#the ‘garbage’ quilt

[mamaspark]

I went on a quilt retreat with some of my favorite people 🥰. We were all very productive! I brought 2 quilt tops that I finished ahead of the retreat just so I could get good photos

I have a backing ready for the triangle quilt. The triangle fabrics are an Alice In Wonderland fabric line. Still thinking about backing on the Wizard of Oz quilt.

I got a couple of quilts back from my quilter so I trimmed and bound both of those. The bear quilt will be gifted to my husband’s uncle. The garbage truck has Kelly green Minky on the back. Quilted in a Diamond plate pantograph. Was supposed to go to my grandson but will likely be for sale. If you’re interested please email me at mamaspark@gmail.com

I had the center block made for this pillow front. Made the block into the pillow front. Now I need to quilt it and finish the pillow.

I had enough greens and low volume fabric to make a second green Limerick quilt. I also made a coral Limerick. Got both tops finished

Lastly, I had almost all my star blocks made. I finished the blocks and put this top together. I really love it!

Now you’re all caught up with what I’ve been doing. Let me know what you think of my work!

[quiisquiliae]

Gonna roll a dice tonight to see what project I should work on >.>

[lovemomhatepolice]

i'll make it fit - rafe cameron

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pairing: rafe cameron x fem!reader

warnings: sexual overtones, established relationship, fingering, teasing, unprotected sex (PROTECTED YOURSELF), this damn tiny polo!!, English is my second language!, NO SPOILERS FOR SEASON 4

belonging: NO NUT NOVEMBER!

type: totally smut (this is the first time i've written something like this, which has practically no plot at all, just sex itself. keep my fingers crossed that it didn't turn out badly!!!), small plot but really small

word count: 1,8k

summary: rafe cameron likes things too small for him.

more content: obx masterlist, rafe cameron masterlist

Mornings in Tannyhill were mostly quiet. Since Ward Cameron was dead and his entire family had moved to a house in the Bahamas, it was quiet there. Hearing of Sarah had disappeared - she was probably somewhere with her friends, again putting her life at risk, nothing new. And the only one who lived there was Rafe, who had taken over the company from his father and decided to return to the “old garbage.” Well, and you lived there too, by the side of your beloved. You couldn't have dreamed of a better life.

You were awakened by the bright rays of the sun, which rudely crept through the slightly parted curtains into your shared bedroom. You dragged yourself lightly and glanced at the clock, which was on the bedside table and, as usual, was making that unbearable sound.

After muttered under your breath, you slipped out from under the warm quilt, which, to say the least, wasn't all that necessary - after all, it was summer. But by the fact that you were in just a lace petticoat, it definitely enveloped you with a warmth that was missing.

You didn't know what time it was, but by the fact that Rafe wasn't next to you, you knew it was probably after nine o'clock. You didn't have to look for him for long, because as soon as you stepped out into the hallway from your bedroom, you heard his voice. You looked out the balcony door, which was gently open, and smiled at the sight. Rafe, in a freshly stitched buzzcut, was sitting on the couch talking on the phone. In front of him on the coffee table he had papers spread out and a laptop in which he was busily tapping something. As soon as he noticed you he sent you a slight smile, but he was so engaged in the conversation that he did nothing more. And you couldn't be passive, after all, he was wearing a beautiful blue and damn tight polo that exposed his perfectly shaped biceps. You laughed quietly, seeing him nervously tweak them as they rolled up higher and higher each time, not covering as much of his arm as they should.

Despite his serious tone on the call, his eyes would flicker toward you every few moments, his smile softening just enough to let you know he was glad you were there.

Not one to resist temptation, you decided to have a little fun. You strolled over to him, moving slowly, letting your fingers trail along the back of the couch as you circled around to where he was sitting. Rafe’s eyes darted up, narrowing slightly in a silent warning.

You didn’t make it easy for him. With a mischievous smile, you leaned over and whispered into his ear, "That polo looks a little tight, don’t you think? You might need help taking it off later."

“Uh, yeah… sure,” he said to the person on the other end of the call, clearing his throat as if to regain his composure. “Send it to the office, they'll take care of it,” he muttered, hanging up.

You moved your hands over his shoulders, gently massaging them. Rafe put the phone down on the table, closed the laptop and leaned his head against the back of the couch, looking at you.

“You know what you're doing, huh?” he parroted under his breath.

“Maybe I do,” you whispered, letting your breath tickle his skin. “Just trying to make sure my man relaxes after handling all that business.”

“And what am I supposed to do with you?” he muttered, covering yours with his hands. “Whatever you want,” you muttered, going down with your palms on his chest. “Oh, but this polo is really too small for you.” Rafe laughed under his breath and gracefully helped you past the couch so that you were now standing in front of him, between his legs. You were in just a white lace slip that didn't cover much underneath, so Rafe could immediately see your hardening nipples.

You let out a soft laugh as Rafe’s strong hands gripped your thighs, pulling you effortlessly onto his lap. You straddled him, your knees sinking into the plush cushions of the couch on either side of his hips. The way he looked up at you—like you were the only thing in the world that could hold his attention—sent a warm rush through your veins.

"So needy" He muttered, stroking your hair and putting it behind your ears. “Who would have thought that you would beg for my attentions so much?”

“I'm not begging,” you muttered, swallowing your saliva loudly.

You could have sworn that in that moment Rafe heard your loud heartbeat. And even though you had been together for more than a year, he continued to trigger the same feelings in you. “No?” he asked ironically, his hand touching your pussy, which was covered only by a thong. “I would say something else.”

“Rafe,” you muttered, gently pushing your hips out to meet him as his nimble fingers pressed your clit harder. “So wet,” he mumbled, moving your panties aside and nimbly sliding his ring and middle finger into you.

You brought your face closer to his and grabbed his jaw, bringing your lips together in a sweet kiss. It was still quiet around you, the only things you could hear were the birds and your moans, drowned out by your boyfriend's mouth.

His thumb moved to your clit, the touch was light, teasing, his fingers tracing slow circles that sent tingles up your spine. And his fingers didn't stop moving up and down, each time hitting the exact same spot. Rafe knew what the fuck he was doing, he always knew how to make you in heaven in a moment by his precise movements. He knew your body like no one else, just like you knew his.

“Cum for me, baby,” he said, moving his lips to your naked neck. You felt you were close - Rafe did the same, following the feeling as you pulsed on his fingers. You didn't have to wait long until your body shook with pleasant and familiar reflexes, and you came on his fingers, burying your head in his neck.

Rafe took his fingers out of you and put them in his mouth, sucking on them. Oh this sight and Rafe in his damn tight blue polo, was something too strong for you to go through. You moved against his lap, letting him know that this was not what you wanted. “Still eager, huh?” he laughed throatily, but you didn't have to wait long. Rafe always knew what you needed and you got it right away. "You taste so good, baby"

“Rafe please,” you muttered, clasping your small hand over his large cock, which was getting harder and harder under you. “Anything for you,” he muttered, quickly getting rid of his pants.

Without much warning, he entered you. Slowly at first, because you knew very well that he was big. And even after so many times together, you continued to feel a slight discomfort at first. But Rafe always made it fit. He couldn't resist your tight pussy, which was even screaming for his attention. “Fuck, tight as ever,” he whispered, correcting himself on the couch so that you were more comfortable. “But don't worry, I'll make it fit.”

And as he said, so he did. With agility, he began to move inside you, making both of you nothing but moaning messes.

“Wait, I want,” you said, putting your hand on his chest. On that damn sexy polo. “Oh, a princess wants to take control?” he laughed under his breath, catching you under the thighs, but as if on cue he stopped moving inside you, making you feel again how big he was inside you. You groaned involuntarily, but didn't give in. You moved nimbly on top of him, practically taking him out of your pussy every now and then, and then lowering yourself all the way down again.

“Fuck, you feel so good,” Rafe groaned, his head falling back against the couch, exposing the strong line of his throat. His eyes were hooded, his lips parted as he watched you, completely entranced by the way you were moving, the way you were making him feel.

You could tell he was trying to hold back, trying to let you set the pace, but the way his fingers flexed against your skin told you just how badly he wanted to take control.

“Not yet, Rafey,” you muttered, moving even closer to him. “You deserve the best. Especially, when you're in that slutty polo"

You increased your pace, but Rafe couldn't stand it anymore either, and came against you, entering your pussy from below. At that moment your bodies were merging at the perfect moments and places, so you were already not far from orgasm. And with that, he captured your lips again, his kiss rougher this time, more urgent. There was no more teasing now-just the raw, unfiltered need that always simmered between you both, threatening to spill over the edges.

“I'm so close,” you whispered into his mouth, clamping your pussy against him every so often. “I know, baby, I can feel it,” he muttered into your mouth, gently biting your lip to reach inside again. "Mmm, so good for me"

Rafe grabbed your buttocks and with even more force began to pound his cock into you. Your tongues fought for dominance, and your hands couldn't find room on his body, clamping down on the collars of his shirt.

"Shit" he murmured into your lips, feeling as his cum shot into your pussy, making quite a mess.

Not much later you too reach climax, clenching around his dick. Exhausted, you leaned on his shoulder kissing his neck. Rafe stroked your back, still calming down after the orgasm that hit you surprisingly hard this time. You felt him smiling over your shoulder, so you shared his happiness, smiling too. You moved your head off his shoulder, looking him straight in the eyes now. He was still inside you, so every movement, made quiet sighs come out of your throats.

“What's so funny?” you asked, stroking his jaw and kissing the corner of his mouth gently.

“Maybe I should wear that tight polo more often, just to find yourself in your tight cunt again?” he laughed lightly, returning your kiss.

“Oh shut up, asshole,” you muttered, lowering yourself on top of him once more until he groaned and settled his head on the back of the couch, pulling you against him.

A/N: I know there's a lot of Rafe or Drew here lately, but I swear, when I see this man, I feel so ungodly that oh jesus, i hope you enjoyed this

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

[jiminrings]

good day miss jimjiminieerings 🫡 i hope i’m not being a bother for asking this but may we 😍 with deepest humility and pleasantries 🥹 have a tiny tiny sneak peek of your brothers bff single dad au 😍👉👈 😍? again if it’s not a bother miss jimjiminieerings!!! feel free to ignore this ask if u are unable to post– im just excited 😍🙏😅🥹

fail-safe (sneak peek)

pairing: yoongi x reader

wordcount: 8k

glimpse: growing up, your brother's best friend always berated you for not having a passion in life outside of loving him from afar. when yoongi leaves everything he's ever known for everything he's ever wanted, trying to move on from him becomes your biggest aspiration.

alternatively, yoongi left when you needed him the most, and comes back home at a time when you love him the least.

[ part one, intermission, part two, intermission 02, finale ]

[ a Lot of angst, eventual fluff, brother's best friend AND single dad au, So Much Yearning, unrequited love (initial), jealousy, self-deprecation, a lot of talk abt passion in an empty n hurtful way that most impassioned youngest children feel (it's a specific feeling idk!!!), eventual redemption in the next parts ]

sneak peek 01

You don’t mind getting hand-me-downs.

As a matter of fact, you love receiving them. The wear and tear of the things that came before you is only proof that it’s been loved enough to be passed on to you.

You adore your mother’s dainty vintage watch that she wore throughout college, the hardware and sentiment behind it being pretty enough that you don’t mind constantly getting the battery replaced. You like Namjoon’s shirts that he’s outgrown, even through the numerous phases he’s had wherein only denim and tie-dye filled his closet.

You don’t mind the history behind the numerous things you have in your home, unbothered that you’re probably the only house in the block with the oldest possible rice cooker. The chips in the staircase aren’t covered up with marker ink and neither are the loose stitches in the couch quilt snipped off. It’s home to your mother and Namjoon — if it’s good enough for them, then it’s already the best for you.

Even on top of everything, you don’t mind your family almost always getting you shirts and shoes that have an allowance in them. Your mom would go to Seoul and pick out the exact pair of sneakers you wanted that are atleast three sizes bigger than your actual feet, and you’d barely bat an eye.

You don’t mind the coziness of things that are brought to you, because even if they weren’t offered, you’d seek them yourself.

So when Yoongi mentioned that he’s decluttering his room and needed someone (read: you) to vacuum it up for him, you jump at the chance. You take a grocery bag with you, wear the nearest pair of slippers within your vicinity, and book it to his house as soon as he finished talking.

“Go crazy, kid. Almost everything in that pile is garbage so you can take anything.”

