#these papers LOVE making up acronyms for no reason

[gross-galaxy]

Guys if you see me posting when I should be reading my stem cell shit .just look away

[therealslimshakespeare]

Dear John || Pt.1

Masters of the Air Fanfiction

Requested: ☑️ My sweet Bri begged for a love-letter-centric Egan fic and with her wonderfully infectious ideas this was produced, the first part of many.

Summary: Major John Egan wasn’t the pen-pal sort but a couple of hours into a dark night full of writing condolence letters, he finds himself wondering why he never tried his hand at the nicer forms of correspondence. Who better to reanimate his numb inspiration than the glamorous Miss Lana Tierney? -the army’s girl next door, the pinup so prolific she was practically a wall paper print and Bucky’s long-standing cinematic crush. It’s not like she’ll read it anyways, tucked up in luxury in Beverly Hills with carts of tedious fanmail burned in her back yard each day, his letter will get lost in the mix. It’s harmless. That thought -and the booze- may loosen his pen a little too much but it’s alright, it’s not like she’ll read it. Right? Right.

It was specified in the request to use or create some of those old WWII dirty acronyms, so in here you have Bucky making up his own for his starlet crush (acorn). I’m ripping off a few ladies here, Lana Turner, Betty Grable, Hedy Lamarr to name a few -the moodbaord is for general aesthetics, I try to keep my fem!readers and oc’s as ambiguous physically as possible. (Besides the fact Johnny Egan finds you mouthwatering, which -be honest with yourself here sweet thing!!- he would.

Rating: 18+ this is the letter writing, vintage form of sexting. i kid you not, this man swings wildly from sweet as pie to downright filthy and vintage slang for anatomical parts is used freely. This would make a better shameful diary entry than a letter but he’s a rogue and he’s in a war, cut him some slack.

Fun game: how many times can Major Egan manage to mention Buck in a horny fan letter to his crush?

Dear A.C.O.R.N.

It is highly unlikely that you remember me, but, all the same, we have met. Now, hear me out, I’m sure fellas say that to you all the time but my point still stands and to match them I’ll do you one better, seeing as how I am not buttering you up for something in return -I have met you, yes, but I have also sung to you.

There. Said it.

Not that you’d recall that either, but then again maybe you would, but either way it doesn’t matter as the entire reason I am writing to you is because it is entirely unlikely you will ever open this god-awful endeavor made of pen and ink.

I am quite drunk, you see.

A necessary medicine. And they do make good whiskey here, one of the few joys they haven’t rationed yet. It’s got me wondering what’s your poison of choice. Something fruity? Or are you an olive sucker? Like that salt on the rim? Or maybe you go for somethin’ silky and warm goin’ down your throat? Which-ever it is, I bet you’d be a surprise, sweet ACORN, I just know it. You were a surprise at the canteen. Back in Jersey? Before shipping out? I know you were on a whole tour and kisses were goin’ for dollars but still, you were a surprise.

A lovely one, really. And that’s the point of this letter. To tell you that you're lovely and while I’m not the pen-pal sort, I’ve written home 80 letters tonight to families whose boys I was supposed to bring home. It got me thinking: Bucky, why the hell don’t you write nice letters? Whyd you only write ‘em now that you gotta? And it occurred to me then that the one silver lining in this whole Air Exec job is the desk, the lamp and the office.

I could write anybody from here. I could write you.

And you wouldn't read it so I could write anything. And it could be a nice letter. ‘Cause I don’t know anybody of yours to tell you anythin’ sad about them and you don’t know me except that I’m alive and drunk. Which is better than those poor eighty two bastards. Which reminds me, I’ve still got two more but maybe Buck will take those, he took seventeen off to his bunk to write from there. Buck doesn't have a desk because he’s not as important as me and he has all the luck.

You’ve met Buck, too, Acorn. He was the appalled pretty one with the straw colored hair pulling me off you after we had our duet. He objects to your nickname, see, even though you didn’t seem to mind. You were lovely, A.C.O.R.N. And I’d not wanna ruin this letter by telling you what it means, not now that I’m actually writing to you and determined to be nice but Buck knows and while he agrees with me as much as any man in the nation that you’ve got the most robust rack on the silver screen -he has objections, you see. So it wasn’t the song or the canoodling he didn’t like, and I still say, he broke up a little love affair that night. Bastard. So I’m writing to you now because as the acronym suggests, I’ve got a goal in my mind in regards to you. I tell myself -Bucky, there’s reasons to make it back.

Reasons, Bucky, reasons. Like Acorn and her halo of gorgeous hair that smelled like coconuts and the way she thought my new lyrics were pretty clever. That’s what you said, acorn, you said they were pretty clever. Now I may have been a little drunk then, too, but I think you might’ve been tipsy, that coke smelled too strong to be straight. I still have the straw you gave me, it’s bent to hell but I’ve taken it up each mission. I’m not counting on it for luck so much as a reminder of the aforementioned reasons. To come back. Your lipstick has mostly worn off but I figure it’s still the same.

You had your precious lips around it. That’s what matters.

And that’s the sorta sentence that makes Buck think I shouldn’t write letters.

But what he can’t accuse me of is being dishonest or vague. I’m being straight with you. You deserve that much, you were lovely and very straight shootin’ yourself, dear little girl. I could pinch your cheeks right now, you’re so sweet. And don’t think me a coward for sayin’ all this under assumption that you won’t read it. I hope you don’t since it’s not worth your time and if you do I wish I’d written less about me and more about you but I need you to know if we were face to face I’d say the same:

You were lovely, you ARE lovely!!!! and I think all your work for us boys is swell and you’ve got the bestest set of knockers any of us have ever seen and I’m stayin’ alive in hopes to see ‘em again some day and while the girls here are swell and sweet they aren’t zippy like you. At least not the ones who’ve put out so far. And if I had you face to face, I’d find a way to make you laugh again and I’d tell you to your face you’re lovely and if I’d been David Nivin in Love Trap with you, I’d have stayed in that little kitchen with you and ate all your burnt flapjacks and watched you in your apron and made babies with you till we were old.

