#sorry it's so grainy i could only find it on youtube

[sickfreaksirkay]

from A Wedding Knight (1966)

[moonshine-dan]

what would kissing your close friend, kuroo or bokuto, for the first time be like? i imagined that you've been with him since high school and you only realized your feelings for him in college gahhh please indulge this hopeless romantic >.<

I would love to! This is for all the hopeless romantics out there who love Bokuto.

@janellion ... I hear you like stuff like this?

Downtown

Is it really this fun when you're on my mind? Is it really this cool to be in your life?

Bokuto x Reader, fluff. 2.2 K

Warnings: Nothing major. Suicide mentioned as part of a drink title. A little suggestive at the end.

The automatic doors hiss open as you walk into the humid Osaka night, wincing. The AC inside the 7/11 had made it easy to forget how hot it was. The slurpee you just bought is sweet and takes the edge off, but beyond that, you couldn’t say what the flavor was exactly. You let Bokuto take both of your cups to the machine and make suicides out of every option - “So none of ’em feel left out!” - like you always did. 

He was following you out, eyes gleaming in the fluorescent lights of the signs above you.

"It's good to just hang out like this again. We haven't done this in forever!" He was waving animatedly in your general direction, the drink in his flailing hand getting dangerously close to spilling on your shirt.

"Woah! My bad! Nothing got on you, right?"

You nod. He responds with a thousand watt smile that pushes his eyes closed and makes you want to grab his stupid hair spikes and drag him into a kiss.

You’ve got it so bad for your best friend that it’s almost funny, if it wasn’t also completely pathetic. It's only recently that you realized you liked him as more than a friend- but now that you’re reminiscing with him, the signs were very, very obvious. To you, at least. 

The pair of you are moving from the eye-piercing light of the storefront and over to the far side of the parking lot. The plan? To loiter, just like you did in high school when volleyball practice got out. Usually, you'd have 3 or 4 of his teammates with you, eating garbage snack food and joking around on the curb until the manager would chase you away. 

You can see in your mind how you would gravitate towards Bokuto on those nights, sitting next to him in the parking lot, bumping your foot or your knee into his while you talked. How you laughed at his jokes and would ask for his jacket when it got cold. His presence was magnetic, and you got pulled in deep. It wasn’t until after you both had graduated and started down separate paths that you were able to really see what you had. What you missed so deeply. 

It's just the two of you tonight, Bokuto fresh out of practice and talking excitedly about his teammates' antics, just like he used to. The only things that are different now are the names of the players. He’s telling you a story about his germophobic friend, Sasuke? You think? Bokuto talks so fast sometimes he doesn’t really annunciate well - and you sigh at the familiarity of it all. Maybe this would turn out alright; maybe you had been avoiding meeting up with Bokuto for no reason? 

You had thought that seeing him in person again, not just on a grainy phone screen, would be disastrous. It was hard enough to try and keep your feelings inside over video calls and text messages, but having him in front of you? You knew you’d do something to tip him off on how you felt toward him, and even though you knew he would never stop being your friend, the fear of your love being unrequited held you back. 

He'd been asking for weeks to meet up, and you had been successfully blaming college on your schedules not working - until he offered you to meet him late night on Friday, just like you used to. With no excuse and an irrationally heavy heart, you agreed to meet up.

Perhaps it was just a crush? Maybe you sought him out between classes and waited for hours after school just so see him because you just…. Liked him. And you had halfway convinced yourself that's all it was, until he had smiled at you brightly and reminded you just how dull things were without him in your life. 

He’s sitting now on a parking block with his back against a bollard, slapping the spot next to him invitingly. Bokuto whoops when you drop down next to him, slush flying from his cup as he whips it excitedly. "You gotta see this!"

He scoots closer to you, phone in hand. There's a paused youtube video onscreen: a highlight reel someone had made of his spikes. He hits play as soon as you lean in a little, grinning wildly and giving a play by play commentary as you watch. The outside of his thigh presses into yours warmly.

Here's hoping he can’t somehow feel the heat creeping up your neck.

He beams at you from over the phone, looking at you expectantly as the video ends. “Wasn’t I great?” 

You feel like you’ve run a mile and all he did was press his leg to yours. He’s too great. “Yes, Bokuto, you were amazing.”

He’s really grinning now, eyes crinkling shut. “You’ve gotta come to one of my games and see me in action! I promise, it’s waaaay better in person! You could even,” he pauses for a moment, thinking, “bring one of the guys you’ve been seeing? Watching me win would be an awesome date.”

Oh god, your dates. You had tried going on a few recently, another attempt to distance yourself from your best friend. Nothing serious - just coffee shop conversations, but they easily lost a competition they weren't even aware they were in. None of them could even begin to make you feel the way Bokuto did. And the thought of taking one of them to see your best friend and unrequited crush in his element? There’s no way that wouldn't find a way to blow up in your face.

“That’s a great idea, man,” you lie. “I’m not seeing anyone right now though.” Bokuto’s giving you a spectacular double eyebrow raise above his cup. “Oh ho?”

You flick his arm gently. “Don’t be mean, Bo. I’ll just come to a game and hang out in the stands with your date instead.”

Why did you say that. Why did you say that. Why did you say that. 

The eyebrows come down. He’s smiling, but it’s not quite reaching his eyes, which aren’t meeting your own. “Nah, you can’t do that. We broke up.”

You feel terrible for the little thrill that sends through you.

“Oh, Bokuto, I’m sorry.” You are. He’s your best friend. The cruel joy you feel does not go away. 

His eyes flicker to you momentarily. “Nah, it’s fine. They weren’t the one, you know?”

Who is? You want to ask. What comes out instead is, “How did you know?”

Bokuto hums inquisitively. “Know what?”

“That they weren’t the one. How did you know?”

He’s still not looking at you when he replies, “I just know.”

Silence falls. You use the quiet moment as an excuse to turn away as well. This is really unlike him. Had he changed that much in the time since you last saw him? Nothing else about Bokuto seems different - maybe the issue was just you?

Stop it. Don’t think things like that. 

The silence drags on. You pull the straw of your drink into your mouth and chew, trying to think of something not romance-related to talk about. Nothing is coming to mind - Bokuto has been all you can think about for a solid week, and being next to him is NOT helping. It’s just the two of you, alone together in silence. It’s late enough that there aren’t any pedestrians on walks to distract you, the night quiet and dark outside of the strangely illuminated parking lot. Desperate to think of anything else, you look up at the hazy summer sky.

It’s hard to see stars through the light pollution, but you can make out Vega, you think. Some stars were bright enough to see even in the middle of the city. The straw pops out of your mouth as you point it out loudly, getting Bokuto’s attention.

“Check it out Bo, you can see part of Lyra. That star’s got to be Vega. You remember?”

Bokuto jerks slightly before he turns to face you, looking startled. His gaze follows your finger up, mouth still pursed around the straw in his mouth. His smile returns as he tilts his head to peer up at the sky with you. “You told me about that one once! It’s a summer constellation, right?”

You drop your hand as Bokuto starts pointing out the faint other stars of the summer triangle. It may be hard to see stars in the city, but with Bokuto shining next to you, it’s hard to see anything else at all. The weird fluorescence of the parking lot light should have washed him out, but somehow he was aglow, soft shadows instead of harsh lines shading him lightly. He really was a star, and he burned the brightest out of any that you could see tonight.

You were staring at him again. 

It’s no surprise when he catches you this time, golden eyes meeting yours and matching your gaze. The delight is still present on his face but it’s sobering, turning serious. Your heart is racing as Bokuto continues to stare you down in silence. His eyebrows draw together as he raises his hand slowly, reaching for your face.

A finger grazes your cheek. You might have stopped breathing. He opens his mouth.

“You had some slush on your face.” His finger remains there, rubbing at the stuck on sugar.

...

Okay. Something has to change. There’s only so much your heart can take.

You reach up and cup your hand over his, holding it in place. Bokuto stills at the sudden contact, bewildered. You aren’t sure what you are doing, much less how to say what you want, but you hope that somehow he understands. No sound escapes your mouth as you maintain eye contact and slot your fingers together. Bokuto stares, still uncharacteristically silent - but he’s not just looking anymore. His eyes are searching, gaze sharp and analytical. You couldn’t look away from them if you wanted to.

Bokuto blinks first, eyes flitting over to your joined hands as you press your cheek into the heat of his palm. His thumb drags lightly over to your skin, meeting your bottom lip and tracing along the curve of it. He watches, entranced, as they part slightly from the touch. 

Even if this doesn’t work out. Even then. Just having this moment would be enough. Your eyes close as you huff out the breath you had been holding. The hot coil of anxiety snaking through your stomach makes you hesitant to open them again. When Bokuto’s thumb moves from your mouth to pad at your cheek, you steel yourself and open them again. 

You shouldn't have worried. There’s nothing in his golden eyes but understanding when you finally dare to open them again. Bokuto’s remaining hand is impossibly gentle as he places it on your shoulder, leaning into your space. His shoulders shake minutely with barely contained excitement from the breakthrough he’s just had - you like him, just as much as he likes you. There’s no way he can’t feel the heat in your skin rising now as your pulse skyrockets. 

“Kou…”, you whisper into the shrinking space between you.

Bokuto doesn’t bother with a response. His lips are a little chapped when they capture yours, but they're warm and eager and pressing in with the weight of half a decade of unconfessed feelings.

You know immediately what he meant earlier about knowing ‘the one’. No kiss from any of your dates was ever this electric. None of them made you feel like time was stopping when their lips met yours, or made your heart beat like it was about to fly from your chest. None of them made you feel like you were finally home, held in strong arms and with a familiar hand gently running along your cheek. 

There really was no one like Bokuto, and you were so glad there was no one else for him but you right now. 

You push forward until you chests are touching, desperate for closer contact now that you know you’re allowed to get it. The back of his head is cradled in your free hand, fingers tangling in the short spikes at the nape of his neck. Bokuto hums against your mouth, tongue slipping out to trace where his thumb had been earlier. He starts backward slightly as you meet it with the tip of yours, breaking away with a gasp.

“Woah! Not on the first date!”

“You used tongue first.” Your deadpan expression doesn't faze him. He wraps a heavy arm around your shoulders and pulls you close to his side, laughing. 

Wait a minute.

“Did you say date? Is this a date?”

Bokuto freezes. He glances at you side-eyed and inquires quietly, “Do you... want it to be one?”

It’s much easier to be truthful when you’ve had his tongue in your mouth. “I’d love it to be one.”

Bokuto whoops loudly, the exclamation echoing in the empty lot.

First dates usually sucked. This one, however, was going to stick with you for a long time. You run your tongue over your lips as you bump your head to his shoulder. Who knew slurpees tasted even better on someone else's mouth?

“Y'know, If we don’t leave soon,” you tease, “the manager might chase us away again.”

He hums dismissively and bends to press a kiss to your temple.

“Let’em.”

[let-me-love-you-loki]

Practicing Too Late

I turned toward the nearby table, setting my paintbrush and palette on the splattered drop cloth. My back ached from reaching and stretching to paint the palm leaves on the top of the trees. The nursery in Nick’s house was halfway finished, but I was almost finished with the beach scene in the one in Matt’s place. I sighed, kneading my fingers along my spine.

           We’d found out that we were having a girl a few weeks ago, and both Matt and Nick were happier than I’d ever seen them. They’d cried as they looked at the grainy grey and white image on the screen in the doctor’s office. There was one copy of the photos on the fridge in each house. Sometimes I would walk in and find them sitting together, one of the photos in front of them, whispering about the little girl that was coming into our lives.

           When they left on a new loop, they took the pictures with them. I could only imagine how often they pulled those out and stared at them on those nights in the hotel and the long road trips. The thought made me smile.

           I made my way out of the nursery and down the hallway. I could feel our baby girl shifting and stretching as I walked. She was becoming more active the further along we went. She was shaping up to be a healthy, active child.

           There was a faint, mumbled noise bleeding from Matt’s living room. They’d been home from the most recent loop for just over a day and, unsurprisingly, they’d slept for the first seventeen hours. Between the time difference and the long flight back from Japan, they were exhausted. I couldn’t blame them.

           When I turned the corner into the living room, I couldn’t help but grin lopsidedly. Nick sat on the sofa, his glasses on and a hair tie between his teeth. Matt sat on the floor between his knees with his phone in his hand. The garbled noise was coming from the phone, a video playing.

           I leaned against the wall, watching them quietly to see what they were up to.

Nick

           I could do a lot of things, but I wasn’t sure I’d ever master this. I couldn’t keep one bit separated from another. The video Matt had up on his phone made it look easy, but it really wasn’t.

           “Ow!” Matt grunted as I tried to start over. “You’re not trying to yank it out!”

           “I’m sorry!” I replied around the hair band in my teeth. “It’s not as easy as she’s making it out to be.”

           Matt growled and backed the video up. The voice over began again as a pair of hands started working with a stylist’s head. “Let’s begin simple,” she said. “Brush the hair out and pull it together at the nape of the neck. Then split it into three equal sections.”

           I brushed my brother’s hair back and pulled it together in my hand. With the other, I pulled the hair tie out of my teeth. “Is this as weird to you as it is to me?”

           “Dude, you have no idea.” He laughed and held the phone up so I could see it.

           I carefully separated his hair into three sections, holding one in each hand with the third hanging in the middle. “Okay, let me see what happens next.”

           The video started up again, and I did my best to follow along as she wrapped and twisted the sections around each other. I tried, but couldn’t get it. My fingers were too big or they were getting in the way or I was just stupid and couldn’t do it at all. Matt’s hair looked less like a braid and more like a knot had been tied in it.

           “I’m useless at this,” I grunted, throwing my hands up. “You’re going to have to do it. I’ll tie shoes, clean up poop and vomit, but I’m not going to be able to braid hair.”

Matt

           I switched off YouTube and opened up my camera app, trying to see what Nick had done. My scalp ached, and I was pretty sure there were strands of hair yanked from my head and spilling over the sofa cushions. When I turned my head, I couldn’t help but laugh. Nick wasn’t lying. He was useless at this.

           “Well, I don’t understand the video either. You’d think with hair like ours we would have learned how to this a long time ago.” I reached back and tried to undo the knots and tangles my brother had wound into my hair. A headache had taken root across my forehead from how tight he’d pulled and twisted. “Jesus, we should have just called Mom. Or DJ.”

           I turned to find Nick twisting and flexing his fingers. He stretched them out, interlocking them and pushing them until they popped angrily. He sighed and threw his head against the back of the sofa cushions.

           “Maybe we should just get Y/N to teach us how to do this.”

           “That’s not the point,” I grunted. “This is supposed to be a surprise for her. We’re going to be girl dads. Don’t you think this is something that we should be able to do before the baby’s born?”

           Nick planted his feet on the floor. “We could tell a little fib. That we want to know how to do it for shows.”

           I rolled my eyes. “And then she’ll point out that we have hair people for that. Besides, Nick, she’s smarter than the two of us put together—she’ll figure it out in half a second.”

           “Call Mom?”

***

           I watched them, my hands folded over my stomach as they tried to learn to braid. My heart skipped a beat, warmth rushing through me. I felt the soft push and stretch of our little girl’s foot against my fingers and smiled. She was livelier by the day, stretching and shifting inside me. I loved her so desperately even now. Even knowing that she was still so far away.

           Before I could stop myself, I turned the corner. Nick looked up, guilt rushing over his features for half a second. His blue eyes were lively and bright, crisp in a way that reminded me of the morning sky in winter. A smile chased its way over his face as he unfolded himself from the sofa and crossed the room toward me. His arms slid around me and lifted me from the ground.

           “You have paint on your cheek,” he said, bumping his nose against mine. He smiled even broader and ghosted his lips playfully over mine.

           I laughed and threw my arms around his neck. “Of course I do. I’m short and palm trees are tall.”

           Matt stood up from the floor, still trying to pull the knots and tangles from his hair. I tried to act like I didn’t see it. He loped across the room, his cheeks rounded in a smile. “It makes you look cute.”

           “Don’t I always?” I teased.

           They gathered me up in a sandwiched hug and drew me toward the sofa. I let them pull me down into the space between them. Nick sat sideways on one side while Matt stretched out, his head in my lap. I grinned and tilted my head against Nick’s chest as I slowly slipped my fingers through Matt’s thick, brown hair. He let out a faint hum of happiness as my nails skimmed across his scalp.

           “I love your hair,” I sighed. I snuggled into the crook of Nick’s neck. “Both of you. I could do this forever.”

           As gently as I could, I tugged his hair gently from the place it was trapped against my thigh. My fingers combed slowly. I hummed beneath my breath, smiling as I carefully separated out three sections. Matt’s eyes were closed, but I could sense Nick watching my every move.

           “One, two, three,’ I whispered softly. “Left over middle, right over middle. Left over middle, right over middle.”

           The barely there murmur of my voice and the soothing sweep of my hands against his hair put Matt to sleep quickly. He snored softly as I finger combed the braid free and started again, quietly repeating the instructions again. I did it once more, my head still tucked peacefully against Nick. He kissed the top of my head.

           “You heard us, didn’t you?” my other husband said after a while. His fingers slid beneath my chin, tilting my head up so that our eyes met. There was mischief in his blue eyes.

           I nipped my bottom lip and grinned sideways. “I might have heard a thing or two. And seen you tangle Matt’s hair into a rat’s nest.”

           Nick grinned, a soft chuckle in his throat. “We’ll never get anything past you, Mama.”

@mox-made-me-do-it​

@not-that-kinda-gurl08​

@lilred91​

@imagineall-the-fandoms​

@maelleoute​

@librathepheonix13​

@justamess44​

[wulfies-kpop-fanfics]

One Photo → Mark Lee [8]

↳  Pairing: Mark Lee/Reader

↳  AU: Soulmate!AU - The first touch of two soulmates permanently scars their bodies.

↳  Warning: angst if you squint, I guess

↳  Word count: 2,294

↳  Chapters: Prelude | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | You Are Here! | 9

⁙ Summary: For an end of the year photography project, you’re tasked with taking a photograph for your favourite group, NCT127, and coincidentally, discover your soulmate.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

WEDNESDAY - 8 TWO YEARS LATER

The heart of Toronto would never compare to the magnificence of Times Square in New York, but the mass amount of billboards by the Eaton Center always managed to send you into awe during your nightly trek home from work. 

You looked up toward the billboards with a sigh as you waited for your streetcar, barely managing to squeeze out a smile as you saw Mark’s visage splayed along one of the electronic spaces. The night sky was too polluted with the city’s light to display any real stars, but Mark’s face was more than enough for you. For the past week, you had seen NCT127’s faces sprawled across that billboard, part of promotions for their latest global comeback. It was a brief respite as you waited for your streetcar home every night, to finally know that the day was over and that you could relax.

It had been such a long time since you’ve seen Mark in person. Even though you texted him every day when the two of you were awake at the same time and video chatted whenever he had five minutes to himself, it always felt depressing to be without him. To not kiss or touch or hug at all was torture.

Everyone knew that it was deadly for soulmates to be apart for so long, that depression would set in and even worse physical illnesses were a real risk. It was hard to be so far away and over the past year you had been let go from multiple jobs because you were constantly sick, and therein lies the problem. You simply couldn’t afford the solution to your problem. So, depression and illness it was. It took everything you had to keep your head above water, to keep your dream alive and know that one day your heart wouldn’t ache as much as it does at the present moment.

After a 20 minute ride on the streetcar, you entered your building and took the stairs up to your little hole-in-the-wall apartment, the bare minimum that you could afford after Rhiannon paid her last half of the old place’s rent. A single bed, bath and a tiny kitchen that housed a little chair and round table. Thankfully, there was enough counter space that you could place a tiny TV to watch Netflix on while you ate. You were lucky that the house had a large living room, which doubled as your studio.

The coffee table was one of the only things left from your old apartment, along with the tote of Marvel films you kept hidden below it. Atop the table now rested all of your cameras, a drawing tablet and cards that you got in the mail from Mark from time-to-time, instead of notes, binders and textbooks. Sitting against the wall across from the table was a small bookshelf and an easel with a large frame sitting on it, housing the last portrait you finished the night before, ready to be shipped to the buyer.

After… somewhat enjoying a quick pot of white cheddar mac & cheese and watching a rerun of Supernatural on your little TV, you head into your room and sit at the desk next to your bed. After starting your computer, you opened up discord and sat back in your wheely chair, waiting for Rhiannon’s status to change to green. Wednesday was the day that she had to be up early for her job, so that meant time for a 10-minute call before you went to bed and she went to work. 

Next to your computer was a copy of the photo you took two years ago, of your soulmate and all his friends beneath the shedding cherry trees in High Park. You smiled at it, the memory was fond but now faint in your mind. You reached forward to pick it up, but you stopped yourself. You knew that if you inspected the photo more, you’d only miss Mark and all your friends more. 

There were times where your apartment became so quiet that it reminded you how alone you really were. You had lived with Rhiannon most of your life, and that meant there was at least some noise going on at all times. Whether she had her headset unplugged when she was listening to music or watching youtube videos, she was clattering about when helping you wash and dry the dishes, or if she was walking around and tripped on nothing. She was always talking, laughing, or doing something that always let you know that she was there. Now, you had nothing.  

The silence is broken and you’re startled by the calling sound from discord, Rhiannon’s icon popping up on the top of your screen. You place your hand on your mouse and click the join call button, adjusting the webcam perched on the top of your desktop monitor. 

"Hey," Rhiannon was the first to speak, yawning and reaching back to pull her hair into a perfect, tight ponytail. 

"Hey," you respond, watching her closely and leaning your chin on your right palm. "How are you holding up?"

"I should be asking you that, Jesus, you look like the Hulk if he got the swine flu," she retorts, and even through the grainy quality you can tell she has sympathy written all over her face. "I'm doing great, we've got two cleanings today and a wisdom teeth removal, so that'll be fun." 

You scoff and attempt to smile, "I'm fiiiiine, other than the fact that I'm here and you're there, 13 hours in the future and at least one ocean in between us and an entire continent and a half. I'd say that constitutes abandonment."

"I got the getting while it was good and you know that," she stuck her tongue out at you. "You need to keep saving so that you can fly your ass out here." She squinted at the screen. "You really need to drink like… an entire bottle of nyquil, dude."

"If only it were that easy," you groan. "I don't even have a photographer's position yet. All I get is sitting at a desk and responding to emails… even with my head start, I can't find a good job and I barely make enough to keep living in Toronto." You stick out your tongue back at her for the nyquil comment. "As if I haven't been hiding a bottle of dayquil in my desk for the past week."

Rhiannon stopped what she was doing and leaned toward her camera. "You know why you can't get the jobs you want," her voice is soft, empathetic. "Mark is having trouble, too. He's been doing a lot of half days, so I don't know how they plan to do their tour with him being constantly sick." 

You looked away. "I can't afford to take any more time off… I don't want to lose this job. If I do, I'm not sure that I'll be able to make my rent."

"You're going to need to take time eventually,” Rhiannon stated firmly. "If you don't get at least some of your strength back you're going to end up in the hospital like I did. Remember?" 

You glanced back at your screen, watching Donghyuck wander around in the backdrop. You were beyond jealous that they got to live together. 

"Maybe. I just miss you. More than I miss having a clear passageway in my nose." 

Rhiannon smiled sadly at you. "I miss you too, everyone does. You'll be here soon, I promise. I gotta go, sleep well and drink plenty of water, okay?"

"Okay." 

Rhiannon waved at you before her screen went dark, ending the call. The call was shorter than usual, so you presumed that she had woken up late. You zoned out a little, acutely aware that the apartment had gone silent again. You didn't want to cry, to give up after surviving for so long. You had made it this far without letting everything get to you.