“I feel like I should be more offended than how I feel right now,” you hum, furrowing your eyebrows at the pile in front of you. It’s a mound of Yoongi, or atleast everything he’s ever wanted up until he decided to do a general cleaning of his bedroom.

Yoongi chuckles, going through his pile of clean laundry for him to fold on the side while you scavenge for his things. “It’s either I have you take them or I get ripped off at the thrift store, then I see somebody’s uncle wearing my shirt as an added insult.”

You huff, rummaging through his heap of belongings while conveniently trying to ignore that you may look like somebody’s uncle the moment you wear his clothes. Everything is him; every distressed cap, every unfinished embroidered shirt, and every item of old significance with his initials branded on it.

The thick gray hoodie you’ve been eyeing (along with its owner) for the better part of the last few years surfaces into your field of vision, your gasp audible enough to make him jolt because he thought you’d gotten hurt.

“No way, this too? But this is your favorite,” you half-complain and half-rejoice, turning the hoodie inside-out eagerly in the fear that there’s a catch to it belonging in the pile.

“Eh. I know it looked good on me but I don’t think it’s my favorite. Besides, I’ve bulked up! Wanna feel?” Yoongi grins, his segue eerily similar to your brother’s at every given chance. A neighbor from down the block recently opened a small-time gym, and the both of them have not been able to shut their mouths about it since. From their gossiping alone, Yoongi and Namjoon have generated enough advertising already.

“You and Namjoon really have to stop asking random people to feel your biceps.”

There’s random knick-knacks throughout the clump in the middle of his bed, some being too good and actually useful that you snag them. Yoongi lets you do what you want anyways (most of the time), not having to turn his head to berate you on what you’re only allowed to grab from his stuff.

You’re not greedy — you already have his hoodie and that should be enough on its own. But there’s that handkerchief with his initials embroidered on it, then that Rubik’s cube he swore his relative got for him from New York, and even the little butterfly knife he got from a souvenir shop when his family when to the beach.

There were those and there is this, looking up at you in all of its glory.

“Yoongi.”

“What now?” he sighs at your dramatic gasp, looking up from his folded laundry to see what you were going on about. It takes a second for him to fully realize why exactly were you so pumped.

“Are you serious? Your helmet?” you squeal, already hugging the shiny red mass close to you. “Does this mean you’re passing your motorcycle to me?!”

“Are you crazy? Fuck no,” Yoongi rolls his eyes, snatching his helmet back from you. He doesn’t miss the bratty frown that fills up your entire face; he’s not exactly the biggest fan whenever you were upset or angry; maybe even both. “Obviously I forgot I even put my helmet there when I made that pile.”

You whine, stomping your feet in exasperation. You would dramatically plop down on his bed if only it wasn’t full of his shit. “Come on! You told me you were teaching me as soon as you finish teaching Joon.”

“Teaching you how to ride my scooter is not the same as giving you it. Why would I just hand you what I bought with my hard-earned money?” Yoongi scrunches his nose, tone sharper than what he intended.

“But you still haven’t taught me,” you murmur to placate yourself and dissuade yourself from the delusion that Yoongi would even exert such an effort for you because of course — why would he do that for you?

You have an inkling that you’re being irrational for all the wrong reasons, perhaps even projecting your need to be looked after… by him.

Yoongi notices your mood that turned sour quickly, the silence between you becoming loaded. He didn’t mean to be that blunt. “I don’t think you’re even old enough to have your driving permit,” he adds in consolation, voice considerably softer.

You snicker lowly, still looking at your feet with your arms crossed. “But I’m old enough to backpack whenever you need me to carry shit that can’t fit in your carrier.”

He immediately groans at your comeback, his furrowed eyebrows mirroring yours. “You’re so stubborn.”

“You’re a hypocrite,” you retort, knowing for a fact he’s known how to drive even before he was eligible for permits and licenses and whatnot.

Yoongi takes one, two seconds to himself to regain his composure, clearing his head in the process. You’re still not looking at him and you’re pouting and you don’t even notice the latter, making him crack a small smile.

“I will teach you next week.”

“Oh my-…”

He cuts you off, raising his hand in emphasis. “Provided that you listen to everything I say and wear full gear at all times. You clearly don’t have a job yet-…”

“Ouch.”

“And I don’t have the extra money to buy full gear for myself, so what you’ll do is bundle up with your padded coat and the thickest jeans you have,” Yoongi enunciates every word, eyes keenly on you. They’re too wide and alert, you actually feel like listening to him.

“You go on rides wearing your pajamas.”

“Just say ‘thank you, Yoongi’.”

“You haven’t done anything yet,” you trail off, head tilting in confusion.

You’ve had a million conversations like this with Yoongi before but of different fonts; worn, familiar, and warm.

“Thank you, Yoongi,” he mouths, nodding at you to do the same. He won’t stop until you utter them back to him, and you know you won’t go home either without giving him your gratitude as you always do.

“Thank you, Yoongi,” you relent, the grin that breaks through your lips being infectious enough that he laughs lowly to himself.

He exhales all the worries he has and could possibly ever have seeing you ride the motorcycle (or for you yearning to do everything that he does), grasping at whatever sanity he has left from looking after you.

.

.

sneak peek 02

In the grand scheme of things, you realize that Yoongi was right — nothing valuable was left for him in your hometown anymore. He was as right as you were wrong every time he went on a monologue of how he thinks there’s no problem in him admitting that he’s full of envy. He had been right for being bitter that there’s people who have and get much more than him, more than what they deserve, by not even putting a fourth of the effort that he does.

In the same way that he was right, you were wrong for thinking each time that Yoongi would soon outgrow his ambitions and instead, see things for what they are. You were wrong for thinking Yoongi would stoop down to your page, much less ever think of it.

Yoongi was right for saying that his stomach’s made of steel, and you were wrong for trying to convince him otherwise. He’s always had the appetite for more, the digestion of whatever life throws at him coming easy. Yoongi can choke down the reality of leaving Namjoon, your brother, who’s been buddies with him even before they could talk. He could forgo the only brother figure he’s ever had in his life if it means making something of himself.

He doesn’t get constipated from the reality of no longer having the homemade meals your mother would make that the younger, more innocent, and less ambitious version of him would literally jumps fences for. In fact, Yoongi’s palate craved something more foreign and sophisticated; not familiar, hearty meals served in dinnerware dulled from years of routine.

His stomach doesn’t turn thinking about how the skyline he said he’d never get tired of, wouldn’t appear in his new side of the world. The little, unassuming, and far too comfortable version of him who used to chase sunrises with his bike as a child and chase sunsets with his car as a teenager, doesn’t feel like he’d be poisoned if he were to see the sunlight in a high-rise instead of a run-down pavement.

Yoongi’s right when he said he had a tolerance because he doesn’t even get heartburn when you cry for him to no longer leave. You’re not in the position to beg him to stay (and you probably never will be) because as you’ve come to realize, he would only stay for the big things.

The only thing that would anchor Min Yoongi into place and dissuade him from chasing more is by being the most. One would have to be extremely significant, even bigger than Namjoon’s brotherhood, your mother’s impact, and what your hometown has to offer. You can’t even hold a candle to the aforementioned.

In Yoongi’s grand plan that’s as big as the galaxy, you’re merely a speck of dust that had the luck of hovering around him. You realized it back then when you blew over and fought with him right before his flight; right when Yoongi was clutching his one-way ticket, right when one foot was already out of the door.

“But the future that you want is not easy, Yoongi!” you gritted through your teeth, the grip you had on his suitcase too visceral that it bends under the pressure. Yoongi snatches his luggage from you in a blink, nostrils flaring in annoyance.

“Of course you’d be the first to say that,” he seethed, eyes wild and unforgiving. He drills his finger into his temple, inching towards you with an anger he had never shown before. “You don’t work as hard as I do, Y/N! You always settle. You always go for mediocre. You never put your head into anything because you’re too immature for any of this shit!”

“I’m not immature, you asshole!”

“Yes you are, you dipshit!” Yoongi scoffed, throwing his head back. “You cave and you bend and you let the whole world fuck you over, then you come running to me whining. You don’t have a passion in life, Y/N! You’re begging me to stay in the same predicament that you’re in now, what’s not immature about that?”

“When you leave now and decide to come back one day, Yoongi,” you spat with resentment, the tears that pour down your cheeks no longer out of sadness but instead, out of promise. “Nothing will ever be the same.”

“Good,” Yoongi clipped, turning his back on you for the last time. “Good for me.”

In the grand scheme of things, you realize that when Yoongi left five years ago, he also took the large chunk of your soul that had been shaped over and over again the entire time that he stood by you. He’d gotten his hands on the security and contentment you used to take pride in, weaponizing it against you.

You’re unsure if you have to thank him for that, the uncertainty being on par with the insecurity you had felt when he left you with his truth.

When you visit your mother for her birthday and see Yoongi emerge from your childhood bedroom, hand-in-hand with a toddler that looks like an exact carbon copy of him, you’re unsure of what to do either.

You’re not hysterical in the same way you stood before him when you even considered ripping up his plane ticket, but on the other hand, Yoongi’s inconsolable in the way he flounders before you.

“Y/N,” he says breathless, the lump in his throat even bigger than the tiny fist that grips his hand. “I… I-I didn’t-…” Yoongi tries again, his mouth dry at your appearance. “You came home.”

“I’m only visiting,” you answer, the curt smile on your face that Yoongi recognizes to be the one you’d give to strangers making his blood run cold. “I don’t plan on staying.”

.

.

.

ruh-roh new series alert :O wanna read the entire first chapter of fail-safe now + intermission 01 + chapter two + gain early access to succeeding chapters + read other exclusive content?? subscribe to my patreon :D

also to get ahead of the questions: yes, this is a general fic aka it WILL be posted on tumblr too!!!

[calendulacraft]

Fast Fashion to Slow Fashion :: a DIY guide to up-cycling and mending clothing on a budget.

For those of us living on a small income, buying from sustainable fashion brands is often out of reach. I would like to point out that *buying new but ecological garments isn't the only way to cultivate a slow fashion wardrobe*. Here are a few options for transforming *upcycling* your clothing, thus making fast fashion into slow fashion:

Mend and repair :: patch hand-me-down sweaters, fix holes in leggins from target and other department stores. By giving items a longer life, and preventing unnecessary garbage, fast fashion items become slow fashion! Here are two tutorials I have written on how to mend a torn belt loop on jeans and patch leggings.

Up-cycle clothing that doesn't suit your style :: when preparing for a trip back home and wondering how to acquire some nicer clothing for the trip a friend of mine gifted me a big bag of clothes. Almost all of them were items that we could call "fast fashion" and nearly all also had stains or rips that needed mending. By fixing and adapting these items and then going on to wear them for several years longer, I am keeping them out of the cycle of buy then trash.

Tailor items that don't fit you :: Taking in clothing is quite simple and there are lots of tutorials on how to hem pants and skirts or take in a size or two. I recently made a tutorial on how to take out a skirt, or make a skirt bigger by adding panels.

At some point, we must face the fact that a t-shirt is totally worn out and cannot be used for clothing any longer. In such cases here are a couple of crafts to utilize the fabric and other items from the scrap pile:

Create a Quilt :: if you find yourself with a pile of beautiful & memory-filled scraps -- transform them into a quilt as I have done in this post.

Make Twine :: Longer scraps of fabric, especially those from stretch materials like leggings or jersey cotton t-shirts can be made into a thing rope also known as fabric twine. I wrote a tutorial on how to make twine out of fabric scraps.

<<Best of luck in all your crafting endeavors!>>

[sincerelyrushwriter]

Me, repeating to myself: I will be fine if no one comments on my fanfiction. I will be fine if no one comments on my fanfiction. I will be fine if—

My stress: You seem stressed.

Me: No, I...am...not.

My stress: You're compulsively checking the number of hits and questioning whether your work is garbage.

Me: Yes...I...am.

My stress: Wrap yourself in the quilt.

Me: The one stitched out of old comments that gave me joy?

My stress: That's the one.

[hareofhrair]

QUILTMAGEDDON COMETH.

So if you voted in that poll about what internet stunt I should pull to raise money for fixing my shit living conditions, you might have noticed I Just Make A Quilt won by a pretty significant margin! So, to all *checks math*... 22 of you who wanted to see that happen, congrats!