Anyway. It needed saying. And maybe I’ll say it to your face given the chance again. I was working my way up to a proposition for burgers and milkshakes when Buck ruined it. But maybe you’ll tour? Here!! Over here. In England or maybe in Europe once we kick the Nazis bastards out.

Now that’s motivation. That’s a reason! -clear out a nice little swath of land through fortress europe so Miss Lana Tierney can sing in the city of lights surrounded by nothin’ but wine and good food and a buncha boys who love and appreciate her.

Because we do, ma’am. We do.

And make no mistake, I do this to keep the country safe and try to bring as many boys home as I can but every second I also think - it’s where you are too, and so I must continue keeping it safe.

If you, by some godawful chance, do read this letter, please don’t feel pressed to respond or pull out a restraining order. Think of it this way, it’d just be one more “Dear John” letter and the system is clogged as it is. You just deserve a nice letter and my wrist is past sore, one more doesn't matter. And being unable to deliver nice, I’ve written this.

~ I am ever your respectful (and hammered) admirer, Maj. John Egan

P.S. if you do happen to read this I’m sorry. Buck told me not to do this but I just had to Acorn. You’re just too swell and I really have got to get myself to a theater before long, I miss your Angel face.

Masterlist

Thank you for reading! This was entirely out of my usual comfort zone but I’ve had fun writing it and I’m trying to tune my ear to pick up his voice, that’s been stretching. This series will have many letters in it but there will also be fic, so fear not. I’ve got some plans already figured out for this series but I do love a suggestion or ten so have at the inbox with what you’d like to see play out.

Hope you enjoyed, if you’d like to be tagged in future MOTA fics, drop a note below.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

aita for not making little handmade gifts for my boyfriend anymore?

🚙💌 (so i can find it lol)

okay so, i think i might be the asshole or at least i might be a tad petty in this situation.

Basically me (20f) and my boyfriend (21m) have been together for a while now. ive always loved making little gifts such as drawings or handmade things for my boyfriend for no real reason or occasion, just because i want to and i think its nice.

a while back he went through a bad couple of days and i supported him during these days but i also decided to make him a little drawing (i drew a specific thing i know he likes a lot) with some cute notes and writings to show him my love and support etc etc.

i gave it to him and he was so happy and it said it was so nice and loving and i was genuinely happy it made him happy. everything good so far.

Then the other day, i made him another spur of the moment drawing of him on a scrap piece of paper while he was working and i put the drawing in the little pocket of his backpack but when i opened the pocket i saw that other drawing i made and it was all torn up and ripped and crumpled up because i guess the zipper repeatedly catched on it when my bf opened and closed that pocket during the days.

it kinda made me want to cry, i felt so bad and my heart broke a little (im dramatic okay), so i was like "hey what happened to the drawing?" and my bf seemed so apologetic and kept saying how he didn't realize and he was going to leave the drawings at home as soon as he had time so they wouldn't be ruined anymore. spoiler:he didn't and i still saw them in his backpack yesterday.

now, i know it's probably really just a thing he didn't notice and he was really also sad about it, but now ive decided im not gonna make him anymore drawings or little handmade gifts for a while because im scared they're gonna get ruined again. i really put all my love for him inside those gifts.

soooo am i really just insanely petty and kind of the asshole and its not really that deep or am i right for kind of gatekeeping these gestures from him?

What are these acronyms?

[non-fantasy]

!!!!! tell me!!

OKAY SO

i couldn't sleep until 1:30 am for unimportant reasons but . at 1:30 am, i was suddenly haunted by a question, right. there are these events in tokimeki memorial girls side 3 and 4 called ADV events, where you get to see a short story from the point of view of one of the main love interests. but like. why the hell was it called adv. is it an acronym for something? what does it mean

so at 1:30 in the morning, i went to look up what tokimeki memorial girls side adv means

i do not receive an answer from search engines

instead, somehow, google heard me ask "tokimeki memorial girls side adv meaning" and gave me THIS.

it's insane, right. it's really insane. this is a 27 page essay claiming that tokimeki memorial girls side (2002), beloved romance simulator, is responsible for teaching girls to view themselves in terms of real-life stats, that rejection from anime guys will give gamers self-esteem issues, and how to view yourself through the male gaze to win love.

i look at this 27 page paper and pass out for the next 5 hours, because it is 1:30 am.

BUT. when i wake up. i am READING. i liveblogged it all to my friend in discord dms (HI @nenestansunsthings) and here are. some INCREDIBLE highlights

"the game teaches you that men expect women to change their clothes from time to time"

the author has cited japanese 123 website, livejournal, and tumblr

"japanese players are more receptive to the series' lessons on femininity than overseas players because of the constant affirmations of the japanese cultural setting" the daily affirmations of being in japan

"players are encouraged to save before making choices and reload if they do not satisfy the object of their affections, teaching women to discard their desires and preferences to please men" HAVE YOU NOT PLAYED A VIDEO GAME BEFORE?!

the author can't make up their mind over whether the game has 7 or 9 love interests

they are basing their analysis on the first game specifically but they bring up the second and third game if it supports their point. but information from the second and third games is ignored if it undermines their point

example 1: they complain about rivals mode portraying women as jealous and willing to throw away their friendships for the sake of a man's love, ignoring that game 2 allows you to calmly talk things out with your friend and game 3 entirely does away with girls being rivals entirely, the game 3 girls are always on your side 100%

example 2: they bring up tumblr posts of fans talking about how they'd date the girls to point out how heteronormative the games are. they are talking about the first game. the tumblr posts are talking about a girl from the third game

weird racism

"this game MAY cause players to develop self-worth issues" "this game MIGHT cause players to see themselves in real-life stats" THESE WORDS ARE DOING A LOT OF HEAVY LIFTING.....

the author is WRONG???? ABOUT THE GAME MECHANICS????

they claim that a guy rejected their invitation for a date because they weren't smart enough but once they were smart enough they launched themselves into a monologue about how this is PROBABLY a guy wanting a girl who is smart enough not to embarrass him but not smart enough to surpass him

THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS. IT'S RNG. THERE'S NO MINIMUM STAT REQUIREMENT TO ASK SOMEONE OUT HE JUST FLIPPED A COIN AND SAID NO

out of the four love interests they mention by name in this, THREE OF THEM HAVE THEIR NAME SPELLED WRONG

look at this fucking bibliography

they have cited, in order.

a shitpost

someone's entire blog

and all of tumblr's search results for tokimeki memorial girls side 3.

which is not even the game they're talking about.

