Summer had come and gotten away from you so fast, and now it’s gone all cold again. 

“Break up with him,” he echos, face solemn. He looks ruffled. 

“Why?” you ask, “And why are you out here?” 

“Because I’m moving out today, and I think I deserve to at least see you before I go.” His eyes look over you. “And... your dad said you went down to the creek.” 

He’s moving out today, and you had no idea. And really, it’s your fault. You’d driven that wedge between the two of you. “I did break up with him.” 

Downpour fills his quiet for a few moments, his face swirling with emotion like the clouds above you. He nods. “Good.” 

There are a few more long minutes between you; just you two searching each other's faces, antsy to say so much that it bunches up in your chests and stalls. It’s what a summer of longing does to you. Even with Yeonjun, even trying to slowly chip away the stitching that had connected the two of you at the hip, you were helpless to stop the gnawing of the love you bear for him. Even just seeing him now, you feel those threads mending back up. God, why does it have to be so hard? 

He just looks at you. For a few beats, he just looks at you. There are so many questions in his eyes. They flit across and turn over, but all he settles on is, “Why?” 

There’s so much you want to tell him. Words pile up to the top, some threatening to spill over. But you know that if you tell him some of it, just to make up for all the time you’d missed out on together, it’ll all come crashing out. And you don’t think you want him to know just how much you accepted, the way you let yourself get treated. So, you shake your head and say, “It doesn’t matter.” 

Kai looks like he wants to push that issue, but whatever look he finds on your face deters him. “Come with me,” he pleads. “I want you to come with me.” 

Your throat tightens. Curling your arms around yourself harder, the rain only coming down on you harder, you say, “Kai, I want to. I want to. I just... I don’t want to freeload off you, because you’re doing great things, and I’m just...” Your tongue darts out to wet your lips, but they’re already as soaked as the rest of you. “I’m just going nowhere. And I don’t want to be a burden, or ever be the reason that you can’t do what you dream of. If staying here means that you become everything that you’re destined to do, then I’m happy with that, Kai. I am.” 

He shakes his head, stumbling toward you. “No, no you don’t get it,” he says, frantically taking your shoulders into big hands. Under his touch, every taut muscle goes slack. You melt. “You don’t get it. You are the music. Every single song is about you. Every single fucking song is about you. I want you to come with me, please. I love you, I have always loved you, and I will always love you, and I thought you’d loved me too, and I don’t want to do this alone. I can’t do it alone.” 

He loves you. Kai loves you. The enormity of it rumbles the ground where you stand on legs you fear might just give in. You flex your fingers to combat the tears pricking your eyes. It doesn’t work; they brim and well up, spilling down over your cheeks. “What?” you say, voice softly breaking. “Kai, I didn’t...” 

“And just when I thought I finally had you, you left me,” he says, throwing a hand up beside him in a big gesture. “You left me! I woke up thinking you’d be there, and that maybe you loved me too, and you had left me. And then you threw me away for some piece of shit, and you stopped coming around.” His chest heaves for breaths. 

Your face contorts. That night, the one where you two had slipped up, you’d fallen asleep curled up against his chest on undiluted contentment. When you woke up, you had panicked. You thought he’d wake up and pretend it hadn’t happened, or he’d be uncomfortable, or even be disgusted and regretting. You couldn’t handle that, so you slipped out before he woke up. It’d been an attempt to protect your tender heart, but looking at the twitching of his lip now, you begin to think it’s the most selfish thing you’ve ever done. He thinks you used him and left him. Your stomach twists. Voice thick, you say, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I left you, Kai. I thought you didn’t... I thought you didn’t see me that way. I was scared. I’m sorry I hurt you.” 

Brows knitted together, he says, “Thought I didn’t love you?” His hand cups your cheek, warm against the soft frozen skin he finds there. “I’ve... I’ve dreamed of you almost every night of my life. In my sleep, I see you, and you’re happy and glowing, and that damn... mist is all around you. I couldn’t get away from you even in my sleep.” 

Darting between his eyes, soft and reflecting your face back to you, it’s hard to breathe. Kai’s dreamt of you; he’s as sickly in love with you as you are him. Thunder claps, and the ground shakes, and the heavens open up above you, the trumpets belt, and you two are in love. Somewhere deep in your center, you feel it—your soul nodding yes. 

The mist. You know exactly what he’s talking about. “I saw it. That stuff, those moths. The stuff we saw back then.” 

“I did too,” he says, wet spikes of hair bouncing with a nod. “Not that long ago. It was the first time I saw it out of a dream since that day.” 

Back then, you two had only budding, innocent love for each other. Things hadn’t become mangled and lost to confused hearts or expectations. When they’d appeared to you, you hadn’t needed it. This time, you’d followed it. And it had led you here—somehow had led you right to the very spot you needed to so that every last piece might fall into place. For this moment to happen. You know why it did. 

“I’ll go with you, Kai. I’ll go wherever you go; I love you. I’ve loved you since forever,” you say, each and every word massive and lovely on your tongue. “I’m sorry I didn’t say it earlier.” 

So unlike the last times your mouth had met, he brings his mouth to yours with a dazzling clarity. No longer is it confused kisses; he locks his lips against yours with the urgency of so many years being unable to. Kai’s hands cradle your wet cheeks, hold you so tenderly into his kiss. His touch grounds you, makes the moment real. You melt into him—your fingers curled into his shirt as if holding him there so that he won’t disappear like something of an incorporeal dream. He sighs through his nose, kissing you harder. Even if it all were fake and this was nothing more than a feverish figment of your imagination, you think you could die happy just knowing this once. 

But it is utterly real, and utterly yours. You kiss him harder, too. 

When your lungs start to burn and plead for breath, you two pull away from each other. Your eyes flutter open to capture his. Warm and brown and the same ones you’ve stared into so many times before, but not like this, you sink into them. He runs his thumb over your cheek as he sinks into yours. His tongue darts out to lick lips painted with you. In the inches between you, space no longer feels heavy or charged with grievances. Every last unsaid thing had been answered. 

“I have my stuff up in the truck,” he says, breaths soft. Brown eyes dart around your face. “I’ll help you add your stuff to it.” 

You shudder out a breath. Add your stuff to it. A nervous energy settles down over you, but it doesn’t seem so bad if you’re doing it with him. Together.  

“Okay,” you whisper, a balmy secret just like the ones you used to share in small, giggly voices so many years ago. “Okay.” 

⚝⭒ 

Shivers seize you like jittering bones, all wrapped up in a blanket. The velour cushion seats beneath you have soaked up water and become damp, but Kai’s got the heater blasting. You wind around back roads, headlights illuminating the way ahead of you. Stray droplets whip in them, but nothing much. Isn’t it funny how the rain had just stopped like that? That’s just how the weather is, out here. You wonder how the weather might act wherever you’re headed. 

Your teeth chatter as if your jaw had its own will. The two of you had the windows down thinking that the wind might dry you off, but all it’s done is lap at your bitten cheeks. You reach down for the handle to crank it up. You’ve got a long drive ahead of you—either you’ll eventually dry off, or you can pull off at a rest area to change in a bathroom. The wet clothes are really not helping. 

With an arm up on the steering wheel, Kai turns his attention on you. You know that smile. “Cold?” he asks, eyes darting between your face and the road. With the hand he’s not got working the steering wheel, he runs fingers over your thigh. Soft, gentle massages, yes. The number it does on your core is absurd. Each mindless digging into your thighs and brush of his thumb, sparks sputter there. You’ve sat here, right in his passenger seat, so many times before. Day trips up to the lake, the one he’d joined your family camping at for so many summers, all the times he’d driven you to school in this truck, and even just a quick run down to a convenience store for a late-night snack. You’d deemed it your seat. But never once had you sat in it like this. Your heart does a flip. All those times you’d wish he’d reach over and do just this—a small gesture that would’ve been so big then. And it’s your reality, now.  

“Freezing,” you say. A brush of his fingers nearer the apex of your thighs sends you pressing them together and shifting in your seat. “But not everybody runs as hot as you, though, so.” 

His eyes catch the movement in just the split second he looked over to you. “Huh,” he says. He turns to look at you, his gaze flickering with something anew. Something that you’d only ever seen once before. “Is that it?” 

It’s hard to swallow. His fingers brush higher, and higher, feather-dustings of calloused fingertips that sends tingles shooting up your spine at the slightest suggestion of where he’s headed. “Yes,” you say, feigning indignance to cover the shiver that threatens to overtake you. When his fingertips dance at the waistband of your bottoms, it does so anyway. “Kai,” you say, blood hot in your veins. “You’re...driving.” 

His eyebrows pinch into a taunting furrow. “I am,” he says, nodding. “Don’t worry about it, baby. I’ve got us.” 

And he does; fingers slipping under the band of both your bottoms and your panties, he doesn’t even tear his eyes off the road. He’d driven these roads so much, you think he might be able to do it asleep. Even drawing a mewl from you with a brush over your clit, he doesn’t look away more than a quick glimpse at your pinkened cheeks. 

Two fingers dragging up your folds, right over the source of the mess. “You get excited so easily, huh?” he hums. “You like it when I play with you.” 

When he presses those fingers at your entrance, you can’t help but be taken back to that night. It echoes and reverberates through you. Long fingers, strong and punctual brushes against the sweet spot—he was criminally good with his fingers. Playing guitar did more for him than just music. He seemed to know exactly how to utilize those roughened fingers and trained flicks. Your muscles flicker as he abandons your hole for more brushes at your bud.  

Those teasing, sly touches turn to something more serious. His fingers roll over your clit, slow but enough to have you sighing and rolling your hips against the seat belt. But last time had gone just like this, him touching you and receiving nothing. He should feel good, too. “Shouldn’t you pull over?” you sigh, muscles taut. Your breaths come out shuddering and half-controlled, interrupted by the tightness that each delicious swirl provokes. The door takes the brunt of your grip, white-knuckling the interior. 