Starting this Friday night (07/26/24) I will be marathoning working on my first ever quilt while also streaming weird old movies, to raise money for food and a cleaning service to fix my depression nest.

I plan to go nonstop for three days, if I can make it. The quilt will for sure not be done by then, but that's as long as I think I can reasonably marathon for. I'll take Monday off and then get back to it on Tuesday, but after that I'll stop to sleep at night. Otherwise I'll basically live on stream, quilting, until the quilt is done.

The image above is my concept for the quilt I want to make (it's Katamari themed!) which will be donated to the next GDQ event as a prize, assuming I finish it (and it's not complete garbage).

If you are an experienced quilter, you are probably going oh no right now! Tune in to watch the train wreck live! Tell your quilting friends!

Seriously, the number one thing you can do to help me is tell other people about this! The biggest thing that has held me back in basically all aspects of my life is my complete inability to market myself so I am seriously relying on anyone who sees this to share it with anyone they think might be interested in either quilting, weird old movies, or just watching someone suffer while doing something stupid!

WE'RE KICKING THINGS OFF WITH THE BLACK CAT (1934) FEATURING BORIS KARLOFF AND BELA LUGOSI, FRIDAY THE 26TH AT 11:59PM CST! BE THERE OR DON'T!

[mamaspark]

Someone loved his garbage truck quilt! 🥰. Kelly green Minky on the back!!

[autisticlancemcclain]

It’s a stupid thing to be hurt about. Lance knows it is. He knows absolutely firsthand, now, how much worse things can be; hell, he has been through objectively worse! Several times! He was blown up! It gave him brain damage!

His eyes burn, anyway, and the lump in his throat is impossible to choke down.

“It doesn’t fucking matter,” he mutters harshly to himself, voice hoarse. “It doesn’t — it’s not serious. Chill out.”

He’s been repeating the same mantra to himself on and off all day. Longer than that, really.

But this time it doesn’t work. He knows why, but he thought he was — he’s supposed to be okay with this. He’s an adult. He’s eighteen years old! It all feels so — stupid and juvenile, and he’s not stupid and juvenile, and it’s not even anyone’s fault and there’s no fucking reason to be mad, except that he’s four goddamn years old, apparently, and can’t fucking handle a situation without crying like a stupid fucking toddler.

It’s just that he —

He clenches the quilt tightly in his hands, squeezing his eyes shut.

He’s been working on this for over a year.

They don’t have a ton of free time, as paladins. They’re constantly on missions or training or planning or spending hours in the healing pod as a result of the missions and training and planning. There’s always a million things to do. But there are moments, here in there, when at least one hand is free, when there’s time to wind down, have some time to yourself.

Lance has been using his rare pockets of time to collect scraps of fabric, from worn curtains to torn flight suits to beautiful decorative things gifted on diplomatic missions. It was something he did with his Abuela at home, from when he was barely big enough to see the sewing machine from her lap, and the sound of the piercing needle and weaving thread is a comfort, now, something familiar he can do with his hands, something to remind him why he’s on this haunted castle in the dead of space, billions of lightyears away from home.

He’s proud of it. It’s by no means the first quilt he’s ever made and it shows in the straight lines of the stitching, the swirling patterns of the patches. It was a calming process but a difficult one, too, and he’s poured his heart and soul into it, seeing together the reds and blues and greens and yellows and blacks to make something solid of their frantic time in space. He’s been too excited to keep it to himself, even, mentioning it here and there, bringing it up during conversation at dinner.

He hadn’t expected everyone to drop what they were doing and write a fucking poem about it, obviously, but he had — he thought there’d be something. Anything. When he draped it pointedly over his lap during movie night, tracing the stitches with his pointer finger, he’d expected someone to say, woah, cool, you make that yourself? You were telling us about it!

His face burns hot with shame, and he swipes angrily under his eyes. How fucking arrogant. It’s just a — it’s a fucking blanket made of worn scraps. They’re fighting a war. He can’t believe he expected a fucking — fluffing of his ego, or whatever. It’s embarrassing. It’s a child whining for their mother to watch them do half a cartwheel.

He balls up the fabric, resisting the urge to rip it to shreds, and stomps down the hallway, blowing past a bewildered Keith. He nearly slams right into the wall as he rounds the corner, staggering to the side at the last minute, yanking open the hatch of the garbage chute and stuffing the quilt in.

“Fucking — come on.” The stupid fucking quilt is too bulky. He slams both palms flat against the bunched fabric and shoves, but his arms shake, and the harder he presses the more frustrated tears well up and steam down his face, and the weaker his arms gets. “Go — in!”

He rears his fist back and slams it into the ball of fabric as hard as he can, but the stupid thing stays jammed. With a shout of frustration he kicks the side of chute, hard, but all that does is damn near break his toe, so he pounds the quilt with his fists again and again and again and —

“Fuck off!” he screams, kicking the stupid chute one more time before giving up and slamming the lid back down on it. It doesn’t do anything but make the whole thing look a thousand times more pathetic; his stupid childish quilt stuffed in a garbage chute where it belongs but refusing to slide down like the ugly eyesore it is. The sobs that he’d been choking down since the beginning of that stupid fucking movie tear their way out of him and there’s not a goddamn thing he can do to stop them, so he turns and flees, leaves the ugly thing behind him, sprinting all the way to his room, furiously wiping his eyes. He throws himself on his bed at full speed and nearly cracks his head on the wall when he bounces on the mattress. He snatches the nearest pillow and hugs it to his chest, shoving his face so deeply into the down that he can hardly breathe, sobbing so hard he has to choke down vomit.

He’s a fucking idiot. A fool. A goddamn child.

He cries until he passes out.

[drakkie]

Just for a moment- like just take a moment and imagine and feel what I’m about to say-

You are sitting in your room in your bed. Quilt is up till your chin. You can feel the sweat in your hands but that is nothing compared to the tears trickling down your face. Outside your blackened room, you can faintly see flashes of gold and red and orange- the worst colours for a country under occupation to witness.

Your whole five senses are fully devoted to the violence outside, ears to the dropping bombs. Eyes shut tight or wide open in fear. Dry mouth. Nostrils barely intaking air or taking in too much of it. Sweaty, trembling skin.

Screams- loud, relentless, haunting - belonging to real people. People like you. People of your own hometown. You can hear them. Oh how you hear them. The bombs keep dropping as if to mock your existence, your right to exist as a human.

If you believe in a God, you pray and pray and pray to him. You’re stuck in a ruthless cycle of praying, sobbing, hearing screams, bomb after bomb after bomb, scream after scream after scream, praying…

If you are ‘lucky’, the bomb won’t fall in on you too. But if you really were ‘lucky’, why would there even be the probability of bombs falling on you anyways. If you really were ‘lucky’, you would not even be undergoing this genocide.

Luck cannot be substituted for compensation as to being or not being killed. It should be human rights which belong to Palestinians which should have been on the minds of Israel when they thought of terrorizing and massacring the entire Gaza strip.

The above written snippet is just a FRAGMANT of suffering EACH AND EVERY PERSON IN GAZA go through EVERY DAY SINCE OCTOBER 7 IN A ROW and BEFORE THAT TOO. Now imagine a small innocent CHILD having that sheer fear, terror and thoughts - no child deserves to go through that.

People of the world. Wake up. Wake up and see this genocide for what it actually is. See ISRAEL for the absolute hot garbage it is, HOLD it accountable for the tens of thousands of lives taken, the people it traumatized for life.

Wake up. Find your voice.

[thestudentfarmer]

Anyone else enjoy thrifting and thrift shopping?

It's one of my favorite ways of keeping stuff out of the garbage heap.

And Sometimes you just need something. Sometimes, it might be cheap pants, shirts, "new" cookware or eating utensils, ridiculous decorative stuff. A ton can be found through thrifting and i don't necessarily have to feel guilty in buying some stuff I might not have gotten otherwise (or needed). Mostly because while it's already had 1 life, why not another while it's still functional and keep it out of the dump longer? 🌱💚 🌱 no need for new for everything if it's already made and here :)

I haven't been able to for a long time as I like to carpool or have donations to bring with, was able to recently go with some friends and wanted to share some of the neat buys I found.

I don't usually get lucky with pretty homemade quilts being available when thrifting, but I found this one and am pretty excited about it, (this was my top find this time)

To me, it looks hand stitched entirely, there's a few small tears that will need minimal repair and a few spots that will need some reinforcement as theres a bit of thinning. Otherwise it's quite beautiful and I know it must have taken the maker a bit of time to do. Also i must admit, im kind of inspired to get my hands back to quilting again soon from this beauty.

A sweet deal on this embroidery floss and tool(?)

To be quite honest I'm not really sure what the tool being pointed at is, if anyone knows please share your knowledge! I'll likely use the floss on some hat projects for gifts this year.

Also, I found a bag with all these bobbins and thread. I've been looking for more bobbin containers cause I like to have a full one for the common colors I use when I'm sewing. These colors I'll probably use for binding smaller quilts (dog, cat, baby, and lap quilt sized) or for attempts at making clothing if fabrics are similar colored.

I also found

A set of ceramic measuring cups with handles,

kitchen knife,

2 crocheted blankets, lap/single sized,

2 nice new picture frames (still wrapped),

A book (fun reading material),

And what I thought was a ceramic pancake 🥞 or tortilla holder/warmer for breakfast, but I think it is actually for something else? I'm using it to store fresh ginger tubers at the moment (later, mayby garlic bulbs)

I was hoping for some nice fabric to try my hands at skirt making and some interesting quilting fabric, but nothing in the selection really caught my eye this round. Lots of pretty kitchen ware and nicknacks, though. Unfortunately, there no time to even look at the clothes before we had to head off, no big loss though.

That's it for now,

🌱🌻Happy Homesteading and sustainability efforts!🌻🌱

5 16 24

[notsodailykurudoro]

Day 23

(day 19 continuation)

“Not a problem!” Dororo gleamed, giving the smaller man his space as he stared around the place. 

It was… something. 

“I could help you tidy up this place if you so let me.” He offered.

Kururu already had started eating and boy was he going at it, he took a brief break of trying to feed his starving self to muster a “Suit yourself” between bites.

And I shall, thought the taller man, tying together his long hair to work better on the stinking mess that was now Kururu's room. He swore he'd seen burrows ten times neater than whatever the everloving heck was going on here. 

Luckily, he came prepared. A soft smile drew onto hidden lips as he began tossing visible junk on a big plastic bag. The room was dark, barely lit by three monitors from the ostentatious mumbo-jumbo that shaped together Kururu's rather expensive setup. Sometimes he wonders where he gets the stuff, sometimes he is brave enough to inquire about such, and sometimes he gets a halfhearted answer. Sometimes, he worries.

He'd be lying if he said he wasn't actually worried all the time. For him, for them, for everyone. 

Had anyone ever paid him back?

That was also a sometimes. 

He kept working on the task at hand, he had a long way ahead but he’ll manage, he was more than satisfied with just having managed to get the hermit to eat something that wasn't artificially made or not even proper food at all. 

He could tell by all the wrappers and boxes discarded on the sticky floor that he'd spent at least weeks eating garbage, if not more. A pit sank in his stomach, well known worry setting in his limbs, sensitive enough to feel his vacant eyes stinging. He tried not to think too hard about it in order to stop himself from shaking, but he knew Kururu's health was worsening by the second and he couldn't help but feel unfathomably sad about it. 

He steadied his breathing, squatting down to toss what seemed like a bunch of crumpled papers next to the ginger's bed. 

Dororo squinted, stopping in his tracks as he tried to fix his gaze on a single not ruined sheet lying on the floor beneath the disgusting mass of quilts, gadgets, clothes and pillows that was the litter. 

He held it gently between long fingers, glancing quickly at the smaller nerd that was too distracted eating while he pondered at something on whatever in the world those screens were showing him, before returning to try and take a read at the messy handwriting. 

It was, again, very dark, however he was well accustomed to see among shadows.

So he read. 

…

…?

And he read again.

…

…

… It was a suicide note. 

He felt his heart stop for a whole second, eyes wide as could be while trying with every fiber of his being to not freak out audibly at the fatal discovery. He swallowed, dry, debating whether or not it was a good idea to bring it up to his companion. 

This was awful! Why would he think about such atrocity? Had he arrived too late, or just in time? He looked… rather bad, but honestly he could never tell the difference and that made him feel even worse. 