[sophieswundergarten]

(Also very much not to do with me digging through everyone's past fics for the last week /s)

I think the Benedict humans should have more unconventional/interesting communication methods!! Specifically, I was thinking of ASL, because I really love learning it, but then it occurred to me that it would be fun if each duo/trio/group in the family had their own preferred way to talk.

I imagine that all of the kids use morse code (They teach Martina and SQ), while the adults favour sign. Within that, of course Miss Perumal and Reynie speak Tamil, and I feel like Mr. Benedict and Sticky would use Greek or Latin with each other.

Milligan and Kate have some complex system that consists mostly of their farm-code terms and meaningful glances (Moocho can participate in most of it, but his meaningful glances aren't compatible with both of them at the same time, so it takes longer).

I think Sticky and Reynie would be the type of silly people to sit down and teach themselves, like, Quenya (A Tolkien elvish conlang) or something just for kicks. Kate tried to learn with them, but she wasn't having near as much fun so it's something just the two of them do. Mr. Benedict knows Sindarin (Other Tolkien elf conlang), but it doesn't help him much.

Constance and Mr. Benedict have perfected a form of communication that is exclusively reciting snippets of poetry to each other. It's actually kind of impressive. They make it a game, and when one of them uses a poet the other doesn't know, they break off to ask about it. This was initially supposed to be part of Constance's schooling and broaden her artistic horizons, but she's stubborn and kept coming back to it so as not to admit defeat (And it fully delights Mr. Benedict anyway, so he lets it continue until it's just another thing they do)

I'm going to (sort of) pull this from the books and say that the twins speak to each other in Dutch. Rhonda, Number Two, Milligan, and Sticky all know a little or have picked it up over the years just from being around Nicholas, but when he and Nathaniel are in a room together they go too fast for anyone else to follow properly.

For some reason, I feel like Rhonda and Number Two (Besides the obvious Sister Speak that they're beginning to let Constance into) would enjoy speaking German or French? I'm not super sure where that idea came from, but there you go. (Their sister ability to communicate is a lot of sideways glances and exaggerated facial expressions, but it is occasionally supplemented with hand signals)

SQ leaves little written notes everywhere. Sometimes he puts them in spots that he knows only one person will get into (The cabinet with Number Two's mixing bowls, Mr. B's pen drawer, Sticky's encyclopedia shelf), but he also likes to sneak them into jacket pockets and things. His favourite is to try and slip them into Kate's bucket. He likes to use a special color code for each person when he can, so that way if someone gets into the mixing bowls and sees a little yellow slip of paper, they'll know who it is intended for.

Reynie's been asking Milligan to teach him some "spy codes", so they will often communicate short messages with an Alpha-Bravo-Charlie and number strategy, mostly assigning each member of the family a short "callsign" of sorts and then using it to check where someone is with each other.

Constance and Sticky, surprisingly, have worked out a fairly good system with their cheating morse code. They got a lot better at it, and now can do it so subtly and quickly that it's hard for anyone else to catch.

Martina and Kate make up absurdly long nicknames and terms for activities/locations and turn them into acronyms. They are fantastically over-complicated and no one has even tried to puzzle out what they're talking about.

[julie-su]

💛 📺 and ✨

YAHOO! I absolutely love recieving these, thank you~ Full question list here;

💛 Favorite Sonic the Comic Character? I'm going to go out-of-character, and not say Dr. Zachary. I KNOW, BLASPHEME! I really do have a soft spot for B.A.R.F - everything about them sings to my nostalgia of growing up on British comics. The gross-out name that is ALSO a silly acronym (Badnik Army Repair Functionaries! FUNCTIONARIES?! CHEESY! I LOVE IT!) and just, the designs; their outfits, their humour, it's so... British! Their names are Cam N' Bert! For NO reason! Camembert?! I LOVE IT! Look at this pin-up!

(Image from ComicArtFans)

📺 Favorite TV show? Ahaha; anybody who KNOWS knows me will know that it is Sonic Underground! I'm not even going to make a sheepish comment, because it genuinely just rocks as a show. The goofy music numbers? The glimpses of their mother!? It used to get me so excited as a kid, and I'd write so much fanfiction about that world! I didn't care that it never got a proper ending; I was so inticed and full of ideas about what the ending COULD be! See, somebody CLEARLY loved this show when they were writing it; a lot of it is derivative, but somebody cared enough to put in all of these unique locations, to fill them with characters and species and plotlines which actually do have effort and care put into them. Freakin' Athair is in it!? There's a lot of influence from the comics, the previous TV shows, and the games; I think that it was made with a lot of love, and if you are willing to engage with it honestly, you will have a rip-roaring time! I still adore it; it's that time capsule of my Sonic; the Sonic I grew up with. I don't not love current Sonic, but I really do feel my heart get heavy when I think of that goofy, sassy, urkelism-filled blue boy, and realise that he's never gonna come back in official media. Oh, but I have a pen, and I have paper~

✨ Dream Sonic Game? My dream Sonic Game... Ooh! What are the rules?! Is it something which could feasibly happen, or can I go haywire? I'm going haywire. I want another Sonic Chronicles. No, not Sonic Chronicles 2; I don't want another SONIC CHRONICLES - I want another game which takes major inspiration from the Comics to tell a story which utilises the echidna! I mean - it's CRAZY that we even got one of those! It's so friggen awesome to put Shade and Julie-Su side-by-side, and see what came from who - Shade is not an expie, but it'd also be stupid to say that there's no influence, when the original promotional videos for Chronicles VERY CLEARLY state that they took major inspiration from the comics. Which, they very well should have been allowed to do! It is a freak accident that they got clapped for it; under any normal circumstances, never would have been a problem. Heck; Sonic Underground lifted Athair into the show, but Athair the Echidna was created by Mike Gallagher, who had the normal person reaction of "Huh. Neat." and never went back to cause a stink once it was common knowledge that the contracts were destroyed, because he's got better things to do XD I WANNA NOTHER ADAPTATION OF THE ARCHIE ECHIDNAS!! ;A; Chronicles has FANTASTIC lore, but I don't know about the game arund it. I have a HISTORY with that game... Picked it up on release day because HYPE WHO IS THAT NEW CHARACTER DID THAT SAY SHE'S AN ECHIDNA I HEARD HE'S AN ECHIDNA OMG OMG OMG NEW ECHIDNA AND IT'S BASED ON THOSE WEIRD AMERICAN COMICS AND OMG. And it ... ... ... Look. Chronicles is a game. By the love of GOD, is it a game.