He laughs, a husky sound that is tinder to fire. He knows what you mean. “Maybe,” he says. “But I think I’m enjoying this plenty. I think I want to see you cum on my fingers again.” 

Fingers pinching and flicking faster, you grow breathy and whiny, hips rolling against the seatbelt and back into the seat. Your muscles, all the way down your thighs and deep in your belly, jump and twitch each time his fingers run over your clit in just the right spot—that tender spot that’s so good that it teeters on overwhelming. The kind that makes you hiss and then want more. “Shit, Kai,” you whine. “Right—there, keep going."  

He doesn’t answer with any teasing words. No, he just doubles down right at that angle and pressure, leaned back into his seat and driving as if he wasn’t fingers-deep in your panties right now. His sculpted profile at total ease—it does something for you. A delicious tightness curls its fingers over your center, promising a sugary ecstasy that you can’t help but chase. Bucking into his hands as best you can, you go quiet. Right there—right there, you feel it. The cusp. Your fingers brush over it, clenching around nothing and squeezing your thighs tight around him. Every last drop of blood in your body reaches for it, singing and dancing through your veins and making you dizzy. 

And then he stops. Your mouth drops open, whiplashed and helpless to its slipping away from you. You whittle your gaze into something sharp and turn to him. “What—why?” you complain. The tide slips further and further and further back, but you still taste sea salt on your tongue. Frustration sets in its place as you feel it go. Seriously, you’d been right there. “You’re so mean.” 

He slows and then with the clicking of the turn signal, he’s off the road and pulling the truck into park on a little secluded side road. Where the headlights pierce the pitch black, nothing but gravel and field surrounds you. He doesn’t kill the engine, instead pulling his hand free from you. 

Your heart, still stuttering with your lost orgasm, kicks back to life as he smears your slick over your mouth, dragging it over your lips and then taking his thumb to run it right over the plush of your mouth. “Am I?” he says, fingers taking your chin to meet your eyes with his. Endless hunger, pupils so blown that his eyes look black, pins you. “I don’t think you’ve seen mean yet, baby.” 

Darting your tongue out to clean your lips, you look at him through your eyelashes. “Show it to me, then.” 

Something dark passes over his face. It has your skeleton jumping out of your body. Then, he says, “Is that what you want? You want mean?” 

Brain gone to mush that can only really think about him touching you, a slow nod is all you can manage. 

The engine’s hum prevails for some long, thick seconds. And then, he tilts his head in a gesture. “Get in the back.” 

Holy shit. You want to sit there frozen in an overwhelming sort of excitement, but his seatbelt clicks undone and you’re set into motion. In a flurry of giggles and clumsy limbs, you climb up over the center console and into the backseat. He slips out of the front seat, not bothering to even kill the engine. 

The door beside you opens in a swirl of cold wind. In nothing more than a blink, a strong hand has both your wrists pinned to the cushions and your back flush against it. Nose-to-nose, his breath hot over your face. “I’ve got plenty of ideas as to how I can warm you up.” 

You appreciate each other’s faces for a beat more, you looking up at him big-eyed and waiting. Kai breaks the moment to attack your neck in a procession of bites and kisses. Your mouth falls into a silent sound. 

“You know,” he says, free hand working your pants off. His eyes are trained on you, though. “I thought about doing this to you all summer. Touching you again.” He moves on to your top, pushing the fabric up until your chest is freed, clad in soft cotton. He eats the sight up. You want to reach down and cup the back of his head or feel his hair between your fingers as he presses his mouth against the soft beginning of your cleavage, but he’s got your wrists firmly planted. So much so, that you wonder exactly how he’s got you so secure with just one hand. Kai is strong, but maybe you hadn’t seen just how strong. Your skin aches under the purple bites he decorates you in. The sight of him—face in your chest and marking you up so lazily—has your teeth abusing your bottom lip. Whatever sounds you might make otherwise would be embarrassing. Kai lifts his eyes to you. “And I think you thought of me, too. Didn’t you?” 

“Oh, god, yes,” you say, writhing beneath him. He’s going so slow. You want him all over you. “So much.” 

He likes that. He takes your pebbled nipple into his mouth through the fabric. Soft grazes of teeth and sucks, you’re burning all over. When he pulls back, he’s left you dark wet patches when the bra had only just dried against your body heat. “Good,” he rasps, taking his big hands demanding and hungry over your torso. They swallow your frame up, soothing skin but lighting it aflame all the same. “Good girl.” 

You never thought just words could unravel you, but those did the job. Not a gasp, nor a sucking in of breath—no, you go silent and brainless, fumbling for rational thought. 

The dropping of your jaw has Kai delighted. “You’re so pretty,” he says. In a swift and powerful hoist, he’s tugging you down the cushions toward him with greedy fingers. He’s got your thighs pressed up to your chest. You’re bent right in half. 

Out of breath, you huff out, “You too.” 

A quick laugh falls from his mouth, lips pulled into a smug tilt. He nips at your calf up by his face. “So sweet, it almost makes me feel bad for what I’m about to do to you.” Reaching down for your panties, he pulls back on the suffocating press for only enough time to drag them up your legs. Those get discarded somewhere on the floor. Who cares about that right now, though? All you can register is the metallic clinking of his belt being undone. It’s got your nervous system twisting up. 

And, those words. Electricity shoots bolts of pure, sizzling revery into your core. What I’m about to do to you. You imagine a great deal of things that he might mean, but still, you think that none could hold a candle against the promise his voice held in saying it. 

Kai presses his body to your thighs and hooks your calves over his shoulders, and it all becomes real. The press of his heavy cock to your folds, the digging of his fingers into your outer thighs, his pretty eyes sparkling with something feral. As real as it gets—more real than anything you’ve ever felt in the entirety of your life. Your hands find perch flattened to his broad chest. 

The position leaving you two no option but to look right into each other, he holds your gaze and begins slow drags of his hot length up and down your slit. Tantalizing, awful, awful drags. When his tip nudges your eager clit, you jolt. And then he does it again. And again. 

“Kai,” you mewl. A press against your hole has you hopeful, and he lingers there for a moment, but doesn’t give it to you. Can’t he just fuck you? You’ve never been more pitifully in need of something in your life. 

“Shh.” His ruts get more daring, smearing your slick up onto your belly. “Take it.” 

You wiggle your toes in the air and make passes at arching yourself into him in search of better friction. He’s got you pressed so suffocatingly into the seat that it does absolutely nothing for you. In fact, he holds your harder and changes tack so that your thighs press together. At the very apex of them, his weeping cock slips through the seam. 

Pressing his cheek into your calf, he watches you. Every gasp and shaky inhale, he watches. It spurs his rutting on, sticky sounds and pants eating up the air. Your nails claw at his hands as, finally, a knot tightens in your core. 

“Yes, please,” you breathe. He fucks your thighs harder. Faster. Every nudge at your clit and hole becomes euphoric. “Kai, baby—I’m gonna—” 

Just as furiously easy as last time, he rips it all away from you. The rushing away of the buzzing and promise of shaking thighs—he takes it from you again. It brings prickling tears to your eyes. “Kai?” you hiss. “Again?” 

His eyes aren’t playful. He pulls your calves back over his shoulders, handling your hips into a better position to press his cock right at your entrance as if you weigh nothing. Face utterly straight, he says, “I don’t think you deserve it, do you? Not after what you did with Yeonjun.” 

A swallow goes down your throat hard. He presses himself just a bit harder into you. Not in yet, but right there. 

When he does begin sliding in, the stretch of it... You cling to him and squirm between him and the warm cushions behind you. Each inch is a heady feeling, all the way up to the hilt of him. He shudders a controlled breath. “You’re so fucking tight, though,” he grits out. “Did he not fuck you right?” 

Slaps of skin bounce off the car interior and between your bodies. He starts off at a brutal pace; you know it’s meant to make your brain go foggy. Squeezing your eyes closed, you manage, “I... didn’t fuck him.” It comes out strangled, voice bouncing as he fucks you into the car seat. 

Thumb tugging your bottom lip down and then dipping into your mouth, he watches the show of your ecstasy down to every last detail. “Yeah?” he says, voice shaking and almost desperate. “Always thinking of me, huh? Such a good little princess. You know exactly where your heart belongs.”  

You want to answer him, even just with a whine or moan. You try to. But with his thumb pressing down on your tongue, enough to pin it to the floor of your mouth, it’s not gonna happen. He tastes salty in your mouth. 

His truck consists of his grunts and whines, and your taut groans for some moments that seem to stretch forever. The planes of his groin grind against your clit when he delivers occasional pointed rolls, but mostly it’s just an animalistic, feverish dancing of your two sweaty bodies, holds growing more frantic the closer you get.  

Thumb wet with saliva; he frees your mouth. The hand trails slowly down your face and your chin, brushing feather touches, until he finds your neck. 

Your eyes fly open, wide. He pressed his fingers into your neck—no real pressure yet, he looks at you through damp strands of dangling hair and says, “Want my fingers around your neck?” His thumb brushes over the buzzing pulse point there. 

“Yes,” you grit out, body bouncing and back raw with friction against the coarse cushion’s surface. Your breath stutters, your mind stutters. Even your blinks stutter, eyelids too lazy to keep up. “Please.” 

The pressure of his fingers there—it frightens you and has you tightening around him at the same time. But you would trust nobody more with your life than Kai. 

He presses his cheek to your calf to indulge in the sight of you like this: underneath him, folded in two, nowhere to go but to take his pistoning hips, cheeks blazing, and his fingers pressed into your windpipe. If the way he becomes sloppier and more desperate in his tempo has anything to say for it, it does something for him. 

“Gonna be my pretty little girlfriend, huh?” he says. His voice is tight—so is your belly. You’re both so close. Hopefully, this time he’ll let you cum. “Take you to every show; show you off to everybody. Fuck.” 

Brain like static and swimming with a pinched flow of oxygen, you slur your words. “You’re—hah—gonna have other girls all over you.” 