He had to think, read the room, think about his feelings, plan out how he was gonna say it so Kururu didn't felt awkward and decided he didn't want Dororo in his life anymore, think about his tone and words and when and how and

“WERE YOU ACTUALLY GONNA DO IT?” A heavy teary eyed Dororo exclaimed as he held onto the hikikomori with one hand and held the note with the other.

Startled outta his mind, Kururu tried to narrow his own fucked up gaze towards what he was trying to show him, the contact making him uneasy as well as the crying. 

“I- uh- wuh-” He stammered, finally focusing on what he had in his hands and feeling his heart stop for a solid split of a second. 

Unbothered, a strained almost permanent smile kept the snarky bite on his words as he reached for the note. 

“Now where didja find that…?” 

“WERE YOU? KURURU-DONO, PLEASE! YOU HAVE TO TELL ME-”

“Where?"

“Th-T-The bedframe, beneath it…” The martial arts enthusiast sniffed, easing his grasp on the technician as to not keep bothering further. He was honestly kinda surprised he didn't instantly shoved him away. 

The yellow devil remained silent for a few beats, rereading the thing as if having forgotten that he, at some point in his recent life, stood so ridiculously low to write such a pathetic excuse of a letter. 

The flash of a thought came to him, who was ever gonna read it anyway? but after glancing out of the corner of his vision and seen the barely illuminated ninja shed abnormally large tears, he reconsidered. 

He crumpled the note and tossed it away. 

“Don't worry about it.” He lazily elaborated, slumping forward once again to keep scrolling on what seemed to be a shady forum long forgotten by even god himself, stuff that Dororo could not get even if he tried or cared enough. 

“DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT!?” The taller man quickly retorted. “Y-Y-H-HOw am I sure you’re not gonna shorten further y-y-your lifespan!?”

Kururu cringed ever so slightly. 

“And I-I apologize deeply if this is still a sour subject to you, but sir, I hold deep worry towards your well being!”

“I know.”

“I'm serious!”

“... I know.”

“So, please do I beg you… Would you tell me if something greatly bothers you? If there's something straining your chest with anguish?”

Kururu seemed so distant from his spot, even if merely inches away, he always seemed to hide just enough to be unreadable yet clear enough to tell he was going through it™. It didn't helped to ease Dororo's nerves. 

“Please? At least would you try?”

“... ‘k” 

“Thank goodness…” He sighed with relief, wiping away some of his tears with the back of his bandaged hand. “I won't ask about the letter, you’ll know when to reach and I'll assist.”

“Will do my best I s’pose.” Kururu muttered, barely audible. Dororo catched it either way, and felt happy about it. “Y’can go back to whatever you were doin’, ain't going anywhere.” 

Ain't dying soon he would had said instead, but he didn't felt like tormenting the man further. Not today. 

“I shall.” 

The ninja bowed lightly, and that's the last he heard of him as he fixed again on the screens, tired eyes fully hidden under glasses that were hit directly by the blue light. 

He felt arms wrap around his frame and he almost jumped at the sudden touch, the scent of incense and pinetrees giving away the perpetrator if not already painfully obvious. 

“Wh… Why…” Words couldn't leave his mouth properly as he fought with his own weird stoicness and months of being a touchstarved sociopathic freak. 

“I'm sorry, I couldn't help myself, I hope this isn't uncomfortable to you-”

Kururu considered. His smell was awful if not just rotten, had the temperature of an oven on Christmas and not for the reasons anyone thought, and the feeling of someone else touching him was just indescribable pain. 

And yet…

“... I don't mind.”

Maybe that's what the mask was for. 

They remained like that for a short while before the long haired shinobi retreated and kept trying to tidy up the room, and he went back to mess on his computer, none of them said a word afterwards. 

It was nice. 

[passivenovember]

wait until you taste me

--

Max says the dumbest shit in the world. 

Billy forces himself, tooth and nail, to give the grace he never got to touch with his own two hands. She’s a teenager. She’s dumb and her nature is rose-colored. Heart-shaped fillers slipped covertly in that delicate space behind a splash of blue.

Her head is filled with hot air. Good intentions. Speckled with delusions that are charming when she’s not so reckless, and.

Billy doesn’t want to smash her hopes on ground in front of her.

Life will, eventually. 

Life always does, but. Billy figures he could try and be the storm wall that protects her garden of wonder.

He gets over that real quick when she can’t do the same in return.

When she bats her eyelashes and says, “I’m glad you and Steve are friends, now,” at Sunday dinner the week before Spring Break.

In front of everyone.

Billy thinks her head is the size of the Hindenburg. She’s full of helium and she’s flying too close to the sun.

Neil tucks a wad of flavorless peas into his mouth. “Who’s Steve?” He asks.

And immediately, Billy’s walls shoot like salt pillars from the ground. 

He weighs his options. What would happen if he got up from this table and ran? If he tucked Steve Harrington and his name and his reputation and his memory into a plastic bag and disappeared.

Billy’s got delusions of his own. 

He’s full of quilted daydreams, stitched from every moment Steve has ever looked, smiled, laughed at one of Billy’s jokes. The thread is golden, the color of every late-night promise  to drive Billy across county lines. 

Billy’s delusions are plushy-soft comfort he’s not ready to bring out of the closet.

So he takes a sip of water. “Steve,” Billy says. “He’s. Steve Harrington.”

Neil leans forward. “Harrington?”

“Yes sir,” Billy wills his voice not to crack. 

He’s reluctant to spoil this part of his exile. To call the hounds in, bloodthirsty, to trample and tear the thing he’s clutching like a spot of gold to his chest. He digs his heel into Max’s foot under the table and wishes he wasn’t in his Saturday lounge-around clothes. He yearns for his boots, to break a bone. Eye for an eye, to somehow cancel the marrow that’ll splinter in his face when Neil finds out the truth.

“Good family,” Neil says. Every syllable lands like crystalized hail. They clink and roll and clatter all around the dining room. “Might be a good influence.”

“He is good,” Max says happily. She kicks back. It stings. “Billy and him–”

“He and Billy,” Susan chimes, and Billy thinks how ironic that Susan would choose now to become a real person when she’s usually set dressing. 

Reanimation, just to fire a canon and contribute to the sinking of Billy’s battleship. 

Billy dabs his mouth with a wadded-up paper towel. “May I be excused?”

Neil’s eyes snap to, and for a single, terrifying moment, Billy thinks he remembers. Carlos. The Pier. California. He wasn’t too drunk, he wasn’t irate, he remembers–

But Neil. He nods, brows knitted with faux worry. “Everything alright, son?”

He only lives up to Billy’s expectation of him when it’s deserved. When Billy’s done something besides breathe, one inhale after the next. 

“Just tired,” Billy says. Wonders what would happen if he ran.

–

Max says the dumbest shit in the world. 

She’s a chick. She’s a girl with an attitude the size of Missouri and a tongue that can pierce the skin, and that’s where their similarities end, careening over the mouth of a cliff into nothingness.

Billy learns early on that if he wants any peace at all he’d better tune her out just short of plugging his ears with cotton and bloody fingertips and dynamite, so when the wailing reaches a fever pitch he can blow his head off and float far away from here. 

Sometimes, though, Max’s scowl will clear and it’s like the Oracle is speaking through her.

You know, this garbage disposal noise you call music actually rocks. Or, I’ve been thinking about piercing one of my ears. It looks cool on you, I guess. And, when Billy needs to hear it most, your dad’s such an asshole. 

She’s a wrecking-ball with no awareness of her swing.

And when she speaks, it’s not the same as I understand. 

It’s not, I look at Neil, I see the way he wishes you were dead and I get it, now. Why you’ve always got a lit match in your palm, ready to burn the world to the ground. 

When Billy least expects it, Max’s words are daybreak. Filled with light so blinding Billy's a bug under a microscope, slowly catching fire. 

Two days before spring, Max slams out of her bedroom while Billy’s working on his bench press.

He hardly notices.

He’s floating, a little. Like a balloon. He’s listening to the new Tears for Fears album because Steve’s obsessed with it, and he’s pretty when he’s excited, and Billy’s a sucker for the plush, wide-lipped smiles that drip like gold from Steve’s face. “They’re good, Bills. They’re like if Halloween and Valentine's day had a baby.”

Billy’s stuck in a ground-hog day memory of the way Steve’s hair flopped into his eyes when he promised, “They’re like us.”

And. 

Billy’s not paying attention. He’s at least twenty shoulder-presses in, he’s smiling, he doesn’t really notice when Max’s heavy, sock-feet steps don’t carry on through the living room, and that’s his first mistake.

Before Billy knows what’s happening, Max looms over him.

He feels, like the distant brush of a spiderweb on his back, Max glaring. Searching his face. 

But Billy’s a ship lost in a sea of brown eyes.

He almost can’t find it within himself to be pissed that he can smell the peanut butter on her breath, almost, but then Max says, “You know Steve wants to kiss you, right?” 

And Billy sits up so fast that he almost knocks himself out on the barbell. 

“Woah, you’re bleeding,” Max steadies him, brows pinched with concern. “Are you–”

“You can’t say shit like that.” 

“I’m just pointing out the obvious.” 

Immediately, something warm starts to trickle over the right side of his face. “Shit,” He says, at the same time Max howls, “Oh, god, you’re bleeding–”

“What the fuck did you think would happen?” Billy tries not to move his head too much. He grips the edge of the bench until the leather splits like canyons until he’s sure the pads of his fingers will separate, too. 

“I’m sorry,” Max babbles, “I didn’t mean to–”

The house is silent. 

Beyond the throbbing in his skull and past the strangled, nervous way Max is breathing while she waits for him to strangle her to death, there’s nothing. 

All of Hawkins might as well be gone. Deleted from the page like a bad line of poetry. Billy wonders what would happen if the drapes parted from the window. Would anything stare back at him? Streets and mailboxes and cloud-covered skies. Would the black cosmos would press hard against the glass, would their refuge of plaster and slate would crumble under the weight of the universe–

“They’re not home,” Max says. Every space monster to his roost.

Billy nods, wincing at the pain that fries and curdles behind his right eyebrow. 

Max steadies him. “Shit, do you need some ice?”

“Don’t need ice, I need a rag,” Billy says, “And a beer.”

“You don’t need a beer.”

“Fuck off.”

“I’m serious,” Max tells him, arms crossed. “If you have a concussion the last thing you want to do is get drunk–”

“I’m not gonna get drunk off one beer, shitstain.”

“Billy.”

“Max,” Billy snarls, working to push his voice fifteen octaves higher until they sound exactly the same. 

Max lopes furiously down the hall, returning a second later with crisp, beaded PBR in one hand and a wet rag in the other. Billy dabs his brow with the scratchy fabric, knowing Neil will reem him later for getting blood all over Susan’s good cloth. 

Billy can’t think about that, now. 

He reaches for the PBR and Max tugs it out of reach.

“Max–”

“I’m just. In biology, we’ve been reading about fetal alcohol syndrome.”

Billy feels like he got pushed in front of a train and whacked his temple on a railroad spike. “I’m not a fetus.”

“No, but our bodies are still developing,” Max says, like Billy’s an idiot. He’s thick and dumb and ridiculous for not paying attention in eighth-grade science class and knowing that the legal drinking age is twenty-one for a reason.

Billy doesn’t give a damn about that. “You made me split my brow, dipshit.”

“That’s not really my fault,” Max bargains. “I was just saying that Steve–”

Billy yanks the beer from Max’s hands. “Shut up,” He insists, nails burrowing under the pop-top, but just as Billy’s about to crack the seal and give himself over to the only thing in the world that would soothe his agony, Max is on him. 

“I’m worried about your brain,” She says, just short of tackling him off the bench, and.

Well.

She hollers. When she’s keeping secrets. When she’s trying to get her way. And Billy squints his eyes, ready to reiterate she has nothing to worry her stupid redhead over and it’s not really her place to worry about him, anyhow–

“You might have a concussion.”

“And you might have a death wish.”

“What’s it taste like, anyway,” Max wonders. “If it’s so good. It looks like root beer.”

“It tastes like piss.”

“Why do you drink it so mu–” When Billy glares, sharper than a new glade, Max bristles like a porcupine, “Look, I’m sorry I scared you–”

“You didn’t scare me,” Billy snaps. Spiders scare him, locked jaws and missed curfews and slashed tires scare him. Not little red-headed stepsisters who can’t mind their fucking business. 

Billy wants to throw the PBR at her.