You knew that your deteriorating health was because of your separation from Mark and companies saw that as a liability, even though laws had come into place last year to protect separated soulmates from workplace discrimination. You felt a tiny ping of hope when Rhiannon said you would be able to move soon, but you knew she was lying to make you feel better. 

Feeling lethargic, you stand and make your way to the dresser in the corner of your room, stripping and throwing your clothes about the room. You open up a drawer and pull out a pair of sweatpants and the softest t-shirt you could find and slipped them on, wandering to your bed and slowly climbing in. You slipped off your glasses, placing them on your desk and reached forward to turn off your lamp.

You hugged your polar bear and tried to get comfortable, hoping to fall asleep quickly. You supposed you could call into work when you woke up; at least your manager was nice enough to understand when you needed a day off. You rolled over, tossed and turned, but sleep wouldn't come. Not while your phone was constantly buzzing. 

"What the hell," you mumble to yourself, untangling yourself from the knot of blankets you had tied yourself in to reach for your phone. Your lock screen lit up with a photo of Mark, one you had taken two years ago of him standing in Union Station. 

[Rhiannon (5)] 

She sure knew how to type quickly. 

Rhiannon: I'm on my way to work, I'll let you know when I'm there

Rhiannon: sorry our call was so short, I was running a little late

Rhiannon: I talked to Mark last night, did he say anything? 

Rhiannon: are you asleep already? It's been like 5 minutes 

Rhiannon: ok you're basically just ignoring me at this point

You: calm down bro I was getting in my pyjamas 

Rhiannon: I forgot how slow you get when you're sick, I could die of boredom waiting for you to respond 

You: hardy har 

Rhiannon: so have you talked to mark today? 

You: around lunchtime he woke up from a nightmare but I assume hes busy right now 

Rhiannon: Things have been pretty bad around now, I think you might have guessed that

You: Yeah, things aren’t really that great here either, but I’m more worried about Mark… have they given him time off? 

Rhiannon: Not much besides half days. He’s really been missing you. Maybe you should message him and see if he’s not busy

You: Yeah, maybe. I feel really guilty

Rhiannon: I know. I still could help you buy your plane ticket, you know. You: You know I can’t do that, I can’t take more from you than I have already. I owe you too much.

No response. 

You: Rhiannon I’m sorry 

You: Come on, you can’t have scrubbed in that fast!

You sighed, staring at your screen and still seeing no response from your best friend. You took a deep breath in and immediately regretted it when you began coughing up a lung, but at least you weren't upchucking your dinner. Instead, you decided to send a text to Mark.

You: mark, you there? 

You close your mind for a moment, thinking that maybe going to bed even later than usual would just make you more sick in the end, but you really needed to know what was going on. 

Mark: yeah I'm here babe, what's wrong, can't sleep? 

You: no not really… do you have time to talk for a bit? 

Mark: yeah, my legs gave out during our first practice so I'm taking a break

You: I'm sorry

Mark: it's not your fault (Y/N) 

You: it kind of is, we're both dying because I can't afford to move 

Mark: (Y/N), we're not dying, and it's okay, you'll be able to move soon

You: face it you know that we are… I haven't felt this horrible in a long time and I've thrown up three times today 

Mark didn't respond right away. 

Mark: why are you putting yourself down so much 

You: I just… have a lot of regrets right now 

Mark: what do you mean

You licked your lips and rolled over in bed, wondering if you should tell him.

Mark: are you okay? 

You: no, I feel like this would make you hate me 

Mark: I could never hate you and you know that. Tell me what's been bothering you.

You: For the past while… Rhiannon’s been offering me money. It’s honestly not much because everyone’s struggling nowadays, but it would be enough for me to fly to Korea, and I’ve felt so guilty about it that I kept saying no and she stopped offering

Mark: You mean that you could have been here faster? You: and now I feel that saying no was a really bad idea… and I.. I can’t afford anything, barely even food and now I hear that you’re even more sick than I am and I feel terrible

You: I don’t know what to do

Mark: It’s okay, (Y/N), really. I know how hard it is to take money from someone else, I’m not mad at you

You: Really?

Mark: I’m just disappointed that I have to keep waiting. You’ll be able to move soon, I promise, I promise, I promise

You: Are you going to be okay

Mark: As long as you are. Take care of yourself, okay? I’ll be there for you the second you land. Okay?

You: Okay. I… I should probably get some sleep now. Mark: Rest well, I love you

You: I love you too 

You sighed, placing your phone on your desk and turning over in your bed. It was time.

[neojeno]

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

giffing tutorial/resources

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[haiyuta]

truth or dare | Bang Chan & Felix

Summary: finding out your best friends are cam boy. Admitting it to them they ask you to join for a game of sexual truth or dare 

word count: 5.7k || Genre: poly! camboy chan, camboy Felix, blowjob, fingering, teasing, smut, love, kissing, 

a/n: Inspired by this anon ask here. This was a joy to write so I really hope you enjoy. IM SO WHIPPED FOR CHAN AND FELIX. (I should have edited it more but I’m soooo burnt out sorry)

Going to university was hard the studying, struggling for money, and the lack of sleep.  At least you had a bright side to this money pit hell. Bang Chan and Lee Felix your two friends. 

Pressing your face against your palm you let out a sigh looking at the long list of math equations you just couldn't get. "Y/n I know it's hard, but I believe in you," you heard Chan say sitting next to you. 

Currently, you and Chan were sitting outside in a shaded area for studying. Well, you were studying while Chan was making paper planes next to you. Glancing at him in jealousy you wish you could slack at a time like this. With a sigh, you whined out "I just can't get this."

"You can do this," Chan insisted moving your study material over to look at it "only oh," he paused "50 more problems to review," he trailed off gazing at the material. 

"You guys are looking down," a deep voice said sitting opposite of you. Rolling your eyes to see Felix across from you.

"Just math studying she's not getting," Chan said going back to his general paper airplane. 

Felix gave a small hum in understanding as he watched the two of you carefully. "Chan, we are hanging out tonight right," Felix asked pursing up his lips. 

"Oh yeah boys’ night," Chan grinned lifting his hand for Felix to high five him. 

"Can I come over," you asked eager hearing that. Boys night was normally 2 times a week on a Friday. The night where Chan and Felix would hang out without you more like it. Even after knowing them for a year they always refuted you going to this 'boys’ night'. 

"Well," Felix trailed off gazing at you. You smirked always asking Felix since he never could deny you. You could see his brown eyes flicker to you and the blond wanting to say something. 

"Sorry Y/n it's a guy thing," Chan quickly made up for Felix awkward disposition. 

"You always say that," you huffed looking at Chan. "I'm one of your closest friends I mean I'm not like you and Felix, but I think I matter," you gave a fake pout. 

Chan gave a gentle smile "aw look she's pouting how adorable," he hummed. You felt your stomach twist with the word 'adorable'. "You do matter but no dice sorry," he shrugged grabbing his bookbag. 

"See ya Y/n," Chan said wrapping his arm around your neck for a side hug. "Guys night starts soon," he gave a wink. "Maybe one day you can join," he added.

"Yeah someday," Felix trailed off looking between you two. Felix gave you a small wave with a sheep smile "sorry Y/n guys night," he grinned giving you a small fist bump as they walked away together. 

Without words, they were gone. Damn those boys you thought to yourself. 

It's been hours since you've seen both of them and it was relatively frustrating. You would like to go to Chan's place for a night in. Being a college student, you were stuck in the dorm while Chan was privileged enough to have his own apartment a little way from the campus to go to. 

Placing your bowl of old Chinese next to your side laptop you stretched your neck. Your roommate was always at her boyfriend’s, so it was just you at this point. 

Opening your laptop, you just wanted to relax a little before you go to sleep. Looking at your phone your last text from Felix was a random meme he sent you. Smiling you quickly sent a reply to him. 

The internet was dull, social media was boring and the loneliness of the night was getting to you. You were frustrated about school and your friends. Why couldn't you just come over? you thought trying figure out why didn't they want you to come. 

Was it you? Did they want time away from you? Were they doing something illegal? you thought to yourself.

Without thinking you decided to play some games to get your mind off of them. They would be upfront with you if it was something about you. 

Typing in an online game you sighed ready to melt away on a video game for the night. Playing the game, it got your mind off of Chan and Felix for a while. The mindlessness making you relaxed. 

Pushing your headset away you saw the video game gave you a cam site pop up on the game. "what the," you hummed looking at the site. 

It was bright and flashy site and it was called "Cams4you" quirking an eyebrow you looked at the site it was tasteful you must say. The layout kind of like YouTube but with streaming content. It wasn't all sexual some was asmr, talking, mukbangs. 

The site was interesting your finger on your mouse looking at some of the safer cams. The asmr range was nice. Next to the live stream was a large red how many people were watching and then had a money jar where you could donate to the creator. 

A large "want to see all the content sign up now," it read. Rolling your eyes, you wanted to click off but for some reason, you didn't. With a throwaway email account, you signed up for an account thankfully no credit card number required. 

To your surprise, there was more content on the page. It was organized nicely with genres like cosplay, female, male all that gaze. A small smile slipped on your mouth as you clicked onto the male. 

Browsing through the male streams you stopped to see an empty room in one. Wait that room looked familiar you thought to yourself. Clicking the link your finger slipped off the mousepad to see Felix in the background of the Cam. 

Your Felix on a cam site. Staring at the screen clicked it watching in awe as he plopped himself down on the computer chair. He looked different the camcorder giving him a clear yet grainy vibe. His colored hair swept nicely across his forehead. 

Your mind raced at reality. Lee Felix your friend was on a cam site. Then your mind processed he was at Chan's house. So that means Chan is in on this too. 

Turning up the volume you heard Felix start to talk it looked like he was reading comments at this point. "Am I good," his deep voice was so different it was husky and smooth. He gave the camera a grin "I'm fine I'll probably go to sleep soon," he said nodding cutely.

Looking over at the door he gave a low whine "where is Chan at," he said. Looking down at this phone.

"I'm sorry guys no sexual stuff for me tonight I'm kind of out of it," he said looking at the camera. Your eyes went to the comments as they gave him hearts of 'it’s okay we still love you' kind of comments.

Chan came in a second later his shirt already off and it made you go completely still at seeing your friend’s bare chest. His broad shoulders gave him a large look as he sat down in the chair next to Felix. 

"Did our baby girls miss me," Chan said leaning forward to look at the chan. You even noticed he had blue eye contacts in making him look positively handsome. 

"Mmh a little but they still love me more," Felix flirted with the views giving them a small wink. 

From there they just talked really until Felix excused himself to go to sleep in the living room. "Don't leave Felix you can sleep in my bed," Chan playfully yelled at his friend. 

"No thanks I need sleep and not hearing you jerking off," Felix yelled back as he left. 

It was weird seeing your friends so flirty to each other and the camera. They were naturals you thought. With another right click, you went to their channel checking it out. It was called Aussie Boys with a selfie of Felix and Chan as the icon. Most of the videos were available they did have pay to watch ones but mostly those were special event ones that were locked. Your eyes widen looking at the number of average views they get. It was a baseline 1,000 plus. 

On your headset, you could hear Chan whimper for a second. The sound made your spine tingle. Looking at the video again you bit your lip watching Chan as he slowly peeled off his baggy pants. 

Without question, you closed the laptop. This was too much you just learned they own a cam channel and watching Chan get off. Somewhere in your morals you just couldn't watch Chan get off. 

An inner debate went off inside your mind and your stomach twist, you couldn't keep away from watching. 

Opening your laptop, you refreshed the screen to see Chan lightly teasing his head. It was bright red and looked so aching. Your fingers tingled wanting to touch it. 

"Ah fuck," his thick accent cussed out. Donations came flooding in as he jerked himself off. Leaning in the chair he looked eternal his blond hair so light his hand jerking himself off. You bite your lip wanting him. 

You were fucked you thought to yourself. 

After finding out Felix and Chan did a cam show you tried not to act differently toward them, but you saw them all. You've seen them bare, jerking off, kissing, laughing, moaning and it couldn't leave your mind. 

You watched all the backlog of them on stream. They were funny and handsome had lots of donations and incredibly popular. Some streams were a teasing stream, some were mukbangs some just playing video games. People watched it because it was Bang Chan the handsome blond older Australian and his friend Felix the shy cute younger Australian. 

You also noted about them they kept bringing up a third person in their stream. It struck you as weird. Slightly jealously filled you realizing they claimed she was a streamer and they knew her and wanted her to join them for a game. 

In reality, you can't be jealous because they don't know you are aware of their activities. It was coming to a point you felt like you needed to tell them. 

Sitting at a quiet coffee shop you sighed looking at the coffee you didn't know how to say it to them. They called you here because they wanted to have a talk.

"Hey y/n," you heard Chan say slipping into the chair on your side. He still looked amazing his blond hair swept nicely his smile bright as could be. 

Felix gave you a small hey as he sat across from you. His disposition was still awkward you could tell. You gave them a warm smile back "hey guys," replied. 

"I love this place," Felix hummed enjoying the privacy of the cafe. 

You chatted lightly with them enjoying the moment with them. Forgetting about the whole cam thing until Chan had to bring it up.

"So, Y/n we brought you here today," Chan paused his brown eyes flickered from you to his hands. His thick hands twiddling their thumb. 

"Chan, I don't think," Felix started. The dynamic was there Chan was the "leader" of this whole thing while Felix was more tentative. 

"Your cam boys aren't you," you finally told them. Felix's eyes widen at your words his face slightly burned red at your words. “That’s what you wanted to tell me,” you said.

Chan smirked "And how did you find out about that," he raised an eyebrow at you. "Was our Y/n pleasuring herself to our stream," he teased.

You felt your face go red "you wish I had the cam program pop up and I clicked on it, you guys leave me every other Friday night I was bored," you declared. "I found your page and watched your streams," you said. 

The tension slowly grew at your comment. You see there everything watched them do everything together. Felix choked on his drink lightly "so you saw," he blushed shyly looking at Chan. 

"I did," you affirmed you saw it all of Felix his chest, his body his moans.

Chan leaned back on the chair "okay well that makes this easier now right Felix," Chan smirked looking at you and him. 

"Sure," he hummed his deep voice doing things to you. 

"Y/n please join us for a stream," Chan asked. Your eyes widen at the words you felt a little outer body at his words. 

"Me," you asked looking between them. "So, in your new streams you were asking about me joining," you said shocked. 

"So, you've been watching," Chan teased at your words.

In your mind, they were basically asking you to have sex on stream with them. "Do you want this Chan," you asked him. He gave a nod his eyes glazed with excitement. "And you Felix," you asked the other male. 

Biting his lip, he gave a small "yeah," back at you. 

This was odd in a good way you thought looking down at the clothing you were wearing. Chan told you to wear whatever you want. But he recommended something airy and cute for the stream. So, you decided to wear a black skirt for easy to remove and a tucked in shirt. 

You marveled at the set up they had. The lights were bright giving them a good look to it, the camera was at least a 100 plus dollar one with a two-monitor set up. The camera was dead center in the room as it was angled to show you guys in the large gaming chairs and the bed nicely. 

Chan was setting up the stream next to you while Felix was sitting next to you in his chair. You were sandwiched between the two of your friends.  Felix small hand played with your hand trying to comfort you. 

The camera went with a red light signaling it was on. The monitor that mirrors what people were seeing showed it was showing you and Felix and Chan at the computer. "Hey guys," he hummed looking at the chat. People started to join at a rapid amount which made you assume they had alerts of the stream.  

"Hello everyone," Felix deep voice hummed waving at the camera. 

"Who’s the new person," Chan read the comment slowly a small smile lifted on his lips "she is our friend we were talking about," he hummed "and she's a little shy about being on camera so give her lots of encouragement," Chan spoke. 

The chat did just that with lots of "hellos" and calling you "pretty". "Hey," you said waving at the chat a little stiff in front of the camera. Your heart was thudding against your ribcage eagerly with anticipation. You would be lying if you never thought about Felix or Chan in a sexual manner. They both were incredibly handsome, friendly and anyone you would love to be with them. 

You all talked it out before even daring this. Chan explained and reassured you he wouldn't force you to do anything you didn't want to. Making sure you were comfortable with this new three-way relationship to move into a more sexual manner. 

Felix grabbed your hand a little firmer. Gazing up at the younger male his eyes held so much eagerness in this. Before you knew it, you felt Felix capture your lips. It was a surprise, but you mellowed into the kiss.

"Felix is a little eager one," Chan hummed shifting in his seat. "I know our guest is pretty but wait for the game," Chan teased. 

Breaking the kiss, you looked at Felix in shock at the kiss. It was soft and eager and everything you imagined it could be. 

"Okay so today we are going to play Sexy Truth or Dare," he hummed at the camera. The comments spammed as he told them today's stream. 

"Here are the cards," Chan said bringing up the cards they were black with a sexy kiss mark on them. "Are you guys ready," Chan smirked. 

"Of course," you said feeling your stomach fill with excitement to finally get this started. 

"And these cards are mostly truth a slight dare nothing too major yet we're saving that for later," Chan gave the camera a wink. It was shocking how good he was to the camera. His winks and looks made people pour money at him for just being him. 

Your eyes widen in the list you saw a recent tip was 100 dollars from a random user they commented: "I can't wait for this". A shiver went down your spine realizing that people were actually watching you guys. 

Felix glanced at you his cheeks a little red his freckles showing under the lights. While his hair held a shine to it. Your mind whirled being in-between those your good-looking friends. One who already kissed you. 

Chan raised the card to Felix letting the other male take one. 

Felix's eyes flickered looking between the two of you. Clearing his throat, he spoke the question "Would you rather spank someone or be spanked?" He read out. Looking at you guys and at the camera, he gave the views a smile. "Personally, I would rather be spanked," Felix said embarrassment laced his voice. 

Chan gave a small giggle "Let me guess you couldn't go through with it," he poked fun at Felix.  

"Felix wouldn't hurt a fly Chan," you hummed back grabbing Felix soft hand into yours. "He's our soft boy," you praised him. 

Felix let out a little chuckle "I can show you how hard I can be," he raised an eyebrow at you. The subtle flirting making your body feel all fluttery inside. 

Chan spoke up "Y/n take your card," lifting you the deck. Chan had this aura that made you feel so comfortable. 

Taking the card, you realized it was a dare card. The dare was already pretty lewd you thought. "Blindfold yourself and try and guess who’s kissing you," you quirked an eyebrow. How situational is that? 

"Did you," you started wanting to call him out for setting you with such a direct card so early. 

"And look what we have here," Chan said looking at the camera picking up the blindfold for you. "Let's see if our good friend can tell us apart," Chan teased. 

"Can I," he asked holding the black silk blindfold. Breathing in you gave a small nod in consent as he went over to tie it around your eyes. 

"And just so she won't know me, and Chan will be on the same side so she can't tell," Felix added. You heard them both get up walking around to one side. You guessed on purpose to mix you up. 

You felt a hand reach for your chin the person guiding your lips to theirs. Your mind raced as you met the person's lips. The excitement of not knowing you who were kissing made your mind whirl. Placing your lips to the person you imagined Chan or Felix kissing you making your body buzz with want. The first press of the lips was gentle testing the water kiss. Slowly as that came it was a harder kiss on your lips.

You felt a small peak of their tongue egging you to open your mouth. With ease, you did let them slip into your mouth. The kiss was hot and warm making you want more. But before you could really get into the kiss they pulled away. 

Who was it? You felt like it was Chan. Felix wouldn't be so bold so early you thought. He did kiss you a second ago so maybe he was so bold. 

Before you knew it, you felt a hand lifted to your chin so your lips met there's. You were stirring for more contact wanting more affection. The kiss was soft and tentative with a force you never felt before like the underline emotion was just pure want and need. Either Bang Chan or Felix didn't try for much tongue all they did was lightly lick your bottom lip in want. You felt yourself sticking your mouth out ready to open kiss him. He pulled away before you could really get into it. 

The person sighed and got up as they placed themselves back into their chairs. "Y/n you can take off the blindfold," you heard Chan say. You felt on the other side must have been Felix helped you. 

The light made you blink a little hard. "So, y/n who kissed you," Chan grinned. 

A firm line formed on your lips as you decided. "I think the first one is," you paused he was more assertive so it must be Chan. "it was you Chan," you declared. 

Chan gave a shocked expression for a second "wow that's talent," he praised.

Shifting a laugh, you nodded "Felix is a little more tentative overall," you added looking at the other handsome male. 

Chan gave a flirty smile "kissing Y/n was nice right Felix," Chan asked the other boy. "I mean you did get to kiss her before me and all," he hummed. 

Felix gave a small nod in understanding "her lips felt amazing," Felix said his eyes slightly looking up to remember the kiss. Being praised stirring up a good feeling in your body. 

"Chan pick your card," you said reaching for the deck. Felix was busy thanking all the donors on the screen reading out the comments. One stuck in your mind "that Y/n looked perfect between the boys". The praise was almost endless, but did you look amazing between these two amazingly handsome males. Did you fit into this dynamic? 

"Got a dare card," he smoothly said looking at the words. Reading it slowly he spoke "Whisper in the persons next to your ear something you've always wanted to see me do in bed," he said with a smooth accent. 

"Sorry views this is for our Y/n ears only," Chan gave the camera a wink as he leaned down to your ear. His warm breath hitting your ear. "Y/n I want to see you whimper my name begging for my cock wanting it so bad yet not getting it," his smooth Aussie accent told you. 

Immediately you shifted in your seat with want. "Bang Chan," you lightly gasped out covering your mouth. 

Giving you a wink, he went back to the views. "Before the next round, I'll read out some comments," 

"Felix you look adorable today," Chan read the comment out. "He looks adorable all the time, to be honest, we're just lucky we get to see it."

Reading the comments, you got an understanding of the cam feel. It felt like a YouTube vide kind of. The comments were nice, donations were flooding in. You totally forgot at least 500 people were watching you kiss your best friends. 

"Felix take a card," you hummed reaching for the deck and passing it to him. Giving you a firm smile he took a card. 

Giving everyone an embarrassing smile "I watched hentai and I have no shame," he declared putting the card down. Your eyes widen at the confession admiring how confident he was in his answer. 

Trading the cards to you, you picked one up and read it aloud. "Touch yourself for 60 seconds," you read out. 

You stiffen your back at the comment. "Um is it okay if I sit on the bed," you asked. 

"Anything that makes you comfortable," Felix said. Putting the card down you sat at the edge of the bed. The comments went wild with the realization sexual stuff will happen. 

You looked at both of them in awkwardness as you lifted the skirt revealing your lace panties to them and the screen. Looking at yourself through the monitor you looked lewd. At that moment the whole room shifted with sexual tension. 

You calmed yourself as you slowly brought your hand go down to pleasure yourself. You teased your slit drawing the wetness near. The exoticness of your two friends watching made you more aroused. 

Touching yourself you were delicate and needy the tension slowly grew as you played with your clothed slit. Peeking out to see Chan with a pleased grin and Felix with a needy wanting look. 

"Forget about these fucking cards," you heard Chan say in an aggressive manner as he put them down to go to the bed. 

"Felix can you help out beautiful girl here," Chan hummed sitting on the bed pulling your back against his chest smoothly. 

Felix did as he was instructed. Even in this situation, Chan was more of the dominant right now and you both fended to him. "Felix please," you begged spreading your legs open for him to touch you. 

"We don't want her to come so early so just tease her," Chan hummed out the order. Leaning his mouth toward your neck he laid a few kisses on your neck as his hands went to your waist. His large hands met your waist as he roamed your body. 