[elliesbelle]

hi belle!! when did you start writing and how did you start off?

hi love!!

honestly, i’ve always been writing my whole life! i knew how to read by 2 years old (the only real achievement in my whole life), and my mom said i’d “write and make” her and my dad books all the time (i’d take paper and fold them in half and draw and write stories and draw pictures for them sometimes, whether they were stories that already existed that i just wanted to recreate in my own way or stories i completely made up on my own).

writing has always been a passion of mine, even at a super young age. whether it’s writing letters (i write letters to my friends a lot, with a stamp and wax seal and everything and i have a whole memory box dedicated just for my letter-writing hobby) or essays or poetry (i actually have a poetry instagram), it’s something that’s always come very naturally to me.

school definitely pushed me to write a lot cause i mean, you have to write a lot for school. but i was always a huge overachiever when it came to writing. i remember that i wrote an essay or short story or something back in the 3rd or 4th grade for my english class and it moved my english teacher so much that she literally passed it all around the english department (to this day, i don’t remember what it was that i wrote, but i remember a lot of teachers really loved it).

i even won several awards related to writing throughout my life:

-in the 6th grade, i wrote an essay that won an award and on the day of obama’s inauguration, i went to this super special theatre with other people who won and we got to watch the inauguration live.

-i went to a private catholic school when i was in the 7th and 8th grade, and i’m not sure what i wrote that caught their attention, but the school johns hopkins invited me to do a bunch of shit with them (it was too expensive though, so i never did any of it).

-i also wanted to attend a private catholic high school since a lot of my peers in middle school were planning to do so as well, but my parents were incredibly poor at the time (my siblings and i were all on scholarships at our current school), so i wrote this letter to the president of the high school i wanted to attend, and he loved it so much that he not only granted me a scholarship or two, but he actually created a scholarship just for me so i could attend the school (it didn’t cover the entire tuition though, and i ended up not going because money was way too tight, so i ended up going to public school instead, which ultimately was for the best).

-i wrote a lot of stuff in high school that won a bunch of shit that i don’t remember (i purposely repressed a lot of high school, sorry lol). i also co-founded the performing arts club at my high school and i not only wrote a lot of short stories and plays for it, but i helped people with it as well. i also took a creative writing class in senior year which i really enjoyed (even my teacher didn’t like me for some reason).

-a lot of professors in college enjoyed my writing so much that one of them got super close to me (in an appropriate ofc, not in a weird way lol), one was super moved by a lot of my writings for class and recommended me to help found the LGBT club for our college (where i met and hung out with the person who actually added the “B” in the LGBT acronym, her name’s loraine hutchins and she’s super cool), and one helped me in becoming a social activist for a couple of years and asked for my help in establishing the institute of race & justice at our college and he also helped me out a lot with my family issues at home.

-while i was also in college and even after (i dropped out a million times and i never graduated cause lol i’m too broke for all that), people paid me to help them write their essays and papers and thesis statements, etc. mind you, i didn’t write it for them or anything, but i did serve as like, an editor or whatever.

if you’re asking about how i started in regards to fanfiction, i was writing fanfiction when i was like, 8 or 9 sgdjfhfj, i’m not kidding, i had an account on fanfiction dot net where i wrote a bunch of fanfiction for an anime i was super into as a kid (it’s called mermaid melody: pichi pichi pitch, it’s so bad but whatever sgdhfhfj). honestly, someone should have called CPS or something cause the shit i was writing was so dark and mature for child sgsjdjfjf, but people seemed to like it? even to this day, i’ll still get emails from the site saying someone liked or commented on a fic of mine (i had this one series that was super dark but people loved it and still ask if i’m gonna update it as if it’s not been almost two decades sgdjfjfj).

i started writing fanfiction for TLOU because i got obsessed with reading it on tumblr earlier this year completely on a whim (i kept getting recommended them on my main personal blog cause i loved playing the games and i was like, fuck it let me read one and i ended up liking it so much). but i was consuming the ‘ellie x reader’ tag so quickly that i was running out of stories to read. eventually, i was like, “fuck it, i have a few ideas of my own, lemme just write it and publish it just for fun.” i was nervous to actually publish my work and didn’t expect people to actually read it, but @lonelyfooryouonly encouraged me to do so (who i was originally mutuals with on my personal main blog ♡︎), so i went ahead and did it, and here we are now!

WOW i did not mean to write THAT much, omg i’m so sorry???? i wrote this all while i was waiting for the bus home from work and i got carried away 😅

i honestly didn’t foresee how far this account would get and how many of y’all would enjoy my works (especially ‘nobody compares to you’, my baby), but i am so grateful to all of you for supporting me and encouraging me to do something i love to do. before i started this blog, i’d been in a real rut with writing (i’d only be writing for my poetry instagram account, but that’s it), but this has reminded me of how much i love to write. thank you so much for the love and support, you guys are literally the best. 🩷

[coldslaws-gear-station]

WOOO CONGRATS ON WAKING UP AT A REASONABLE TIME 🎉🎉🎉🎉

Also PICA N PEAK. I actually have Pica myself and the amount of shit I chewed on as a kid is unbelievable. Paper, plastic googly eyes, pumice stones, pebbles, nail filers, glass (yes I chewed on broken glass), and of course ice. I've gotten a handle on it as I've gotten much older, but I can't resist a good craving for the crunch ice gives me every now and then

And yeah BENGA NO 😭 It makes sense because of the effects of starvation but it still makes me sad. I think he's incredibly self conscious about it too, he's in complete denial of being infertile. During his childhood it was expected that when you get too old you're supposed to replace yourself with your kin, it was expected to have kids and since he can't it makes him "useless"

Combined with the fact that he's an extreme closeted pansexual due to the fact that gays and such were heavily looked down upon and ruthlessly attacked for the reason stated above (not like they treated women any better...) it makes him horrifically emotionally constipated.