The taunting, split-second raise of his brows flips your belly. You tighten him again. If he keeps hitting that spot, tip ramming into the soft spot deep inside you that he’d taken such delicate care of finding last time, you’re going to burst into sparkling flame and firework. He growls, “Well, I’ll just have to knock you up so that they know I’m yours, huh?” 

Holy shit. You like the sound of that. Your nails dig into his wrist around your neck, but you cry out a pitchy, “Yes!” 

“Oh, you like that?” Kai releases your throat to take both your hips. You gulp for air, finding nothing but the thick air of sex and humid breaths, at the opportunity. He’s ramming into you like he’s found a purpose. “Isn’t this the perfect position to do it? Get you pregnant?” 

With every last bit of brain power you’ve got, teetering on the edge excruciatingly close to salvation, you groan a long, hoarse sound. “Fuck, yes! Please, Kai, inside—” A hot trail of tears roll down your temples. 

It’s all he’s got to hear to still inside you. His growl rumbles deep in his chest, holding you in place and filling you with his hot cum deep in your cunt. That feeling, coupled with his short grinds against your clit as he fucks his seed deeper, takes your soul by sinful claws and crumbles it down into nothing. You burst into a shaking, whimpering peak, sucking your lips into your mouth to bare through the sheer twisting of your insides and the flame that consumes up your thighs and cunt. 

He falls on you heavy, face in your neck. Warm kisses against your clammy skin meld with your slow floating down, the two of you a beautiful, nasty picture of fucked out. He stays right inside you—the absolute stillness of him, you think he has no plans of pulling out any time soon. His long fingers card through your sweaty locks of hair. 

Finally, he presses himself off you. You get a glimpse of the window behind him—fogged up and filthy with your affairs. Anybody to see the truck from the outside would know exactly what went on inside, but right now, you don’t care. Not one bit. Your panted breaths drag in nothing but musk and thick, hot air. The drumbeat in your chest tells you that, despite how you feel ripped straight from your body, you are very much still alive. More alive than ever. 

“Warm?” he says, pushing sticky hair off his forehead. He’s a mess, too. His hair is ruffled with your touch, his clothes rumpled the same, beads of sweat rolling down the planes of his cheeks and neck, and his eyes a lazy smolder. As much as he looks like sex personified, a soft smile twitches at his lips. 

You snort. You can’t help but feel giddy, here with him. You’re with him. Nothing has ever felt more right. Unplugged when he pulls out of you, your mess trickles down onto the seat below you. “Yeah,” you say. “Very.” 

Warm is not enough to begin to describe how you feel. In your ears, you hear whisperings. Soft and gentle. Perhaps it was divine intervention, or the fates lending you their word, or maybe just rational thought. It says: 

Home. You are home. 

✎୭ ashlynn's note how do we feel about this pair? i really didn't mean for this to get so long, but i ended up RLLY liking their chemistry. i had to do their story justice. also, i finished this with kai as a guitarist and then his drummer performance came out... hmm.

﹙🏷️ ﹚@lvrs-street2mmorrow , @soohashits , @f4iryfever , @arcturus444 , @linqed , @serenityism00 , @immelissaaa , @luv4cheol , @lickingan0rchid , @20-cms , @hhoneylix , @beestvng , @hyucktapes , @bewitchless , @prince-jjae , @blankliving , @yaoizee , @stormy1408 , @missychief1404 , if your tag isn't working, check the mentions part of your settings!

[revelboo]

i love your writing so much thank you for feeding us!!! do you think you’d ever write for ultra magnus/minimus? feel free to ignore this if not!

The Conversation

Ultra Magnus x Reader

• How many is that now? Servos drumming on his desk, he grimaces. Five counting Swerve’s find the day before. That one had to have appeared after Rodimus and Megatron had destroyed the machine. Brainstorm’s only response had been to wave his hand and mutter about lingering temporal effects. Which is complete lunacy. Science has rules, it must. Whatever Brainstorm had done isn’t following them, though.

• Leaning out from the ladder, you stretch an arm out and your fingertips can just barely brush the top of the book. Tipping it and lunging to catch it before it can fall to the floor below, you feel foot slipping on the ladder rung as you reel back and bang back into it, feet scrambling until your footing is secure again with the book clutched to your chest. And heart racing, your stomach drops. It’s not like you haven’t fell before, but this is different. Cold sweat breaking out all over your skin, your head feels like it’s splitting open. You can’t hold onto the ladder, can’t feel your fingers at all as your vision goes gray at the edges and pain hammers you.

• There’s a feeling like a shift in air pressure that prickles over him. Bringing his head up in time to see the small form just materialize in the air. Reaching without thinking as that limp form begins to fall and he catches you. Another one? Venting raggedly at how warm and still you are in his palm, he reaches out a servo of his other hand to gently nudge you. Can feel your heart beating and see the rise and fall of your chest. Alive, but if you’re anything like the others, that pain would have been crippling.

• When you come to, it’s to your head pounding and a foul taste in your mouth. Everything hurts, like you’re one big bruise, but whatever you’re laying on is warm and there’s something soft wrapped around you. And you just want to sleep, curling tighter against the ache you can feel down in your very bones.

Happy turkey day- visiting my grandma in the land of no cell service

[lixies-favorite-cookie]

⋆.˚ ☁︎ TEENAGE DREAM ☁︎︎ ⋆.˚

—sometimes at eighteen, young love is anything but a teenage dream.

genres・fluff // young love // awkward confessions // meet cutes. summary・love is embarrassing, especially when you're in high school. from the cozy coffee shop to the local campus, eight boys stumble through the awkward world of crushes—trying, and failing to confess to you.

a/n・I haven't been on here for a little while, but I wanted to do something silly and fun to celebrate 500 amazing followers! All of these ideas are still in the works, so the plots may change, but I'm having so much fun writing them. I get hit with a pang of nostalgia every once in a while, remembering my very first fanfiction, haha. If you want to be tagged in any of these, just comment down below or send me an ask—and always remember to support your content creators; it means the world to us!!

☁︎︎ COFFEE CUP ☁︎︎

BANG CHAN loved being a barista; not only did he get exceptional employee discounts but it was peaceful—he handed people their coffee, they said thank you and walked away—nobody ever bothered him. that is, until one night, ten minutes before closing, you walked in with your bright smile and garrulous chit-chat. It only took you one sentence to have him hooked, eagerly waiting for your next late-night visit. what is bang chan going to do when he finally works up the nerve to write his number on the sleeve of your coffee cup, only for you to toss it away without ever seeing it? (coming to your shelves December 10th)

☁︎︎ ROSE ☁︎︎

LEE KNOW was famous for being the star quarterback turned heartless bachelor—or so everybody thought. nobody could have guessed that the reason minho chased every woman away was because, hidden 60 miles from home, there was the animal shelter where he volunteered. the reason he drove an hour every day to nurture abused pets? you. what is minho going to do when, no matter how many roses he gives you, you just can’t take the hint? (coming to your shelves soon...)

☁︎︎ MOTORCYCLE ☁︎︎

︎SEO CHANGBIN. there’s nothing he loves more than his motorcycle—well, that’s not entirely true. he probably loves you more, but his motorcycle is certainly a close second. with prom looming, changbin finally gathers enough courage to ask out his long-time crush and childhood best friend. what is changbin going to do when, halfway through, he chickens out—and, in a panic, ends up ramming his motorcycle into your mailbox while trying to back out of your driveway? (coming to your shelves soon...)

☁︎︎ MY MUSE ☁︎︎

HWANG HYUNJIN has been in love with you for about as long as he’s understood the word love; stuck in the seat beside you since elementary school, hyunjin grew to adore the soft curves of your features. one day, in the middle of art class, he's struck with the urge to draw you. overcome with the fear of never getting the chance to tell you how he feels, hyunjin stuffs the picture in your locker. what is hyunjin going to do when he overhears you talking to your friends about the drawing—and you mention his enemy's name, and not his? (coming to your shelves soon...)︎︎

☁︎︎ LYRIC BOOK ☁

HAN JISUNG is dedicated to securing the top spot in his songwriting class, and nothing is going to stand in his way. that was, until three years ago, when you walked through the door, head held high, speaking of your goals as if they were already part of the present. jisung never thought there would be any competition—until there was. now, he doesn’t know whether to write songs about his overwhelming hatred or his overwhelming ardor. what is jisung going to do when, one day, you’re paired with him for a project, and you discover all the love songs he’s written about you? (coming to your shelves soon...)

☁︎︎ SUGAR AND SPICE ☁︎︎

LEE FELIX, the school's sunshine, the universe’s fallen star—nothing was going to get him down. well, except for you. no matter how hard he tries, felix just can’t form a sentence around you; his tongue twisting into sailor’s knots whenever you look his way. what is felix going to do when he tries to confess through a cake, baked fresh in the culinary class you share, but trips over his shoelaces and smears the cake all over your shirt instead? (coming to your shelves soon...)

☁︎︎ BASEBALL ☁

KIM SEUNGMIN worked with a focus nobody else seemed to reciprocate, constantly practicing to be the best pitcher this world has ever seen. his teammates respected him, his coach loved him, and the school only ever saw his poised manners—not the awkward teenager he really was. that is, until he meets you—equally shy and almost as painfully awkward, studying on the bleachers every day after school. there's something about your concentration, the self- assured direction you set for yourself, that makes him want you even more. what is he going to do when, one day after practice, he scrawls his number on a ball and chucks it toward you? and for once, the ball doesn’t go where he aimed. instead of landing in your lap, he nails you right in the forehead. (coming to your shelves soon...)