"Just relax," Chan whispered in your ear as his hands went further up to meet right below your bra. "I'm right here baby girl," his deep voice so naturally seductive making you buzz with want. 

Felix slowly fingered you his gentle touch made you whimper for more. Looking down at the male he looked so focused on your slit. His fingers lightly petting you slowly only slightly entering to feel your velvety wetness. "She's so damp," Felix deep voice hummed. Spreading your fold to show the camera you off. 

Chan hard manhood stood firm against your back as his hands groped your breast. He felt the fabric over them as he ran his smooth palm over them. Lifting the shirt up enough to show the stream. "I picked out her set for her," he mentioned proudly, of the black lace he bought you. 

The stimulation with being in between two hot and bothered males made your body heat up. Chans fingers found your bra snapping it off in a cool manner. Letting your breast be free for him to play with. 

"As much as I like it on you, I like it off a lot better," Chan uttered. His palm enveloped your breast as he played with them. "So warm in my palm," his dirty talk making you wet. 

"She's so warm Chan," Felix spoke up finally as he teased you. Licking his lips, you knew he wanted to dive in and enjoy himself. 

Chan one hand played with your nipple. Taking the small bud and playing with it "Oh I would love to see them filled with milk one day," he leaned down to whisper. The insinuation of breeding you made your spine chill with want. 

"Ah," you let a mew at the feeling of him pinching and rubbing your nipple paired with Felix now inserting his finger into you this was too much. The familiar feeling of excitement pooled in your lower belly wanting to come soon. 

"Mmh look at the chat praising you," Chan accent came out thicker at the moment. His fingers teased your nipples his one hand traveling down to your slit as he slowly found your clit as he played with it. 

"Don't come, baby," he hummed in your ear. His hardness lightly rocking against your back. Both of their hands playing with you. 

"You're close aren't you," Chan groaned in your ear. With a shaky head, you nodded feeling the coming orgasm fill your stomach. 

"Felix stop touching," He demanded you turned your head to see Chan had a large smirk on his face. "Mmh clean his fingers for him won't you," Chan teased out. 

The loss of contact made your body slightly settle. You gazed at Felix a gentle grin on his face "open," he ordered lightly. 

Without words, you opened your mouth accepting his fingers tasting yourself. The visual of seeing Felix stand before you as you swirled your tongue on his fingers made you want them more. Cleaning his fingers, you probably looked so desperate at this point. 

"Look what you've done to poor Felix," Chan pointed out the outline of a line of his dick showing in Felix's sweatpants. "Got him all riled up," he pointed out once again. 

"Get on your fours baby girl," Chan told you a light pinch on your butt making you shift. Following his orders, you did what he asked. You wondered if Chan was naturally like this or was this a show for the cameras. Something inside you guessed this isn't an act. 

"Now give Felix some pleasure he deserves it," Chan hummed watching from behind you as you grabbed Felix sweatpants pulling them down slightly revealing his briefs. He was already hard against them making an outline. 

You ran your fingertips over his clothed dick lightly teasing the member. "Fuck Y/n," he gave deep moan at the lightest touch. 

Feeling behind you Chan grabbed your hips tapping your ass lightly. "Her ass is amazing," Chan praised. He grabbed at it in a harsh manner feeling it. 

"I want to feel it," Felix groaned as you kept your light touches up. 

"One day you can have it," Chan teased out at Felix. "Today it’s all mine," he added.

Chan fingers lightly played with slit pulling the underwear down slightly. "So many donations I think people like the show," he hummed at the camera. The monitor gave you a perfect view of Chan behind you. 

Pulling off Felix’s briefs to reveal his dick. "Suck it please," Felix whined out practically begging you. Grabbing it you lightly jerked him off. The feeling of Chan behind you made you moan as he slowly entered you. 

You panted with want but wanted to please Felix as well. Wrapping your mouth on his dick you felt Chan lightly thrust in you making sure you could take him. 

"Suck him off good Y/n," Chan egged you on. You moaned feeling Chan starting to slowly thrust into you. Your stomach stirring at the feeling of being fucked. Felix in front of you letting deep moans lace the air. You adored the sound of the younger male deep voice. 

Chans hands were wrapped around your waist as he steadied you as he gave a gentle pace inside you. "Seeing you suck off Felix is so hot," he admitted a breathy groan laced his sentence. 

Your gag reflex was lightly getting in the way, so you lightly backed off. Felix's hands met your head as he thrust into your open mouth his hips rocking in your mouth. The more he did that the more you gagged on him. 

"Oh, fucking hell you clench around me every time you gag," Chan cursed "It feels amazing," he rocked into you harder. 

The scene was lewd as it could be. You are blowing off your friend while your other friend took you from behind. 

The warmth in your body was flaring up you felt your stomach tighten your skin so warm from the teasing. Wanting to help Felix before you came you focuses on the person in front of you. 

You hollowed around him sucking him lightly. Your tongue peeking out giving kitten licks to his mushroomed head. 

"She's so good," Felix gave a deep moan as he rocked his hips in your mouth. Pressing his fingers in your hair he lightly pushed you deeper as he balls tightened as he came in your mouth, you gagged lightly feeling the ropes of come touch the back of your throat. 

"Fuck the clenching," Chan moaned from behind you. Felix unlaced his fingers from your hair his hand grabbing your chin letting the cum lightly drip out of your mouth. 

"What a good girl we have here," Felix said a slight smirk on his face as his thumb touched the cum coming out. Catching it on his thumb he moved it to your mouth making you open your mouth to accept the fallen cum. "All of it my girl," his dark eyes held so much love and lust as you stared up at him accepting his finger cleaning it. The shift from cute too so sexual made you whine with want. 

Chan wasn't done with you as his thrust became sloppier signaling, he was about to come. Your arms tired from holding yourself up you laid your head on the bed letting Chan fuck you into the bed. 

You eyed Felix as he went back to the stream a lazy smile across his face. It made your heart flutter knowing you did that for him. You pleasured him into that handsome smile of his. 

"You feel so good baby girl," Chan moaned as his hips were starting to stutter into you he was so close and so deep inside you. 

Finally, after all the teasing, you could finally let go. You let the pleasure envelope you as he drove into you. The feeling of the tension washing over you signaled you came; a flow of moans left your mouth as you let go. The pleasure washed over you in an amazing way. 

Chan soon chased his orgasm his Australian accent came out thick as he praised you. 

Felix said some words you couldn't care less about to the stream thanking all the watchers and donors you think. Saying he loved the feedback and this experience as he shut off the stream and the bright studio lights in the room. Chan grabbed you pushing you on the bed. 

You looked up at the male wide-eyed to see a lazy smile on his lips. "You're a natural," he praised you deciding to lay next to you. 

"Yah why do you get to cuddle Y/n," Felix playfully pouted at the scene before him. 

"Um because she likes me the best," Chan rolled his eyes covering you with his arm. 

"I want your cuddles Felix," you whined reaching out for the other male. He accepted your arms and laid in them. Sighing with content you felt Felix shift on the bed.

"We really did that," Felix hummed laying in the packed bed. 

"We sure did now go to sleep before I kick you out the bed," Chan laughed out lightly. You didn't know what morning had for you. At least you had your two best friends next to you. 

[moonstruckholland]

FaceTime and French Fries (p.p)

Pairing: Best Friend Peter Parker x Reader

Word Count: 1116

Warnings: Maybe one curse word? Cute best friend fluff? Probably some typos

A/N: This was inspired by my best friend who likes to facetime me when he goes to the store at freaking 1 am for snacks and it gives me so much anxiety. Also, this is strictly platonic, which is a first for me, so if this sucks extra, I'm sorry 😅 I hope y'all like it! If you do, I would definitely appreciate any and all feedback 💕

It was almost midnight when your phone started ringing, a facetime notification with Peter's face immediately illuminating the screen. You answered, expecting to see your best friend and instead saw a grainy dark image.

"Peter?"

You didn't really hear much at first, just the sounds of the city and wind before Spider-Man's mask popped up on the other end and your ears were filled with Peter's voice.

"Hey, y/n!"

You gave him your best disappointed mom look, "Are you swinging right now?"

"Maybe."

"Peter! You know not to facetime and swing!"

"What? I really wanted you to keep me company while I go to McDonald's."

"McDonald's is literally two blocks away from your apartment, why didn't you just walk?"

"I mean, I was already out patrolling, I figured I'd kill two birds with one stone."

You refrained from rolling your eyes, you knew he'd use any excuse to go swinging around the city. "Please tell me you're being careful, at least."

"Of course I am." Even with the mask on, you could just tell he wasn't being completely honest, and it didn't exactly help your suspicions when two seconds later you heard a loud "oof," and the screen went completely dark Peter's end.

"Pete? Are you okay?"

Your heart was thumping loudly, your heart beat getting quicker and quicker each second he didn't respond.

"Peter Parker if you don't answer me right now I will find you and kick your ass if you're not already hurt."

Lucky for you and Peter, you saw the phone being slowly lifted, probably by one of his webs, and eventually you saw his mask covered face once again. You let out a breath of relief you hadn't realized you'd been holding before quickly chastising your friend.

"I'm sorry! I didn't mean to scare you, I almost hit a street lamp by accident, so I swerved and my arm did this thing and somehow my phone flew out of my hand..."

You let him ramble, half listening, half admiring the dumb boy you were lucky enough to call your best friend. You never meant to nag him, but despite Peter being the smartest person you know, he always found himself getting into trouble in the stupidest ways. You almost had no choice but to be the responsible one in your friendship.

“I’m glad you’re okay, but you’re officially banned from using your phone and swinging forever.”

You could almost see the mischievous smile you knew was on his face, “Whatever you say, mom.”

Thankfully, he pulled him to the mcdonald’s not too long after that. You listened to him order food, which honestly seemed like a lot, but you've seen Peter eat a ton more and some of it was probably for May, so you didn't question it.

"So, how was patrolling tonight?" You asked while he waited for his food.

“Oh, you know, the usual.”

You knew what that meant, “Did someone almost kill you tonight?”

“More like they tried,” he paused, swinging to a secure spot on top of the restaurant to take off his mask, “It was actually really cool.”

“Only you would think-” you cut yourself off, “Wait, I’m wrong. Only you and Ned would think almost dying is cool.”

“I wasn’t even close to death, I swear! There were these guys trying to rob the jewelry store down the street. You know the one by the deli with the really good bagels?”

He barely waited for you nod before he continued, “Well, one of them broke the glass and triggered the security alarm, they weren’t very smart.”

He looked so done, literally facepalming as he described the robbers, making you laugh, “I swooped in all cool and suave a second later and y/n, I kid you not, they literally started freaking out. The guy who broke the glass started crying. The other guy tried coming at me with a knife.”

“Okay," you interjected for a moment, "I’m not going to panic at the thought of some dumbass coming at you with a knife. But of all the things he could've brought, why did he bring a knife?"

He rolled his eyes thinking about it, “That’s what I thought! It barely took me five minutes to disarm him and web them both before the police came."

Peter moved on to a story that involved a little old lady, a drunk Elmo, and a slice of pepperoni pizza. It was somehow even more eventful than the robbers story. You were shocked and full of questions by the end of it, but his food was ready and while you wanted, needed, to discuss the topic further, you weren’t going to let him swing and talk to you on his way back home. After a little convincing, he promised to call you when he got home.

Fifteen minutes later, you were laying in bed, watching creepy youtube videos while you waited for Peter to call, when you heard a tap on your window. You had a little moment of panic, grabbing the closest thing to a weapon you hand near you, which just happened to be an umbrella.

You hesitantly made your way to the window and slowly pulled up your shades. For a second time that night you let out a sigh of relief as you come face to face with your best friend. You opened the window, letting Peter climb into your room before you lightly smacked him.

“Don’t attack! I have food!”

“You scared the crap out of me!”

He stifled a laugh, pulling you in for a hug to apologize. You forgave him, of course. He brought you food, there was no way you could be mad.

The two of you sat on your bed, Peter handing you chicken nuggets and fries.

"Have I ever told you just how much I love you?" You asked, or more like muffled, your mouth stuffed with food.

"Yeah, yeah, don't forget to chew, you dork."

You almost laughed at the fact he was parenting you for once, instead you gently shoved him before allowing yourself to eat like a normal person.

"I have so many questions about the Grandma and drunk Elmo fiasco, but first I have some tea to tell you."

Peter raised a brow, immediately intrigued.

"Guess who applied for a job today?" You gave him a knowing look, and his eyes widened, automatically knowing who you were talking about.

"You're joking, right? There's no way Harry showed up at your job."

"He did! It was so awkward!"

"Wait. You talked to him?" Peter pulled up one of your pillows, getting more comfortable on your bed, "Forget about the old lady. Spill the tea."

Tagging: (feel free to send an ask if you wanted to be added (or don't want to be) to my taglist! Or you can also add yourself, the form is in my bio ❤️)

@fangirlwithasweettooth @bravest-at-heart @rachramblesstuff @ravenclawmarvel @devildisguiseasangel @spidey-waffles11 @fairytaleparker @petersmparker @parkeroffline @parkerpuffwrites @lovinnholland @tomhollandsumbrella @officiallyunofficialperson @babebenhardy @antoouu @its-the-unknownspidey @petersstarcadet @thollandx @kxrtwxgner @xxxxdelenaxxxx @smexylemony @sleepybesson @awkwardfangirl2014 @nedthegay @80sthottie @styles-balor4eva

[tonystarkstan]

Idk if your taking prompts so sorry BUT. imagine Tony find some footage or audio of when Peter got crushed by that building and he just crumples because it’s h i s fault because he took the suit and why did he expect Peter to not be the hero? (Sorry for bad grammar lol)

“Tony,” Pepper calls, voice sounding serious as she walks into the lab. Tony, who’s elbow-deep in a new suit, trying to fix the wiring in the knee, shakes his head irritably.

“Whatever meeting I missed, scold me about it later. I’m kind of literally in the middle of something right now,” he tells her, not even bothering to look up.

“That’s not - there’s something you need to see. It’s about the kid,” she tells him.

That gets his attention. He looks up, taking note of the shaken look on her face.

“What’s wrong? Did something happen?” he asks urgently, already extracting his arms from the suit and getting ready to call his functioning one into action. Pepper just shakes her head and thrusts the tablet in front of him.

“Is he posting videos of the Avengers on YouTube again? Because Happy and I already talked to hi -”

“Tony,” Pepper cuts him off. “Just watch it.”

Tony sighs, but he’s curious now - and a little worried, too, because not much fazes Pepper - so he quickly hits play.

The video feed is grainy and dark, except for a small lamp at the end of the room, where a lone figure is shuffling around a desk.

“Hey! Surprised?” a voice yells, and Tony squints as a smaller figure dressed in red and blue walks in. He turns to Pepper in confusion.

“Is this live?” he asks, frowning when she simply purses her lips and shakes her head. He keeps watching.

“Oh, hey, Pete,” the man greets, as if they’re old friends. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“It’s over - I’ve got you!” Peter continues, stalking purposely towards the man.

“You know, I gotta tell you, Pete - I really, really admire your grit. I see why Liz likes you,” the man compliments, and Tony’s eyes widen.

“This is Toomes?” he asks incredulously. “Peter never told me about - about this. Just the plane.”

Pepper’s eyes look sad as she says, “Just keep watching.”

“ - could you do this to her?” Peter is asking, and Tony watches, tense.

“To her? I’m not doing anything to her, Pete. I’m doing this for her,” Toomes explains.

Peter laughs dryly at that and shoots a web at Toomes, trapping him to the desk. Tony stares at the screen, transfixed, as he listens to Toomes try to convince Peter that people like Tony don’t care about people at the bottom of the totem pole.

Tony resists the urge to roll his eyes. It’s the same spiel he’s heard a billion other times from villains who like to think they’re special.

He can’t help but feel a twinge of unease, though. There’s something about the whole situation, the relaxed, casually manner with which Toomes is standing there that sets him on edge. Almost like - 

“I needed a little time to get her airborne,” Toomes says, pulling out a knife and slashing through the webbing.

Tony winces as a pair of huge, metallic wings come soaring in, and he inhales sharply as Peter darts quickly out of the frame. The wings fly around erratically, crashing into the large supports.

“I’m sorry, Peter,” Tomes calls, not sounding sorry at all as Peter skids on the ground and straightens up again.

“What are you talking about?” Peter scoffs. “That thing hasn’t even touched me yet!”

Toomes shrugs. “True, but then again, it wasn’t really trying to,” he says, and Tony’s blood freezes in his veins.

He watches with a sort of muted horror as the last of the supports is torn down and the ceiling caves in, directly on top of the kid - he’s only a kid for Christ’s sake! - and the screen goes static. He turns a frantic look to Pepper.

“Pep, what -”

“He’s fine,” she quickly reassures, putting a calming hand on his shoulder. “This is in the past, he’s okay now.”

Tony can still hear the friction of rock on rock, and he realizes that somehow, the audio is still picking up. He waits anxiously, straining to hear any sound that indicates Peter’s okay. He knows logically that Peter’s fine - hell, he was just at the lab yesterday. But with what he just saw, Tony can’t quite convince himself of it.

Finally, a high-pitched whimper breaks through the white noise of gravel, followed by a series of strained grunts and gasps.

Tony listens, horrified, as the kid practically hyperventilates in panic before steeling himself to try to move.

“Okay, ready?” Peter gasps to himself, followed by a strained yell, eventually cut off by a choked sob that has Tony’s heart clenching painfully in his chest. It’s not a sound he ever wants to hear again.

“HELP!” Peter yells hoarsely, and a chill runs down Tony’s spine. This isn’t just a superhero in a situation gone south. This is a kid who is alone and terrified. “HELP! Please, please! Any - please, I’m down here,” Peter pleads through harsh sobs. “I’m down here and I’m stuck - I’m stuck, I can’t move, I can’t -”

Tony listens helplessly as Peter tries to breathe, breaths coming in short, desperate gasps. Beside him, Pepper is looking away, eyes shining with tears as she listens to a kid cry for help where no one can hear him.

Then, it all goes silent. Peter’s breaths stop, and Tony looks at Pepper in alarm, but she shakes her head. For a startling moment, the silence continues. And then, he hears it, at first just a faint whisper. But then it gets stronger.

“Come on, Spider-Man,” Peter says shakily, but there’s something determined in his voice now. The desperation for help is gone, and Tony’s stomach sinks as he realizes why. This is the sound of a kid who’s realized that no one can save him but himself.

“Come on, Spider-Man!” Peter repeats, straining, and Tony hears the sound of rock shifting again. “COME ON, SPIDER-MAN!” Peter yells this time, and now there’s so much movement that the rest of Peter’s strained sounds are lost to the shifting cement and metal.

A loud crash sounds, and then everything stops, dust settling under the sound of tired pants.

Peter made it out.

Tony stands there, frozen, as Pepper gently stops the video and pries the tablet from his tight grip. He’s distantly surprised he didn’t drop the thing. He barely notices as Pepper carefully maneuvers him into a chair, too caught up in his thoughts.

How - how did he not know? It’s been months since Toomes was thrown in jail. And all this time - how does Peter not hate him? This is all my fault, Tony thinks, self-loathing gripping his lungs and making it impossible to breathe.

“Tony? Tony, you have to breathe!” Pepper is saying urgently, cupping his face. “Peter’s okay, I promise he’s okay now.”

Tony tries to inhale, gripping the hand on his cheek. “I - this is all my fault,” he gasps, spiraling into an abyss of self-recrimination.

“No no no,” Pepper says firmly. “This is Toomes’ fault. You did nothing wrong.”

“No, Pep,” Tony argues, trying to get himself under control again. “I took - I took his suit. I have - I have to make this right,” he says in determination, shrugging himself from her grasp.

“I have to make this right.”

-

“May!” Tony greets cheerfully as she opens the door with a puzzled look. “Is Peter here? I’m sorry for the late visit, but he wasn’t answering his phone and I needed to update him on some urgent internship stuff.”

Her expression clears, and she nods and steps back. “Yup, he’s working on homework. He usually turns off his phone so it doesn’t distract him,” she explains, and he can’t help but smile at that.

The kid’s a nerd through and through.

“He’s certainly dedicated,” Tony comments. “Mind if I go in? I’ll make it quick.”

She shakes her head and gestures to the hallway. “Go for it.”

Tony nods gratefully and walks quietly to the door, feeling an unfamiliar sense of nervousness. He knocks gently.

“Come in,” Peter calls, and Tony opens the door. “I’ll go to bed soon, I promise, I just have four mor - Mr. Stark?”

Tony smiles wryly, clasping his hands behind his back. “The one and only,” he confirms, and Peter shakes his head, confused.

“Is - is something wrong?” His eyes widen. “Is there a mission?” he whispers urgently, already scrambling towards his suit, but Tony holds out an arm to stop him.

“No, no - there’s no mission,” Tony says. Peter gives him a confused look.

“Then why…?” he trails off, gesturing to Tony, and Tony sighs, running an unsure hand through his hair. He has no idea how to do this. He didn’t come here with a plan. All he knew was that he needed to see the kid for himself, needed to make things right.

Tony decides to do what he’s always done: get straight to the point.

“I know about Toomes,” he says bluntly, with no preamble. “I know about the warehouse.”

Peter flinches bodily at that, face going white, and Tony curses himself for not being more tactful.

“I - w-what do you mean?” Peter stutters nervously. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Tony sighs again, looking at the barely-concealed fear behind Peter’s eyes. “Kid, I saw the footage,” he says gently.

Peter inhales sharply at that, looking away. He never wanted anyone to see him like that, reduced to a pathetic, sobbing mess. Instead, his hero - his idol - saw everything.

Tony walks closer and kneels in front of the kid, carefully turning Peter in his chair to face him.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asks softly.

Peter looks down at his hands, fidgeting. “You didn’t ask?” At Tony’s incredulous look, he rushes to continue. “It just - after everything, I didn’t want to give you another reason to be mad at me. It wasn’t even that important,” he shrugs helplessly, and Tony’s face hardens at that.

“‘Not important’?” he scoffs. “Peter, what you experienced was traumatic. How are you not - how are you even okay?”

Peter smiles sadly at that. “I-I mean, I wasn’t? Not for awhile, at least. But then I just - I dunno. Got over it?”

Tony shakes his head. “This isn’t the kind of thing you just ‘get over,’” Tony insists. He hesitates before, “How do you not hate me?”

Peter looks taken aback by the question. “What?! Why would I hate you?”

Now it’s Tony’s turn to look baffled. “Peter, I took away your suit. You would have been okay had it not been for that.”

Peter actually has the audacity to laugh at him softly, shaking his head a little. “No way. I deserved that.” Tony opens his mouth to protest, but Peter cuts him off. “No, really. I was being stupid, thought I could just play at being a hero without knowing what it really means to be one.” He shrugs. “It was a rude awakening but. I needed it.”

For a minute, there’s just silence as Tony processes that. Then, he lets out a big breath and shakes his head in awe. “Kid, you are something else,” he says in amazement, but Peter just dodges his gaze shyly, shrugging off the praise.

Eventually, Tony says, “And the actual traumatic event you went through - how are you dealing with that?”

Peter just shrugs again, fiddling with a pencil on his desk. “Mostly I just keep myself busy, you know? With patrol and the internship and school, I don’t really have a lot of time to think about it.”

Tony raises an eyebrow at him. “So what I’m hearing is that you haven’t dealt with it.”

“It’s not even that bad!” Peter whines defensively.

“Oh yeah?” Tony challenges. “And the nightmares? Panic attacks? How are those?”