Steve scares him. Steve–

Billy presses the can to his eyebrow, instead, hissing through his teeth at the feeling. 

Max’s shoulders drop, “Thanks for not drinking it,” She mutters, and it’s so sincere, so steeped in the sisterly worry Neil’s always preaching about, that Billy can’t swallow the question that bubbles up his throat like strawberry perfume. 

He has to know, “Why do you think Steve wants–”

“Whenever he watches you talk he always gets that look on his face.”

“What face?”

Max’s sneakers sing on the hardwood, dragging like nails against the chalkboard in Billy’s mind that’s been scrubbed clean and scribbled with Steve’s name, over and over and over again. “The blank one. You know, like when boys are about to kiss you and every thought flies out of their head like–” 

“How do you know what that face looks like,” Billy demands, stomach turning over on itself when her freckles burn away in shades of red. 

“Lucas–”

“God, that’s sick.”

“Don’t be an asshole. Just because Steve’s a loser and you’re a raging dickhole with a face only a mother could love–”

Billy winces, his molars grinding. It has nothing to do with the pain. Nothing to do with split brows and annoying sisters. “You’re one to talk, I can’t even look at you without wanting to Ralph.”

Max rolls her eyes. Deflates. “Sorry,” She says, soft and small, and.

She’s eyeing the PBR. Neil would kill Billy if he ever found out, but.

Billy cracks the beer and hands it to her. “Get lost before my head stops swimming.”

–

Steve’s fridge has the warmest light Billy’s ever seen, but maybe Billy’s just high. 

The glow cuts him from marble. He’s the work of artists long dead, the picture of beauty. Billy sways against the kitchen sink, feeling very much like he could fall asleep to the soft harmony of ketchup bottles and pickle jars making a grab for the fairytale prince.

It’s Friday. Just before spring break. They’re staring down a two-week barrel of nothing but lazy mornings and hazy midnights and each other. 

Miles and miles of nothing but this.

Billy’s excited. He could live forever in this moment, and the thought bubbles laughter out of him, surprised and happy. 

Steve looks at him, startled out of thought. “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing.”

Steve smirks, and. His nose is perfect in the refrigerator light. Billy never noticed before. He re-shelves a jar of olives, the fancy cheese-stuffed kind, and tugs a hand through his hair. “What are you even hungry for?” 

“Whatever you want,” Billy chews on his thumbnail, stomach churning. 

“Nothing sounds good. I don’t think I’ve got food in here, anyway.”

Billy watches him open a bag of sliced cheese. Is so warm and content he could fall asleep next to the bread box. “What do you call that?”

“Not food.”

“It’s food.”

“It’s ingredients, that’s not the same thing,” Steve pulls a slice from the bag, folding it a million times until it splits evenly down the middle. 

“It’s food, Harrington, it’s a whole meal,” Billy smiles in spite of himself when Steve nibbles on one half and holds the other, grinning, out in front of him. “No, I’m not–”

“Don’t even try it, Hargrove, I know you get the munchies when you’re stoned,” Steve wiggles the cheese at him, eyes big and brown and as expectant as they are beautiful, so.

Billy pops the cheese slice and eats it without tasting anything. 

Steve watches him, unblinking, “Well, what do you think?”

“It’s cheese.”

“Yeah, but you’re not full, right? Because there’s only more of that if we stay here.”

“Where else would we go?” Billy frowns, not getting it. The cheese is better than the single-packaged shit Susan gets from Melvalds. It’s smoky, and aged, and Billy could polish the whole bag if he wasn’t worried about the cheese farts. 

Steve fiddles with the corner of the bag, avoiding Billy’s eyes, “We could go out–”

“Close the fridge. You’re letting all the cool air out and now our dinner is gonna spoil.”

“Our dinner is not a bag of cheese,” Steve grumbles, but he hip-checks the door, collapsing onto his elbows in front of the paper towel dispenser. He tugs at his hair until it looks like it hurts, until his sprouting laugh lines disappear, and Billy hates it.

He wants them back.

He swims through the fog, trying to think of something funny to make Steve smile, but Harrington’s already pushing away from the counter, frown deep-set. “Why don’t you ever wanna eat anything when you’re here?” He demands.

And Billy can’t say that it’s the fault of his kid sister. That her insane, paranoid ramblings about love and blank expressions have gotten under his skin, and now everything Steve does feels like the start of something else.

Billy can’t admit that he wants it to be something else, so. “I eat popcorn sometimes.”

“I’m not talking about snacks, I mean real food,” Steve says. He studies Billy’s face, “Do you get your energy through photosynthesis or something?”

Billy laughs, loud and sudden. “No, I just–”

“I could cook for you.” Billy almost brains it on the spotlessly tiled floor because Steve’s eyes get bigger, somehow. Sparkling with earnestness. Steve shuffles, hands on his hips. “I want to cook for you,” He says, like it means something else entirely.

And whatever it is. Billy can’t handle that. 

He bristles, says, “I don’t feel comfortable eating anything that costs more than the house Max and I live in,” Hoping it’ll sink the lifeline Steve’s trying to throw him.

“It’s just organic shopping,” Steve shoots back.

Which. “Huh?”

“It’s got like, less sugar. And preservatives, or something,” Steve shrugs, tongue darting pink and swift across his cupid’s bow. “My mom does the shopping when she’s home.”

Billy frowns. “Well, I’m not eating half of your mom’s paycheck. What will you eat?”

“You know, making dinner for you means I’ll get some, too,” Steve says. A smile tugs lazily at the corners of his perfect, clever mouth, and Billy is swallowed by anticipation. 

There’s nothing he loves more in the entire world, probably, than seeing the subtle birth of each smile. The way Steve paints them on as if he were writing secret letters addressed to Billy, slipping them between the folds of conversation so Billy is surprised whenever they unfurl and bloom like tulips in the springtime. 

Steve’s eyes hunt over his face, “You’re sure you’re not a plant? A sunflower?” Steve asks. He scoots close, fingers reaching to tilt Billy’s head toward the kitchen light, “Look like one to me,” He says, and.

Out of nowhere, his face goes carefully blank. His eyes land somewhere and stick, like the spindly legs of a fly to trapping paper.

Steve is watching Billy’s mouth.

He’s leaning forward, he’s–

Somewhere, in the back of Billy’s mind, Maxine bangs on a door labeled No Admittance, hollering about the way boys look when they want to kiss you.

It scares Billy, how much he wants it.

How much it would kill him if it never happens. 

“I’m not a fucking plant,” Billy says, shrugging away. He stares wildly around the kitchen, his heart pounding like a drum in his chest. “This kitchen is disgusting.”

Steve watches him, quietly amused as Billy pretends to find something on the counter to scrub. 

Billy works a damp paper towel over every inch of the counter, putting an island between them so Steve doesn’t have the chance to swoop close. Get his hands on Billy’s face. 

Those fingertips would send sparks flying.

Billy would char and burn and bubble over, so.

Steve watches him for a quiet moment and Billy avoids his eyes, terrified of what he’ll find when he has to stop scrubbing the counter. “What are you doing?”

Eventually, the marble will come away on the paper towel. “Cleaning,” Billy says. “If we’re going to eat a bag of cheese in here, it’s gotta be spotless.”

“Wanna go to Benny’s?” Steve asks.

Billy stares at him, then, stomach growling on command. 

Steve’s answering smile is brighter than the harvest sun. Billy could sprout into fields of marigolds, he could be picked and kept forever in a vase on the fireplace mantle. “I don’t want you to feel like you’ve gotta clean up after me,” Steve tells him.

Guilt, sharp and swift, pangs in Billy’s stomach. He wants to insist that it’s no bother. That he’s used to cleaning up after Max and sweeping away the delicate bits of himself that clatter to the ground. And even if there were fruit punch stains all over the marble, the remnants of Steve living everyday in this house, Billy wouldn’t mind cleaning up after him.

Billy wouldn’t mind taking care of him.

Steve shuffles around the island, smile sheepish and cute. “C’mon, we can have pancakes.”

“I want chicken strips.”

“Alright.”

“And a double chocolate rootbeer float with ranch–”

“For your ice cream?” Steve teases, “That’s disgusting.”

“For my fries, asshole,” Billy shoves him playfully, “Do you want to feed me dinner or not?”

Steve rocks away and lands closer, cheeks red like strawberry ice cream, “I want to do a lot of things for you,” He admits quietly, and.

That face is back again. 

Billy wants to pull away, but he’s caught. Steve catches him, hook and line, says, “Billy–”

And Steve kisses like he’s never done it before, but has always wanted to try. Like he’s been waiting his whole life and every one before that for Billy. For this moment. High spring nights and empty stomachs and yearning, soft as fresh soil.

His fingers thread into the curls at the base of Billy’s skull.

Their knees bump together, Billy grabbing onto Steve’s shoulders to stop from falling back against the trash can.

The kiss opens up.

Gets sloppy and good and Billy could live here forever. His lips could swell and melt into Steve’s and it would be perfect.

Steve pulls away, but he stays close. Their lips brush on every desperate breath. “Sorry my kitchen is disusting,” He says.

Billy can’t think straight. “I’ll clean it for you.”

“Let’s stay in,” Steve says. He kisses Billy’s jaw and both eyelids, licking slowing into his mouth.

Billy throws the paper towel in the garbage can.

For the first time in his life, he’s full.

--

For an anonymous donor! I hope you enjoyed this drabble :)

[dearabby1990]

Chapter 29: The Morning after

Through your bedroom blinds colors of pink & orange dance across both your faces naked bodies clung together covered by your quilt sound asleep. Eddie starts to stir eyes fluttering open to see your face smiling to himself as he takes in your features thanking whatever higher power the universe has to be here with you to have you like this in a way nobody else can have you. Wanting to show you more of his love he quietly slides out of the sheets onto the floor to throw on his t shirt & his boxers. He tiptoes into the kitchen to look around for anything he can use to make you some breakfast in bed. Thankfully you were pretty good at keeping your house stocked with anything at all times eddie decides on making you chocolate chip pancakes & bacon he saw something odd next to the bacon he’ll have to ask you about that later he has no clue what in the world pork roll is or what kind of food it even is. He turns on the small radio in the kitchen making sure the volume is low enough to not wake you as The Beatles fill the kitchen & he sings and dances making his way around the kitchen island back to the stove. Meanwhile you start to stir in bed reaching for your love only to hit an empty pillow. Thinking he must be in the bathroom you get up throwing on some underwear & your guns & roses r shirt heading into the hallway only to stop & hear Eddie faintly singing towards the kitchen. 🎼”I give her all my loveeee… that’s all I dooo… and if you saw my loveee… you’d love her too… and I love herrr…. She gives me everythingg… and tenderly… the kiss my lover brings…. She brings to me…..and I love herrrr….”🎼 you stand there silently in complete awe his voice is raspy yet so beautiful notes melting into your ears like butter covering your body in goosebumps stepping forward slowly still listening in on him you enter the room leaning against the doorframe arms crossed smiling at him barefoot in your kitchen slender form swaying turning to you he jumps slightly “shit princess you scared me” chuckling “I’m sorry Eddie I couldn’t help it your voice… it’s.. beautiful” his cheeks turn crimson “thanks jame it means a lot.. oh! I made us some breakfast I wasn’t sure what you’d want but I hope chocolate chip pancakes are fine.. oh what the fuck is pork roll?!” You spit the sip of coffee you just took laughing “oh Eddie haha pork roll is a breakfast meat the look on your face just now though was hilarious what the hell did you think it was by the way it’s more only found on the east coast my uncle ships things from over there for me from time to time so I’m guessing you never had it so now I’m gonna have to make it move aside sexy pants I’m about to knock your socks off!” He’s shaking his head giggling at you watching you prep & cook what to him looks like bologna he stares at you fry it in the pan in such confusion when you’re finished you add some to both of your plates. “Okay try it & be honest it’s okay if you don’t like it Ed’s” he smiles at you “Sweets im a human garbage disposal I think we’ll be alright” he cuts into it taking a large bite you stare at him for a moment “hmmm it’s like ham but it’s not it’s good but it’s confusing” “hahaha Ed’s it’s okay as long as you like it & by the way these are the best pancakes I’ve ever had thank you for doing this you didn’t have to” he takes your hand “I know I didn’t have to I wanted to” rubbing small circles against your hand before placing a kiss on your knuckles “now on to other things are you sure you want my pain in the ass to move in here? I don’t want to be a bother or get in the way” “Eddie I haven’t been more sure of anything in my life now if this is all too much too soon please be honest & let me know” he gets up from his seat & walks to you “I want to I just wanted to make sure this is really what you wanted before we took that step because I care about you so much I don’t wanna lose you over any reason whatsoever” you wrap your arms around him embracing him as tightly as you possibly could. Both finishing up your breakfast with packing plans.