He knows he likes men, he has a debilitating crush on UD Ghetsis (bi Ghetsis canon) that he shoves down into a deepest part of him he can find, he just can't grasp it. In his mind this is something that'll pass, he doesn't actually like him in that way, it's just because of the warmth and affection Ghetsis had treated him with (aka treating him like a human being) has him confusing platonic attachment that he's been starved from with romantic attraction. He doesn't want to be useless, he can be useful, but every small piece of affection UD Ghetsis mindlessly gives him serves to remind him that he's in it deep

Backtracking to the previous "imagine if NHP and UDU met" scenario, I think at the sight of NHP Alder not only being happily married to a man but also having his own kin and family would have UD Alder stewing in red hot anger and jealousy. It's not fair, why can't he have that? It's not fucking fair. Deep down all he wants is to raise his own and to create a family, but unfortunately that's just simply a luxury life did not afford him

- 💌

THANK YOU!! im already tired and wanna nap 😭 but it's a start

DAMN. i used to eat weird junk as a kid and teenager, idk if it was often enough to actually label it as pica but i loved licking metal, chewing bark, tried rocks a couple times, and would pretty frequently eat dandelions (not sure if they even count because they technically are edible and have nutritional value but eating them right out of the ground with 0 processing is a little odd). also as an anemic bastard i love my ice. glass sounds scary

alder needs like. the emotional equivalent of miralax LMAO there's so much to unpack . denial everywhere. also shoutout bi ghetsis. at least this one isn't weird about it (sorry rh ghetsis). i get that feeling of confusing enjoying platonic affection for romantic feelings. idk alder i hope you figure it out and maybe kiss someone about it. as a treat

NO. LITERALLY. THATS GOTTA SUCK. so we have udu alder jealous of nhp and nhp nat jealous of udu. guys PLEASE therapy asap. doesn't help that nhp alder lowkey fumbled big time with ryuki, i could imagine udu thinking that nhp doesn't even really deserve the family he has if he's gonna fuck up so bad as to lose his son. i mean he still has benga (and by extension of marriage, iris, and by extension of adoption, nat and penny) (anthea and concordia are here too of course but will never quite consider alder as a fatherly figure the way n does, to them he's moreso that family friend that's so close you just start referring to them as actual family) (but i digress) but messing up with ryuki was a huge thing

all these acronyms it's like we're speaking a forbidden language

[expendablemudge]

A TRAITOR IN WHITEHALL, entertaining mystery set in WWII's corridors of power seen from below

Period details FTW. I was reading along thinking how little I actually knew about life in WWII when the main character finds a body in a place I had no vaguest awareness of the need for or existence of: A sun treatment room.

A what now? Sun-treatment? What on Earth is that?

It was about that time that my interest and pleasure in the read sharpened to the point of reading past my bedtime. I'm a mystery fan anyway, being a big believer in ma'at and the scales of justice needing to be balanced. The victim of the murder wasn't a lovely person, as is customary in series mysteries set in the Halls of Power. It was a lovely grace note, the first of several, that the victim was discovered in the sun-treatment room. This afforded the author a perfect opening to reveal this very interesting, perfectly sensible detail's existence. It gives the story an extra gloss of period authenticity, as does Evelyne's Agatha Christie-reading habit. The author's an experienced historical novelist and it shows in these sorts of unexpected moments that firmly root the story in time without becoming stodged up like a research paper gone metastatic.

Evelyne, our main character, is an oddball in the world where she's been plonked because nothing in her background suggests she's a prospect for Greater Things...an unwanted daughter placed in a boarding school by her always-absent father after her mother's death when Evelyne was thirteen, she's been given few solid opportunities to develop her intellect beyond the ordinary. As is typical for series mysteries, as fans of the genre know, she's got the most important character trait of a sleuth: Ungovernable curiosity, starting from when her Maman (a French lady, who raised her daughter mostly in France) supposedly committed suicide. Luckily her absent rich-bastard father's friend circle includes powerful people who need that precise characteristic in a woman of presentable lineage (if always stained by the loucheness of her foreignness), adequate education, fluency in French, and unexceptionable looks.

Evelyne's sudden arrival in the bunkers...referred to by the acronym "CWR" or "Cabinet War Rooms"...of busy workers surrounding the Prime Minister isn't cause for anyone to take much notice, exactly as the Powers That Be need it to be. She blends into the scenery. As her job is to ferret out a traitor who's already established in those hallowed halls, everything's proceeding acording to plan.

Until someone's murdered. (There's a reason I'm being coy about who's been murdered. If you know too soon, there's no way you won't know who the titular traitor is.) The murder makes everything higher stakes and involves Evelyne with the inevitable love interest, David. Another facet of the series mystery is the de rigueur presence of a love interest or interests. David's clearly being positioned for this. This is, for me, the least interesting facet of the story. How would David, a senior aide established in the hierarchy, even think to team up with Evelyne, a mere girl and of known-but-stained ancestry? In 1940s Britain? That high in the Government (even if it's not quite the way we're led to believe)? Hmm, said my inner skeptic. Most especially I find the borning relationship between them Doomed because David prefers American thrillers to Evelyne's beloved Mrs. Christie. This is a less bridgeable gap than between a reader and a mundane.

While the usual first-mystery flaws are present, eg too much information comes too easily into Evelyne's grasp for her position in the hierarchy and people "grit" and "roar" things far too often, the author is clearly a skilled storyteller. The TV adaptation unspooled before my eyes, in six-part ITV period-mystery glory. It's the kind of book one reads with keen pleasure in its strengths, and forgives its lapses readily. At least this picky one did.

If you're in the market for historical mysteries, this one will scratch the itch. Nothing too deep, nothing too fluffy, just the right level of interesting background and emotional investment possibilities. Bring the sequel!