☁︎︎ THE BOOK WAS BETTER ☁︎︎

YANG JEONGIN lived in the library. on the days when he wasn’t cramming for an exam, he was relaxing with a good book. the library had always been peaceful for him—a sanctuary that students rarely ever touched. that is, until one random morning, he sees you walk in—captain of the cheerleading squad, with your tiny skirt and sparkly eyelids, jeongin almost expects you to laugh at him and his pathetic seating arrangement—all alone. but then, checking to see if anyone’s watching, you pull a book from the shelf, and begin to read it. that's how it started—now, every day during lunch, you come and read your book, safe in the shadows, creating a home nobody else knew about. what is he going to do when he starts falling for you, through the notes he slips into your book after you leave? And what will happen when the wrong girl comes in and tries to take the book? (coming to your shelves soon...)

a special thank you to @jeonginsleftcheek who helped me flesh out all these ideas. I couldn't do any of this without you!! I hope you like these stories <33

[miaoua3]

(pairing: hoshi x noona!reader)

there is a superstition that if you spend the first snow with the person that you like, that the new love will blossom between you two, just like a flower after a long and cold winter.

“and then as i jumped up because- hello? they just dropped a fake spider in my lap, i hit my knee in the table, which resulted in the bowl full of hot soup to spill…directly onto wonwoo’s lap!”

you burst out laughing as hoshi finishes his story about one of the many times when they tried to prank him while drunk, which inevitably ended up in a chaos.

you had to stop walking for a second from how hard you were laughing at one moment, wiping away the tears that were forming in the corners of your eyes.

hoshi just stands there, chuckling to himself as he looks at you fondly, waiting for you to collect yourself. the look in his eyes…is something that you weren’t sure how to interpret.

to be completely honest, lately you’ve been questioning your entire friendship with hoshi. see, sometimes people can be really blind to the things that are right in front of them, like you with your feelings for example.

you have known hoshi for years now, and in your eyes he has always just been this dude that was always fighting to get your attention, pulling on your shirt while calling “noona! noona!”. up until recently, you have always just thought of him as your cute little junior, maybe a friend even, but nothing more than that.

you always thought he was a little too young and little too immature for you.

until one night a few months ago, when he bravely stood in front of you and protected you from the creep who has been trying to hit on you. the way he behaved, the way he spoke in his deep voice…

it made your heart skip a beat.

and ever since that day, you have started looking at him differently, and your heart hasn’t stopped skipping a beat every time you would see his cute smile.

so here you are now, coming from what you first thought was a regular dinner two friends would get, but which definitely progressed into something closer to a date.

after eating some delicious chicken from your favourite diner, you two just started strolling around, until you realised that it was entirely too late and that you should go home.

hoshi, intending to make your heart collapse apparently, offered to walk you home, saying he could never leave his noona to walk alone in the night.

as you continue to walk, you continue to talk, telling each other stories that are definitely not as funny as you make them to be.

your mood sours the moment you round the corner of your street, realising that your…date will have to come to an end.

walking up to the entrance of your building, you stop on the third stair before you turn around to look at him. standing like this makes you realise just how tall he is, because it takes you standing on the third stair for you two to be similar heights.

he smiles gently at you, his cute eyes creating cute little crescents as he does.

“well. this is you.”, he pauses awkwardly for a few seconds before he continues “so i was wondering, would you maybe be interested in going to that restaurant on the other side…”.

his voice trails off as he sees you slowly walking back down the stairs, until you’re standing right in front of him, you beautiful doe eyes looking up at him expectantly.

hoshi, being the weak man the he is, lets his eyes fall to your plush lips, dry from the cold of the early winter’s air.

he starts to panic a bit, his breathing coming to a stop while his heartbeat skyrockets.

you look at him, the only thought on your mind being kiss me, kiss me, kiss me.

your hand unconsciously grabs the hem of his jacket, fisting it tightly as you look at his dazed expression.

hoshi looks at you for a second longer, before he groans and utters “what the hell.”.

and then he’s grabbing your cold cheeks in his hands and swooping down to kiss you breathlessly.

as hoshi kisses you on the doorstep of your apartment building, tilting your head so he has better access to your mouth, kissing you both so sweetly and so hungrily, a few snowflakes start to fall from the sky, inevitably landing on his eyelashes.

he breaks the kiss apart to look up at the sky, his breath coming in puffs, before he looks down at you and giggles a bit.

as you join his giggles, you lean your forehead against his, your hand unconsciously seeking out his own.

you weren’t sure if this was officially your first date or not, but you knew one thing for sure.

you were definitely looking forward to the next one.

[mehiwilldoitlater]

"Ready... to give up?!" His panting voice cracked his confident Facade.

You didn't need to answer, only cleaning your cheeks from the dust, Take your training rod and rise up again. You preferred to be beaten than admit defeat.

Yuán Fèn's younger siblings couldn't decide if they felt excitement about the match or guilty about making you both fight... Well, it wasn't like you two were really fighting, but now neither of the two of you wanted to back down...

Everything started so many hours ago...

When the two of you weren't training, Yuán Fèn's duty around the Mountain was quite simple: training the youngest monkey. You had the chance to observe him, and what you learned was that he was quite good at it! He was patient and understanding with those who found some difficulty in mastering a few techniques, yet severe and authoritarian with the ones that crossed the line far too much.

That day, on the other hand, was quite an event for his young disciples! It was the day of your first fighting lesson!

You, on your side, were nervous. For them The first time, you would have held a staff and learned the basics of Yuán Fèn fighting skills, a way to finally be more helpful in your mission, but the idea of not being even able to hold a simple wooden rod scared you. You gulped when a strong pat was given on your back; a chuckle escaped from him while you tried to fix your bandages on your hands.

"Nervous?"

"Yeah... a little..."

"You'll be great! I bet you'll be amazing!"

You smiled a little, yet still a little worried.

All those thoughts were put aside when you and Yuán Fèn faced each other while he showed you how a few stances needed to be done properly. Maybe, you thought, the standing in the actual scene helped you against your anxiety, and, all things considered, you weren't that bad at all! Even Yuán Fèn needed to admit you were a natural!

"This is a defensive stance. In case of danger, it will help you."

"Like this?" You mimicked his same pose. He loves a little of your arms, but besides that, he hasn't touched you at all.

"Good.... Good, very good! Let's try it. A few more stances, okay?"

You really were a natural one there. You were sucking in learning writings and reading the scrolls, always asking their meaning and all, but maybe your talent was fighting! The thought still made the monkey a little uneasy, but if it gave you confidence, then why stop you?

And you were getting confident!

"Come on, give me something REALLY hard!"

Ok, maybe too much. He did take your challenge to heart and decided to take the thing to another level...a small fighting session.

"Come on," he said, taking his position. "I thought you wanted something harder..."

"...ah!" You followed him, taking yours.

More than once, his staff hit your hand with the only intent of disarming you, and every time you had to message your hands and take back your weapon fast, even when he was clearly waiting for you to take it back.

More than once you were able to hit him at least once, but he was able to strike at least three more times. And every time he looked at you, waiting for you to give up.

He had cornered you many times, even when he was clearly telling you to take a look at your surroundings, only for you to hit your back against the wooden wall.

You were good, but he was better, and that...frustrated you.

Now there you were, your hands trembling from the many strikes, hickeys ready to form all over your body and your breath heavy. He was painting, but it was clear that he wasn't in as bad a shape as you.

"I... I won't... stand down..."

"You really should... with those hands too..."

You only grasped harder your hands on the rod, attacking again. Both of your staff crashed together, with his feet trying to not let him lose his balance.

You tried to put more force into it, using your body as a weight, but he quickly chose to move away and broke the stall. You tumbled around, falling badly on the dust, coughing and trying to get up as quickly as possible, only to find his staff again pointed at you.

"Okay...you've got some good moves, Y/n...but I'm still stronger here!"

You held your breath...then suddenly kicked his leg with your foot. The sudden attack made him tumble down, with you stopping him by climbing on him, sitting on his waist. Your rod is pointing at him, a satisfied grin on your face, feeling a small victory on you.

"And I'm smarter!"

You waited for another retort, only to meet a shocked face, with a small tint of red on his ears. Only then did you realize in what kind of position you were, especially when you felt his hands on your hips ...

A few seconds of silence, of pure nothing between the two of you... then he raised his hands like he had touched iron hot, and you jumped away, feeling your face melting by your heating.

"NICE FIGHT! GREAT LESSON! GOTTA GO!" You screamed while practically running away from the scene, while your poor monkey was there, on the ground, trying to make sense of everything.

He did the only thing he could do, putting himself in fetal position with his face in his hands, his tails frantically moving around. His siblings, slowly approaching him, decided to climb on him, chirping around and laughing a little.

"What a show, Brother! Such a show!"

[moodymisty]

Author's note: What are you gonna do? Kinkshame me?

Relationship: Mortarion/Fem!Reader (to call it a relationship is kind of a stretch you only have his last name cause the vet paperwork requires it)

Warnings: NSFW, Nonnegotiable pet play (hampter), Degradation, Dehumanization, Kidnapping(?) Stockholm syndrome, Brief mention of reader having enough hair to put into a hair tie, Collar and leash, I dunno this is weird, This is totally unrelated to the Morty and his hot wife fic as much as his (future)wife would be down for being his pet, Inspired by @lemon-russ and her Mortarion pet fic series <3 and by inspired I mean like half of this fic is the exact fucking same cause i had trouble with the last half

The festering, bloated form of the Imperium was good for something, Mortarion thought.

Logistical tasks were nightmarish beyond all belief, shipments of requisitioned goods sent from place to place in the thousands if not millions. Many shipments disappeared outright; A planet now without food, a desperate front line without weapons. Efforts doomed purely on logistical error due to the sheer amount of traffic having to be handled.

It made slipping things between the cracks quite easy, however.

The box in Mortarion's hands is small by his standards, but for a human it would be quite sizable. They had offered to bring it to his quarters but he instantly refused, and Garro reiterated to the serfs that no one- including his own men- were to be near let alone in his quarters.

Not anymore.