Peter looks away, face reddening, and Tony nods to himself. “That’s what I thought,” he mutters.

There’s another small silence as Peter continues to mess around with his pencil before Tony sighs heavily.

“Listen, kid,” he starts, waiting until he’s got Peter’s full attention before continuing. “This superhero stuff isn’t easy. I know all too well what having to deal with the repercussions of what we see everyday alone is like. It sucks. And I’m not letting you do this alone anymore,” he says fiercely.

He watches as Peter’s eyes start to well with emotion, a tired, hopeful look that wasn’t there before making itself known. Tony carefully reaches out and rests a hand on the back on the kid’s neck, pulling him close. Peter shudders under his hold, the floodgates opening to tears of hurt and relief at not having to deal with this alone anymore.

Tony rests his head on the soft curls, murmuring softly, a promise.

“I wasn’t there for you before, but I’m here now. And I’m not leaving.”

[dvp95]

can't breathe when you touch my sleeve - chapter 1

pairing: dan howell/phil lester

rating: e (eventually)

warnings: none

tags: alternate universe, slow burn, fluff & humour, tiny bit of inner turmoil wrt sexuality but trust me it’s not that deep, eventual smut, idiots in love

word count: 5,384 (this chapter & total)

summary: Dan keeps making a fool of himself in interviews, to the point where it’s basically a meme. Now he’s got to sit down for the better part of an hour and sell his show to the YouTuber he’d had a massive crush on when he was a teenager.

read on ao3 or here!

“You’re gonna need to do this one alone, dude, our flight’s been delayed again.”

At least Dan’s costar seems somewhat put out. She looks all chagrined and her accent has slipped back into a drawl since they’d finished filming. The FaceTime call is grainy, but he can tell she’s tired from being in the airport all day.

“It’s fine, Jaime,” Dan lies through his teeth, because there’s nothing she can fucking do about it anyway. He sighs and looks at himself in the mirror, where he’d paused in fixing his eyebrows to take her call. “Does Patrick even care, or is he just sleeping on his luggage again?”

“The latter, of course,” Jaime laughs. She turns the camera briefly so Dan can see the star of their show lounging across his bags with a blanket over his face.

Dan laughs, too, but there’s panic in it. “So you guys are really, like. Stuck in Atlanta.”

“Yeah,” she sighs. “But it’s just one interview.”

Just one interview. The amount of damage Dan knows he can do with just one interview makes him consider calling out sick.

“It’s an interview with BBC Radio One,” he reminds her. Jaime’s only reaction is to blink at him. This is why he regrets spending all of his time in America, with Americans. They’re fine and all, he loves his job, they just don’t understand the sort of ramifications that could come from Dan fucking up this interview. Ramifications like, his grandma might hear it.

“It’s fine, you’re talking to a YouTuber,” says Jaime. “You’re better with them.”

“That’s because they’re more like people.”

“Jimmy Kimmel is people, Daniel.”

“He’s not,” Dan says, adamant. “And Jimmy Kimmel saw me do a fucking nosedive on my way offstage, didn’t he.”

It’s their second year doing press tours, the first they’re doing any kind of international coverage, and it’s already become a widespread joke that Daniel Howell sucks in interviews.

Give him a script, he’s fine. Ask him questions he can riff off, he’s fine. But he’s easily distracted, gets starstruck in ways his coworkers have managed to suppress, and his limbs aren’t friends with his brain. He’s spilled iced coffee on many a PA, said BuzzFeed no less than five times during the Wired autocomplete interview, turned into an actual fucking tomato when Lilly Singh complimented him.

He always thought, hey, at least it’s mostly online coverage. Not the fucking BBC. He’s more comfortable in an online space. And he’s happy with it all, since being in a well-liked Netflix original means that he’s more or less living the dream.

If only he could stop making a fucking fool of himself in interviews. It’s basically a meme at this point.

“You’ll be fine,” Jaime says.

“I’m going to offend them and/or fall on my ass,” says Dan.

Jaime’s lips twitch, lagging a bit with the shitty airport wifi. “Yeah, maybe.”

–

It’s a very close call, but Dan doesn’t roll into the BBC late. His hair might be a fucking disaster and he might have almost left the house without his left shoe on, but he got here and that’s what counts.

“Hey,” he says at the desk, trying to act like he didn’t just run here after getting off on the wrong Tube stop. He’s never spent a lot of time in London, has barely been back from America in a few years, and he might have overestimated his navigation abilities. “Hi, um, I’m -”

“Daniel Howell,” the receptionist says, looking for all the world like he hasn’t done anything strange. “Sure, yeah, you’re just going to go down that hall there, it’s the third door. The toilets are on the way if you want to freshen up.”

Dan is fairly sure he looks like a mess, so he thanks the kind person profusely before running off to the bathroom to check.

Yeah, alright. He’s looked worse. He’s also looked a lot better, but he didn’t pack any straighteners or concealer in his jeans, so it’ll just have to fucking do. He fixes his hair as best as he can and dries the sweat off his face. After that, all he can really do is make sure his flies are zipped before he makes his way to the room he’d been pointed to.

It’s small and sparse, clearly not part of the radio behind-the-scenes. In front of a plain white backdrop, there’s just a couple dark loveseats and a coffee table with glasses of water that Dan is already having a premonition of knocking over.

A guy is setting up one of the two cameras, hasn’t heard Dan enter, and now Dan is wracked with the certainty that anything he says or does at this point will come out awkward.

“Uh,” is what he goes with, wincing when the guy almost knocks the camera off its axis as he jumps. “Sorry. For - that. And for almost being late.”

“You can’t be almost late, can you? You’re fine, sorry, just let me get this…”

“I thought this was a radio interview?”

“No, I mean, I do have a radio show, but I’m not hosting today. This is just for the website and YouTube.”

The voice sounds irritatingly familiar, like it’s on the tip of Dan’s tongue, but that doesn’t surprise him. He’s probably heard most of the people here on the radio at some point, even with how little he’s on this side of the pond.

He’s immeasurably relieved by this not being a live radio interview that his grandma might hear, but he’s still feeling weird without his costars.

“Sorry,” Dan says again, for lack of anything else to say.

“It’s seriously okay,” the guy laughs, finally securing the camera on its tripod properly and spinning to greet Dan. “Hi! You’re Daniel, right? I hear it’s just us today.”

Dan’s brain takes an entire second to place the eyes, the smile, when they aren’t half hidden by a long fringe and bad webcam quality; to place that voice when it isn’t accompanied by some kind of weird animal noise. He makes a weird noise of his own once the lightbulb clicks, and he finds himself blinking rather more than a regular human does.

“Holy shit,” says Dan. “You’re AmazingPhil.”

AmazingPhil smiles with his tongue between his teeth. “Last time I checked. You can just call me Phil, though.”

He’s got glasses on his nose, his hair pushed off his forehead, a corgi on his jumper, and Dan would be lying if he said he wasn’t considering just turning around and walking out.

AmazingPhil - Phil - looks good. The last time Dan had the time to sit down and watch one of his videos was back in uni, and he’d thought Phil looked good then, too. Really good. Like, put Phil’s videos on whenever he was sad and think about that stupid Britney lipsync whenever he was showering kind of good.

Now he’s got to sit down with him for the better part of an hour and sell his show to the guy he’d had a massive crush on when he was a teenager.

“Daniel,” Phil says when Dan doesn’t say anything, his smile softening. “You alright over there?”

“Yes,” says Dan, feeling his face heat up. “I - yes. Sorry. I just - I didn’t expect you.”

“I’m guessing you’ve seen one or two of my videos,” Phil jokes, gesturing for Dan to sit down. “Get comfortable, I’ll grab your mic.”

Get comfortable. Is Phil having a laugh? Dan doesn’t think he’s been this high strung in months, and he sits stiffly on the sofa with his hands clasped in his lap.

Fucking hell. Dan had embarrassed himself on nearly every stop on their press tour last summer, still new to the whole process, and the interviews in L.A. and New York earlier this year weren’t much better. He’s just a massively awkward person, not aware enough of his own body or of the things coming out of his mouth.

He can’t even imagine how he’s going to fuck this one up.

Phil laughs when he approaches Dan, fixing the mic to Dan’s shirt with long, fumbling fingers. Dan’s heart does something acrobatic. “I don’t bite. Y'know, more people have seen your face than they have mine.”

“Probably,” Dan concedes in a mumble, hyperaware of his gaze while Phil gets comfortable on the other sofa. He doesn’t know where to look. He wants to try and match this calm man to the guy in his memory who’d once put makeup on and meowed at a camera for twenty seconds. “It’s not the same, though.”

“Why not?” Phil asks, crossing one of his ankles over the other.

“Well, you’re, like,” says Dan. He gestures vaguely at Phil, and then again at himself. “And I’m, like.”

“Very informative,” says Phil.

“I’m better at talking about the show,” says Dan, feeling the very stupid need to try and prove himself to someone he’s only just met, really. Phil smirks at him a little.

“Well, you’d have to be.”

As much as it makes Dan flush red, he finds himself honking a laugh at the same time. Phil’s smirk widens into a grin.

“Don’t look so fucking pleased with yourself,” Dan says, trying to let the banter relax him a bit. He hasn’t fallen on his face or accidentally said something horrendous yet. He leans back into the sofa and smiles at Phil. “Okay, alright. Moment over. No longer starstruck.”

“Still seems silly to me, I’m really not that big.” Phil laughs. Dan has to bite back roughly a dozen inappropriate comments. “Not compared to some people on the platform, anyway, but that’s fine. I like where I’m at.”

“I understand that,” Dan says, surprised that he’s not lying to sound empathetic. “Like, I love making Heatwave, it’s fine that we aren’t going to be the next Stranger Things.”

“Do you mind if I turn on the camera?” Phil asks, those eyes focused on Dan in a way that makes him feel warm all over. “It’s just, you’re actually speaking. About relevant stuff. So I feel like I should be capturing this on film for some kind of posterity.”

“Fuck off,” Dan says, and then immediately freezes. Phil only laughs and gets up to switch on the cameras and lights.

Okay, good. Still hasn’t mortally offended his teen idol yet.

Phil sits back down and rambles an intro to the lens, looking somehow even more comfortable now that it’s on. Something about being filmed makes him sit up straighter and his eyes go a bit wider. He gestures at Dan with a smile, says, “As you can see, I’m here with Daniel Howell to talk about Netflix’s Heatwave! This is your first time doing an interview by yourself, isn’t it?”

Not a hundred percent sure how Phil knows that, but it’s probably obvious in everything Dan has said and done since getting here.

“Er, yeah,” says Dan eloquently. He scratches the back of his neck and gives his closeup camera a sheepish grin. “That obvious, huh? Jaime and Patrick hide a lot of my awkwardness, they’re good at this bit.”

“You’re doing just fine,” Phil says, encouraging and warm. He ruins it by adding, “At least you haven’t asked me when the baby is due or elbowed me in the face.”

“Oh my god,” Dan groans. He plays it up, throws his head back with it, but the blush is all real.

“I have to ask,” Phil says, and his voice changes slightly. It takes Dan a moment to figure it out, but then he realises that Phil is using his off-camera voice now. Deeper, less enthusiastic. “Is the whole awkward klutz thing a marketing ploy? Like, you’ve been at the center of so many memes.”

“I wish it were a marketing thing.” He blinks over at Phil and mournfully admits, “I got my head stuck in the doors of the Tube last time I came to London. Luckily nobody was filming.”

Phil laughs. It’s a really good sound. Dan wants to make it happen over and over, and he has to stamp down on the urge before it turns into a class clown act. “How did you even manage that? I thought I was clumsy.”

“I tripped,” Dan says, a little more whiny than he really meant to sound. Oh, well, seeming cool in front of Phil is a lost cause by now.

“I trip a lot, too,” says Phil. He’s back in his camera voice. Dan likes this voice, too, more familiar with it, but he already misses being spoken to in that deeper, calmer tone. “Probably a good thing we’re sat down for this, or we’d have to take a trip to A&E.”

“Touch wood, mate,” Dan says dryly.

He’s surprised and charmed when Phil actually does, reaches out and taps on the coffee table.

The conversation flows more easily, then, because Phil starts asking questions about the show and Dan is finally in his element. He knows the show back to front and he’s experienced in the art of holding back spoilers from two decades of finishing video games before his friends did. He tells the same story he’s told in three other interviews, about how he didn’t know he was supposed to do an American accent for the audition and the character got Britishized for him.

Phil laughs like it’s his first time hearing it, even though he’s clearly done his research.

“But you still do a slight accent,” Phil says.

“I do,” says Dan, mildly surprised. He shouldn’t be, but he’s so used to people not noticing or just not commenting on it that Phil bringing it up is strange. “I didn’t think it made sense for Warren to be, like, posh.”

“It doesn’t,” says Phil, “that was a good call.”

“Not that I’m posh,” Dan says, because it’s important to him that Phil know this.

“Really,” says Phil, dryly.

“Oh, fuck off,” says Dan. He regrets swearing on camera, but figures someone will edit it out. “It’s not my fault Winnie the Pooh raised me.”

The grin Phil turns on him makes Dan briefly forget where he is and what he’s talking about. Luckily, one of them is a professional, and Phil gets the interview back on track easily. Dan even manages to make him laugh a couple of times. When he dies, he wants someone to stand up at his funeral and tell everyone that he made AmazingPhil laugh.

Dan even manages not to embarrass himself on camera. He thinks he’s gotten off scot-free, actually, until they’re saying goodbye and Phil goes in for a hug at the same time Dan goes for a handshake.

“Oh,” Dan says eloquently, his knuckles just sort of pressed to Phil’s stomach.

“Sorry,” Phil laughs. He goes for it anyway, wrapping his arms around Dan’s shoulders and not letting go until Dan steps back, feeling so extremely awkward with his hand just kind of crushed between them. Phil doesn’t look awkward. Phil is smirking. “I always give my fans a hug.”

“Shut up,” says Dan. He’s aware of exactly how whiny he sounds, and he wishes he could suck the noise back in and sound cool, unruffled.

“What?” Phil grins. “I’m flattered.”

“I’ll have you know,” says Dan, “I haven’t even, like, watched you since 2011, so.”

Phil’s smile falters. Dan wants to punch himself in the face.

“Just because I got really busy,” Dan rushes to assure him, like Phil actually cares what one bloke thinks of him. “Like, I actually started working my ass off, and couldn’t keep spending fourteen hours a day on YouTube, and then it just stopped being a habit, and I got a new Twitter for professionalism so I fell out of the loop with a lot of people, and -”

“Dan, breathe,” Phil says, but he looks pleased.

Professional people don’t call him Dan very much anymore, not since some other idiot called Dan Howell joined the same union as him. Daniel was a better option than James, and Dan had been going through a pretentious phase that hasn’t quite ended yet, so.

He’s reminded people at work to call him Daniel before, when they try to get overly familiar with him, but. He doesn’t really mind when it’s Phil.

“Okay,” he says, a beat too late for it to sound natural. Well, self-deprecation hasn’t failed him yet. “I’m just walking a very fine line here between seeming cool and also telling you I used to reply to everything you ever tweeted.”

“Aw, Dan,” says Phil. He holds a hand up to his chest like he’s touched. “You couldn’t seem cool if you tried.”

“Shut up,” Dan huffs, shoving lightly at Phil’s shoulder.

Phil’s tongue pokes between his teeth again when he laughs. Dan wishes he could stop noticing that. “It’s nice. I like meeting someone just as weird and awkward as me.”

“I’m way more weird and awkward,” says Dan. “If I didn’t already know the shit you get up to in your bedroom, I’d think you were normal.”

Both of Phil’s eyebrows raise, and it takes Dan about half a second to realise what he’s said and promptly turn crimson.

“I’m alright at acting normal around celebrities,” Phil says, blessedly not drawing attention to Dan wanting something to strike him down where he stands.

“I’m not really a celebrity,” says Dan.

“Sure,” says Phil.

“So you don’t have to, like, act normal around me.”

“Alright.” Phil grins, shoves his hands into the pockets of his jeans, rocks back and forth on his feet in what Dan recognizes as a nervous tic. “Did you know that caterpillars don’t just grow wings in their cocoons? They turn into caterpillar soup and then reform.”

Dan blinks. “Why the fuck would I know that?” He blinks again. “Oh, god, why would you tell me that? You mean they just fucking dissolve into liquid before becoming an adult? How fucked up would that be?”

“I know,” Phil says, very earnestly. “It keeps me up at night, Dan.”

Not a fluke. ‘Dan’ still sounds good coming from Phil. Although, if Dan’s going to be perfectly honest with himself, he thinks Phil could call him anything and he’d like the sound of it. He likes Phil’s voice and he really, really likes Phil’s voice when it’s just for him to hear. There’s a part of Dan’s mind that exists purely to remind him he’s attracted to men, and it’s currently clanging pots and pans together as if he couldn’t figure it out on his own.

“Now it’s going to keep me up at night,” Dan groans.

“At least I’ll have company,” says Phil. His voice lilts a bit on the last word, like he wants to make it a question but changes his mind at the last second.

That part of Dan’s mind that he usually tries to forget about, that part he keeps locked up tight unless it’s relevant, is now adding operatic singing to the percussion. It yells, This is flirting! The hot guy is flirting with you!

But he can’t trust it, not when the stakes are as high as having another conversation with AmazingPhil, so he stamps that voice down.

“Yeah, you can DM me,” Dan offers, putting that ball firmly in Phil’s court. “Like. When you can’t sleep. Or whenever, really, I’m jetlagged as fuck right now.”

Phil smiles. “Okay. I will.”

–

Dan doesn’t actually believe him. When his phone dings with a Twitter notification at one in the morning, he gets a sharp neck pain doing a double take at his screen.

Okay, cool. Actual AmazingPhil has sent him a caterpillar emoji. It’s stupid how fast that makes his heart race.

He’d followed Phil’s Twitter while he waited at the Tube station and had been pleased to see that Phil already followed him, too. He hadn’t had time to snoop on his profile or anything before the train came and then he’d gotten distracted when he got back to the hotel, but he’s got nothing but time and insomnia right now.

Dan opens his laptop and clicks on Phil’s Twitter profile to get a good look. He opens the Instagram and YouTube links in new tabs, since it’s not like Phil will know Dan is stalking every page.

youre really still thinking about that, Dan sends from his phone before he settles in to scroll mindlessly.

Phil’s not very good at taking pictures of himself, is the first thing Dan notices. He checks Instagram quickly to confirm it, and, yeah, what the hell? Phil either doesn’t know or doesn’t care what his angles are, because he looks more or less average in every single photo he’s posted in the past few months. He’s not an average-looking guy.

Twitter is kinda boring; Phil doesn’t tweet a lot and when he does it’s either video promotion or an anecdote that doesn’t sound fully true. Dan closes the tab and focuses his stalking on Instagram for a bit.

It’s a good choice. Phil’s selfies are still mediocre, but he’s got good photos with his friends, other YouTubers, some musicians. There’s about a dozen with Nick Grimshaw in some capacity over the past year, but that makes sense to Dan - he’s pretty sure they work together.

Lots of food pictures, which Dan can appreciate. Scenic views of Los Angeles, Orlando, somewhere by the sea that looks like Scotland or the Isle of Man. It doesn’t seem like Phil travels to many places, but those three locations pop up over and over again. And, of course, London. Dan wonders how long Phil has lived here, if he knows the city like the back of his hand the way Dan used to wish he could be rich and famous enough to do.

London used to be The Dream. Still is, really.

His phone vibrates again. I wasn’t joking, it drives me mad. I’ll just be minding my own business and all of a sudden I remember caterpillar soup and I start to spiral. Did you know they retain memories from being a caterpillar? How????????????? They’re SOUP. Then, after a couple seconds, Sorry. Hi., with a string of emojis.

Dan laughs quietly to himself. He’s still a bit starstruck, but he’s also just… charmed. Phil is a charming person.

that’s fucked up and i will be thinking about it for the rest of my short and meaningless existence, Dan replies, because if Phil can’t handle his humour then what are they even doing here.

Remember me when you’re soup, is what Phil says.

Dan decides to save his YouTube stalking for tomorrow night, closing his laptop so he can focus completely on the fact that he’s DMing with AmazingPhil right now. He bites his lip and starts one sentence about four times before he goes with, will do. soup will be soon, im gonna die of embarrassment tomorrow for sure.

What’s tomorrow??

buzzfeed uk. i hate doing buzzfeed interviews bc its like theyre waiting for me to fuck up. theyve got whole listicles on my messy ass

BRB looking up any and all listicles about your ass.

Dan feels warmth curl in his gut. He still can’t be sure if Phil is flirting with him or if this is just what he’s like, and he’s also not really sure what he’d want to do about it if Phil is flirting.

It’s not that Dan doesn’t know he likes guys. He’s known that for a long time. But aside from a few fumbling encounters during secondary and uni - and more than a few during his gap year, when he truly felt like nothing mattered - he hasn’t let himself explore that. It’s fucking terrifying just to think about, and that was before he had millions of people looking at his every move.

He pushes all that back into the box to deal with later, because Phil is messaging him again.

You could invest in a belt.

they dont help!!!! flat ass problems amirite? Dan tries to change the topic immediately after sending that, because the last thing his overthinking needs is to talk about ass with Phil. im also mad at buzzfeed bc they never let me play w the puppies. patrick got to last month and i almost cried i was so jealous

That’s not even a joke. Dan and Jaime had been stuck taking Buzzfeed quizzes on camera while Patrick got to roll around on the floor and play with dogs. When Dan heard, he’d literally started tearing up.

Patrick hadn’t even appreciated it properly. Fucking cat people.

Well, Thor isn’t a puppy anymore, but you can play with him while you’re in town if you want to!

Then, Phil sends him a photo, and Dan makes an embarrassing squeal of a noise, because, what the fuck, why didn’t Phil have any fucking dog photos from the past three years on Instagram? The cutest Welsh Corgi Dan has ever seen is curled up on a familiar duvet cover with one of its eyes peeking open at the camera, curious.

HOLY SHIT

PHIL

HOW IS THIS THE FIRST IM SEEING OF THJS DOG IM GONNA CRY

Haha, you weren’t kidding that you haven’t kept up with me! Thor is the most popular guest star on my channel.

Well, now Dan regrets starting with Instagram, but he doesn’t want to stop talking to Phil long enough to watch a video. He’ll enjoy that personal hell when he can’t sleep tomorrow.

WHY ISNT HE ON YOUR INSTA

Cos he’s got his own! Go follow him @AmazingThorgi if you wanna see! Dan immediately exits the app to do that, swiping up at the notification when Phil double-messages. You’re Insta-stalking me? :)

AmazingThorgi is Dan’s new favourite Instagram account. Thor is ridiculously cute, and Phil seems to have a habit of dressing him up and making him sit in front of plants.

Somehow, Phil takes incredible photos of his dog. Dan would like to know where that composition and lighting knowledge is in his selfies. He doesn’t even know how he’d bring that up, because how do you tell someone they’re smoking hot but have some kind of block when it comes to using a front camera?

When he’s scrolled back to puppy pictures and his eyes are in legitimate danger of watering, Dan goes back to Twitter.

amazingphil who i only know thorgi

He’s the best!!!!!! I’m slightly allergic to him but that’s ok he’s worth all the benadryl in the world!!

Jesus. Dan isn’t sure his heart is physically capable of handling all this new information about a guy he used to know everything about. There’s something so endearing to Dan about that, about a man who loves dogs so much that he’ll take allergy medication every day instead of not owning one. That’s just. Something Dan thinks is very cute.