[pl-panda]

To Marry a Vigilante: Part 13

MASTERLIST || First || Previous || Next

To Marry a Vigilante: Part 13

--------------

Marinette wasn’t sure what to expect from school after her reveal. Their plan was to make it public that she was ‘dating’ Damian Wayne, but not her identity as the MDC. That plan failed when she panicked and tweeted about it. By now, pretty much everyone knew about it. Especially after Jagged Stone went forward and confirmed it. She loved the rockstar, but he was like a wild six-years-old when left without supervision. It was impossible to reverse it. 

The other problem that was making her very anxious was the new Hawkmoth. Her class was already called the Akuma Class not without reason. Now, they would be probably split into different groups, which could serve to make her suffer more. Not to mention how much Lila would be making her life a nightmare now. 

She dressed in the standard Gotham Academy uniform and waited for Chloé to finally arrive. The blonde’s arrival was foreshadowed by the sound of a loud rant. 

“...they can’t expect me to wear these rags!? The purple will totally clash with my lipstick! And the black and white? What is it, the Seventeenth century?” She was already dressed, but clearly unamused by what she was forced to wear.

“Hi, Chlo.” She greeted her best human friend.

“Mari-bear! How can you stand by this fashion disaster?!” 

“I don’t mind. We must wear it only at school.”

“Ugh! I need to pack spare clothes then!”

“Or you could… you know, stay in the uniform?” The bluenette smiled. “I mean from what Damian told me, it’s pretty common to see groups of students still dressed in their uniforms after school.”

“These rags?!” Chloé shouted, slightly agitated

“I’ll make you an MDC original uniform once I get my hands on specifications. Deal?” Mari giggled at her friend’s antics. She was supposed to be the one criticizing fashion here. 

“Fine. But it’s ridiculous! Utterly ridiculous! After classes, you and I are going shopping for some better make-up for me and actual make-up for you.”

“Sure! We can also visit the Botanic Gardens again. Just the two of us?” The girl suggested. 

“Perfect. Won’t Lover-boy have a problem?”

“Nah. Damian won’t mind. We’re not bound by the hip, you know?”

“Could’ve fooled me.” Chloé smiled.

“You…!” Marinette giggled. “I heard you’ve been spending whole days in the gym with my cousin. What’s that about? I thought you would be more interested in pestering Tim about detective stuff.”

“I decided to start exercising. Cass is a great trainer for your information,” she huffed, but the smile on her face let Mari know it was just Chloé being Chloé. “Besides, have you seen your mother? She is nearing fifty and looks drop-dead gorgeous. My mother would kill for that body at her age.” 

“Suuuree.” The bluenette giggled. “Let’s go. Alfred will drop us at school.”

In the entrance hall, they were met by Damian, who wore his own uniform. Sabine, Tom, and Bruce were there to see them out. After the standard round of goodbyes that awaited children when they were supposed to start a new school (Sabine filling the mother role for Chloé), Bruce looked critically at Damian.

“You know that you can only bring the sword on Tuesdays and Thursdays when you actually have practice?” 

“Tt. I’ll need it today.”

“Damian…” He glared at the boy, only to be met by an equally fierce gaze. 

“Fine. But I’m keeping the dusters.” He bargained. “That’s not negotiable.” 

“You know the rules.”

“Tt. With a madman after my wife, I reserve my right to having means of self-defense.” 

“Fine. But only if Akuma shows up and the two of you can’t transform. I hope I don’t need to remind you that Gotham is not Paris? People are much more observant here.” He warned them. 

“Don’t worry Mr. Wayne.” Chloé dismissed him. “I’ll make sure those two are behaving.”

“I already feel better.” He deadpanned. 

“Hush! They are smart kids and can deal with their problems. Right, sweetie?” 

“I… I hope?” Marinette was not exactly convinced but tried to smile. 

“You’ll do great.” Her father reassured her.

“Okay. Let’s go.” She put on her sunglasses. The thin black frame surrounded the twin large tinted glasses that hid a large part of her face. Nobody would know it was Kaalki in disguise. She would need the glasses to not be bothered by the press. At least she hoped they would help.

------------

They arrived with half an hour safety cushion, which made them one of the first on-site. Damian led them to the Principal’s office first to get their schedules. Mr. Hammer was already waiting for them. He wore formal clothes with a green vest over a white shirt, yellow-brown trousers, and to finish it he had a dark-green cape with a white collar made of fur. 

“Ah. Mr. Wayne with his girlfriend,” He spoke the word with utter loathing, which was pretty strange. Marinette never met him before. “I seem to remember to have expelled you last semester”

“Tt. You also expelled me the previous one. Four times. And the semester before. Two times.” He didn’t bother to hide the grin. “Except the paperwork never left your office.” He pointed at the large stack of papers on one of the shelves, with a golden plaquette reading ‘Damian Wayne’.

“Hm… Indeed.” 

Damian stopped himself from interrupting him to educate him on how to talk with and about Marinette.

“Um… Professor Hammer?” speaking of the angel. “Thank you for accepting my class for the exchange program.”

“Yes. Your school was kind enough to send the records of all the students. Yours including.”

“Great. Is there anything…” 

“I didn’t finish.” He snapped at her. “You have a very interesting file, Miss Dupain-Cheng.” He dropped a rather thick folder on his desk. “Class president for three years, engaging in various charities, supporting drama club, brilliant gymnast and martial artist.... thief, bully, conflict child.” He added in an angry tone. “I don’t know about France, but here we often call such girls H.B.I.C., which is an acronym for…”

“Tt. I would appreciate it if you stopped trying to refer to my Angel as such. She is the victim of theft, bullying, and ostracization by her class. If you read the files, you know that each person in that class holds significant sway, and the headmaster of that school is easily swayed. I’ve spent a semester at Françoise Dupont and that establishment is in simple words… lacking.” Damian almost spat the last word. He wanted to tell the headmaster more, but Hammer was ignoring him. 