When he enters the privacy of his chambers his shoulders relax slightly, and he hears the soft jingle of thin metal. It's quiet now- it used to be far louder but now that your cage is a bright display of plush blankets and toys, only weight on the exterior of the cage, and the metal of your collar, create any noise.

He smiles at the wide, excited look in your eyes, your fingers wrapped around the thin bars as you rise to your knees. The little dress you wear is still clean but a decent bit wrinkled, an array of lace and frills.

He'll have to change it; Along with a myriad of other chores he'll need to go after leaving you alone for so long.

"How are you, my little pet?"

You perk up and eagerly watch as he comes to let you out, but not too eagerly.

He doesn't like when you yelp and rattle the bars. He always wants you to be quiet above all else, especially during living hours.

"I have some new things for you, excited? Sit, and I'll show them to you."

You obediently listen legs curled to one side and nod, watching as he lowers himself to the floor on one knee. He grimaces and his bones crack and pop, but he manages. You look at him a bit worried, but you know he'll be fine.

You always love when he gets new things for you; New blankets, new pillows, new toys. Whenever things break he's always quick to get you new ones. It's so exciting to see what wonderful and colorful things he gets you from all of the places he's been, stuffing your life so full of plushness, soft fabrics and pastels.

The corner of his bedchambers your cage is in far more filled that it was when you'd first arrived, stuffed with spare things and little lights. If you were to just look at him, it would be almost funny; How lively and cute your home is in comparison to himself. His desk directly adjacent to you is solid wood, covered in burns, stains, and various bottles and jars.

In the moment it's nice, the free food, the blankets, the security; But when you think about it, its...

It's humiliating.

Degrading.

You feel less than human, though you suppose that's his intent; If anyone you knew ever saw you like this crawling around on all fours like a-

If any were alive.

Your planet was vicious, unforgiving. How you'd survived as long as you had was a miracle. To live there was to scavenge and fight for day to day survival, no thinking of the long term. You don't know if anyone you knew has even survived in few months you've been gone.

Has it been months?

Here, you're showered in plush toys and blankets, bowls and bowls of food. By a primarch no less. You were plucked from the sky by a being that from the sparse teachings of your forgotten planet was a man of incomprehensible power, a military of thousands at his disposal.

You even have a heating pad; Mortarion keeps the switch within your grasp after you wouldn't stop whining for him to turn it on.

For all intents and purposes, you're pampered. You are his pet, but you're safe, well taken care of, and loved.

It could be worse.

...could it?

You are still fully cognizant of that past life, before him. But why would you yearn for it's return- to a nightmare of struggle and fighting- when here, you're pampered and pet and fed until you're plump? You don't have to worry about anything. Your primarch does it all for you. Here you can sleep in a warm bed, eat your food and wait until master he returns and you can get some time out to stretch and play.

If you're very good, and he doesn't have any duties that take away his time, he'll let you sleep on his bed with him- not complaining when you crawl up to lay your head on his thigh.

He's been busy for a few days now, multiple nights you haven't seen him leaving you alone in the dark. It gets lonely, but you're patient- napping in your bed or playing with the myriad of toys he's given you. They keep you busy, but your little mind always wanders back to worrying if he's left you forever.

Reaching for the latch of your cage he undoes it and chuckles as you eagerly crawl to the entrance, almost visibly vibrating from excitement.

It's been days, and now he's going to let you out! You struggle to contain the excitement.

He opens the box and briefly shows you a peek of the things he's gotten you, before he gets distracted by something else.

"Your hair is such a mess. Come out."

He doesn't put a leash on you, letting you come out and stretch your legs a bit before getting back down. He sits at his desk, and motions for you to come by hitting his thigh.

When you do so, he begins to undo the tie in your hair and try to redo it. You wince a bit and move, earning a grunt of displeasure from him that turns into a mild coughing fit. Once he's finished coughing and clears his throat, he speaks at you.

"Stop wiggling."

You try to hold perfectly still as he fixes your hair, styling it the way he likes it. Sleeping in your bed for the past few days has made it messy, and you didn't have the tools to fix it yourself. Master does it for you anyways. He does it the way it should be, same with your clothes.

When he's almost done, he gestures for you to turn around so he can judge his own handiwork.

Something on his desk however begins making noise, and he looks in it's direction with no small amount of disdain. When he looks back at you, he grips your jaw and mushes your cheeks upward. It doesn't hurt, but it is a bit uncomfortable.

"Be quiet."

You nod- at least as best as you can.

He lets go of you and reaches to touch the device, and a voice starts talking.

"My primarch, Lord Fulgrim is attempting to vox you."

He lets out a loud sigh, clearing his throat once again. The dry scratchiness of it is palpable.

"Is it important?"

The man on the other side makes a contemplative noise, while Mortarion's rough skin brushes against the little hairs just in front of your ear. You tilt your head in the hopes he'll keep doing it.

"Lord Fulgrim did not specify when asked."

Mortarion pets you just a bit harder.

"...Let him through."

There's silence for a moment, before the voice acknowledges Mortarion and cuts away. A different voice fills the air a few moments later.

"Leaving Terra so soon Mortarion?"

The voice is smooth, melodic, and amused at Mortarion's expense. You continue to kneel silently between his legs. You lean against his calf a bit, lazily looking up at him. He looks down at you as he talks.

"I have many things that require my attention far more than your stupid parties, Fulgrim."

The voice on the other side chuckles, smooth and music-like.

"Fair enough. Guilliman and Lion were the same." He huffs before speaking again. "You think any of them would even miss my presence?

You perk up, but remain totally silent.

You missed him!

You missed every moment he was gone. Your cheek pushes against his leg harder in an attempt to show your thoughts without words, wrapping your arms around his calf, and he rewards you with a brush along your cheek. You smile happily.

"Probably not, though I could say that about more of the primarchs than just you." The voice quiets for a moment before speaking again. "Safe travels, Mortarion."

The voice is gone now and Mortarion returns his full focus to you, so you assume it's safe to make noise; Though you don't just in case.

"Good girl. You behaved." He looks at you. "Want a treat?"

A treat? Everything he gives you is so yummy, you nod and eagerly await whatever he's giving you. He gets up for a moment to retrieve it, before handing it to you.

You've tried taking food from his hands before, but he prefers if you just eat it from his fingers.

You take the treat, the yummy flavor hitting your tongue the moment your lips pull away from his fingers. There's a small something a bit hard in the middle, but you just chew through it. It doesn't effect the flavor in any noticeable way.

While you do, he latches your leash on the d-ring of your collar. You don't complain, just watching curiously as you chew your treat. He stands a few moments later, the leash wrapped around his hand.

"Come here."

You move to where he's going before the leash has a chance to snap taut, crawling onto his bed and onto his lap when he ushers you there.

"Did you miss me? It's been a few days."

You eagerly nod, hands gripping the fabric of his tunic. His lap is too big for you to straddle outright, so you straddle one of his thighs instead. When he raises that thigh, you instantly whimper at the feeling of pressure on your core. He sighs.

"Only a few days and you're already pent up again."

He sounds almost irritated, but he's quick to push around the fabric of your little dress to press his fingers against your cunt.

He toys and fiddles with your folds until they're nice and slick, whimpering in his grasp and trying to grind harder on his hand. Once he's done playing with you, he undoes the ties of his trousers to pull out his cock. It's half hard,

He leans back, pushing you until you almost straddle his hips and his cock lays rising between your thighs.

"Go on, pet."

You're so beyond pent up, even the toys he gives you weren't enough in the days he was busy. So it isn't long of grinding your sloppy cunt along his shaft before you're desperately trying to shove it inside of you, your master watching keenly as you move about awkwardly.

After only a minute or so of sliding up and down his cock do you feel a shudder run through you as a small orgasm rides up your spine, whining and biting your lip. Just the act of slipping him inside of you and feeling the stretch was so much, sinking into your tight heat. Your hands grip the material of his clothes tightly as he coughs, trying to hold them in enough to not be too loud for you.

"Poor pet, do you need more things to keep you busy while I'm gone?"

He mumbles something under his breath, something about an implant, but you're too busy trying to fuck yourself on him to really understand what he's mumbling about through the wet, sloppy noises.

It probably isn't stuff you should care about anyways. He handles all the complicated stuff, you just enjoy the things he gives you.

He tugs on the leash once, and you feel the fabric dig into the nape of your neck as you're pulled forward. You're beginning to tire, hips aching and sore. You slow down and grind down on him, groaning between your breaths.

"Do I spoil you too much? Are you getting lazy?"

No! You aren't lazy, just tired. Your mouth hangs slightly agape open mouth breathing, as he watches you.

"Keep going, pet."

You try and gather enough strength to continue, feeling his cock shift inside of you. His groans are louder and he accidentally begins pulling on your leash as he tries to steady himself with his arms, pulling you a bit forward as he finishes inside of you. The warmth and the feeling of his hips bucking up into you and jostling you around is what pulls another orgasm from you, whining over the sound of his groans.

After a few moments he slowly pulls from you, and you clench around nothing at the hollow ache, and feel some of his cum slip from you and dribble onto his cock.

He's quiet for a moment, before he sighs. You perk up expectantly waiting for what he has to say.

"You can sleep out tonight."

Your excitement is explosive, stretching your back with a squeak he finds endearingly cute. He needs to clean your cage he says, after a few days of not letting you out, the blankets are wrinkled and food crumbs are dusted around. Some of your toys need to be refilled with whatever treat was inside of them or some of another variety cleaned entirely, a thought that fills you with joy.

He lays a blanket on the foot of his bed, one of yours, and you move to sit on it and watch as he goes to change his clothes for sleep. When he returns and climbs into his bed, you watch eagerly before crawling closer.

You curl up next to his left thigh, laying your cheek against it. You look up at him and see the hollowness of his features.

He's so ghostly, yet he treats you so well. You've tasted and seen things you never knew existed.

Life...

It could be worse.

You could be scavenging for scraps- now you're curled up on your master's bed.