They tell you not to meet your heroes for a fucking reason, and that reason isn’t 'because they’re somehow even better in person.’ Dan has met a few people in the acting sphere that he was disappointed by, to be honest, but.

Every new message he gets from Phil just makes him sound more and more like someone Dan really wants to hang out with.

And Phil had, in a way, offered that. Dan isn’t sure if it was just a lead-in to showing off cute photos of Thor, but he’s just sleep-deprived enough to take it as an invitation.

im in town for 3 wks what is thors schedule like

Phil responds with a couple of barely comprehensible, excited emojis, and Dan has to bite his lip so he doesn’t smile at his phone like a goofball. Not that anyone is here to see him, but. It’s the principle of the thing. He’s helping me film sometime tomorrow but he’s free all week after that!!

Swallowing down the minor uncertainty of whether or not this is flirting, if this is a date they’re setting up, Dan figures out a time and place to hang out. He’s got a day off between interviews this week that he’d originally planned to spend in bed recharging from all the social interaction, but being given the opportunity to get coffee and go to a dog park with Actual AmazingPhil is a gift from a higher power that he won’t ignore.

Phil gets sleepy and Dan finds it sweet that he can tell by the way Phil types, his grammar slipping by the wayside and his emoji use becoming a hundred percent incoherent.

we should both sleep mate but send me pics of thor to get me through buzzfeed hell

One comes in immediately, a somewhat blurry shot of Thor’s nose buried into Phil’s thigh, and Dan curses under his breath. He puts his phone on the nightstand and struggles to fall asleep when all he can think about is how cozy that photo looked, how much he wants to crawl into it and live there forever.

Dan may or may not be fucked.

–

It’s a relief to have Patrick and Jaime with him again, all three of them subject to the repetitive questions and whatever weird, unique tasks are thrown their way by entertainment news sources, but Dan can’t wait to get away from them once they’re back at the hotel.

He gets himself set up with a beer and some Dominos in bed before he opens the AmazingPhil channel on his laptop. Hotel wifi isn’t the best, but it’ll have to do.

There’s a lot of content and links, and every title is as clickbait-y as the last. Dan could probably scroll down Phil’s page for eternity without making a decision, so he sorts the uploads by most popular.

A video of Thor as a puppy takes the number one spot, which Dan isn’t sure he’s emotionally prepared for, and not far behind it in views is just a video thumbnail of Phil looking bemused and titled 7 SECOND CHALLENGE! (BONUS). It really is only seven seconds long.

Dan can’t help but be curious about that one. He clicks it, makes it full screen even though it’s a short video.

The shot opens on a closet door and it folds open, revealing a grinning Phil. His fringe is soft over his forehead and he’s wearing a shirt with a roaring bear on it - this was a couple of years ago.

“Hi,” video Phil says, jolting Dan back to the present. Phil giggles. “I’m gay.”

It’s not all that much of a shock, really, but Dan’s heart still picks up speed as he watches Phil laugh again, close the door, yelp as he knocks into something.

Something else starts autoplaying, and Dan lets it. A younger Phil talks to the camera about a bad gym experience, and Dan finds himself zoning out for half of the video.

Phil’s been out as a gay man since… when was that video posted? 2014? 2015? Dan doesn’t have the wherewithal to check right this second. For a few years, in any case, and he’d said it so casually that he must have known for ages before that, and Dan.

Well. Dan can’t quite shake the feeling that, if he had kept up with Phil all these years, he might have had to examine that box in his mind a lot closer by now. The word gay rolls off Phil’s tongue like it belongs there, like it’s second nature, like it has never been a weapon. Dan wants to hear him say it over and over like a personal calming ritual.

A cursory Google tells Dan that Phil’s coming out video was posted in 2014 accompanying a collaboration with Phil’s friend PJ, and that he has never spoken about his romantic life since.

That’s a blessing and a curse.

Dan sighs heavily and thinks, not for the first time, that he should really invest in therapy. Then, he lets himself become untethered from reality as he watches Phil talk and joke about silly things in the autoplaying videos. The pizza tastes like cardboard.

As if he’s looking at his own body from the perspective of an outsider, Dan takes the figurative locked box in his figurative hands and lets it fall open to sort through some things. Just for a little bit.

[merlinemryspendragon]

Gif Coloring Tutorial

Requested by anon. Sorry for taking so long to post this!

This tutorial goes over how I color gifs, including tips for coloring dark scenes and scenes that are heavily filtered with a certain color (i.e blue scenes, yellow scenes, etc.).

We’ll be going from this:

To this:

Warning: This post is gonna be really long! (if the read more breaks blacklist “long post” or “usermerlin gif tutorial”)

*I’m using Photoshop CS5

1. Gif Making Basics (Note this part won’t include images since the anon specified coloring and avoiding noise I’m gonna focus on that)

First I take screencaps using Potplayer.

In PS I import the frames by selecting File --> Scripts --> “Load Multiple DICOM Files”

Once the images have loaded I go to the drop down menu on the animation window and select “Make frames from layers”. 

Then I crop my gif using the crop tool. I put all the layers into a group  (select all the layers and press ctrl + g (cmd + g if you’re using a Mac)

Now I sharpen my gif. I’ve created an action to speed up this process using user thepunisher’s action tutorial. I didn’t include the grouping of my layers in the action so that’s why I always group them before starting my action so that it works properly. My sharpening is pretty standard from what I’ve seen. I use smart sharpen: 

Now I can start coloring!

2. Basic Coloring

In this section, I’ll be going over a basic, but vibrant, coloring. When making adjustments you have to be careful not to increase brightness or vibrance too much or your gif will become grainier. Same goes with making changes to the colors. It’s better to have more layers with slight adjustments 

I always start by brightening up my gif. Sometimes I use curves to both brighten and adjust colors. For this particular gif I didn’t, but I use this adjustment often. User villainelle has a tutorial for using curves to color adjust here and so does user thepunisher here. They have slightly different approaches and I use either depending on the scene. I’ll also be explaining this adjustment more in the next section but I learned how to use it from them. 

Step 1:

For this gif, I just started with an Exposure adjustment layer. Exposure allows you to change the tones of your document. Gamma adjusts midtones, offset adjusts shadows, and exposure adjusts highlights. It’s really helpful with brightening up dark scenes or heavily shadowed scenes. I usually only adjust the midtones/gamma. Here are my settings:

I increased the Gamma to 1.12

Step 2:

I then use a Brightness/Contrast layer to adjust the highlights (you could also do this with Exposure but I find Brightness more manageable). At this point, I’m only increasing the brightness. I won’t increase or decrease the contrast bar. Here are my settings:

I increased the Brightness to 34

Step 3:

After adjusting the brightness, I want to bring back some depth (I’m probably using this word incorrectly tbh) to my gif by increasing the contrast before moving on to color correction and vibrancy.

To increase the contrast I use a black and white gradient map and set it to soft light. Then I lower the opacity between 10%-50%, depending on the scene.

You could also use Levels or Brightness/Contrast but I find the gradient map is easy to control while also making the gif more neutral. For this gif, I set the transparency to 10% but could go a little higher because the scene is naturally bright. All these adjustments are really about your personal preference. 

Step 4:

Now I can move on to the colors. For basic coloring I usually start by increasing the saturation. I use a Hue/Saturation layer because this way I can increase the saturation of everything. I feel like the Vibrance layer tends to just make the gif warmer rather than making the colors pop- and I have less control over individual colors. For this gif, I increased the saturation for all colors (”Master”) to 27:

Step 5:

After adjusting the vibrancy I move on to color adjustment. This can really vary based on preferences. I tend to prefer to make my gifs cooler in tone. I use Selective Color and Color Balance to manipulate the colors. 

I started by adding a Color Balance layer to adjust the colors on Aziraphale’s face:

I increased the Cyan to 4, the Magenta to 3, and the Blue to 1 to make the skin tones more neutral. I’m moving the bars toward the colors I want to add. So if my gif is too yellow I’d move it toward blue and if it’s too red I’d move it toward cyan. Also note that I only made changes to the midtones. If I wanted to make changes to the darker or lighter parts of this gif I’d alter the shadows or highlights but I usually only do that for rainbow gifsets. Typically, I prefer Selective Color to make more drastic color alterations so I have more control over the specific color I’m changing.

*Be careful when making these types of changes. You don’t want to make drastic changes to the natural undertones of a person’s skin. Same goes when you’re brightening your gif. You can easily whitewash if you’re not careful. User amorverus has a great tutorial on avoiding whitewashing in coloring here .*

I also wanted to brighten up the gif more after this so I added a curves layer :

Then I used Selective Color to decrease the yellow tones in the White background:

I decreased it by 26. I almost always do this for scenes with white backgrounds or large blocks of white.

Step 6:

After I make some color adjustments I adjust the brightness and contrast again. I always add another Curves layer to increase the brightness of the shadows by slightly lifting the line on the bottom left:

Then I use Levels to change the contrast of my tones. I usually increase the contrast by moving the left hand point slightly to the right:

After that I add another Curves layer, decreasing the shadow and increasing the highlights like this:

I feel like this adds some nice depth to my gif and brings out the colors more. The amount I decrease or increase the curve depends on the gif itself, so definitely play around with this. 

Step 7:

Now I go back to make some last color changes. I added another Selective Color layer and increased the Black on Whites:

Finally, I added another Selective Color layer adjusting the Whites again. I decreased the Yellow again and also increased the Cyan and Magenta to make the blue in the sky pop a little more:

I used a layer mask to erase this layer on Aziraphale so the change is only apparent on the sky.

Now I’m done! Here’s the same method on two other scenes:

And I uploaded the .psds (dl here) so you can take a closer look at what I did in Photoshop. Keep in mind that I don’t always follow these steps in the exact same order. Psd #3 features the curves color adjustment method and has some more adjustments. It really depends on the scene itself and the mood I’m in. Practicing a lot will build your familiarity with the different adjustments and hopefully boost your confidence in making your own coloring! 

3. Hard to Color Scenes

Blue/Yellow/Green/Red Scenes + Dark Scenes

These types of scenes can be hell to color but there are some techniques to help balance the colors so that you have something that’s easier to work with. 

For general dark scenes, adjusting the Exposure can be really helpful. Unfortunately increasing the Gamma or Exposure too much can make the gif grainy so be careful when using it. Consider using it in combination with Brightness/Contrast and Curves to avoid making drastic changes.

Another helpful adjustment layer is the curves layer. As the tutorials linked above explain, using the midtone or highlight dropper tool can help adjust the presence of red, green, and blue in your gif. Photoshop will balance against the color you select. 

Let’s take this scene for example:

This scene is really yellow. Using color balance or selective color to balance it out could help but given how yellow it is, you’d need to use a lot of these layers to gradually change the colors or you’d make your gif too grainy. Using Curves, we can adjust colors with less layers and hopefully introduce less grain (sometimes this type of adjustment can result in too drastic a change, so your gif becomes hella grainy so be careful). I used the midtone dropper around here:

And got this:

Here’s the Curves layer:

The shadows are a little more intense than they were to begin with but that’s easier to adjust. You could also keep messing around with the dropper so the scene doesn’t become darker. You could it make it slightly less yellow and then finish the rest with color balance and selective color. Either way, I’m satisfied with this so now I can continue coloring:

Here’s an example of a dark and blue scene:

Usually for darker scenes, I use the midtone dropper but that wasn’t resulting in a change I was happy with. I used the highlight dropper instead, clicking on the flecks of snow in the bottom right:

Here’s the Curves layer:

And here’s the final gif after coloring:

This method is great for making big changes to the lighting and colors of your gifs.

HQ GIF Tips:

Save Settings:

I save my gifs with Diffusion because I find that the dithering is usually less noticeable that way, so my gif looks smoother. Pattern can also look really nice though, depending on your coloring. Try out both and see which you prefer! Here are my settings:

Coloring:

Making drastic changes all at once can make your gifs grainier. Be careful not to change a color too much one one Selective Color or Color Balance layer. It’s better to make smaller changes over multiple layers. Same goes for increasing brightness and vibrance.

Source:

Use the highest quality video source you can. That’s an easy way to make HQ gifs. Blu Ray or DVD quality is better than Itunes for example and both of those will be better than clips from Youtube. If the file size is bigger that typically means there less compression so the quality will be better. If you can’t find larger sizes or you don’t have the space or time to save larger files, just make sure it’s at least 1080p. Keep in mind that now that gifs are converted to gifv, your gifs might look grainy or blurry when you post them even if they look fine when you save them. You can go back and mess with the coloring to see if this helps but otherwise there’s not much you can do about the conversion.

Those are all the tips I have for now! If anything doesn’t make sense or you have any questions please let me know.

[paradisobound]

I Want It, I Got It: Chapter 26

Summary: Phil Lester was a worker for the BBC in London. Working in the advertising department, he was content being alongside his friend and fellow coworker PJ during every shift. However, the BBC is temporarily being used as a film set for a new movie staring Hollywood ‘It’ star, Daniel Howell. Being stuck as an extra on the set, Phil finds it’s hard to ignore the famous star. And maybe, just maybe, Dan finds it hard to ignore Phil as well.

Word Count: 2.6k (this chapter)

Warnings: Occasional swearing and sexual content 

Rating: Explicit

Updates will be every Sunday around 1pm EST

**MASTERLIST | READ ON AO3 | WATTPAD**

The picture was spread over every corner of the world. Everywhere Phil looked, he saw the photo. It was so blurry and grainy but it was obvious who it was and it was obvious what was happening. Every time he looked at the photo, he felt sicker and sicker. 

The worst part was that he felt so powerless to everything. He felt absolutely powerless to anything that was happening and it was so far beyond their control. When he’d gotten off from the phone with Dan, he’d cried so hard that Spike barked at him and Phil had yelled for him to shut up and then immediately apologized. He’d held Spike close. He knew his crying was unsettling for his pup. 

He hadn’t bothered to call his mum back or Martyn. He didn’t even look at PJ’s text. A part of him believes that if he stops looking at his phone and seeing the photo, he can believe the photo never existed and this entire thing wasn’t happening. 

He was curled up on his bed when he heard Dan enter his flat a short time later. He could hear Dan’s footsteps walk around before they eventually walked to the bedroom. Phil looked up at him and immediately broke down into tears again at Dan’s puffy eyes and tear stained cheeks. 

“What are we going to do?” 

“Marianne is talking with the media right now to try and get the photo pulled. I have my entire team working individually to find the source of the photo so we can press charges.” 

“But that doesn’t solve our problem.” Phil says, reaching up and wiping his cheeks. 

“I know.” Dan says. “But there isn’t anything we can do right now.” 

Phil let out a long sigh. “So what are we going to do now?” 

Dan walked into the bedroom further and shrugged his shoulders. He took a seat on the edge of Phil’s bed and sniffled. “I actually don’t know.” 

“I don’t either.” 

“We could release statements and ask for privacy but…” 

“That doesn’t really work when our privacy has already been breached.” Phil says. 

Dan nods in agreement. 

“I never really planned for this to ever happen.” Dan says. “I should have been more careful. I knew how paparazzi liked to follow me around and I knew that they would eventually find out where I was but I still should have been more careful. It was my fault for kissing you in such an open setting.” 

“It’s not your fault.” Phil says. He actually believes―no, knows this too. He knows that this isn’t Dan’s fault and he doesn’t want Dan taking the blame for it. Not with all of this shit crumbling around them, he doesn’t need Dan to take the fall. 

“But it is.” Dan says. “It’s indirectly my fault and you can’t argue with it. I’m the one who is the celebrity, not you.” 

“But that isn’t your fault for what the paparazzi are doing to you―to us. They’re ruining our privacy and breaching our boundaries.” 

“I know.” Dan says. “And on top of that, I have that movie premiere tomorrow night and I’m going to have to show up since it’ll look fucked if I don’t. And when I get there, I’m going to bombarded by people and cameras and microphones and I’m going to have to bite my tongue to not tell them to get fucked.” 

“This is all such bullshit.” Phil says. 

Dan nods again in agreement. 

“What do you want to do?” Dan asks him and it catches Phil off guard. 

“I don’t know.” 

Dan lets out a watery sigh. “I told Marianne that I would travel back to LA tomorrow night immediately following the premiere. I need to sort things out back home.” 

“Okay.” 

“I’m sorry.” 

Phil reached out and put his hand on Dan’s arm. “Don’t apologize.” 

Dan laid down on the bed and rolled closer to Phil, bringing their bodies closer together. Phil wrapped his arms around Dan’s torso and pulled him close. 

They just laid in silence together. In the background, Phil could hear both of their phones going off, constantly vibrating from emails, missed calls, and texts. But right now, they just lay together, crying silently as they think about the future and what’s going to happen. 

They were just outed in front of the entire world. Phil wasn’t even out to some of his coworkers and past friends and now, his name is plastered on headlines as kissing Daniel Howell. He can only imagine what people must be thinking right now. He doesn’t even want to see his social media. He doesn’t want to see his Twitter or Instagram or even his YouTube channel. 

Whatever chance he had a normal life was just ripped away from him and he’ll never get it back. He’s always be known as the guy in the photo kissing Daniel Howell. 

They remain silent until Dan suddenly begins to kiss him and they find themselves getting heated. Just mere moments later, Dan is beneath him, spreading his legs open and Phil is stretching him open and pushing inside not long after. It’s a bit sad and Phil feels tears prick his eyes as he thrusts into Dan. But as his thrusting gets faster and Dan moans under him, he feels something deep and primal take over. 

This is the one thing they have between them that remains private. Sex will always be just for him and Dan to have. No one will be able to see Dan like Phil does. No one will see the way Dan shuts his eyes and bites his lip as he moans. No one will see what Dan looks like naked underneath them. 

This is just for Phil to see from now on and forever and he intends to eventually make that clear. 

Dan finishes before him but not long after, Phil pulls out and finishes on Dan’s belly. It was what he needed to feel the stress leave his body and he can tell Dan feels the same way as his muscles unclench in his stomach and back. They don’t even bother to clean up. They just lay down next to each other and fall asleep. 

***

Phil calls in sick to work the next morning and then before Phil can really comprehend what the day is actually going to bring, Dan tells him that he needs to leave so he can go and get ready all day for the premiere that night. Their goodbye is much more bittersweet than when Phil left Los Angeles. There isn’t as many tears shed but it definitely hurts a lot more because Phil has no idea what the future is going to bring anymore. 

He’s lost. 

He’s completely and utterly lost. 

He sees Dan out with one last kiss goodbye and then Dan leaves out the door to a black cab with his suitcase and he’s gone once again out of Phil’s life. Phil doesn’t even know when he’s going to see Dan again and maybe that’s why this departure feels a lot more bittersweet. 

This was supposed to be his and Dan’s time to be together and it was ruined by the paparazzi and now they couldn’t enjoy what they wanted to. Phil has to figure out what to do while Dan goes to a movie premiere and then flies back to Los Angeles to figure out what he is going to do. 

He sits on his couch all day and ignores all of the phone calls that come in. He sends his mum and brother texts asking for some time to himself and then he turns off his phone and leaves it be. 

When he gets onto his laptop, he finds himself looking through his old footage of videos that he and Dan had filmed when he was in LA. He clicks through the videos and finds one of him and Dan doing a Q+A that they had asked questions for and finds himself importing the footage into his editing software and splicing it together. 

He works on that until its done and he honestly does not know how long it takes. He exports it and renders it and then he’s on his YouTube channel. Phil’s clicking on his profile and then he’s clicking on upload and suddenly he’s uploading the video and titling it. He adds in the description that this is the last video he’ll post for a while and then as it uploads, he watches the progress bar rise further and further to 100%. 

When it’s finished, he presses publish and takes a deep breath before closing his laptop and tossing it gently to the floor and laying on his side. 

He never sees what the reception of the video was. He never sees anyones reaction. He doesn’t even see what Dan says about the video because by the time he finally turns his phone on, the premiere for the moving is beginning and he’s watching it on his telly. 

Spike lays with him and they watch the TV as the hosts of the entertainment channel he stumbled upon talk about how it’s going to be a star studded night for the occasion and they were going to be covering some of the celebrities who were showing up to the red carpet. 

Phil watches curiously as all of the celebrities begin to arrive for the premiere and then suddenly a limo pulls ups and he see Dan step out with the help of a bodyguard. Phil watches with a tight throat as he sees all of the flashing lights flaring at Dan. He’s wearing a black pin stripe blazer with black pants and Phil thinks he looks stunning and he’s upset that he didn’t get the chance to tell Dan that himself. 

“Daniel Howell has just arrived to the red carpet.” The one host says on the TV. “He’s been the center of media headlines over the last couple weeks and there were talks that his appearance tonight would be up in the air.” 

The host suddenly walks over to Dan and Phil can see the fear that is registering over his face as the host points the microphone at him. “Hello, Dan! Do you care to tell us who you’re wearing tonight?” 

“I’m wearing Marc Jacobs.” Dan says with a smile. 

“Ooh.” She says. “We were all surprised to see you at the premiere tonight following the massive media attention in the last 24 hours.” 

Phil watches Dan’s smile falter and Phil wants to go through the screen and shake the host and scream at her that she shouldn’t be asking Dan that. But instead, he has to sit back and watch as Dan visibly recoils and then tries to answer. 

“Well, my friends all worked hard on this film and I’d been an extra on the set so it only feels right that I still come out and support them on such a great occasion.” 

Dan then turns away from the host and walks away and the host tries to play it off like that was what was supposed to happen and she turns back to the camera to speak about how Chris Hemsworth was arriving right about now to the red carpet. 

Phil reaches for the remote and flips the channel, finding a cooking show to watch instead as the bile rises in his throat. 

***

Phil gets around to calling his mum before he goes to bed that night and he shares a  healthy cry with her over the phone. His mum keeps him calm and tells him that she’s spoken to someone to act as a publicist on his behalf and this time, Phil doesn’t argue with her about it. He needs the help. 

He hears from Dan when he leaves the premiere and heads for the airport and when he falls asleep that night, he’s convinced that Dan is on his flight back to Los Angeles. 

Phil wakes up from a restless sleep to his phone buzzing repeatedly on his night stand. He reaches for it and checks it and sees that is Dan wanting to Facetime. He looks at the time and notes that it is a little after 6am which means Dan is back in the USA by now. 

Phil answers it and Dan’s face pops up on the screen in front of him. His eyes are puffy and his cheeks red and Phil knows that there is something different―more tense―hanging in the air as Dan opens his mouth to speak. 

“We need to talk, Phil.” He begins. 

“Okay.” Phil chokes out. 

“i’ve been doing some thinking and…” Dan’s voice breaks. “I think we should take a break.” 

Phil feels his heart shatter as if someone just took a sledgehammer to glass but he tries his best to hide it despite his vision blurring. 

“I don’t want to do this.” Dan says, his voice continuing to break as he speaks. “But I think it’s for the best if we take the time apart to let this situation clear and then we can try again.” 

“Okay.” 

“This isn’t a break up.” Dan reassures. “This is just a break, okay?” 

“Okay.” 

“Can you please say something else?” Dan pleaded. 

“What do you want me to say?” Phil says. “I think a break is a good thing too.” Phil lies. 

“Are you…are you sure that’s how you feel?” Dan asks. 

Phil nods, a tear suddenly sliding down his cheek and landing on his neck. 

“Fuck, this is so much harder than I wanted it to be.” Dan says, his voice hoarse. 

Phil can see that he’s crying silently to himself. 

“I think it’s best too if we try and remain as low as we can about each other.” Dan says. “I think we shouldn’t try to contact each other for the next few days and we should just try and let this situation be pushed on.” 

Phil turns his head and tries to hide the fact that a sob is threatening to break through his mouth. “Okay.” 