“In Gotham Academy, we pride ourselves as a prestigious institute that helps students develop their full potential. I don’t care how it worked in your previous school, but I expect you to behave. If you start conflicts with the students, I will be forced to expel you, as per the exchange program regulations that your parents signed. And this time, the papers will leave my office.” He glared at Damian, who in response grinned. “The school is surrounded by a high wall and a river, so you don’t have to worry about paparazzi. If such is caught on the premise, he will be dealt with harshly.”

“What about students taking photos?”

“I’m sure you can deal with them.” It was Hammer’s turn to grin.

“But… But…! That’s unfair! And enabling!” 

“Life is not fair. If it was, I would be living in a castle somewhere in the stormy peaks of Scotland. Instead, I’m here.” He handed both of them their schedules and ushered them out. Chloé was waiting outside.

“So? How did it go?”

“He doesn’t particularly seem to like me. It might’ve been because I’m dating a boy he expelled six times last year.” She glared at his husband. 

“Tt. He just dislikes me because in the first year I accidentally detonated the head of his statue. And then the next year I detonated the replacement.” He shrugged. 

“How do you even accidentally detonate the statue’s head?” Chloé asked. 

“Chemistry homework?” Damian suggested

“Archery practice?” Marinette supplied.

“Science class gone wrong?” He continued

“Secret weapon cache activating by itself?” She added. 

“All of the above.” Damian finished. 

“Okay. Honey, are you sure you want him? We can still return him to the store and find one that is less rabid?” The blonde joked. 

“Tt. Over my dead body.” He growled and grasped Marinette’s hand.

“Calm down, Damiboo,” she grinned at the name, “nobody will be separating you two. But for now, we need to go to the chapel for the welcome party.”

“Tt. Call me that again and I’ll…” He started, but then Marinette’s glare shut him up. 

The girls walked away and Damian almost rethought his stance when the blonde dared to whisper “Whipped” when she was passing him. Marinette didn’t notice, already too focused on describing the meeting with the headmaster.

-----

“...furthermore, the North Hall remains off-limit to all students. You will have your rooms assigned before the lunch break.” Hammerhead finally finished his long and boring speech. The girls were lucky enough to have a peaceful if uninteresting welcome ceremony. Sabine sat next to them, which served as a very strong deterrent from any idiots trying something stupid, like taunting her or bullying. Caline was sweating each time she looked at the other chaperone. Sabine didn’t bother with niceties and could (and would) totally destroy her at moment’s notice.

“Hi. I’m Erica Layton. I’m the school president and it’s my pleasure to welcome you to our great school!” A cheerful blonde walked onto the stage. 

She wore a standard GA uniform, but Marinette recognized it as tailor-made, with high-quality materials. Marinette immediately took to dislike her. She had an aura similar to Lila. Falsehood and malevolence. Her smile was precarious and she swept the students with her gaze. She zeroed on Marinette for a second too long and the bluenette could feel the headache coming. She tried to remember what Damian told her about the school president, but the position was supposed to be held by a girl named Boyle. 

“I hope you’ll fondly remember your time at our school. There are many clubs that you can join. If there is one that you wish to start, you’ll need a group of at least five students and signed permission from one of the teachers. You can find more information on our website. Each of you will be assigned a dorm according to the survey you filled…”

“Excuse me!” Kim, who just received a whisper from Lila, stood up. “From what we were told, we were supposed to stay with host families. What gives?”

“Oh! I’m sorry nobody informed you before. Sadly, we didn’t get enough volunteers, so the plans had to change.”

“But… but… Marinette is staying with the Waynes!” Alya protested before sending the girl in question a hateful gaze. Sabine glared back and the bespectacled girl shivered and quickly turned back to the stage. 

The woman stood up and addressed the class herself. “Marinette is staying with me and I’m staying with my niece and her guardian. I hope that will clear any and all confusion.” Her glare told them that the conversation was over. 

“Yes…” Erica awkwardly started again. “Let’s continue.”

Marinette made sure to note everything the school president spoke about. She was certain her class had more important gossip to focus on and later would have no idea about anything. She would just have Chloé send them the picture later. 

After the event was over, Marinette and Chloé stayed back to photo the notes. Sabine made sure that all other Parisians left them alone, urging them to run to classes. The two left maybe two minutes later, walking calmly to their new classes. The girls would have all the same classes and there was hope that none of the other students from Françoise Dupont would pick the same. 

When walking through the corridor, Chloé finally brought up Alya’s reaction to her mother. The two laughed at how scared she was of Sabine. 

Out of the blue, a hand pulled Marinette to the side and the doors closed behind them in complete silence. She managed to give a weak squeak before that, but her best friend didn’t notice. It would be a moment before Chloé realized her best friend disappeared. By then, the doors had been already locked and she would not differentiate them from other locked doors in the corridor. 

“So… You’re supposed to be the famed girlfriend of Damian Wayne?” Marinette heard once her head finally stopped spinning. She was sitting on a chair with ropes tying her down. Five girls stood there, surrounding her like vultures. 

“Huh? Yeah. Damian and I…” 

“I didn’t give you permission to speak.” The middle one, blonde stopped her. Marinette recognized her. It was Erica!

“Yeah! You think you can just swoop here and try to steal Erica’s man?” One of the companions asked indignantly. 

“Damian was not dating anyone when he came to Paris.” The french girl confidently defended her right. 

“Of course he wasn’t. He is the Ice Prince of Gotham Academy.” Erica dismissed her. “But I had the first claim to him.”

“I don’t exactly follow…” Marinette, for all her shrewd tactical mind and lessons from Damian, was still mostly clueless of how rich, bratty teenagers worked. Chloé was supposed to be a unique case, not a rule. 

“Sorry. We started on the wrong foot.” The lead blonde changed her strategy. “Erica Layton.” She extended her hand. Marinette shrugged, took a deep breath, and tightened her muscles. The rope they used to tie her snapped and she stood up to take her hand. Other girls stared at her with a weird expression. 

“Marinette Dupain-Cheng.” Her handshake might’ve been a bit too strong, she did it on purpose. 

“Listen, Dupain-Cheng. There is a social hierarchy in this school. I just so happened to be on top. We can be friends and peacefully resolve our differences...”