He reaches down and brushes his hand across the top of your head a few times, petting you. You push into his hand in a way that makes him chuckle.

"Good girl."

[grimmweepers]

prev reblogs <3

thank you for the tag vana banana, des and eydis!!!! this was something i was looking forward to doing as soon as i hopped in bed :]

i spend most of my free time writing, reading, doing some form of selfcare, going on solo dates or catching up with the family since ALL of our schedules clash. i would say gaming but im so burnt out from all games rn and idk why :/ this time last year, gaming would have been on the top of my list but :// i hope after my holiday, my joy for it comes back

one of my hobbies is collecting fragrances. i liked the idea of wearing a fragrance the same way you wear clothes. yknow, choosing something based on vibes for the day or your fit. having a signature fragrance is so cool but i also loveeeee smelling different every day 🥰

the most recent would have been wicked the movie… i was tearing in the first 15 minutes i’d say. i keep singing ‘i’m not that girl’ to my sister and she told me to get over it -_- and some books that really did something to me was ‘the night circus’ and ‘the forty rules of love’. also ‘assassin’s blade’ purely for the angst. after a CERTAIN event i went to bed with a heavy heart and woke up still thinking about it :(

i can listen to anything i’m sry. my liked songs is a mess 😭 it really really does depend on my mood or what i’m doing. lately i’ve been listening to a lot of amapiano, pop and rnb BUT my weakness will always be classical music

my top characters of all time are sukuna, lucifer, tsukishima, alhaitham and nami. i have so many other favourites but this bunch have really stood the test of time. also fun fact my first fictional crush ever ever ever was shego from kim possible 💚

OPEN TAGS. if you have eyes 👀 TAG you’re it 🫵

tag + q&a game ₊˚ෆ

hello! i thought it would be cute and exciting to do a tag game with all my mutuals to not only talk about themselves, but have fun! so here is my short little game:

alongside this picrew, share 5 things about yourself!

• how do you spend your free time? • what are your hobbies and how did you get into them? • what book or movie left a lasting impression on you? • what kind of music do you enjoy? • who is your favorite character (atm or all time) and why?

i will start first!

my name is rurumi and i enjoy spending my free time writing!

some of my hobbies (outside of writing) includes: drawing, building gundams and keyboards, and fashion! i got into most of them on a whim and became instantly hooked. aside from self-expression, being into fashion also helps with making friends in college because you always have something to talk about!

a book that left a lasting impression on me would have to be either kafka on the shore by haruki murakami or before the coffee gets cold by toshikazu kawaguchi. both stories have kept me up at night thinking a lot about the 'what ifs' in life.

i enjoy soul/r&b alongside anything of jrock influence, but i will basically listen to anything that sounds good. i am currently listening to 'so what' by lucy!

my favorite character at the moment is rin itoshi from blue lock because hes so ridiculously edgy, but at the same time i sympathize with him a lot. on the other hand, my favorite character of all time is suletta mecury from the witch from mercury series, she's an absolute ball of sunshine that i aspire to be.

tagging (+ no pressure) ₊˚ෆ

@kaiser1ns @naenaex0xx @shomatoriashi @choccorin @ryescapades

@rindreamery @soleillunne @kissxcore @rainswept @mitsvriii

[walks-the-ages]

let's play a game.

Biological Essentialism/Determinism can be summed up as, in the most simplified way, "what you are born as intrinsically determines your behavior and destiny".

"Gender Essentialism" uses the exact same framework but with a thin veneer of "trans inclusivity" slapped on top, to say that while your biology does not determine who you are, your gender identity does. Even before you realize you are trans or come out of the closet.

Under the framework of "Gender Essentialism" you're viewed as being X gender and somehow getting all of those 'benefits' from society even before you realize or come out as X gender.

So, some examples:

W is a member of a sentient Fantasy Race who is created to be Ontologically Evil. W being born into this Fantasy Race means that W is destined to be Evil and cruel no matter what and W and the rest of W's race will never ever be able to change their Evil ways.

X is assigned Female at birth. X is expected to be subservient, loyal to a single husband, and want to have children. X is expected to want these things from an early age and can and will be ostracized if X expressed any disinterest in these things or opposite behavior to the things expected of X's gender. (not wanting kids, not being interested in men, etc)

Y is assigned Male at birth. Y is expected to be fierce, strong, and to father many strong sons. Y is expected to want these things from an early age and can and will be ostracized if Y expresses any disinterest in these things or opposite behavior to the things expected of Y's gender. (being physically weak, not minding having daughters instead of sons, not being interested in women, etc)

Z is born into a strict caste system, and is born in the lowest caste. Z is expected to spend Z's whole life serving those 'better' than Z without recompense or complaint, with *no* possible avenue to advance in society due to the caste system.

This is inspired both by the wave of trans inclusive radical feminists who say that

"because trans men are of course men, that means they are inherently evil and oppressive and part of the patriarchy that seeks to tear trans women down."

and also because I've seen too many fantasy and scifi series way too comfortable with making Ontologically Evil Species and strictly enforced Caste Systems where everything is fine and dandy and everyone's happy with their lot in life as long as the ones with a caste system are the

"Beautiful, Pure and Good Elves, because as we all know, Happy Slaves aren't really Slaves, right? And if the Ruler has the Divine Right of Kings and all the little people think that's good, that makes it good, right?" (sarcasm).

If you've ever considering giving your fantasy or scifi race as 'caste' system that determins who does what based on their lineage or their body type and its apparently 'good and natural and everyone loves being their caste and wouldn't have it any other way'

....have you considered that Caste Systems have always been used as tools of oppression and discrimination and this is something real people face, and that we should not be writing "good caste systems" from the comfort of Western Society and perhaps consider the harm in romanticing these very real frameworks of systemic oppression?

Anyways, both in literature and real life:

do you agree that Biological Essentialism, Biological Determinism, and yes, "Trans-Inslusive Gender Essentialism" are ever correct and a good framework for viewing other people?

Or do you agree that this is an absolutely bullshit way to view individuals and that all it does is uphold systems of oppression, especially when it comes to queer people, people of color, disabled people, intersex people and more?

anyways just gonna leave you with this gif.

[ID: a gif from Pokemon the Movie 2000, showing Mew and Mewtwo floating over a battlefield, with Mewtwo having the realization "I see now that the circumstances of one's birth are irrelevant. It is what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are." End ID]

[smiley-mcdoggington]

DONT ASK ME WHAT THIS IS I'M SPEED RUNNING THIS BEFORE I PASS TF OUT TW COERSION I GUESS??? TW STANCEST TW SMIDGE OF IMPLIED/REFERENCED SA TW A/B/O DYNAMICS

Ford's long fingers curled tightly into the blankets as he tried to swaddle himself even smaller. He almost threw the blanket when it didnt bring the relief he wanted.

Ford had read about the omegan estrous cycle - he had to, when he turned fifteen and it became clear Stanley was growing broader but he was not. He knew if he was just held by familiar people it would calm the knashing pain in his stomach and the pulsing in his head.

But instead he was alone, because Ma had locked the door and told him not to let anyone in except her. It was day three, the most optimistic estimate was he still had another two full days of trying to figure out how to hold himself the way someone else would hold him - touch himself the way someone else would touch him.

Then there were three quick knocks before the door was shoved open. Ma looked pale. "You and Stanley stay in here until you don't see your Pa's car on the road, capiche? Don't open this door for anything until then, there's money on the counter, leftovers in the fridge, Stanford you call my sister when it's safe, I love you both, goodbye." She said in a whirlwind that barely made it through Ford's cloudy thoughts. Then Stanley was shoved in the room and the door was slammed behind him.

Ford stared at Stanley for a second with wide eyes. Ma hadn't allowed him in their room since Ford had presented, acting cagey whenever he asked before eventually just saying that Stanley looked like an alpha and alphas couldn't control themselves. That was why Pa wasn't allowed in. Ford knew it was factually incorrect - alphas were capable of resisting urges, they simply chose not to in many cases. Part of him wondered if Stanley would be so forceful once he presented. He certainly had the build for it.

Then a wimper drew Ford's gaze away from his indimidating form and up to his face. His face was a deep pink, tears rolling down his cheeks and trembling where he stood.

Then the scent cut through his own. Oh.

Stanley had presented.

Ford slowly drew away from his blankets - the open air was suffocating, but Stanley could help that - Stanley was just another omega, he could help, wrap those big arms around him, press that heavy weight into his ribs until he didn't have to feel anything anymore.

"Stanley. Why are you crying?" His voice dragged as he got closer - he was only wearing his boxers, he couldn't find it in him to care.

"I wa-was s'posed to be - be an alpha. That-That's what Ma said." He babbled. "How can I prote-ct us if I'm an omega?" He whimpered, digging his heels into his eyes. "I'm sor-ry." He hiccuped.

Ford felt a rush of something wash over him. In the next second he had Stan's face in his hands - so warm, he fit perfectly between 12 fingers. "You're still a great boxer, Stanley. But now - now you can help me. Don't you want that?" Stanley looked up at him with those big brown eyes, hopeful. It made Ford's stomach roll in a new way.

"H-How?" Stanley asked, laying his own smaller hands over Ford's with such ease, as if the contact Ford had needed was just so easy to give.

Ford pulled Stanley closer. "Physical contact. Familial omegan contact can bring smaller amounts of the endorphins released during copulation. You want it too, don't you?" Stanley nodded quickly. "The come here." He purred, and Stanley curled around him in a tight hug. Stanford shivered, clinging back to his twin. For a moment, they stood there, similar scents intertwining, both making small pleased huffs as they gripped eachother tighter.

But like an addiction, he started itching for more. "Stanley." He muttered into his brother's ear. "We should go back to the bed. I tried building a nest it--" Stan's nose touched the gland on his neck and he made a quiet keening noise. "--it isn't great, but omegan behavioral studies were very vague with how they're made."