“This isn’t easy for me, Phil.” Dan says. “I love you so damn much, okay and that’s why I’m doing this.” Dan sniffles. “It’s just until we can figure out what we can do in the future.” 

Phil just nods and pulls his lips into a tight line as he looks at the screen through a clouded gaze. Dan brings his hand up and wipes off his face. 

“I didn’t want it to come to this.” 

“Me either.” Phil says. 

“But it’s just until the media blows over. I promise.” 

Phil nods and Dan tries to give him a sympathetic smile but it falters and crumbles as he wipes off the new tears from his face. “It’s late there and I know you’re supposed to be sleeping so I’ll let you go.” 

Please don’t go. 

“I love you.” Dan says before he shifts just a bit on camera. “Bye, Phil.” 

The call ends and Phil feels his heart shutter into millions of unfixable pieces. He drops his phone to the other side of the bed and curls onto his side as he pulls his knees up to his chest and lets go all fo the sadness from the last few days. 

[ikesenhell]

Peeling Back The Mask

Bloodline, Chapter 5. You can find all other IkeSen works of mine here. NOTE: This was a LiveWrite! Thank you all for coming out! Fortunately, there isn’t a content warning this chapter. Thank god. 

Ieyasu didn’t want to hand over the tape. He only relented after a fruitless night tossing and turning, his mother’s blood-streaked face burned in his nightmares. Was she still alive? Was she still out there, chained and imprisoned in some dark basement, captive to nothing more than the heartless blink of a video camera and the cold link of chains on her wrist?

But he needed details. He needed the where, when, how old, and so he handed over the CD, heart in his throat, to Mitsunari.

“Don’t--” He stammered, trying to think of anything to say to his least favorite person. Don’t fucking say anything. Don’t you dare be cheery right now. You can’t see me weak.

But Mitsunari just nodded and pushed his glasses up his nose, more serious than ever. “I’ll do my best to find the information you need.”

Ieyasu balled his fingers tight into fists and choked a strangled, “Thanks.”

---

The video was from around 1999. That explained the grainy footage. She’d gone missing around 1998, so that lined up. How was he supposed to feel? On one hand, it was very possible her situation was worse (though he honestly couldn’t envision how and didn’t want to)--and on the other, it felt very likely that the sweet embrace of death had taken her from her misery.

Ieyasu didn’t want to wish death on his mother, but he assumed in this situation, it was a mercy.

Later that day, his cellphone buzzed. A glance at the number and his stomach dropped.

“Are you alright?” She was doling out some pasta dish or another that she’d cooked tonight, poised with the pot braced between her ribs and elbow. “Someone calling with information?”

“No,” he managed. “It’s… it’s my ‘Uncle’.”

They fell silent. The phone buzzed loudly on the wood grain table three more times. He couldn’t clue anyone in that he knew what was happening. If his mother was still alive (if, that was a very big if), then her safety hinged on his cooperation.

He flipped the phone on and pinned it against his cheek. “Hello?”

“‘Yasu!” The man’s cheery voice roared through the speaker. Once his Uncle’s inability to use a normal volume was funny. Now it was just awful. Ieyasu braced himself in his chair and screwed his eyes shut, swallowing the waves of venom rising in his throat. “What are you doing?”

“Having dinner.”

“Having dinner? With someone?”

Ieyasu cast his eyes over at the Princess, who just finished scraping the pasta into bowls and returned to the kitchen. “No?”

“Huh.” A beat. “Well, your Aunt misses you. You should come by tomorrow, have a bit of dinner. We might even go to the movies. How about it?”

A sickening twist of I know who you aren’t and sure, yep, sounds great surged through him. This man--this stranger--had raised him. How could he separate that from the truth grinding in his ears? How could he reconcile the lies to the reality of the past two decades?

“Y’okay there?” His Uncle asked.

“Yeah,” Ieyasu lied. “Trying to think of my schedule. Hold on.”

“I thought you had a normal nine-to-five?”

“You know that’s not the case in practice.” He made an audible show of getting off his chair and pattering into the kitchen, squeezing past the woman with a hand to the small of her back. She jumped and blushed, but he pretended not to notice, just rifling through his calendar. It was always possible that the man really was asking him to hang out, but the more cynical part of him assumed that wasn’t the case. There was an angle somewhere.

Come to think of it…

“I’m on call tomorrow,” he answered, more surprised at himself for having never thought of this. “How does Thursday sound?”

“Hmm.” Apparently his Uncle wasn’t convinced, but he just sighed. “Well, Thursday will probably work. I’ll let your Aunt know. We love you, ‘Yasu.”

No you don’t. No, you don’t. He swallowed his feelings like broken glass and replied, “Love you all too.”

The line went dead. God, he needed something, anything to distract him now--and fortunately, he had just the thing. Ripping open the calendar, he started making marks. “I might need you to do a little research while we eat.”

“Mmm? What’s up? Are you okay?” Her voice was comforting and soft.

“Yeah, yeah, just thought of something.” He unpinned the calendar from the wall and took it back to the table with them, eating with one hand and highlighting with the other. “I need you to run a few dates for me through my hours log.”

“Sure?” She pattered into the office and emerged with the official laptop they’d set her up with, opening it and logging in. The poor woman had gone to so much trouble with dinner. Guilt flashed through him and he speared a bit of grilled zucchini harder than he meant.

“It’s good,” he mumbled.

“Hm?”

“The food,” he snapped, very on the spot. “Good.” Wow, could that sentence have been more mangled? “Tastes good. Thanks.”

Her smile was kinder than he deserved. “I’m glad.”

“Right.” He cleared his throat hard. “Okay. I’ll run off some dates. Tell me if I got called in for something major on the same day, alright? August first, twenty-seventeen.”

“Yes.”

“August twenty-eight, twenty-seventeen.”

“Yes.”

And on and on they went. Ieyasu dutifully listed each date his Uncle and Aunt conveniently wanted him to visit them, and on every single one, a major incident was recorded back in the base--with him being called in most of the time. He didn’t even need the last few months to confirm his theory, but he did it anyway. Maybe it was to cement the anger and rage, that betrayal burning hot in him, packing all of his sorrow and grief together until it formed its own wild star.

“Ieyasu?” She asked eventually, folding her glasses against her chest. “Are you okay?”

“What do you fucking think?” He snapped.

A pause. She nodded and folded the laptop shut. “Sorry. Stupid question.”

“He knew,” Ieyasu managed, breathless from anger. “He knew. This whole time, he knew. He guilted me and made me feel like shit and dragged me away from work intentionally. He knew something. This isn’t coincidence.”

Nothing more was said. With a resounding click, she just shut the laptop.

---

Nightmares woke him. Gasping for breath, he felt his way along his bedside table until he yanked on the chain of his lamp altogether too hard, watching it crash to the floor. Still, it did the job. Light lanced around his small room and provided him the meagre reassurance that he was alone after all.

God, he needed to get it together.

Kicking off the sheets, he righted the lamp and headed for the kitchen. It was chilly in the living room. He could still smell the distant scent of pasta and vegetables that he hadn’t appreciated in the moment. He poured himself a cup of cool water and gulped it down, refilled it, drank all that too, and got a third. Thousands of thoughts swirled in his mind and he crushed them all down. Nighttime was a time to sleep. He couldn’t stand and waste himself with worrying in this moment. He needed to quiet himself.

On his way back to his room, he saw the faint blue cast of light from the office. Was she still up? Ieyasu automatically tried to check his phone and realized he’d left it on the bedside table. Curious, he rapped his knuckles against the door.

“Come in.”

He eased the door open with a tap of his foot. There she was, clad in some white pajamas and settled into the office chair, a series of sticky notes littering the desk before her. Pale light from the laptop backlit her face. Not for the first time, Ieyasu realized she was really very lovely.

“What are you doing up?” She asked, pushing her glasses back up on her head. “It’s very late.”

He huffed. “Speak for yourself.”

The faintest of uneasy smiles flickered over her lips. “I was having nightmares.”

Part of him wanted to admit that he was, too, that the same things that haunted him no doubt ghosted her sleeping footsteps. He couldn’t bring himself to do that just yet. Instead he crossed to her side and peered at the computer screen, a thousand different searches on different individuals on a myriad of tabs. “What are you doing?”

“Hunting down your ‘Uncle’s’ real identity.” She threw up the finger quotes. “I figured it was high time that someone peeled back that mask.”

How could he even respond to that? He stared at her for so long that apparently she grew uncomfortable under his gaze. “I’m sorry, if you don’t want me to--”

“No, that’s not what--”

“--I don’t mean to intrude on anything--”

“--I’m just kind of--”

They both lapsed into silence again. After all the crosstalk, quiet was just funny. Ieyasu snorted, and she snickered, and finally they were quietly giggling in that dark room.

“No,” he managed, “sorry, I was just… surprised that this was what you decided to do.”

“Of course. It’s what I’m here for, and frankly, I got sort of… pissed about it.” She shrugged. “So I decided I was going to take a little time and expose him.”

A surge of foreign affection bloomed hot in his chest. Why was she here? After all this time, he was pretty sure he didn’t deserve to have someone so kind in his house. Without thinking, he reached out and took a hold of her hand.

“How about…” He struggled with words for a moment, trying to get past the look of surprise in her eyes, “Do you like Youtube videos?”

Wow. Wow. In retrospect he wanted to smack himself. What an inane question was that? But she pinned her lips between her teeth to stop from laughing and just smiled at him.

“Yeah,” she answered. “I like them alright, depending on what they are.”

“No shit,” he snipped, angry at himself still. “Uh, well, how about we just, um, hang out in the other room and watch something stupid? Not cause I want to, but you won’t be much use to me if you spend all night doing this and can’t work in the morning.”

“Right. That makes sense.” But she was smiling at him. “You’re probably right.”

They slipped back into the living room together and flopped down onto the grey couch, elbows and shoulders knocking together. He was more exhausted than he’d thought, or had to be--the contact didn’t bother him so much. After a moment he remembered he’d forgotten his phone in the other room, peeled himself back up, snatched up a blanket and the device, and returned to her, draping it over them both as he sat back down.

“You’re too cold,” he mumbled by way of an excuse. “What kind of videos should we watch?”

“Maybe something stupid, like a Vine compilation?”

“You’re right. That is stupid.”

But he thumbed Youtube open nonetheless and cast it onto the TV. Mercifully she held her tongue when the app told on him and revealed that one of his favorite things was to watch Vine compilations with Masamune. Throwing his most-watched one up there, he lay in the silence and felt her rumble with laughter at his side.

Somewhere along the line they both fell asleep. He woke around six only to find himself lying down, her head resting on his chest and his arm wrapped around her shoulders. He considered moving.

But he didn’t hate it.

Taking a deep breath, he stilled his mind again and drifted back into a dreamless rest.

[jestbee]

Phanfic Round Robin - Group 2

Tags: Angst, domestic violence in the past, a new story about murder, established relationship

Words: 3.5k

Writers: (in no particular order) @artsietango @p-hantasticpheels @softdans @heartfeltfangirl @phantasizeit @phanarchy

T

Notes: Group 2 were the first to finish! Well done! this was a lot of fun, and all the fics turned out a bit different. 

I’ll post the bit I wrote above the cut, and then the rest of the fic, written collaboratively by the group, below it. Enjoy!

Can’t Take it Back

He can't take it back. He wants to, if he could rewind and make the words jump back into his mouth, snatch them back from the air between them he would. But he can't.

It's out there, and the look on Dan's face is raw and open and Phil doesn't really know what to make of it.

One of them is going to have to say something soon, they can't continue on like this.

“I…” Phil tries, but it's no use.

It was a mistake. He's concentrating on the game and not the words that are coming out of his mouth, that's how it had happened.

Now the game is paused, music still playing in the background, colourful characters suspended mid-action. Everything seems like it's paused, because that's what happens when this kind of thing is said.

Dan shakes his head and for once Phil isn't really sure what he means to indicate by it. Above their heads, staring down, a red light blinks ominously. They stare in silence and the camera keeps rolling.

Dan has a good sense of humor. Phil tries to remind himself that, but the game is on hold and he still isn’t speaking. It could be shock that Phil said such a thing while recording, that he would imply a romantic relationship. Truthfully, in his focus, Phil forgot entirely about the gaming channel.

He knew that wasn’t it though. This was crossing the lines for them no matter what context. Maybe if it had been about anyone else, but no. It was Sam he had compared Dan to, Phil’s last lover, and though it was a joke the comparison also wasn’t very kind.

Still in silence, Dan stood and dropped, chucked really, his controller on his chair. He exhaled slowly, regaining composure.

“I can’t believe you,” he said as he clicked the camera off. The red light shone bright for a moment before it dimmed into blackness. Dan spun around, swiftly making a beeline to the door.

“Dan!” Phil called out behind him. He heard the door click shut with finality.

Phil pushes his hands back into his hair, tipping back in the office chair dangerously, knowing if Dan was sitting beside him he’d scold Phil for being careless. Still flashing in and out of focus, the glowing red PAUSED screen catches the curve of his glasses and he reaches up to switch it off, knowing he’ll have to scrap the footage. There’s no way he wants to sit and edit through that; he doesn’t think Dan will, either.

“Babe,” he’d said, voice laced with irritation, letting slip not a pet-name but a marker that he was annoyed with Dan, “will you stop- Dan! I had it, then, why did you do that? You’re so cocky, don’t be a Sam”

They could withstand a lot of things from one another; they were so intensely close, after so many years, that barely anything fazed them. Sam, though. It was when Dan was still working through a mountain of insecurity and self-doubt, when he sometimes looked at Phil doe-eyed because he was a smitten nineteen-year-old without the means of expressing it just yet, when he’d try valiantly to hide the darkened, crestfallen expression on his face at the mention of Phil’s relationship. It would have been easier to categorize as jealousy and file it away, if not for the fact that Sam was a complete asshole. Dan saw it, and a little too late, Phil saw it, and when Phil was still cut up about it Dan swore up and down that he’d never, ever be like that. Any notion that Dan could be anything like him rubbed Dan the wrong way, and Phil hates himself for accidentally implying it.

Just as he stands, dusts off his jeans, readies a speech in his mind, he hears the front door click back into place and knows he’s well and truly fucked up. In vain, he tries Dan’s mobile, throwing his own to the carpet when he hears the familiar melodious ringtone echoing down the hall. Part of Phil knows that Dan needs his space, needs to go for a walk and cool off and come back when he’s ready, but the desperate, guilty, anxious part of him urges him to look high and low until he finds Dan. Frustrated and at a loss, he collapses back into the shitty futon with his head in his hands, wondering how he can make this better.

-

It’s cold out.

It’s cold and the chill is dry and biting. It leaves a painful burning ache in Dan’s knuckles as he rubs them absently for warmth.

Dan’s been walking for almost an hour now and he’s under dressed for the weather in his flimsy jumper and simple black jeans but he has no concern for his ice cold limbs as his mind is numb from disbelief and betrayal. 

He knows though that Phil didn’t mean to say that. He knew it as soon as Phil spoke, the instant regret filling his wide blue eyes, mouth parted as if he couldn’t process the words he said himself but what’s done is done and Phil can’t take those words back even if he wants to, while Dan can’t pretend he hasn’t heard them.

He’s hurt and the emotion is justified.

Dan can be obnoxious, he could shout too much or buy weird expensive potato sacks for clothes but he could never be Sam. Phil comparing them even on accident is something that leaves him rattled.

Sam Hayden would’ve seemed normal enough to anyone with his blonde hair, charming smile and masterful words but Dan knew better and it was a curse in itself that he did. 

He’d found out tracing scars upon scars on Phil’s body and soul. He’d found out piecing together a person who was too precious to be ever treated in such a deranged and downright psychopathic way.

Dan would’ve never treated Phil like that. He never could and he never would and that’s one of the reasons being in the same sentence as that monster hurt him enough to storm out without a second thought.

He loves Phil so fucking much. 

He’s loved him since he first saw him on that YouTube window rambling on and on about everything and nothing as Dan wonders how one person could be allowed to be so enchanting. He’s loved him on that grainy, flickering Skype screen with his mane of a hair ruffled to a mess, bangs in his eyes and a shy smile on his pink lips. He’s loved him with his arms wrapped around him in Manchester’s train station, breathing in his scent and wondering how he could even be real.

He’s loved him through pain too, just like he has with Dan’s. He’s held Phil through the worst of his nightmares, worst of his flashbacks. Rubbed his back and matched his shallow breaths till he could see Dan again instead of cruel green eyes and rough cold hands.

Phil knows it all and Dan knows that Phil knows how much a comparison with Sam fucking Hayden would kill him but he’s let the words slip.

Dan’s mad at him, rightfully so and he has a full mind of giving him the silent treatment at least until he’s ready to forgive him but then he notices the television playing on the screen of a shop he passes by.

He stops dead in his tracks.

The caption’s up in blaring red, loud and ringing in Dan’s ears. The newscaster’s voice is somber as he recounts how a man has killed his girlfriend during a domestic argument, strangling her to death. The police lead out a large man with blonde hair and green eyes with cuffs around his wrist and the same cruel expression and Dan feels sick to his stomach.

“Maria Williams died from homicide via strangulation, according to Alfred Tiller, chief deputy. William’s boyfriend, 32-year-old Sam Hayden, was present at the scene when authorities arrived, according to local Police Department. Hayden was arrested and now faces a preliminary charge of murder.”

No.

Dan feels like he could wretch as he turns and sprints back to the apartment. He hopes to God Phil hasn’t seen the news. He reaches for his pocket to take out his phone and call Phil to make sure but curses as soon as he remembers he left it back in the lounge.

“Fuck,” he mumbles, “fuck, fuck.”

A woman with a child clutching at her hand a few feet across of him scoffs at him, but Dan doesn’t even apologize. He just stares back at her before he turns and starts jogging back to where he came from.

This is all so messed up.

A minute ago all Dan felt was white-hot anger running through his veins, anger and hurt at the fact that Phil used such a sensitive topic against him. Now he only berates himself for it. It’s not him who’s been in that abusive relationship, not him who still wakes up crying sometimes, who had to work through years of therapy and slowly trying to trust again.

Fuck.

And while for Dan, seeing this news broadcast has shocked him deeply, he is not the one who sees that kind of face in his nightmares.

He’s panting by the time he makes it into the house they live in. He waits for the elevator, come on, come on, maybe he should have taken the stairs, but it’d probably take longer- The elevator arrives, and he gets inside, sacks against the handles.

Why did he overreact so much? He doesn’t know, he’s going to analyze that later, but right now his mind is filled with all kinds of scenarios where Phil is breaking down. His mind plays through them all and he stands, helpless, watches as the numbers tick by as he slowly climbs the building.

And then he’s there, he jumbles in the key, jerks open the door, and-

“Dan?”

Phil is in the hallway looking at him. He is not hurt, he is not crying or panicking, he is okay.

“You’re okay,” Dan breathes in relief, “you’re fine.”

“I mean,” Phil starts, “I- I am sorry for what I said. I know I shouldn’t... but, wait, why were you... are you worried? About what?”

Dan swallows. Phil doesn’t know yet, and Dan freaked out, and now he’s gonna have to tell him because he will find out sooner or later anyway.

“Um,” he says, very eloquently, “can you come sit down with me?”

Phil nods, looking confused, but he lets Dan pull the front door closed, pass him in the hallway, and lead him into the lounge. They both sit, poised awkwardly on the edge of the couch. Dan is suddenly reminded of sitting on the same couch in their old London apartment, listening in horror as Phil broke down and told Dan that he didn’t think his relationship with Sam was “all that healthy anymore.” Phil had started crying and hyperventilating and apologising, like it was his fault for all of it. Dan hadn’t known what to say. He could only rub Phil’s back, in what he hoped was a soothing manner, and ask Phil what he needed from Dan. Although Phil didn’t tell Dan the extent of the abuse that day, it had been one of the first steps toward getting out of the relationship with Sam and recovering.

Dan remembers what it was like to feel utterly powerless as he watched Phil cry and panic about someone that Dan thought Phil was in love with. He remembers what it was like to have no words for Phil. Dan feels the same wordlessness, now.

Phil is waiting patiently, playing with his long fingers in his lap, pointedly not looking at Dan. But as the silence stretches on, Phil says: “I’m sorry about what I said. I don’t know why I said it. You aren’t—you aren’t Sam. You’ve never been like him. You helped me through all that, so I can’t imagine how much it hurt to be compared—”

“Phil,” Dan interrupts, “stop, please. It’s forgotten. Sometimes we say stupid things we don’t mean. God knows I’ve done the same.”

Phil knows Dan is right. Their relationship hasn’t been an easy one, with one of them recovering from abuse. In the beginning, it was hard on Dan, especially because he was still so young when Phil finally broke up with Sam. They had a lot of fights back then.

“Plus, I found something out… something that made me forget that I was even mad at you. But I’m scared to tell you.” Dan whispers, not trusting his voice to be strong enough to speak normally.

Phil bites his lip and reaches over to grab Dan’s hand. It’s their only point of contact, but the familiar heat of it calms them both, just a little bit. He tries not to let his brain run wild, but what could have Dan possible discovered in his short walk around London that has gotten him this torn up? “Whatever it is, Dan, I can handle it.”

Dan nods, but still doesn’t say anything. The words are there, but Dan can’t fit them together in a combination that doesn’t sound so utterly wrong and evil.

Phil squeezes Dan’s hand, reaches out to Dan’s chin and tips his head back to get him to look Phil in the eyes. “Whatever it is, Dan. We can handle it. We’ve been through so much together.” Dan exhales a breath, slowly, tousling a little bit of Phil’s fringe in the process. Dan leans forward to press a quick, chaste kiss to Phil’s lips. Phil lets go of Dan’s chin. And then:

“I think… Sam is in jail.” Dan is so quiet that Phil must strain to hear the tiny words floating past Dan’s lips. But when Phil works out what Dan has said and realizes their meaning, he freezes. Sam. His ex-boyfriend Sam? In jail?

Phil closes his eyes and breathes in the manner that his therapist has taught him to. Slowly in for six seconds, and then slowly out for seven. Repeat. When he has a handle on his heart and lungs, Phil whispers, “in jail for what?” even though, deep down, his heart knows what he’s in jail for. He can almost feel it. Or maybe he can just deduce it, based on his own experiences. Sam’s abuse began subtly; he was controlling and used guilt to make Phil do and think certain things. Sam manipulated Phil, making him feel like he was lucky to be loved by Sam, because no one else could ever love Phil’s quirks. Things got incrementally worse, so slowly that Phil almost didn’t even detect changes. Physical abuse didn’t even come into the equation until years into their relationship—and even that started out small, forgivable. Sam’s abuse was a gradually boiling pot, in which Phil was trapped. The increasing heat was only ever slightly uncomfortable, until Phil had something healthier to compare his relationship to. But, Phil knows, that if he had stayed in that boiling pot, that he would have been slowly boiled to death.

And Phil knows. Sam was in jail because he had successfully boiled someone to death.

Dan, unaware of Phil’s inner thoughts, responds to Phil is a gentle voice. He is rubbing Phil’s knuckles with his thumb in a familiar, soothing gesture. Phil’s eyes are still closed because he knows that, if he opens them, the world will seem too bright and overwhelming. The room will spin, and harsh colours will press themselves painfully into Phil’s eyes. Dan confirms Phil’s premonition, making it one of the only moments in his life that Phil wishes he wasn’t just a little bit psychic. “Sam… Sam is in jail for… killing his girlfriend.”