[spark-my-nature]

The Thrill of It All - DRW & SFK

Now I know people say this all the time, but this honest to god started as a barely 500 word ramble about Sam getting flustered around Danny, but hours later and nearly 7K words later, here we are, so...

Summary: Danny notices something is bothering Sam. Ever the helpful friend, he ends up getting to the bottom of more than Sam's switchy mood. Fluffy, friends to lovers, unrequited requited love, smut, blush sweet boys.

Words: 6.6K | Pairings: Sam x Danny

Warnings: Mentions of alcohol & marijuana, language, slash pairings, graphic sexual content (nudity, oral: m-receiving)

It wasn’t even that late, for Kiszka standards, but the twins had long since retired to pass out in the other identical two-person sleeper cabin next door already, and Sam released a steady stream of air through pursed lips as he switched the half full garbage bag to his other hand. His hyperactive mind was unusually calm this evening, a lovely consequence of the joint he’d shared earlier with his brothers and the numbing, constant white noise of the invisible orchestra of crickets. 

The memory of Danny’s folksy plucking at Jake’s miniature accoustic as he accompanied his cashmere-smooth voice, lulling Sam into a longing trance… well, it had that soothing effect on him, too. 

As he puttered around, enjoying the residual high and tossing cans and wrappers into the bag like the responsible environmentalist (and holier than thou little sibling) he was, his mind wandered as it often did to the curly mop-headed boy who’d taken his leave inside nearly twenty minutes ago. They’d argued their way into occupying the main cabin, the one with the kitchenette and the stand-up shower, as well as a bedroom. 

Bedroom, singular. 

Everyone in the band was more than used to doubling up; it wasn’t even a factor in their booking anymore. Months on the road confined to a bunk at the rear of a bus will quickly strip anybody of any semblance of privacy. But as of late, Sam had found himself torn between the prickling hot, shameful desire to share very close quarters with Danny, and the desperate need for walls between them. 

What used to be occasional, unwarranted… intimate curiosities about his friend had ramped up as of late into full blown, x-rated fantasies that had, on more than one occasion, manifested in a sticky mess in his flannel sleep pants, discovered in the wee hours as he shot awake, covered in sweat, and mortifyingly rinsed out and hidden in the laundry bag beneath t shirts and towels in the dead of night. 

It was through no fault of his own, though, he grappled. Everyone at least thinks about it, right? What it would be like, your best friend’s lips on yours, his body warm, sweaty, pressed tight along your own as he-

A clang of silverware against stainless steel inside the nearest cabin alerted him to his bunk mate’s own restlessness. Not long ago, Danny had called it a night, helping Sam dump the bucket of sand over their comically small fire (one they were expressly told by the property management not to have at all), saying he was grabbing a quick shower and to not wait up. And Sam had, fairly enough, expected him to just crawl right into the comfort of the quilted queen bed after. 

But as Sam struggled his way inside, fighting with the trash bag and the sliding screen door, he was startled, not by Danny’s presence, puttering around and tidying the kitchen, but by his completely inconsiderate, personal-attack-on-Sam, indecent lack of modesty, clad only in his towel. Wet ringlets dripping down his bare chest, the towel low on his hips, obscuring the pot of gold at the end of that dark treasure trail- 

Letting the bag slip out of his suddenly sweaty fingers, Danny looked up from the sink at the sudden tinny racket it made with wide eyes, scrambling to sort out the unexpected racket. Catching Sam’s clumsy manoeuvre over the pile of spilled cans, his hand pressed to his chest as he willed his heart to settle down. 

“Fuck, Sam, startled me,” he chuckled, winded, his shoulders relaxing as he leaned back against the counter, observing his friend crawling and reaching around the wooden floor while keeping his eyes rigidly to himself. As Sam shoved the trash into the bag for the second time, muttering to himself under his breath, Danny’s brow furrowed, already shifting into fix-it mode but baffled as to what could be wrong.

The bassist’s head shot up as the shuffle of Danny’s steps moved around the edge of the kitchen island. For no logical reason, his heart started racing, every part of his body screaming for Danny to stay away from him, but also to get as close as possible as soon as possible. 

“Dude… I thought Jake was the one seeing ghosts, not you,” Danny half heartedly joked, his confusion starting to shift into true concern at the squirrelly, nervous energy his friend was emitting. “What’s the problem?” 

You, Sam’s inner monologue shouted, you and that fucking towel, and your god damn naked chest and your perfect fucking face-

On the outside, Sam neutralized his features as best he could, attempting a wry smile as he tied up the bag. “No problem, just cleaning up their messes,” he gestured vaguely in the direction of his brothers’ cabin. He hoped Danny wasn’t observant enough to catch his fingers shaking and fumbling with the knot, playing it off with a dramatic, “there we go,” letting the bag lean against the door to be dealt with in the morning. 

Danny watched, folding his arms over his chest as his eyes narrowed. Sam shifted his weight, holding the suspicious staring contest for a moment before shrugging and attempting to move past the drummer toward the bedroom down the short hall. The escape was foiled by a toned, tan arm extending in Sam’s path as Danny leaned against the wall by his head. 

“Let me go, weirdo,” Sam chuckled nervously, his dodge under Danny’s arm blocked by his toweled knee lifting in front of him. 

The sudden jerky movement loosened Danny’s already precariously secured towel, the white fluffy fabric slipping in slow motion before Danny’s corralling arm retracted to help protect his little remaining modesty. A rush of blood shot so quickly south through Sams body, it left him feeling lightheaded, and he darted past Danny’s failed bodily barricade, marching in the direction of the bedroom before he could embarrass himself with the pathetic whimper that almost just betrayed him. 

Danny was hot on his heels, and for the first time, Sam wished his friend wasn’t such a god damn mother hen. The last thing he needed was an interrogation, not when the inevitable confession was centred around the curly headed detective. 

“Sam-“ he followed the lanky man into the bedroom, now firmly into worrying territory. The bassist had been just fine when he’d left the fire to cool off. In fact, Sam had been visibly quite enjoying Danny’s serenading, and the romantic atmosphere became too much, toying with Danny’s feelings, a mere glimpse at the kind of evening he wanted with Sam every night. So he’d made his excuses and brought himself back to earth in a cool shower, and that was only half an hour ago at best. He wracked his brain as to what could possibly have set off the unpredictable storm of his friend’s temperament. 

Sam busied himself by unzipping his bag, rifling a little too frantically through balled up socks and messily folded shirts as he kept his back to the practically naked Greek god standing behind him. 

“Sam.” 

“What, Daniel?” His head whipped towards his friend, immediately regretting the way his words hissed harshly past his lips, though Danny paid him no mind, well versed in Sam’s attitude by this point.  

“What happened? Why’re you acting so… weird, all tense and shit?” He took a step closer, instinctively causing Sam to step back as well, the dresser now digging into the small of his back. 

Their eyes met briefly, Danny’s gaze analytical and concerned, while Sam’s face began feeling uncomfortably warm. 

Danny was among the most patient men on the planet, but Sam’s stubborn vow of silence was wearing thin, and he pushed once more, “Sam?”

Sam blinked, shaking his head and forcing his eyes away, anywhere but Danny’s bare torso, the remaining moisture of his shower catching the nightlight plugged into the wall and the moonlight streaming through the open window into the otherwise dark room. 

“I’m fine, Danny, seriously, leave it,” he mumbled, sounding unconvincing and small even to his own ears. 

Danny shook his head, closing the distance further, reaching a hand to Sam’s shoulder, the smell of his earthy body wash drifting past his nose. 

Sam rapidly shot his face towards Danny’s movements, reminiscent of a wild animal, and Danny scoffed, although there was no animosity behind the sound. “…’Kay, you never call me Danny, will you just tell me what your issue is?” 

“Maybe if you’d stop chasing me around with no clothes on, I’d be able to think!” Sam blurted, his eyes widening immediately in regret. 

Danny’s brow furrowed, his brain lagging severely with the mixed messages it was receiving. Sam’s issue was… him? His body? Since when?

The drummer’s face slowly shifted from confusion to a sort of timid, hopeful understanding. “Sam, I-“

Sam shook his head quickly, his face bright red and his chest tightening as he ducked down, anticipating his friend’s grabby hand swinging out to stop him.. His mind was reeling, his stomach feeling like it was through the floor in the wake of his unintended confession. 

This time, Danny’s swinging hand grasped successfully onto Sam’s forearm, spinning him back towards Danny’s body. 

Sam gaped up at his friend, those extra two inches of height really making their presence known in this moment of stunned silence. Danny simply gazed down at him, holding him securely, practically chest to chest, his warm stare working to calm Sam’s panic immediately, as it always did, even now when said stare was the source of the panic. 

“You’re… bothered by me… in a towel,” Danny confirmed softly, his own cheeks tinting pink. Sam’s eyes fell down the column of his friend’s neck, sweeping across those broad muscled shoulders that carried him around, the sculpted but subtle pecs separated by the triangle of chest hair he had never been able to grow himself.

Sam chewed his lip, putting his trust in Danny’s unlimited understanding and caving a little. 

“Maybe, a little. Yeah.” His wide eyes were quick to meet Danny’s, “But this doesn’t have to be, a- a thing, I don’t ever want to make it weird, we can just, just move on. Like this didn’t happen, yknow?” He rambled nervously, shutting himself up when he saw the hint of a smile tugging at the edges of Danny’s lips. 

“Hmm,” Danny nodded, a cruel part of him enjoying letting Sam squirm a little. It wasn’t often his feathers were ruffled, and watching his cheeks flush bright as he got himself increasingly flustered, it was… cute. 

Sam, after a pause that dragged on for longer than he could stand it, huffed out, “What? What’re you- what?” 

Danny’s grin spread wider. “You’re cute.” 

Backup. Refresh. Error 404, train of thought not found, system failure- Sam’s intelligent, articulate brain was a blank slate, wiped clean with the words that had just been uttered so casually. 

“Cute?” Sam sputtered. “Excuse me, what?” Stampedes of butterflies swarmed mercilessly in his stomach, slowly unfreezing where he stood before Danny unceremoniously in the middle of the room. 

Danny had the audacity to giggle at him, “Yes, cute. You’re cute.” 

Sam squinted at him, fighting the incredibly strong twitch of his lips as they threatened to defy him in a bashful smile. “Shut up, don’t mess with me-“ 

“M’not, I’m not messing with you. You are. Like, always, in fact. Especially right now,” Danny confessed, too preoccupied with the endearing shock painted across the bassist’s face to feel shy.

Sam let out a short disbelieving laugh, letting the smile win its valiant efforts to take over his face, hand in hand with a deep blush in his cheeks. 

“Oh,” he said simply, shyly dipping his face down. “…cool.”

Danny barked a laugh, his hands lifting to cradle either side of Sam’s face. “Cool? You’re such a dork,” he snickered. 

Sam rolled his eyes, chuckling along. “Whatever, Daniel, you’re the king of dorks,” he unoriginally shot back, slowly becoming more and more aware, once again, of Danny’s clothing situation, or lack thereof. 

The drummer watched in fascination as those heated brown eyes drank in his figure, still bashful but lacking the prior shamefulness. 

“Well don’t start drooling on me, I did just shower.” 

Sam shook his head quickly, huffing petulantly through Danny’s giggle, pushing away from his body. 

“Nope, that’s fine, you can go fuck yourself, I should be getting to bed-“ 

A sudden tangle of limbs, a brief wrestling match, and a litany of strained curses found Sam pinned to the mattress beneath a pleased, half-naked Daniel Wagner. 

“Jesus, dude,” Sam exhaled, blown out-pupils drinking in Danny’s far-too-smug face until his eyes blaze down his naked torso of their own accord. He watched, powerless to stop his own long, dexterous hand from slipping out of Danny’s grip and hesitantly placing against Danny’s pec, faintly digging his fingernails into the skin experimentally. 

Danny bit down on his bottom lip as air whooshed into his lungs, shifting his weight on the arm beside Sam’s head to smooth a hand of his own down the soft fade of Sam’s shirt. 