Stan hummed. "Nest. Yeah. That - that sounds so good." He said, before picking Ford up. Ford took the chance to wrap his legs around him. When Stan finally pressed him into the mattress Ford whined loudly, a purr still filled with the cracklings of puberty rumbling in his chest. Stan shoved his face into Ford's whispy chest hairs, whining right back at him.

"You're - You're right, your nest is crap." Stanley teased breathlessly. Ford jabbed him in the back with the sole of his foot and Stanley giggled, eyes still red-rimmed but smiling, now. Ford couldn't help smiling back.

"Fix it then." Ford replied, and Stan pulled away very slightly before dropping back down.

"Nah." Stan said simply, clinging to Ford.

The cramps were still there - but with Stanley they were barely a nuiscence. Just a low presence to match the feeling of his wet boxers.

Then he noticed Stan's slight shifting.

He still looked completely distracted, blissed-out and clinging to Ford like a piece of driftwood in the ocean. But lower down his hips were twitching into the mattress just a little. Ford traced the tiny erratic rolling of Stan's hips in a trance. Did Stanley even notice?

Then Stanley made a little groaning, huffing noise and Ford's own hips twitched. Except any movement on his own part resulted in directly jutting into his brother's stomach.

Stanley's eyes snapped open. He looked up at Ford slowly. Before he could say a word Ford had pushed up his glasses. "it's perfectly normal to have the same physical symptoms of arousal during an estrous cycle, Stanley." He said almost defensively, but Stanley's relief seemed to be directed inward. He rolled his hips more brazenly against the mattress.

Then Stan's whole body froze, and he started pulling away. Ford tried to follow him, but Stanley looked close to crying again. "Whats the matter? I promise it's normal, Stanley - what's wrong?"

"I gotta go." Stan said stiffly.

"You can't go, Stanley - Pa isn't gone yet." He said, sitting up and reaching for him.

"I don't care about Pa, I'll just punch him again if I gotta." His voice wavered with a little bit of fear.

Ford stood again. "Don't be ridiculous Stanley - why do you have to leave?"

Stan looked away.

"Stanley."

"I think I peed myself."

Ford stared at him. Then down at his perfectly dry jeans. Then he snorted.

Stan's face twisted angrily, though his eyes were glassy again. "Shut up."

"You didn't pee yourself, Stanley - did you even read the omegan biology book I lent you? Or were you too busy drawing Lil' Stanley in the margins?" Stan shrank in on himself a little. Ford sighed fondly. "Here - it's happening to me, too, it's just discharge." He wiped some from his inner thigh onto his finger for Stan to see. "The pH is within the acidic range, though, so you should probably get out of your good jeans before you bleach them." He said, and Stan just kept staring at his two damp fingers.

Ford would have let Stan indulge his curiosity, but the lack of contact was getting to Ford. "Stanley?"

His brother nodded, clearing his throat and unbuckling his belt. Ford watched his hands make quick work of the leather, before he slid the denim down over his tight boxers and his large, chubby thighs. There was a small wet spot on the inside of his jeans. Ford wondered if he would add it to their nest.

Stan threw his shirt over his head and then they were both in similar attire. Ford pulled Stanley closer to him again - he just couldn't stand the itch of not touching his twin for long. "Now that that's established..." He dragged Stan back into his bed. They laid facing eachother, legs tangled and arms clinging.

Stan was just so perfect as an omega - so pliant. Ford wondered how he ever could have thought Stan would be an alpha, even with his build. He was so perfect, so trusting, he fit just perfectly in Ford's arms, held into every word despite the physical advantage and the primal mindset an estrous cycle brought to the forefront. Watching Stan happily nuzzle into his smaller chest made Ford almost understand the gaze of an alpha. Stan would just be so easy to take and claim for himself - not because Stanley was weak but because he was Stanford Pines and Stanley was pliant for him and him alone.

He curled a little further towards his brother, when his thightouched something warm and wet. Stanley didn't move away, his nose just scrunched a little and he whined softly. Ford studied every subtle change in his expression.

Then Stan's hips rolled against his thigh. His dick was solid, pressing into his stomach, but Stan was more interested in the new sensations his hole brought, grinding it against Ford's thigh with tiny huffing whines, getting his leg wet while Stan lost himself with his nose still pressed into Ford's ribcage. Ford was like this, too, the first day. It was so cute on Stanley, though. Ford pushed his leg a little harder upward and Stanley moaned quietly, like he thought he was being subtle.

Stan's whines got a little more desperate the longer he went without orgasm, chasing an end that wouldn't come just from a bit of frotting. Ford let him get frustrated, felt his thick thighs quiver under the blanket while he tried to grind harder. Ford felt a drip of hot discharge run off his knee and he snapped.

He grabbed Stan by the hips and Stan stopped dead. "Proper orgasm during an estrous cycle is nearly impossible to achieve by one's self because of the lack of physical contact. This is enough to get rid of the cramps, but if you want to come then you have to ask." His voice was rough from the sight of Stanley, he felt his own slick running down his thighs.

"P-Please." Stanley whimpered. Ford immediately surged forwards, bracketing Stan's larger form under him and pressing their lips together for a searing moment. When he pulled back, Stan tried to follow.

"You want something in your hole, don't you?"

Stan nodded quickly, back arched just a little, neck exposed obscenely.

"Gorgeous - god, Stan, you're so pretty, you know that?" He mumbled into Stan's jaw between short, soft kisses. "You probably want some big alpha to stretch you out, don't you? Fill you up while you take it so perfectly?"

"No." Stan whispered. "Jus-Just you. Please, I want - need you, please." Ford shivered at the words.

"Perfect, Stanley, you're so perfect." Ford purred into Stan's skin while six fingers dipped under Stan's waistband. Stanley was a mess, sopping wet for him and Ford would spend hours licking it all up if Stan hadn't asked to be filled.

Two of his fingers grazed Stanley's soaked enterance and Stanley keened. "M' ready, m'ready - please, Stanford--" Ford pulled his own boxers down and rubbed Stan's slick onto his skin before grabbing Stan's legs to put on his shoulders.

Stanford put his thumbs on either side of Stanley's hole to watch it stretch, watch a little bit of clear fluid burble out. Stan whined under him. "It's gonna hurt, Stanley, I'm telling you."

"Then hurt me." Stanley demanded.

Ford lined himself up and pushed into Stan's feverish warmth. He keened, feeling Stan all around him, slick dripping down into two puddles under them, close enough to merge. He took a breath while Stanley shivered and moaned.

"Move - damn it Sixer gimme all of it--" Ford pulled out and thrust back in again, the smack sounded in the room and both omegas groaned.

"Perfect - g-god Stanley, my perfect little omega - fuck. Gon-gonna full you up, fill you up with my pups - gotta - god - gotta let the world know they lost the perfect omega to an-another fucking omega." Stanley yelped when Ford found his prostate, grinding against if for all he was worth.

"S-Six - gotta - gonna--" Stan sobbed.

"I've gotcha, I've - Stanley." Ford whined, taking one of his hands off Stan's hips to run over his own hole, wetting his fingers in his own sopping mess. "I'm close."

"Please - please--!" Ford shoved two fingers in alongside his dick as his orgasm peaked, and Stan squealed on his pseudo-knot while he came himself. Ford kissed the fresh tears from Stan's face and waited for Stan to come down before gently easing his fingers out.

Stanley's arms wrapped fully around him in a crushing embrace the second Ford was out of him, and his own more practiced purr rumbled them both out of consciousness.

[choshasan]

Why do we find it okay as artists to redo "the greats" arts, to make 1:1 of them, to use them as practice, to refference them in our own works,

But then if you did the same with a small artist's work, you're suddenly an art theif, a cheater, a liar, a terrible person??

Why is it acceptable for me to make fanart of any anime character I so please, but if I come across someone's OCs online I'm expected to ask their concent if I wanna make fanart?

Small artists and "the greats" are the same, we're all just artists.

I genuinly don't understand it. If I want to paint a 1:1 of The desperate Man (Gustave Courbet), or if I wanna make a thousand fanarts of Deadpool that's fully okay, but if I even think of doing that with a small artist, it's suddenly one of the worst treasons I could have ever commited on art and I get stripped of my title of artist??

That's the thing I hate the most of the art community too, you're expected to know from the beginning all these sets of "rules" and are never given an explanation to them

Like, I remember getting fucking torn to shreads on instagram once, when I was fucking 11-12 years old, because I found a drawing I liked on google, decided to redraw it in the exact style with different colors for the characters, like?? Sorry, I am a *child* who doesn't know shit about the internet and tried to do something I thought was nice and neat???

And the worst part is, deppending where your art lands? Some artists will tell you it's okay, there's no rules to art, do as you want!

And others will send you death threats for so much as existing bruh.

To me personally, I fall in the category of art has one rule; don't claim another person's work as your own. Don't just screenshot someone's art, post it and say you made it.

(Obv with the new age, don't use A.I., but that'll never be art so.. 💀)

For everything else, there are no rules. Trace, copy, make a 1:1, build upon pre-existing works, draw someone's OCs, share your own OCs, inspire yourself of different works and mediums, do as you wish, share what you want, art is not something to be gatekept, it's the most human thing there is. Music, drawing, painting, writing, feeling inspired, Creating. it all comes to us naturally as humans. We all love beauty and creating it. Let's not stop eachother from experiencing the beauty of creation. ♡

Also, never try to ruin someone else's work or tear them down, but that mostly applies to everything in life, not art specifically..

Lets build a beautiful community together and nurture eachother's talents with love and appreciation ♡

Feel free to reblog & add any tags to this! I tried to tag as many art forms / communities as I could think right now ♡

[revelboo]

Ignore me-Not Transformers, I just like the angry boi and a friend reminded me of the Transformers/Overwatch crossover and that he was paired with Megs for it. Love his design and the Omnics in general, but so, so incredibly awful at this game. Also, title’s not a Motion City Soundtrack song

Anti-Gravity

Ramattra x Reader

• Heart racing, you run headlong down the street. Hearing the explosions and trying to guess how many streets over they are. You don’t even know where you’re going, just following the people in front of you. When they reach the intersection and start screaming and scattering, you’re shoved down by the panicked people ahead of you. Falling at the feet of an Omnic taller than any you’ve ever seen, seeing its head tip, ribbons on its head sliding against its shoulders. Unable to move as Nullifiers storm the street in a violent tide around him. And his arm lifts, a staff in his hands as you hear the scream of jets overhead.