At that, Phil collapses back on the couch, his head landing on the back pillow with an uncomfortable clunk. Dan doesn’t follow; he knows that Phil needs space in these moments and will ask Dan if he needs more. Dan is still holding Phil’s hand, but he angles himself toward Phil, bringing a knee up on the couch to make it more comfortable for him.

Phil’s head is swimming with memories and thoughts. He tries his best to allow them space in his head, but not fight against them or dwell on them. Another technique taught to him by his therapist… that isn’t really working. Dan’s words—killing his girlfriend—are echoing in his head in a painful crescendo. Moments in Phil’s past are flashing in his head. They aren’t complete enough to be flashbacks, but quick and plenty enough to be jarring and confusing.

Phil snaps and pushes himself off the sofa, opening his eyes for the first time in a few minutes. The sudden movement is a mistake and he sways on his feet, pitching dangerously to one side. Dan sees it, hops up, and steadies Phil with his hands on Phil’s hips. Phil tenses at the touch and Dan detects the almost imperceptible movement. He reassures Phil, “it’s just me. It’s just Dan. I’m just making sure you don’t fall and hit your head. Do you want me to help you to bed?”

Phil turns to Dan with wide, terrified eyes. His irises are a shocking, icy blue. They don’t look unfocused and distant, thank god. But Phil sounds desperate when he says “Please.”

Slowly but surely, Dan ushers Phil to his bedroom, helping him down onto the checkerboarded blue and green covers. Phil mutters out a weak thanks before nearly collapsing onto the bed, his knees pulled up and his arms going limp, his hand not letting go of Dan’s. Dan takes a deep breath, almost regretting telling Phil, but it was too late now, and at any rate, he had the right to know.

“Is there anything I can do?” He asks softly, rubbing his thumb against the back of Phil’s hand, trying to magically make him feel better through the small, simple motion.

“I dunno, just - just- please don’t go.” Phil murmurs, fighting the tears that started to prick his eyes.

“Are you sure? Are you sure you don’t want to be alone?” Dan asks, his worrying giving an edge to his voice.

“I can’t, I just can’t...” Phil manages to choke out, tears slowly escaping down his cheekbones. He scoots over a little to make room for Dan on the bed.

Carefully, Dan awkwardly crawls onto the bed to lie down next to Phil, wrapping the arm attached to Phil’s hand around him. It takes a few minutes, with a couple of prompts from Dan to just breathe, until Phil finally begins to feel himself calm down.

He sighs, tightening his hand around Dan’s as he brings it up to his lips, kissing it lightly. Dan’s embrace becomes a little more protective after he realizes Phil is going to be okay, that everything is going to be fine between them.

Phil begins to turn over to face Dan, letting go of his hand to wrap his arms around Dan’s chest, burying his face against it.

 Dan rests his chin on top of Phil’s head as Phil manages to stammer out, “I-I’m so sorry. I should never have compared you to him. You’re nothing like him Dan, nothing.”

“Ssh, I know, it’s okay. It’s okay, I forgive you. I know you didn’t mean it.” Dan says, rubbing his hand reassuringly up and down Phil’s back. “It’s okay.” After a moments pause, Phil whispers,

“That poor woman. I should’ve know, I could’ve stopped him-“

“It’s okay Phil. You did your best. There’s wasn’t anything different you could have down. Try and rest.” Dan says, his voice almost breaking when he hears Phil blame himself. A couple more moments of silence pass between the two.

Dan is almost certain that Phil has fallen asleep when he says, “I love you Dan. You’ve loved me better than anyone ever has.”

Dan blinks back tears, unable to form the words to speak his love to Phil. Instead, he kisses Phil on the forehead, and wraps him tighter in his arms. His eyes fluttering closed, Phil releases one final shuddering breath before he settles into Dan’s frame, finally falling into a safe, restful sleep. It takes Dan a few minute to close his eyes, a couple of his tears sliding onto Phil’s pillow unnoticed as he held the tall man closer, fiercely promising himself that he would never allow anyone to harm this man again before falling into a fitful sleep.

[junkyard-trash-blog]

Another weird vivid dream with some sleep paralysis thrown in halfway through the dream. In the dream, it jumps to several different scenes which I find really weird because there’s only ever maybe one or two scene jump in any of my dreams.

Scene 1

Information: I’m in a haunted residence with my team of paranormal investigators - there’s four of us total: two guys, a girl, and me (I don’t know if I’m male or female). We’re all adults in our late twenties. The residence is three stories + basement and it’s a castle-like residence made of stone (it actually appears later on). There’s a green filter over my eyesight as though my eyes are like night-vision cameras.

We’re just doing our normal investigation thing when some weird shit starts happening - growling, voices, dark shadow, one guy gets scratched. We run down the three levels of stairs, this being spiral at the time, because the one dude is freaking out and telling us to run.

I enter the basement and the scene shifts suddenly.

Scene 2

Information: My eyesight has a kind of black and white grainy filter except some things are in color. I feel younger than before, like I’m a teenager. The basement is filled with a bunch of cages either stacked on top of each other in the center of the room or on tables lining the walls. Some cages have critters in them: one a raccoon, another a cat, a couple rabbits, and several birds that are crosses between cockatiels and parrots. 

I walk through the room in a funk and for some reason my only thought is about where my laundry basket is because I need to wash my clothes. I see a man near the cages on the right side of the room that is supposed to be my uncle but he looks...off (I can’t say what about him looks weird, it was more his aura or something? idk, he’s just...off...somehow). 

I ask him if he’s seen my laundry basket while staring at a raccoon in a cage nearby. He looks at me and starts speaking in tongues, then he opens a cage and takes out a dark calico-ish cat with glowing golden eyes (like in BBC’s Merlin) (the cat is in color instead of black and white). 

Uncle: Watch over this beast.

Me: *unsure, taking the cat* oh...kay? 

*the cat squirms a bit in my hands*

Uncle: It’s important. Watch over it. Treat it well. Promise me. *stares me down and his eyes are pitch black like demon’s eyes, this doesn’t seem to bother me*

Me: Okay, I’ll watch over it.

The cat settles in my arms and starts sucking my thumb when I tell my uncle that I’ll watch over it. I ask him again about my laundry while follow him to the left side of the room, this is where I see the bird cages.

I look into the four bird cages there while my uncle rambles in tongues in the background. There’s five smaller birds in one, three small/medium-sized birds in another, two medium/large-sized birds in a third, and another small/medium-sized birds in a fourth cage. The birds (cockatiel-parrot hybrids) are all in color instead of black and white.

My uncle enters my field of vision, he mentions rats and the scene shifts.

Scene 3

Information: The world around me is in normal colors. I am a younger teen, maybe 13-15, and I’m in a pet store with a man who’s supposed to be my father but he looks odd too (again, can’t say exactly how he looks odd, but he does; and again, I think it’s his aura or something)

I follow my father around while he talks about pets, he’s going to buy me any pet I want. I tell him that I want two rats and he says okay, but we look at some other animals first. In an open section of the store are two older teen girls wanting to get married (they look like the girls from Hayley Kiyoko’s “Girls Like Girls” music video). They’re talking about how the priest nor their guests would ever show because they’re two girls in love and everyone’s homophobic.

I talk to my father about the different kinds of rats and he nods along - he doesn’t really understand. We run into an employee - a young black woman in an orange-yellow uniform with red suspenders and khakis. I tell her what I want for my pet rats - I want something like a double rex rat, two of the same gender so they won’t breed.

She leads us right over to the rodent section - there’s three whole rows of ten tanks/cages with rats and mice, on the ends are bigger pens for a few giant guinea pigs (and by giant, I mean like the size of a Yorkshire terrier). She shows us the rats and I see two curly-haired ones that I like, both young. One is a toasted marshmallow color and the other is a silvery-grey color with a white belly. 

I decide these are the two that I want, the lady says she nicknamed them [demonic scramble] and [demonic scramble] (the scramble means that whatever is said is in another language, the demonic part means that it sounds demonic). 

She packages the rats up for me. My father pays for everything: rats, cage, food, bedding, and supplies. We start to leave and I can hear a commotion in the background that involves the two girls, the scene shifts as I’m looking back.

Scene 4

Information: I’m maybe 13-14 years old and I’m with my family: my father (looks a bit like Zak Baggins but with a mustache), my mother (who’s face is blurred out), and my older sister. There’s supposed to be one other, my eldest sister, but she’s missing. My middle sister is a popular YouTuber who goes by the name “Jim”.

We’re sitting in the stands of a ballpark, my father is angry and yelling about something (it may have to do with gay/lesbian relationships) while my mother tries to calm him down. He storms off.

My middle sister walks down the stairs (she had gone to the bathroom and missed dad’s outburst), people are screaming around her about “Jim!” because they recognize her from her YouTube channel. Her hair is short with a few long thin braids (I think she cut her hair while in the bathroom but it could have been before, idk) and she’s wearing a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a dark brown-grey t-shirt, and cargo shorts.

She smiles at her fans as she passes then stops in front of me and mom. 

Sibling: I’m sorry, Mama, but this is who I really am. My name is Jim and I’m your son. If you can’t accept that, well -

*Mom hugs him, cutting him off*

Mom: It’s okay, honey. I love you whether you’re a boy or girl. I’m just glad that’s you’re finally on the path to finding out who you truly are.

The scene shifts after our mother says this.

Scene 5

Information: I’m a child of 6-7 years old and I’m sitting in the backseat of a small car between my older sisters (this is before the middle one joins YouTube). Dad is driving and Mom is in the front passenger seat. 

Mom and Dad are talking about having to leave because of some guy. I tune them out as I look back at our house - it’s a big three-story stone house. When I look at it, it looks abandoned and decrepit, there’s vines going up the sides, windows are boarded, and there’s a couple doors missing.

The house isn’t supposed to look like that yet (it’s the same house from the first scene that me and my team are investigating). I turn to my parents to tell them this and the scene changes.

Scene 6

Information: I’m an older kid of 11-12 years old. The family has stopped to stretch for a moment before we continue our journey to wherever we’re going - Mom and Dad are near the car, my eldest sister is missing, my middle sister is on the train station platform, and I’m standing near her on the ground. The area in front of me has an old train station platform and a small white stone building with a caving roof, one window hole on the side, and a doorway with no door. 

Me and my middle sister are arguing but the words are scrambled to my ears. I do have the feeling that it’s about having to move again because she did something that she wasn’t supposed to do. (it feels like we move around a lot)

The scene quickly changes. (this is weird because it’s such a quick scene, like it was played in fast-forward)

Scene 7

(I wake up briefly here but immediately slip back into unconsciousness, this is also where I believe the sleep paralysis begins though I’m unsure of that)

Information: I’m 9-10 years old and I’m standing behind a white stone building. Up a small grassy hill is a store called femmel duol (it’s supposed to be all-lowercase. it’s sign is: a yellow and red half-flower on top of a shield). Outside femmel duol, in the parking lot, is a black guy in a sequined maroon suit (like Elvis’ white suit but maroon), he has a microphone and he’s singing about “Baby Sugar Ray”. 

I’m scared of the guy singing so I run around the building behind me to get away. I quickly find myself in front of a mechanic shop called “Chuck’s Wood Stock Chop Shop” I’m all alone and I know that I’m not supposed to be here - I’m supposed to be with my friends, my paranormal investigation team, and I’m supposed to be an adult.

I’m starting to freak out because I’m a child in an unknown area. I find a cellphone, a flip phone that I was given in case of emergencies, and I call my dad on instinct. 

Dad: Sweetie? Honey, where are you?

Me: I don’t know, Daddy, I don’t know where I’m at. Where’s Mom? I have to speak to Mom. Where is she?

Dad: It’s okay, Honey, Mama’s here. She’s a bit preoccupied, she went into one of her [scrambled words] and is speaking in tongues. Can you see a sign or any marker of where you are?

*I look around and see a homemade sign: there’s two guys on a motorcycle holding up something - the something is missing; there’s a name above them*

Me: W-Wood Stock, Chuck’s Wood, Stop Shop, Stock Wood *I’m struggling with the words and getting them turned around even though the words on the sign clearly say: Chuck’s Wood Stock Chop Shop*

Dad: Describe it. Does it have Chris Angel with Death on it? (idk why he says this but he does)

Me: It has two guys on a motorcycle.

Dad: Are they holding a scythe with Death’s Skull on it?

Me: I...I don’t know. Part of the sign is missing. Where’s mom?

Dad: Is it called “Chuck’s Wood Stock Chop Shop”?

Me: *I nod then remember we’re on the phone* uh-huh

Dad: We’re on our way. Just wait there, sweetie.

Me: Okay, Daddy

I hang up the phone and wait inside in a little hallway. In the next room are four biker guys (one may actually be a female but it’s hard to tell) and they’re arguing about thieves - someone stole part of their sign.

Suddenly my father is there and so is my eldest sister. The middle sister is still in the car with our mother (this is before my middle sister becomes famous on YouTube and before she realizes she’s trans). I tell my eldest sister that I need to speak to mom but she doesn’t listen.

Me: Where’s Mom? I need to talk to her.

Sister: She’s a little busy right now. She’s [scramble]. You can’t talk to her.

Me: It’s important.

Dad: [scrambled sister’s name] Go check on your Mother, see if she’s okay.

Sister: All right, Dad. *she leaves the small hallway and I follow her* Just stay back, okay? Stay out of my way. *the “stay out of my way” is said in a gentle tone, not menacing like one would normally say it*

Me: Okay

*We go out behind the building and find Mom standing there looking odd and staring at the sky. She’s speaking in tongues*

Sister: Just stay right here, I’m gonna talk to her.

Me: But I need to talk to Mom. It’s important.

Sister: *insistent* Stay right here. You can talk to her in a minute.

Me: *sighs* Fine

*Sister walks up to Mom*

End

The scene is abruptly cut off and I wake up because of my phone alarm. It takes me a minute to move because I’m still in that paralysis state. It’s a lot easier to get my body to move this time which is odd because it normally takes me awhile to get out of the state, but this time it only took a minute or so for me to be able to move.

I just found the dream really odd because of all the scene jumps. As I said above, there’s usually/maybe only one or two jumps in a dream, but this had seven scenes total which I don’t think has ever happened in my dreams before.

[lainahastoomuchsparetime]

There are four threads for this part of this series, so there’ll be four blog posts (plus a bonus one that isn’t about any plot or content, but just me making jokes for like 10 minutes.)

Warning in advance that these will be pretty image heavy as obviously I took a lot of screencaps because movies are a visual media. Without the visuals, they’re just audiobooks.

(Link to Twitter thread.)

Let’s talk about the 1934 Anne of Green Gables by RKO Radio Pictures!

But first some history.

The first Anne of Green Gables adaptation was a silent black and white film starring Mary Miles Minter who honestly seems like she was a super interesting person. Her wikipedia page was really neat to read.

Now, it’s said one of Montgomery’s inspirations for Anne look-wise was Evelyn Nesbitt, and personally in this aspect, I can see why they cast Minter.

See this picture of Evelyn Nesbitt:

Source: Theatrical Cabinet Photographs of Women (TCS 2), Harvard Theatre Collection, Harvard University.

And here are two pictures of Minter:

  (Look who learned you can make little collages on wordpress so pictures can be next to each other! Boy, that’s gonna come in handy later.)

Minter has a star on the Hollywood walk of fame. I’d like to see that some day.

As a silent film star, much of Minter’s work has been lost to time. As much as 75% of silent film has been destroyed by fire, purposeful destruction, and poor storage leading to decay.

The 1919 silent film adaptation of Anne is considered one of these lost films, which is a shame. However, you can watch a clip of what’s been recovered by Jack and Linda Hutton here on youtube

If you’re ever around Muskoka, Ontario, I’d suggest checking their museum, the Bala’s Museum, out. Since it’s the 100th anniversary of the film, they’re doing a special exhibit this summer about it.

Also if you’re ever in the area, and you hit up their giftshop, I will legit pay you back + the shipping if you send me the DVD they’ve made of the 1919 movie XD (Editing Laina: I’m seriously considering buying this.)

While I find this a fascinating piece of history, Montgomery HATED the 1919 movie. They didn’t seem to tell her it was being made (her publisher wasn’t good – there were later long legal battles) and she only found out about it when her cousin saw it. Her cousin hated it, she hated it, and I don’t think it was too popular in general. Montgomery especially hated that they changed the setting from P.E.I. to New England.

New England.

Sorry, America, you can’t have our Anne.

Apparently there were a lot of other odd choices, too, including a pet chicken, a skunk, American flags, and… an angry mob that Anne fended off with a shotgun?

Some um. Interesting choices indeed.

Montgomery also said Minter was “very dainty, very pretty and utterly unlike my gingerly Anne.” Keep that in mind as we go through adaptations, perhaps.

Back to 1934, though. This version stars Dawn O’Day, who took on “Anne Shirley” as her stage name. Can you imagine that today? It’d be like Daniel Radcliffe deciding he was going to be called Harry Potter the rest of of his life.

Going forward, when I need to refer to the actress, I will call her “Shirley” similar to how I’m referring to the author as “Montgomery”. I want to respect her wishes about what she wants to be called, but calling her just Anne would be confusing lol. Or, what she wanted to be called, since she did sadly pass away in 1993, but I still want to respect that.

She also has a Hollywood Walk of Fame star. That’d be a fun trip, finding all the Anne’s through time on there

Shirley was also a very interesting person. She would later in her career be in a movie called Murder, My Sweet, her last role before retirement at age 26, which was one of the first film noirs and influenced so many that came after it. She also has some interesting history that links her to the Hollywood Ten which I don’t really know about all of that business, but if you ever need a school project or something, it seems really interesting to read about.

We open the film with a lot of beeping and a film company logo I didn’t recognize. “A Radio Picture” or RKO Pictures, was a big company in this time period, but I’m clearly not an expert in 30s film.

Seriously though there was a lot of beeping. I was wearing earbuds the second time I watched this and it was a lot.

I do love the full credits before the movie starts. I love old Disney movies that do that, too. Funny how long they used to be, isn’t it?

The credits roll over some… tbh, somewhat grainy images of a rural area. It is an 85 year old film so, you know. I’m working with the best I can get, but I’m not particularly wowed by the scenery.

Then we move to a pretty little house with a young blonde girl cutting flowers outside. A tall, thin woman with dark hair opens the window and tells the girl, Diana, to look at something.

Wait, Diana? I mean, okay. She could be visiting Mrs Rachel Lynde.

The woman points out to Diana that Matthew Cuthbert is driving by, and Diana says, “Yes, Mother.”

Excuse me, Mother?? Who is this person?????

Well, Diana’s mother wonders where Matthew’s going and says he never goes to town this time of year, never visits anyone, and is too dressed up to just be going for a drive. He also isn’t driving fast enough to be going for a doctor.

Here we take a minute to pause and ask wtf did this movie do to poor Diana? Why is she blonde??

  The mystery woman says she won’t “have a moment’s peace of mind til I find out from his sister Marilla”. Smooth dialogue there, movie.

We go right into Green Gables’ kitchen where Marilla is polishing silver at the table. She says, “Good morning, Rachel” and asks how everyone at the Barry house is.

Wait. She’s Rachel BARRY?? I�� I’m going to need to come back to that.

Honestly this casting surprised me a little. The actress playing Marilla does not fit her physical description of being tall and thin. As Luce said, if you just saw this screencap, you’d probably think the one on the right Marilla and the one on the left Rachel.

However this actress is an amazing fit for Marilla and she’s probably my favourite casting choice in the whole movie. She’s a little prickly and very brisk, but it works great. Ability over appearance being true here. No, she doesn’t fit the physical description of Marilla from the book, but she really does embody her wonderfully.

The talk goes very similarly to how it did in the book: they’re adopting a boy from Nova Scotia to help out as Matthew’s getting older and having heart troubles. The dialogue here is basically straight out of the book.

However, there’s a really out of character line when Marilla offers Rachel a cup of tea, and Rachel replies, “Now, how can a body drink tea when they’re so excited they’re about ready to burst?” That’s really more of something ANNE would say.

Orphans are risky, styrchnine in the well, it’s all very book accurate over all, and the movie takes us out to Bright River.

Honestly I like this set. It looks how I pictured the train station.

The station master says a girl has been dropped off, and Matthew is confused as he was expecting a boy.

And honestly, again, this is a good shot. She looks so alone.

I’ve now given this movie like three compliments. This is where that ends.

Anne introduces herself and my first complaint is that I don’t love this casting. First of all, every actor in this movie is American and they don’t sound right. It’s all like… 30s Hollywood. Which I believe is a mid-Atlantic accent, or like an “affected” accent. If you’ve ever seen Wizard of Oz, it’s kind of like how Judy Garland talks in that. It doesn’t fit the setting.

Second, as Montgomery said of Minter… Shirley is a bit too perfect for me. She’s very pretty and very chipper and perky. Just doesn’t do much for me as an Anne performance.

Third, what is this hair????? Why do the ends look like that??

Fourth, she is not 11. This is a 17 year old playing a 14 year old.

One of my big problems with this movie is that the interactions between Anne and Matthew just feel… off. I think a lot of it is honestly aging her up while keeping her behaviour the same.

And I don’t like the actor playing Matthew. I’m sorry, but he’s kind of creepy.

Matthew agrees to take her home, though with different dialogue. In the book, he’s mostly silently like, “Need Marilla to fix this.” And just apologizes for being late. In the movie, he says, “I guess it’ll be alright.” No, it’s not the biggest change in the world, but his whole performance is off so I’m nitpicking.

She talks his ear off on the drive home, as expected. They pull dialogue from the book, but again Shirley being so much older makes it a little odd. It’s very child-like stuff and it doesn’t seem the same coming from a near-adult.

I do like them including Matthew saying he doesn’t mind if she talks. That’s one of my favourite lines.

Interesting film history note! The background of the driving scene is greenscreened. This is a pretty early example of greenscreen/chroma keying. This studio was a pioneer in the technology. It’s not too obvious considering the time period, either.

I still can’t with her hair, though. And it’s hard to tell it’s red. Not their fault, but a limit of the medium.

Otherwise the scene goes by the book, except Anne says, “My eyes are green.” Book!Anne’s eyes are grey. And it’s said more than once! Normally that’s not something I would care about BUT IT’S A BLACK AND WHITE MOVIE. You can just say they’re grey!

Like that just confuses me.

Anyways, time for our first look at Green Gables!

Honestly, not the worst. Compare Montgomery’s grandparents’ house and the actual real Green Gables and it’s not bad.

  The real Green Gables is on the left, and the Cavendish home her grandparents owned is on the right. Green Gables photo is by Natulive Canada via Wikimedia Commons and I did a quick edit of it to make it black and white so it would match the others better and be better for comparison. The Cavendish house photo is courtesy the LM Montgomery Society which is truly a wonderful site, and the original can be found in the LM Montgomery Archival Collection in the University of Guelph.

It’s not exactly what I personally pictured, but it’s okay.

The movie, however, decides that Anne is to be the one to name it Green Gables. I don’t know why.

Marilla is annoyed to see Anne, as you’d expect. Another nitpick, but they give Matthew extra dialogue in this scene. Not a ton, but it bothers me. And Marilla’s a bit meaner to him, too.

Anne does break down into tears when told she can’t stay, which is book accurate (though she claims she isn’t crying). It’s actually less dramatic than what it is in the book.

We follow the book pretty accurately through the name conversation and I do like the Anne/Marilla interactions. Marilla isn’t cruel, just brisk and exasperated. Her actress is seriously the best of the bunch here.

Matthew suggests Anne could stay, and ugh, just look at his creepy face.