“You’re really driving me crazy, right now,” Danny quietly confided, hand now sneaking its way underneath the shirt’s hem. 

“Good then, the feeling is mutual,” Sam whispered, blinking demurely up at him, scratching at Danny’s chest lightly as an outlet for his racing heart and heated lower half. 

Danny’s hand flattened against his soft stomach, smoothing steadily up his lithe abdomen, pushing the t shirt up past his ribcage, until Sam curled a hand around his roaming wrist. 

Slightly terrified, but in the most exhilarating possible sense, the two men lock eyes, searching each other in the dead silence of the room, deafened by their own heartbeats pounding in their ears. 

One perfectly arched nose brushed against the tip of another more angular tipped up one, the oxygen fleeing the room suddenly as Danny’s lips loomed so close, so close to Sam’s. 

“Kiss me.” 

Looking back, it was rather a blur of who actually spoke the words, but it didn’t matter in the slightest. 

Danny’s lips captured Sam’s pout in a searing, momentous kiss, the ache of longing finally quenched, relief seeping through Sam’s veins like an IV drip. Relief and carnal, animalistic craving. Sam was deaf to his own wanton moan, but Danny lapped it up in the figurative and literal sense, his tongue darting between Sam’s parted lips. The drummer groaned, every neuron firing left and right in an overwhelming chorus of take, give, need, provide. Sam felt drunk, his senses consumed with Danny’s greedy lips working against his own. 

Lungs burning for a reprieve, Danny regretfully detached from Sam’s mouth for a gasp of air, Sam’s longing, pitiful whimper putting an end to remaining self-control. 

“Oh my god,” Danny slurred in a whisper, eyes drooping heavily before he dove back in, lips feverishly massaging and dominating Sam’s mouth. Having freed his other hand at some point, Sam sank both sets of fingers into Danny’s luxuriously soft curls, damp but steadily drying in the heat of the summer air, stifled in the tiny bedroom. He tangled himself in Danny’s hair, cementing himself desperately to his body and to this moment they found themselves in. 

Sam whined breathlessly as Danny licked into his mouth, mumbling what sounded like, “Fuck, baby,” letting himself be worshipped and mauled by Danny’s lips. 

Parting from the escalating kiss, stealing greedy pecks as he mournfully pulled away, Danny panted, still supporting his weight on one elbow at Sam’s side. Even as his shoulder ached from the strain, Danny realized then that redistributing the weight of his body would require two things. 

One, putting distance between him and the gorgeous boy laid out beneath him so submissively, distance he wanted little to do with from here on out.

Two, a delicate manoeuvre to keep his towel from completely unfurling from around his waist, a movement he wasn’t sure he had either the skill, nor frankly, the desire, to attempt. 

Sam fluttered his eyes open, his pouty lips swollen, as he tried to determine the reason for the absence of more kisses. Letting a playful grin sweep across his face, he gave a questioning, flirty glance down the drummer’s bare torso. 

Danny smirked, that single expression capable of melting Sam into a puddle, before cocking an eyebrow in a questioning tease. 

“Can I help you?” he coyly flirted, leering at the suggestive looking bassist. 

Sam narrowed his eyes, his smirk remaining in place. 

In hindsight, he only meant to brush his hand down Danny’s abs, a tease in retribution for the unbearable, cruel torture Danny was inflicting, what with him hovering so tauntingly above him like the most forbidden treat, refusing to meet his lips again. 

But as he felt the rippling flexing muscles under his fingers tensing, and heard Danny’s flustered inhale through that gorgeous nose of his, he didn’t stop his exploring hand from travelling south, breath held in his chest as he monitored Danny’s face curiously. 

Danny, who’s towel was now dangerously close to falling away from his waist (given the extra girth his rock-hard erection provided) unexpectedly let out a pleading, cut off whimper. The sound choked in his throat as he swallowed harshly, leaning, pressing ever so slightly against his friend’s wandering fingers as they mapped out his abdomen.

Sam’s teeth sunk painfully into his bottom lip, steadying his hand against the unusual affliction of shakiness, and he continued silently searching Danny’s eyes for any sign to stop. He was consistently met with Danny’s rhythmic puffs of breath near his face, his expression needy and trusting, so Sam hesitantly rotated his hand one-eighty, to slide fingertips-first down his friend’s happy trail. 

Danny shivered delightfully, eyelids fluttering shyly as Sam finally dipped his fingers beneath the taboo-checkpoint of the towel. Both boys inhaled sharply as callused fingertips mapped out the transition of Danny’s happy trail into his patch of dark curly hair. 

“Hang on,” Danny whispered, rushed out in a tense exhale, causing Sam to freeze in place, terror gripping his chest with fear of having upset his friend, having gone too far, hurt him somehow-

Danny ducked down, stealing a soft kiss from the bassist’s parted lips, then lifted off Sam’s body toward the pillows. Holding onto his towel still, though he was starting to feel a little silly about it, he laid himself out against the cushioned headboard, holding an arm out in shy invitation. 

Sam relaxed visibly, making Danny smile, endeared by his best friend’s nervousness. He decided he rather liked being the one to make Sam nervous for a change, granted Sam made him nervous more often from the reckless mischief he got roped into with his older brothers rather than… well, whatever type this was. 

As Sam climbed up the bed, eager to lose any space between his body and Danny’s, Danny interjected softly. “Why don’t you take your shirt off?”

Sam paused, straightening on his knees as he grinned, tugging the threadbare tee shirt over his head. Smile broadening, Danny bit his lip as the shirt was discarded to the floor. 

Sam sat back on his haunches, displaying himself to be admired. He thoroughly enjoyed Danny’s eyes raking down his bared torso, despite it not being close to the first time he’d been shirtless in his presence. He was looking at him now with new eyes, in this ambiguous but safe new development of their dynamic. 

“So pretty,” Danny whispered, so mindlessly that Sam wasn’t sure he was even aware he’d uttered it out loud. He positively preened under Danny’s gaze.

Danny finally lifted his eyes to Sam’s. “You wanna c’mere?”

“Yeah,” Sam breathed simply, smiling crookedly, not feeling the need for words when he planned on letting his actions do the talking. He encroached towards Danny, laying out on his side parallel to the drummer’s body, and Danny tipped up his jaw sweetly, capturing his lips in another needy kiss. Push and pull, the rhythm section of the band did what they did best and quickly established a rhythm. Danny sucked Sam’s bottom lip, releasing it gently for Sam to lick at his lips in return, each exploring the other’s mouth in the knee-buckling ways Sam had only ventured in his dreams. 

When Danny’s tongue slipped hot and wet along his own, quickly followed by a muffled groan beneath his hand on Danny’s chest, Sam gave into the urge to get back to where they had been before the readjustment. Humming like a pleased housecat under Sam’s sensual touch, Danny paused his kisses when he felt Sam’s hand snaking once more beneath the cloth draped around his hips. On a mission, Sam simply moved his kisses from Danny’s stagnant lips down the drummer’s angled jaw, seeking that tempting patch of hair once more. 

Danny moaned softly, Sam’s lips working diligently to unravel him, one nipped kiss at a time. Encouraged, and despite his thumping heartbeat, Sam felt himself rake his fingers through Danny’s hair, the way he’d fantasized about. 

So often was Danny the subject of Sam’s nocturnal musings, his masculine build, the muscles, the hair, the broad shoulders and chest, all of it always conjuring filthy, forbidden images in his mind, scenarios he felt guilty about pining for. Well, up until this interesting development, that is, where he now realized that perhaps his filthy daydreams had more in common with Danny’s than he’d thought.

Danny brought him back to the present with the tiniest, most delicious grunt of withheld desire, jaw flexed in anticipation from Sam’s fingertips drawing nearer and nearer to the base of his erection. 

Sam instinctively curled his fingers in, withdrawing shyly from the point of no return, this part of Danny’s body that he’d never been privy to before, but Danny’s responding petulant huff was tinged with a barely vocalized whine, accompanied with a barely-there buck of his hips, and Sam wordlessly teased him with a smirk and an arched brow against his sweaty neck.

“Oh, can I help you?” It was exhilarating, throwing the drummers earlier tease in his face.

Danny huffed a breathy laugh, blushing and tucking his jaw against his chest, looking down at Sam’s roaming fingers and licking his bottom lip. 

“Now who’s the cocky bastard?” He answered, voice low and smooth, rumbling out of his bare chest. His tone, much like him, was sweet as honey, and Sam was the owner of a very prominent sweet tooth. 

That, and his curiosity never could be withheld for very long, least of all now, and given that he’d been waiting for this moment practically since their sophomore year, he felt his ability to joke around depleting by the second, replaced with the voyeuristic streak tugging at his brain and his stiffening groin. 

This was his best friend in the world, though, and at the end of the day, not even his own insatiable need to scratch that itch would overcome his need to ensure Danny’s comfort. And so, Sam lifted his face from the fortress of Danny’s neck and captured his eyes with a bashful smirk. 

With his hand still brushing featherlight circles through Danny’s pubic hair, he nuzzled his lips against the apple of Danny’s cheek in an uncharacteristically sweet and shy display of affection. 

“Can I touch you?” Sam breathed, words so soft they reached only across the small space between his lips and Danny’s ear, before melting away into his raven hair.

“Sam…please.” 

Two shaky, whispered words, flooding Sam’s mind with a rush of sudden, insatiable lust and a need to give his friend, his best friend, anything in his power that he could ever possibly want on a silver platter. 

Throwing caution to the wind, Sam finally pinched the lip of the towel and uncovered Danny’s body fully, drinking in his swollen, throbbing erection resting patiently against Danny’s thigh. 

“What the fuck, you’re so big,” Sam’s words coming out under his breath, hardly more than if he’d just mouthed them. He felt faint with need, considering for a second the slight size difference between them, though it was his first time fooling around with a guy, you couldn’t blame him for at least considering it. His mouth watered at the impressive girth, coupled with the obvious extra inch or so. 

Danny blushed, feeling so exposed, but God if he didn’t feel desirable under Sam’s ravenous stare. 

True to their nature, Danny weakly joked, “S’rude to stare, Sam.” 

Sam bit his lip hard, groaning softly, moving his hand tentatively to curl around Danny’s thick base. “I’ll try to mind my manners, Emily Gilmore.” he sassed breathlessly, stroking his fist over Danny’s impressive length once. 

Hips bucking into Sam’s touch, he gasped, “Oh-“ Swallowing harshly, Danny let his jaw hang open lazily, watching in awe as Sam’s fist begin to work his cock into a steady rhythm. “Feels good,” he murmured, bashfully catching Sam’s smug grin. 

Sam shifted uncomfortably around his own painful erection, ignoring it in favour of his new toy between his best friend’s legs. “I’ve had some practice,” he deadpanned. 

Danny snorted, distractedly flexing his fingers into the sheets. “Thinking about this, no doubt?”

Sam flushed, ignoring the teasing question in favour of lifting up on his hands and knees, releasing Danny’s twitching cock, letting it rest, leaking against his navel. 

Danny watched him crawl between his thighs and settle unceremoniously on his stomach, taking a deep lungful of air in realization. 

“Oh fuck, Sam,” he leaned up on his elbows, heart threatening to beat out of his chest as Sam, again, picked up his erection, “You don’t have to- ohh!” 

Sam’s lips enveloped Danny’s velvety pink tip carefully, slipping his tongue from the delicate underside of the head, to over the little slit that leaked a droplet of precum. Sam’s eyelids felt heavy with lust, but he forced them open, unwilling to miss a single expression flicker across his lover’s face. 

Danny watched, completely taken with lust and stunned grattitude, his lips parted attractively as he reached a hand down to sweep a tendril of chestnut hair behind Sam’s ear.

“Oh fuck, baby… shit,” he panted, giving in and letting his head fall into the pillows, panting at the ceiling as he let himself just feel.

Sam pulled back, taking a moment to breathe while he pumped Danny’s girthy cock in his hand. “You taste good,” he honestly told the blissed-out man above him. 

Danny let out a tortured sob of a laugh, sinking his strong fingers into Sam’s hair both affectionately and dominantly. He mustered up the willpower to glance down to where Sam worked him, thumbing over his tip with an expectant, submissive face.

“Don’t stop,” he directed, gathering silky hair in his large fist, his stomach tensing tight as Sam’s lips enveloped him deeper than before with his own guidance. Swallowing him about halfway, Sam breathed shakily through his nose, the air tangible against Danny’s base as the brunette exhaled. 