• They scatter like insects before him and his followers, screaming in fear. Knows they think he’s a monster for what he’s doing, even though they’re the ones that drove him to this. He never wanted any of this, trying again and again for peace only to see his people cut down. Because to them, the Omnics are expendable. Things that can be used and thrown away, not living beings. But not anymore. Never again ignored, because he will be seen and heard.

• That head turns and you catch the faint glow of optics under that mask as the biggest Omnic sees you on the ground, time seeming to slow as his head turns away dismissing you, those ribbon like strands on his head stirring in the breeze as the jets turn. They wouldn’t dare attack, they have to know there’s civilians down here with those monsters. You want to believe that so bad, but when the first missile is launched, you’re frozen but not surprised. Not really. Null Sector makes the news all the time, its leader thwarting attacks repeatedly. Always slipping away before he can be brought down.

• Growling, his arm lifts and a barrier shield flickers to life as the first missile hits. They’re really desperate enough to not care about collateral damage like the human sprawled at his feet or the ones still running just to try and end him. His Nullifiers turning and returning fire as another missile hits a building overlooking the street. Seeing the damage, seeing the building lean over them all. Any cost to stop him, then. Because now they see him. Fear him. Swapping to nemesis form, he bends, dragging the human out of his way and slamming his fists down. Again. Street buckling under the force, aware of the building coming down as he falls and the human screaming as they go with him. Rending pain. And the building crashes down, entombing him in darkness. But they’d seen him.

• Something wet drips in your face, and everything hurts as you come to by degrees. Wherever you are is cold, dark, and wet. Shafts of light spearing down from above, dust dancing in the golden glow. Pain slices through you when you try to move, trying to remember details. The building came down on you, so how had you survived? You remember the tall Omnic getting bigger, looking at you and raising his fists. Falling. You’re below the street? Gingerly sitting up, you try to figure out how badly you’re hurt. And there, a flicker in the dark. That Omnic, the one you’d seen on the news. Ramattra, Null Sector’s leader. He’s right there, unmoving. One of his legs pinned under debris, an arm torn completely off. Much worse off than you are, though shifting sends a jagged lance of pain through your ankle. There’s a broken rebar near you and you reach for it without thinking, the metal bitingly cold against your palm. As cold as the realization that you could end this. Drive this twisted spike of metal through his head and the fear disappears. Optics flickering behind the broken mask, its head turns to stare at you. And snared by those awful optics, you drag yourself to your feet.

Next

[annawayne]

Hi, Anna! I was wondering for some small opinion and possibly suggestions to do with AruAni, mainly their names! In my opinion, I like to imagine Annie's name is actually "Annabelle", though she's never said it to anyone, ever, having the name everyone is more used to be the one that everyone calls her. Though, it would be fun if she slipped up and then have Armin, the adorable nuisance he is, start calling her Anaya, Arianna, etc - as he tries figuring out her full name. Bit silly, but fun stuff! And I was wondering, if you ever had thought of that, or the possibility of them having middle names, since I don't believe many have spoken about that and you're very creative when it comes to that! Have a lovely day, Toodle-oo!

Hello-hello!~

Oh, thank you a lot for asking this! I'm a huge fan of the whole name topic in general, and I think it's a significant topic for such characters as Armin and Annie. I can tell that I'll touch on this topic a bit in the next MYLYSW chapter with my attempts to explore Annie's past in Liberio, so you just HIT ✨the spot✨

I adore the exploration of all of it, so let's begin!

First of all, I want to say that despite everything, I really love the way both Annie Leonhardt and Armin Arlert sound: Annie's full name sounds, first, like a sigh, with the double ringing 'n,' only to flow into quite firm combinations of sounds, with the same respite right in the middle; Armin's name gives me a very metallic sound with a harsh and resonating tune.

I really love how their names sing, and we can explore many of their meanings. However, I want to focus more on the origins - not the meaning and roots of their names, but how they were given and what they meant for them.

We know that Armin's name is given by his grandfather. However, it's also quite an interesting moment for me since parents usually give the name to a child, and his parents disappeared much later when Armin wasn't a newborn. Probably, it's more like Grandpa Arlert was there from the very early time of Armin's childhood, and so he has this honor to give a name for his grandson (we skip here a theory that Armin was an unwanted child who was more of an "accident" rather a desired and planned child, who "stole" from his parents their dreams to fly away - it's a big topic and theory, and I would love to focus on other aspects this time since otherwise it would lead into long essay).

So, Armin, despite losing all his family at a very young age, has a personal connection to his name - he knows that this name wasn't an "accident" or "casually thrown" into him like a label. This name has old Germanic, Latin, and Persian roots, "a Warrior," "a Fighter," and also "goal" and "universal," which all fall into Armin's life path - he fights for the right to appreciate the whole world, even if it's not the one he has read in his book. However, with time, I think he starts to hate this name as his self-hatred grows as well, associating this combination of letters with the downfall and problems (in his opinion) he has caused since often his name was screamed in anguish and fear, or despair. Still, Armin, despite anything, knows his real name, which he learns to embrace and live up to. He knows this name is given with the love and warmth of his grandpa.

But what about Annie? We know that she was found by Mr Leonhardt on the street near the rich-looking mansion and that she has a biological Marleayn mother and Eldian father. Then, she was adopted by Mr Leonhardt (it's also interesting that we don't have any name for him throughout the whole series, which also gives me several ideas, but it's also for another time). Probably, Mr Leonhardt gave her this name by the logic "it sounds simple and doesn't show any relation to her possible noble blood by mother's line", which gives me an actual idea, based on your ask: what if Annie's name, given by her biological parents, was indeed something like Annabelle, Annette or Annalise (or any other form), which sounds more like "noble," rather than Annie, which directly shows her relation to some high-class Marleyan society?

We have not to forget that Marley - is an empire. Any empire does everything to erase any relations to the authentic roots of the people it colonized, and changing names/surnames - is one of these very well-known practices, since when you took the name from a person, you also took the part of their identity and ethnical background to make the person "fit" within the empire as their own, and yet, this is only to play a role of "generosity," when in reality people from colonized territories always won't be equal - the citizens of any metropole look down at them.

I think this happened to Mr. Leonhardt, who in reality isn't Mr. Leonhardt at all but was given this very Germanic surname, which aligns pretty much well with Marleyan traditions. So, the same might probably happen to Annie - maybe when he found her, there was a small card or note with her full name, but when he read "Annabelle/ Annette/Annalise" (or anything similar), he decided that with this name she wouldn't survive in the internment zone with such "noble" name, and simplified it to "Annie," both as an act of erasing any roots for her to start questioning her background and also of an act of owning - just like the empire did to him when he was shipped to internment zone. Just like Edward Said in one of his works, "There is nothing mysterious or natural about authority. It is formed, irradiated, disseminated; it is instrumental, it is persuasive; it has status; it establishes canons of taste and value; it is virtually indistinguishable from certain ideas it dignifies as true and from traditions, perceptions, and judgments it forms, transmits, reproduces."

There's really nothing mysterious. A plain act of cutting the roots, replacing it with himself - no wonder that Annie, on the day of her departure to Paradis, felt such a strong connection with the words her father said to her. It was not only a first showcase of care and love (which I highly doubt of its genuinity, and I don't think any of these words were towards Annie, but only to whitewash his ego), but also the attempt to keep her in his claws - like any empire does to its colonies by erasing everything and replacing with what is comfortable and needed for it to make it looks like the colony is incapable of living without it. I honestly have no questions why for Annie it was all her sole goal - to return to him. I swear, I will always defend Annie and try to highlight the whole complexity of her character.

So, I think, if it really happened at some point in history, then, after the Rumbling, when everything settles down a bit, Mr . Leonhardt confesses that Annie's full name is different (personally, if you would ask me, I really love Annette). For her, it's a huge shock because she realizes where it comes from.

I think it becomes a pretty sensitive topic for her - she would immediately dismiss it, however, she would understand with time passing that this name is hers and isn't hers at the same time since she has no association, no history with it, no attachments, and it also provokes some inner conflict she tries to ignore.

But Armin would notice, and eventually, she would tell him, however, it takes a long time, firstly, for Annie to embrace it as a part of her she has never known, but it's the only thing her parents left for her, aside her birth, and even longer - for Annie accepting it as an alternative - not a replacement - to her name.

I think Armin would be cautious with this, and the first time he calls Annie "Nettie", she would be a bit in shock - but more of the fact that this part of her is also loved and embraced by him. It would never replace Annie from his lips, the way she knows how he sighs it and how his tongue pushes this double "n" in her name only to string it with the mellow tune of "e," but she thinks that "Nettie" also deserves some love - the one Annette never had, denied almost immediately after her birth, but, maybe with him, Annette could learn it, too.

As for the middle names, I'm familiar with them, of course, but this concept is so rare in my country that this whole thing just doesn't appear too much in my head. But we instead have patronyms, and I also thought of all of it, and it just makes me quite sad since if Armin and Annie had patronyms tradition, it would remind them so much of their fathers... Who, well, let's be honest, both left quite a lot of angst in their lives, even if in different ways.

Oh, well... maybe you expected another answer and a more fluffy one, but sorry, I went into the angsty depths of some meta and headcanons :D

If anyone reached the end, thank you so much! I appreciate your time spent on it!

Thank you once again for asking, I enjoyed answering it a lot!

Have a wonderful *timezone* (⁠◍⁠•⁠ᴗ⁠•⁠◍⁠)