I kind of think the actor is trying to play Matthew as “slow” in a stereotypical, offensive way at the beginning of the movie. I’m forcing Luce to watch most of these with me (I love you @soveryqueer) and I asked them if it was just me, and they kind of got that vibe too. It’s strange and creepy and I’m really not a fan of this Matthew overall.

The next afternoon, Marilla takes Anne to… pick up Mrs Spencer? And then they all drive to Mrs Blewitt’s house, which the credits spell as Bluett for some reason.

If you’re confused, pleased know it’s the movie and not my recapping skills. I was also confused watching it.

Mrs Spencer says she’s sure Mrs Bluett will take Anne. There’s a few little kids running around at Mrs Bluett’s but they seem better behaved than I’d expect. And you know, 4 kids is fewer than I expected, too.

Mrs Spencer says she brought them there as Mrs Blewitt is so anxious to get anyone to help with the children she’s sure to take Anne.

Also the baby is cute. Luce thought it was a fake baby at first XD

This is where we actually learn Anne is 14 and I began to have some suspicions about how the plot would play out.

The scene plays out mostly as it does in the book, with perhaps a touch more obvious annoyance at Mrs Bluett from Marilla, which honestly works as we don’t have her POV here.

The baby is having a great time. Look at the little foot kicking all happy.

JEEZ this baby is almost 90 years old!

Also Mrs Bluett has almost more of a Southern US accent? The actress was from Maryland – is that considered the South? Odd choice for PEI, again.

I do like that they didn’t have Anne say anything. She just looks at Marilla, absolutely miserable, and Marilla says to the others she better talk Anne home to talk it over with Matthew. As in the book, she’s definitely using him as an excuse.

However, we have our first instance of them leaving something major out. The conversation with Marilla about Anne’s backstory never happens. We never even learn about the Thomases or Hammonds. I guess that was too serious.

Marilla’s line is great, though. “I oughtn’t do anything without consulting him.” Sure, Marilla. Sure.

Marilla says if they decide not to keep her, she’ll bring or send Anne back tomorrow.

Aw, they give Matthew’s dog line to Marilla! Matthew also is very casually smoking in this scene which isn’t really in character. He mostly smoked when he needed to think deeply about something.

It’s really weird, though, that they give him random extra dialogue but take away a great line of his from the book that really showed how much he disliked Mrs Blewitt and cared for Anne already since it was so unlike him to say.

The bedtime prayer scene goes pretty much as planned, besides some minor backstory changes. Marilla’s actress is great here. She really nails the balance between flustered and knowing she should disapprove of what Anne’s saying, but actually being amused.

I’m ending the post here, because we hit about the twenty minute mark of the movie and it’s pretty long already. Twenty minutes of this movie took me two hours to thread which again is why there will be four of these posts. It’s a lot of movie.

I’m gonna put all my links in the last post, so this is it for this week! Part two next week.

Anne Adaptations: 1934 Anne of Green Gables – Part 1 There are four threads for this part of this series, so there'll be four blog posts (plus a bonus one that isn't about any plot or content, but just me making jokes for like 10 minutes.)

[sugasgrowl]

Saturdays (pt 1)

Genre: Fluff/Smut (in pt 2)

Member: Jungkook

Warnings: None 

Word Count: 4484

Summary: After three months of loneliness and insecurities while on tour, Jungkook comes home to you.

Part 2

This is just pure fluff tbh. But Part 2 will much more explicit (and will be posted within the next two or three days at most). Enjoy!

You weren’t sure exactly how long you’d been sitting on the window seat with your knees pulled into your chest, the cool wall leaching all the warmth from your spine through the thick material of your hoodie. All day you’d been lounging in the comfort of your apartment, basking in the calming serenity of the pouring rain pattering against the wide window. The view of the Seoul skyline piercing the gray swirling clouds above was beautiful in the most hazy and sleepy way, almost as if the entirety of South Korea had just woken up from a Saturday-afternoon nap and hadn’t yet wiped the sleep from its eyes.

Saturdays were one of your favorite days, mainly because you didn’t have to worry about your usual responsibilities of college and work. You preferred to spend most of your Saturdays at home to recharge before having to finish up any assignments you’d been procrastinating over on Sunday, and you often found yourself devoting Saturdays to pampering yourself. Eating whatever you wanted, messily slathering on a face mask, taking a long steaming bath to relax your tense muscles, the works. At that point in the day, you’d already cooked yourself chocolate chip pancakes (You woke up around 11:30am, but who’s to say pancakes have to be reserved solely for breakfast time?) while your favorite moisturizing mask was caked on your skin. You stuffed the fluffy, sweet deliciousness in your face ravenously as you binge-watched YouTube videos, the only worry you had being that you may not have enough syrup.

Now you sat, four hours later, curled up by the window, still sucked into the void that is YouTube and enjoying the melancholy rainfall that was baptizing the streets of Seoul.

As much as you loved Saturdays, you couldn’t help but feel sad that you’d spent so many without your boyfriend around to participate in the self-care. The two of you had made it a tradition to spend Saturdays together and bond over cartoons and unhealthy snacks. Even though he basically lived with you when he wasn’t forced to stay at the dorms or travel for a tour, Jungkook was insistent on coming over and talking about each of your weeks through mouthfuls of pizza.

You heaved a sigh at the slight sinking feeling in your chest at remembering the last Saturday Jungkook had been home. The two of you had both gotten a little too tipsy (aka: you were both piss drunk) on cheap wine and ended up singing at the top of your lungs and clumsily dancing around the apartment to the Friends opening credits, the obnoxiously loud volume of the TV and your booming laughter causing your neighbor to complain the next morning. You were both ridiculously hungover the next day, and poor Kookie had a six hour dance practice starting at one in the afternoon. The stubborn motherfucker insisted that he was fine, dammit, and he would just go to practice and suffer through “like a man”. The memory of Namjoon calling you to tell you that Jungkook had puked all over the practice room floor in the middle of rehearsal brought a small smile to your face. God, he’s such an idiot.

You groaned as you raised your arms above your head in a stretch, all the joints in your body seeming to snap at once. At least he’s coming home today.

You unlocked your phone and reread the last messages you’d gotten from him.

[Jungkook] 6:03am: I’m getting on the plane. I’ll be home with you soon. I love you

[You] 11:32am: Be safe! I love you too

[Jungkook] 11:41am: Well good morning

[Jungkook] 11:42am: I guess I’m glad nothing bad happened to me. You would’ve just slept right on through it.

[You] 11:42am: To be honest, I’m a bit disappointed. I was expecting you and Taehyung to find a way to crash the plane by now.

[Jungkook] 11:45am: Lmao sorry to disappoint but Tae is sitting with Jimin instead this time

[You] 11:45am: Did you make a scene

[You] 11:46am: Did you #expose them for the cheating boyfriends that they are

[You] 11:46am: Did #Nochu come thru

[Jungkook] 11:48am: Of course. My emotional speech about their betrayals made the stewardess and several passengers cry.

[You] 11:51am: Where is this man’s Oscar

You didn’t hear from him again until an hour ago, and you could practically feel his excitement buzzing through the phone grasped in your hands.

[Jungkook] 3:30pm: We’re about to land!

[Jungkook] 4:17pm: We’re waiting for our luggage!!

[Jungkook] 4:39pm: Jimin’s bag is lost

[Jungkook] 4:56pm: God this is taking forever

[Jungkook] 4:59pm: I just asked if we could leave Jimin behind but they said no

[Jungkook] 5:11pm: We’re leaving the airport!!!!!!!!!!!! I’ll be home soon!!!!!!!

The last message made you smile so big it made your cheeks hurt. He was so excited to be coming home--and you were so excited for him to rest, if even for a short while. You knew that he was so much more exhausted than he would ever admit. Jungkook loved his job more than anything, but he was still human. Well, you debated that fact on occasion. The boy had a tendency to go and go and go until he was half dead, but even then, the average person would have already been put in a padded room from the amount of stress he faced on the daily.

The past three months had been rough without him--it only being the second time Jungkook had ever had to leave you on tour with Bangtan--but aside from feeling lonely at night after having a particularly rough day, you were handling yourself amazingly well and even gave your boyfriend the space that you felt that he wanted during the stress of touring. Jungkook, on the other hand…

It wasn’t that he wasn’t handling it well. It was more like he just missed you so damn much that he didn’t know what to do with himself. While the touring process was new to you, you had easily adapted because that was just what had to be done and it was all you'd ever known. The first time that Jungkook had to leave for a tour, you had merely been on a few extremely casual dates, so there were really no huge emotional investments on either side yet. You’d formed a closer bond over time by sending texts and links to ridiculous YouTube videos back and forth--Jungkook’s sense of humor more often than not making you snort out loud in the middle of your lectures, the sudden outbursts forcing you to cover it up by pretending to go into a coughing fit. After the first tour, loving Jungkook through a pixelated screen had just become half of your relationship, and you'd both accepted that. But that didn't mean it was easy.

You knew Jungkook wasn’t used to having someone to miss while he was away aside from his family, and the unfamiliar emptiness in his arms where you would normally be made him feel exposed and vulnerable--like he was going into battle without his most important and protective armor. The insecurities plagued him, a swirling mass of what ifs echoing against the interior of his skull. There were many nights where you would be roughly yanked out of sleep, your ringtone blaring so loud that you would scramble to find your phone amidst the tangle of sheets and the throw of darkness--your heart beating so hard in your chest that it felt like it was going to burst through your ribs and flop into bed beside you, only to find that it was merely Jungkook needing to hear your voice.

The last night that he had called in such a state was a week ago, the conversation still fresh on your mind as you waited for him to come home from the airport, your eyes trailing after a couple of silvery raindrops that rolled down the windowpanes in front of you.

“Hello?” That night you answered on the sixth ring with a tongue thick with sleep and eyes still unable to fully open.

“Baby?” Jungkook’s voice was almost always strained when he called you like this, as if he was trying his hardest to keep from showing just how vulnerable and needy he was--although you always knew. That time in particular, the pet name tumbled past his lips in a hurried rush.

“Hey, Jungkookie,” you smiled as you rubbed your eyes. He hesitated, the four seconds worth of grainy silence confirming your suspicions of him calling out of feeling alone in a crowd of six. “Bad day?”

He sighed lowly, and you could practically see him raising his thumb to his lips to nervously gnaw on the ragged cuticle. You could just faintly make out the sound of a rustling somewhere on the other end of the line, and you knew he was bouncing his leg, the nervous energy desperately trying to escape.

“Sort of...” he trailed off, not wanting to voice his actual feelings, god forbid, but you always patiently waited in silence until he felt ready to talk. “I really miss you.”

“I miss you too, more than you know,” even with thousands of miles between the two of you, the sounds of the wheels turning in his head were nearly audible as he tried to think of how to word his burdens.

“Talk to me, boy…” You sang the phrase to the tune of Rock Your Body by Justin Timberlake as out of tune and off pitch as you could, your voice that was still gravelly with sleep only adding to the effect. Anything to make Jungkook smile.

You often used this trick to get him to spill whatever was bothering him, and more often than not, it would illicit an airy chuckle to escape from him and begin to thaw the anxiety that had begun icing over his stomach. But that time all you got was a weak puff of air, a sorry excuse for a laugh.

He must really be upset, you thought.

After a moment, he spoke.

“You don’t….regret being with me, do you?” his voice was quiet, and even through the phone you could see his eyes timidly glued to his lap as he picked at the frayed holes in his jeans. “I mean...do you resent that I have to leave you for so long? Do you wish that you were with someone...normal?”

You blinked in confusion.

“What?” your voice hitched up in surprise.

“Never mind. Forget I called,” he babbled, “I shouldn’t have woken you up. I mean, it’s what? Almost four in--”

“Jeon Jungkook, hush,” you firmly interrupted, causing nervous rambling to die in his throat. “Why would you ask me that?”

He paused.

“Um…” the humiliated blush that was burning his cheeks was nearly audible.

“I….” he began, but the words dissolved on his tongue like a bitter cotton candy. He let out a huff of frustration.

“I’m scared,” a tone of hopelessness tinged with shame dripped from his lilting voice. “I love you so much, and I’m scared that you’re going to realize that this? What we have? Isn’t what you deserve.”

Your brow furrowed as you processed his words. How could he be so dumb sometimes? Couldn’t he tell that you were madly in love with him? That he was your best friend, and you could never give him up for anything? You been together for almost a year, shouldn’t he know that by now?

“Jungkook--”

“I’m the man, I‘m supposed to be reassuring you! And instead I’m the one calling you all the time because I miss you so much that I can’t focus on anything. You don’t ever call me like this. I’m the one calling you in the middle of the night because I’m feeling real anxiety for the first time in my life over the thought of losing you. And I’m a fucking singer!” his voice was growing louder as he let his stress out into the light, and his bouncy Busan accent peaked through the more worked up he got.

“I get followed by crazy fans and have hate thrown at me every day, and yet the only thing that really cuts me deep is the thought of not getting to hear you do Justin Timberlake an injustice over the phone anymore.”

The sentiment was meant to be joking, because he didn’t like talking about his feelings nine times out of ten--it made him feel guilty for not being content with his job and his life all the time. He didn’t want to seem ungrateful.

He paused for a moment to catch his breath, and that was when you jumped in.

“Jungkook,” you softly said, “you do call me when you’re upset. I can always tell the difference between a call like one of these and a normal phone call to check in. But have you failed to notice that I always answer these urgent phone calls?”

He didn’t answer, so you continued.

“I’m scared, too. I’m terrified you’re going to find a much hotter, more talented, idol girlfriend to love. But the reason I don’t call you like this very often is because for one thing, I hardly ever know where the hell you are. For all I know, you’re back in Seoul chilling in the dorms right now,” Jungkook let out a single grunt of a chuckle.

“And I also don’t call you freaking out because right around the time when I start to feel lonely or sad, you end up calling me. I may not know where you are in the world, but you’ll always know where I am. I’m not going anywhere.”

There were a few beats of warm silence as your reassuring words released the tension in Jungkook’s shoulders and loosened the uneasy knot pulled lethally tight in his chest.

“So you don’t want someone normal?” the smile in his voice was evident, but you could still make out a hint of uncertainty in his tone.

“Kookie, if I wanted someone normal, I wouldn’t have chosen you to begin with, you dumbass,” a grin broke out across your face as the sound of Jungkook’s musical laughter floated back to your ears. The mental image of him throwing his head back with his eyes scrunched tight with a genuine smile made you swoon.

“Promise?” he giggled.

“I promise, okay? You being famous isn’t what makes you abnormal to me. It’s your inherent dorkiness and embarrassing outbursts,” you teased.

“Don’t act like you don’t contribute,” he sassed.

“You love it.”

“I really, really do.”

At the end of the phone call, you could tell he felt better. It was like his burden dissipating also lifted one from your own shoulders, as if you had cleared up an insecurity you didn’t even know you had.

Before you, Jungkook had never loved someone at all, period, and now that he was madly in love with you, he felt as if he wasn’t doing enough. He hated not being able to take you on dates, real dates, where you could both go out without worrying if he would be followed by fans or paparazzi. He hated that he couldn't hold you every night and feel your icy toes shove themselves under his thighs, the biting cold nearly making him jump out of his skin every time. He hated never getting to post the cute pictures that he would take of you while you slept, or the horrendous selfies you would send him as you sat in class while he was at rehearsal. He wanted to shout how much he loved you from the rooftops, loud enough for all of both North and South Korea to hear. But the job that he loved so much prevented that.

He hated those things, but god, did he love you.

The thought that after all that time, you would finally be able to see him, and hold him, and do all the things you were able to do with him three months prior made you feel as if your body weighed twenty pounds lighter. Loneliness was a much heavier burden than you realized.

The sound of keys jingling and sliding into the lock made your head automatically whip towards the long awaited noise. For whatever reason, be it the suddenness of the noise while you were so deep in thought or the fact that your Jungkook was finally home, your heart fluttered inside your chest. On instinct, you rose to your feet and stood with your eyes glued to the entrance to your apartment. He’s home.

When the door finally swung open after what felt like an eternity of him fumbling with the knob that always seemed to stick, Jeon Jungkook stood before you for the first time in three months.

His hair was a dishevelled mess, the caramel blond and faded pink stripes sticking up in every which way in wispy tendrils around his brow that had collected the brunt of the rain on the way to your apartment. If you hadn’t been so stunned, you would have laughed at the very obvious line where his hat had protected the crown of his head from getting wet, leaving the top of his hair to be dry and fluffy--a stark contrast to the ends of his locks that were dripping wet and darkened with the freezing rain. Jungkook’s soaked beanie was clutched so tightly in his fist that his knuckles were white and little streams of water were dripping down his fingers and onto the floor from the fabric being wrung so extremely. His black hoodie was bunched up over one of his hips, as if he hadn’t bothered to pull it down or fix it in it any way when he stepped off the subway. The fabric was significantly darker over the broad expanse of his shoulders and chest where the rain had initially struck him, making it hopelessly cling to his leanly muscled frame.

Your heart skipped a beat as your eyes raked over his body and landed on his face. Without a stitch of makeup on his skin to hinder your view, you were able to see every little detail on him--even from across the room. The wind must have been much chillier than you thought, because his nose and cheeks were bright pink from the abuse of the nipping temperatures. All of his freckles and dark circles and scars were right in front of you, and they were so goddamn gorgeous that it made a lump form in your throat. He was so real. So real and so solid and so very, very beautiful. It was as if his image was enhanced and hyper-focused after being without him for so long.

The expression of disbelief written on your face must have been amusing, because Jungkook’s red, chill-swollen lips quirked themselves into a bright grin.

“I’m home,” he softly said, his smile growing even wider--the rise of his cheeks making his sparkling eyes disappear into slits that sat on the top of his cheekbones and nearly all thirty-two of his teeth flash in your direction.

The broken silence snapped you out of your trance, and you quickly found yourself shuffling across the room towards your boyfriend while muttering an ecstatic mantra of “You’re home, you’re home, you’re home, you’re home!” with a beaming smile on your face. He met you halfway, his long strides carrying him to you in a matter of three steps. You threw your arms around his neck and nestled your frame into his torso. Muscled arms wound themselves around your waist--one firmly snaking around the circumference of your lower back and the other trailing up your spine to gently grip at the curve of your shoulder--as he mumbled an incoherent string of words declaring just how much he missed you, his voice sounding an awful lot like he was trying not to cry.

“I missed you too,” your fingers wound themselves into his hair as you felt a sting behind your eyes. “I missed you so incredibly much, Jungkook.”

A startled gasp flew past your lips when the tip of Jungkook’s frigidly cold nose nuzzled itself into the warmth of your neck.

“Jesus,” you attempted to squirm away from the way from the way he was using you to thaw himself, but he simply pulled you tighter into his body.

“You’re freezing! Why didn’t you wear a coat, Jungkook? You’re going to get sick, you idiot!” you half laughed and half scolded, the smile on your face causing a single happy tear to squeeze from your eye.

His cheeks rose devilishly in the crook of your neck. He’d missed your playful insults so much.

“I was so excited to see you that I forgot to grab one from the dorm when I dropped off my suitcase,” his words were muffled by the fabric of your sweatshirt.

His dripping wet clothes were beginning to soak into your own and make you shiver. You placed your palms on both of his cheeks and pulled him back to get a better look at him up close--and partially to get his icicle of a nose the hell away from your flesh. Your eyes locked with his, the nearly-black irises seeming to place gentle kisses on every inch of your face as he surveyed your features. His mouth dropped open in a look of false and exaggerated surprise, his doe eyes twinkling like a thousand galaxies.

“Are you crying, (Y/N)?” he chided.

You let out a laugh poked his cheek.

“Are you? You’re looking a bit waterlogged.”

“What?” his brows raised, feigning innocence.

“This?” he gestured to his soaked lashes. “No, no. It’s not crying if the tears never fall, baby.”

You giggled and pulled his face closer to yours, the scent of his favorite cologne washing over you in the close proximity. Your lips brushed against his in a teasing kiss, the feeling of his chilled lips lightly grazing yours sending chills down your spine.

“God, you’re so warm,” he whispered, awestruck, his breath fanning over your face.

Jungkook’s hand ran itself painstakingly slow up your arm and the side of your neck, his icy fingertips trailing against your skin so lightly that goosebumps erupted across the expanse of your exposed flesh. Long fingers knotted themselves in the hair at the back of your neck to pull you into a deeper kiss, and the way his fingernails lightly grazed your scalp had your breath catching in your throat. The kiss was slow and languid, everything seeming to be moving at half its normal speed. With each move he made, icy droplets would drip from the ends of Jungkook’s hair and splatter faintly on your skin. Every brush of his lips and unhurried swipe of his tongue against yours was purposeful. Each shaky breath and quiet sigh was a message, a secret code that you’d cracked months and months before--every tender nibble on your lower lip and stroke of his swollen lips against your jaw a declaration of how much he loved you, punctuated with gentle swipes of his thumb against your cheekbone.

The way Jungkook was not only suddenly present in your life again, but also painting your lips with his most intimate and passionate kisses was making you weak in the knees. After all the months of being apart, you finally had him back in your arms. The crushing feeling of love for him was so overwhelming that your head started to spin. You brought your hand up to rest against his cheek and pulled away from the kiss ever so slightly--just enough to speak.

“I missed you,” you rested your forehead against his and looked into his eyes, your mouth beginning to water at the sight of his flushed cheeks and blown out pupils.

“I missed you so much. God, every single day it was like I was walking around in a daze,” you gave him a lingering peck before continuing. “I love you so much, Jungkook. I don’t think you realize how much.”

You began peppering kisses along his jaw, gentle at first--pulling a satisfied hum from him that quickly turned into a low moan when you switched to leaving burning open mouthed kisses that seared the still freezing skin on his neck. The contrast of your warm mouth and his cold skin was so drastic that it felt almost painful, his nerve endings having long forgotten what warmth was in the mile long walk from the subway to your apartment.

You pulled back to make eye contact with him and make sure that he was listening to what you were saying. He stared back at you with hooded eyes, doing his best to actually process your words.

“I’m sorry if I seemed distant while you were away. I just figured you would want some space to focus on work,” you brought your lips back to his, kissing the top and then the bottom before slowly tracing his lower lip with your tongue. His hands gripped your hips in an attempt to keep from losing focus on your loving words.

“I let the space change from an inch to a mile, and you felt insecure in our relationship because of that. Am I correct?”

Jungkook’s golden cheeks flushed a deep russet, his eyes leaving yours to wander aimlessly before dropping to the floor. He nodded, embarrassment  evident on his face. He hated admitting when he was struggling. He wasn’t supposed to struggle, he was the golden maknae.

You smiled fondly at him before intertwining your fingers with his and raising the tangle of warm and cold digits to brush your lips across his knuckles.

“Let me make it up to you,” you slyly said.

Jungkook’s eyes snapped up to meet yours, a knowing smirk tugging on the corner of his lips.

“Whatever do you have in mind, m’lady?” he suggestively raised his eyebrows and wrapped his arms around your waist.

You shivered at the chill that your now soaked clothes brought.

“Well, you feel like you’ve been inside a deep freeze for four days. Let’s warm you up.”

Jungkook’s eyes gleamed.

“You don’t mean…?” he began, a wide smile spreading across his face.

You nodded.

“Yes. I ordered more bath bombs and saved them all so we could use them together.”

Jungkook wiggled in excitement, doing a quick dance of waggling fingers and spastically tapping his toes.

“You’re the beeeeest,” he cheered as he heaved you over his shoulder--causing a surprised shriek to rip from your throat--and pranced off towards the master bedroom.

You couldn't contain your giddiness as your laughter rang out across your apartment. Jungkook was finally home, and your Saturday was finally as warm and relaxing as they used to be before he left.