What with the thickness of his cock stretching Sam’s smart mouth so prettily, combined with the breaths and the gag reflex he struggled to control, Danny’s balls tightened, feeling his orgasm nearing embarrassingly quickly the longer Sam bobbed and sucked on him. 

“Sam I- Babe,” he whined, head falling back against the pillows as his face twisted in arousal. 

Sam hummed around him, blissed out with a mouthful of Danny’s perfect cock and the breathy, muttered praises and moans that drifted down. 

The fist holding his hair back tightened, torn between the need to pull him off or shove deeper into his throat. Suctioning his lips tighter, Sam hollowed his cheeks and squeezed while twisting his base gently, his efforts rewarded with a high pitched cry. 

“C-cumming- oh fuck Sammy, I’m cumming baby, please, please-“ Danny gasped, hips pitching forward erratically as he twitched, then gracing Sam’s tongue with warm pools of his cum. 

Sam whimpered, face hot with his own arousal as he struggled to swallow down Danny’s load, coughing as he gagged involuntarily from the unfamiliar texture and taste. 

Danny’s chest heaved, his eyes screwed shut. Sam panted, a proud smile suddenly stretching across his face. He watched Danny come down, his furrowed brows relaxing into place as he draped an arm lazily over his forehead. 

Feeling a little unsure of himself, and ridiculously turned on, Sam kissed the inside of Danny’s thigh, his heart fluttering at Danny’s lazy, affectionate smile from the action.

Pushing up on his hands, Sam quietly moved up the bed, laying beside Danny. He purposely left a few inches of space, his rational mind forcing his lust aside for now. 

He just made his best friend cum. While the thought made his own screaming erection throb, it also raised some very pertinent questions about the nature of their relationship. Sam’s brain struggled to process any tangible thought, the evening and the endorphins and his long-time crush spread out, naked and spent beside him, all tangled together in a fog of confusing feelings and uncertain outcomes. 

Danny could practically hear the cogs turning in Sam’s head without even looking at him. He blinked his eyes open sluggishly, a relaxed smile permanently etched on his face in the afterglow of one of the most intense orgasms of his life. As he turned his body on its side to face Sam, he met the boy’s timid eyes. 

“Sammy?” he quietly questioned, his brows furrowing at the face of churning anxiety looking back at him. 

Sam raised his brows expectantly, licking his lips. “Hm?”

“Why do you look like I’m gonna beat you?” Danny chuckled humourlessly, his smile fading as the unwelcome feeling of worry set in.  

Sam shook his head, offering a half-hearted smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Just, y’know…” He shrugged awkwardly, curling in on himself and rubbing his arm. 

Danny shook his head, shuffling toward Sam’s body, feeling a wave of relief when the initiation for cuddling was accepted. That was something at least.

“No, baby, I don’t know, talk to me,” he quietly prompted. 

Sam huffed a short breathy laugh against Danny’s neck. “This, Daniel, you just called me Baby, we’re cuddling, I just had your dick down my throat,” 

“Sam…” Danny’s cheeks flushed hot.

“…and up until an hour ago, I had no idea you felt anything like how I feel about you, I mean,”

“Sammy-“

“I still don’t, I- I didn’t want to assume you had, y’know, feelings for me, cause you’re my best friend, and if this is a one-time thing, then I’ll take it, I will, we can forget it happened if you want, but I-“

“Sam, shush,” Danny asserted, whipping out the harsh tone only to drag Sam back to earth. He pulled the pretty boy’s face out of his neck with two hands on his cheeks. Levelling with the, honestly, petrified stare Sam was giving him, trying to convey as much reassurance in his eyes as possible. “I do,” he confessed quietly. 

Sam’s wide, vulnerable eyes peered back at him, tempting Danny to lose himself in their pools of warmth, in the beautiful face that belonged to the boy that made his heart race and his head melt. 

“You do… what?”

“Have feelings for you,” Danny filled in, feeling his cheeks growing warmer. 

Sam blinked, and Danny grinned hesitantly, gaging his reaction. 

After a second, the bassist’s brain caught up, and once it did, his whole face erupted in his dazzling smile. “S-Seriously?”

Danny giggled, “Yes, dummy, seriously. I like you. In fact, I like-like you,” he joked, “as in more than friends.” 

Sam let out an incredulous laugh, “You- Daniel!” he scolded affectionately, blushing himself now, but too wondrously happy to give a shit. “Why wouldn’t you tell me?”

Danny shook his head defiantly, “Now hold on, that’s not fair, you never told me, either,” he protested, pitch climbing but not volume. 

Sam buried his face in Danny’s neck, rolling his half-clothed body half on top of Danny’s naked one, grinning wildly. He made his confession in the safety of Danny’s collarbones, sheltered with mostly-dry curls. 

“S’cause you’re so gorgeous, you make me nervous.” 

He felt giddy, light as air. And as Danny’s bashful chuckle vibrated his sculpted throat, he felt more desperate than ever for his friend’s touch. 

“Oh, whatever,” Danny dismissed, leaning his head on Sam’s shyly. He pressed a kiss to the crown of his head, delighting in Sam’s happy little squirm. 

Then he felt the sting of a playful bite, the flesh of his shoulder reddening as Sam’s mouth soothed it with a wet kiss. 

So quickly, he was flushed with warmth again, Sam’s mouth the most heavenly on-switch that had ever triggered his hormones before. 

The smug culprit lifted his face from the evidence bruising his skin, and Danny’s jaw dropped slightly as Sam’s hips rolled into Danny’s thigh. Sam exhaled, slow and shaky, eyeing Danny’s face as he ground into him again, his erection prominent through the sweats he wore. 

“Such a needy boy,” Danny’s eyes darkened with his deep rumble of words, flicking his tongue over his top row of teeth in a rather animalistic display. Gaze landing on the tented outline of Sam’s groin as it twitched in response, Danny huffed a low breath of desire and pushed himself up on his elbows. 

Sam watched in rapt fascination, allowing his beau to manhandle him onto his back and crawl swiftly overtop of him. Before he could string together a coherent thought, his lips were sealed with a searing kiss, his mouth eagerly returning Danny’s hungry attack. 

Tensing his stomach, he felt Danny’s fingers nimbly fumbling with the drawstring in his way. Impatiently, he lifted his hips and shoved his pants and boxers down as soon as the bow was undone, and Danny tugged them off his ankles for him as he laid back down. 

Sam watched Danny’s eyes eagerly. They trailed up his thighs, landing on his stiff, near purple-ish cock bobbing impatiently against his stomach. Danny’s face drooped in lust, biting his bottom lip so hard the skin whitened. He swiftly closed in on Sam’s cock, kneeling between the boy’s legs and balancing on his left hand, his right reaching out and wrapping delicately around his length. 

Sam shuddered, taking his lip between his teeth as his eyes flitted between the hand on his cock and the pair of lips longing to suck it in. 

“Daniel, please,” he breathed, pleading with his eyes. “M’so hard, it hurts.”

Danny’s eyes flew shut, and he huffed through his nose. Lowering his body onto his belly, he pumped Sam shallowly a few times before he met Sam’s eyes again. “Relax for me, sweet boy, I’m gonna take care of you. Promise,” he sealed his words with a kiss to Sam’s thigh, above his knee. 

Sam whined, losing his composure quickly after such a tenuous build up. He nodded quickly, putting his trust in his best friend like always. 

Danny held eye contact, sparks flying between them as he lowered his face to Sam’s tip, pausing his lazy strokes to flick his tongue over the delicate slit glistening with pearlescent precum. The unspoken words exchanged through looks alone felt like a live wire of white-hot energy, threatening to snap any second. Steadily, though, Danny held Sam’s unblinking gaze, sinking his mouth partway down his cock. Even as his gag reflex faltered, pushing the limits of his throat, Danny blinked away tears and maintained their connection. 

Sam’s mind, normally buzzing incessantly as his brain tried to process every piece of stimuli, felt soothed, quieted. As though Danny’s mouth had the power to flip the off-switch to every frenetic thought, leaving only a melty, viscous puddle in his wake. His mind consumed with Daniel, Daniel, Daniel. 

Danny finally fluttered his eyes closed, working Sam’s length with determination. His lips sealed as tight as he could manage around the salty, soft skin, and he pushed his limits again, sinking down farther as his hand left the base of his cock to cup and fondle his balls. 

Sam cried out brokenly, tossing his head back, his hand shooting forward to hold Danny’s head firmly in place. 

“Fuuuck-uh,” the curse flying from his lips an octave higher than his speaking range. His hips bucking in time with Danny’s rhythmic suction, Sam’s forehead began shining with sweat, chasing his orgasm in the warm, wet heaven of Daniel’s mouth.

“Gonna- gonna cum, almost there,” he panted, brows knit tightly at the centre of his forehead. Danny moaned around him, steadfast in pleasing his best friend. 

“Sooo so so so fucking good, Danny, shit-“ Sam babbled. His orgasm taking hold quickly, he huffed a whine through his nose, arching his back into Danny’s inviting mouth. “Ohh- fuck, please- Danny, yes-“ 

Interrupted by the sheer force of his orgasm, Sam’s mouth dropped open in a silent moan, cumming violently across Danny’s tongue. His fingers flexed, white knuckles as he gripped the bedsheets, crying out his release as he began to slowly come down from the high. 

Danny pulled away, and as Sam peered down with blissed-out eyes, he winked up at him.

In a display that stole Sam’s breath, Danny parted his lips, letting Sam’s cum drool out of his mouth as he lapped up the length of his dick, coating him base to tip with his own release. Sam whined breathlessly, gritting out, “Oh, my fucking. God.”

Danny hummed in smug agreement, sinking his mouth around Sam once more and slurping up the mess he’d made, swallowing with a filthy lick of his lips. 

Sam stared down at him in stunned, aroused shock. “…You’re gonna give me a heart attack.”

His breathless declaration made Danny chuckle, climbing back up to Sam’s level, and flopping beside him. “You also taste good,” he softly flirted, smirking at Sam’s pitiful groan. 

“Shut up,” Sam insisted, rolling over and curling bonelessly around Danny’s warm body. “You’re a menace.”

Danny giggled, wrapping his arms snug around Sam’s lanky figure, content and sleepy. 

“Maybe I just like getting you all riled up, huh?” He pressed a lazy kiss to Sam’s face, unable to see the resulting little smile playing at Sam’s lips from the simple display of affection. “S’pretty cute.”

Sam let out a dismissive ‘psshtt’, half-heartedly swatting at Danny’s face. “I said shut up.”

Danny hummed amusedly, nodding his agreement, if anything just to pacify the sleepy boy cuddled up against his thrumming ribcage. Absent fingers toyed with his small dusting of chest hair, the two of them soaking up the affection and comfort that being held in each other’s arms was bringing. 

After a short while of comfortable silence, Danny was roused out of his near-sleep by Sam gently, shyly tapping a finger against his chest. 

“Psst,” came his hushed voice. 

Danny smiled to himself, gleeful all over again. “Yeah, baby?” 

A hesitant pause. 

“So are we… boyfriends now?” 

Danny’s grin spread wider, full fledging across his face. He whispered sleepily, “I mean… I know I wanna be.” His eyes fluttered closed again, patiently awaiting Sam’s response. 

A gentle nod. “I’d like that.”

Another pause, then a timid whisper.

“…I love you.”

Danny squished his newly-deemed boyfriend into him, heart swelling with warmth. “I love you, too, Sam.”

Sam’s chest tightened with the reassurance, the confirmation of Danny’s requited feelings making his head spin. Dizzy with happiness, he let himself drift willingly with the gentle waves of sleep, his heart on his sleeve, and his favourite person by his side. 

☆

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[fairy25]

I love buying old quilts but also really anything handmade, old table runners, wall hangings, embroidery, cross-stitch. My aunt spent much of her life creating huge projects of all sorts, massive award-winning quilts and every flavor of other homemade items. They were gorgeous. She had a giant workroom just for all her crafts. I still remember how good it always smelled in there, how she had huge cabinets all labelled and organized. It was like a candy store. When she died, my uncle threw it all away. Didn’t donate it. Didn’t ask if we wanted it. Into the garbage. So every time I get a new piece with some woman’s name on it who was lost in time, I hope she knows I think it’s beautiful and I’m glad she poured her time and love into it. Idk it makes me sad but also happy. It’s like having a tangible representation of a woman’s love and dedication which was discarded as something meaningless and kitschy