“I’m sure we can be at least neutral to…”

“I didn’t finish.” Erica seethed. “Of course, friends don’t steal other friends’ men. So, if you’ll break up with Damian, I can get you to the top of the food chain. You will be safe from that Lila girl and untouchable by anyone. It would be a shame if something happened to your online store after all. Or if your social media suddenly ended under attack by bad reviews.”

Marinette stopped smiling halfway through that speech. By the end, she was openly scowling. She broke the handshake and glared at the blonde on the opposite side. Her mother taught her the glare. It was the ‘you’re in over your head��� glare. 

Only one of the girls had the decency to shiver. Others seemed too stupid and too convinced of their own superiority to take Marinette seriously. 

“Let’s make it clear.” The girl started with a very cold voice. “You want me to break up with Damian, just so you can try, and fail, to get him for yourself? And if I don’t comply, you threaten my online shop and my social media? All for protection from Rossi and her lapdogs?” She allowed herself a laugh. “That’s a good one.”

“You little bitch!” Erica shouted. “Do you have any idea who I am? I am at the top of the food chain here. I rule this school. I’m the Gotham Academy’s golden princess!”

“And I’m above the food chain.” She quoted Damian. It took all her willpower, acting skills, courage, and boiled-down anger to continue. “You might be the princess, but I’m the queen here. And you have nothing that you can take from me.”

“Everyone has some dirty secrets. When I’m done with you, you’ll be too afraid to even show up at school!” Erica shouted. Marinette’s cool gaze swept over the room. 

The bluenette didn’t dignify that with a response. Instead, she walked over to the locked doors and grabbed the doorknob. At first, it was locked and didn’t want to budge, but with a stronger twist the old mechanism gave over, and the doors opened. 

Outside, Chloé was already on the phone with someone. 

“...Nevermind. I found her.” She hung up and turned to her best friend. “Maribear! Where have you been?”

“I just met the Rossi of this school. She thought she could offer me friendship in exchange for Damian. Like that would ever work.” She gave a cold giggle. When they turned the corner Chloé found the nearest bathroom and dragged Marinette there. Once they were safe from any prying eyes, shel broke into sobs in the blonde’s arms.

----------------

Masterlist // Next

[the-werdna]

Title: Robcina Week Day 5 - Day of Devotion

Description: Lucina wanted to make the perfect gift for Robin to celebrate the first Day of Devotion they'd spend as a couple. Making homemade chocolates seemed like the perfect idea. With a recipe and ingredients in hand, she set about making this plan a reality. After all, it didn't seem like it would be that hard.

Words: 2118

Lucina coughed, waving her hands frantically to blow away the smoke spewing from the pot she had been slaving over for most of the day. The acrid fumes reached her nostrils, confirming without a doubt it had been another failure.

Why? Why did it burn this time?  Lucina wondered, gazing into the pot at the burned mess that was the chocolates she had been attempting to melt. I thought I followed the recipe exactly, but I can't even get past the first step…

She sighed, feeling like failure once more for the dozenth time that day.

Today was the Day of Devotion, a holiday celebrated throughout all of the Outrealms in honor of love. In particular it was a day for couples to show their appreciation for each other, often through gifts of flowers and chocolate. That later which was why Lucina had found herself in the camp's kitchen the entire morning, desperately trying to turn the ingredients she'd bought into chocolates fit to be a gift for the man she loved above all else.

Maybe I should just purchase some instead. I am certain that is what most everyone has done, she considered, but quickly abandoned the idea. This was the first Day of Devotion she and Robin would share together, so she wanted it to be special. What better way, then, was there to make it special than to gift something she'd made herself?

At that moment she heard the rustle of canvas as the tent flap was yanks open, hurried footsteps announcing the arrival of a newcomer into the kitchen. She didn't even have to turn to see who before the excited voice called out, one she could not help but recognize.

"What smells good but also burny?" chimed Morgan, skipping past her and around the counter to stand at the opposite side.

"Morgan, I was-" Lucina started to tell her daughter. Her words faltered however when Morgan stuck her whole hand into the pot, shoveling the still molten, blackened chocolate into her mouth,

"Just as I thought! Chocolate! And lots of burned bits! Also, ow! Hot" Morgan quickly lapped up the remaining chocolate from her fingers as it started to burn her, only to then start panting like a dog. Evidently, her efforts only managed to start burning the inside of her mouth.

"Holfff ommff" she slurred, rushing over to a nearby bucket of water. Before Lucina could stop her, the girl tipped it up to her mouth, dumping most of it's contents over herself even as she drank down several large, loud gulps.

"Um, Morgan? Are you…" Lucina tried to ask, her words failing her at the bewildering display.

"Ahhh," Morgan sighed contentedly, tossing the now empty bucket aside. "Much better." she grinned, seemingly taking no notice of the fact is was soaking wet from head to toe at this point,

"I…" Lucina could only stare and blink, finding herself at a loss for how she should respond to her daughter. Not that it was an unusual occurrence. Morgan's oddity had become a fact she was well used to by this point, even if each new manner that oddness manifested would, without fail, catch her off guard.

"Anyways, what's the occasion? Making chocolate for 'Dee Oh Dee' Day to give to father?" Morgan asked.

This statement more than confused Lucina, causing her to stare and arch an eyebrow. "I'm sorry, what is this 'Dee Oh Dee' you speak… oh, right" Lucina blushed, embarrassed to only then get what her daughter was saying. She had been referring to the holiday by the acronym of it's name.

But wait, wouldn't that mean she called it "Day of Devotion Day", Lucina wondered. She thought to ask, but thought better of it. Best to just answer her daughter's question rather than delve down what would certainly be a rabbit hole of an entirely different sort.

Better not to consider much how her daughter's mind worked.

"Yes, I had hoped to… But as you can see I have not had much success," Lucina admitted, hanging her head sadly. "I can't even manage to melt the chocolate without burning it beyond salvage. I fear if I don't remedy the mistake soon, I will have nothing to show for my efforts."

"Hmmmmm," Morgan returned to the stove, rubbing her chin vigorously as she stared intently at the pot. "Well, for starters you should fill the pot with water instead. Then you put the chocolate in a smaller pot or ceramic bowl and place that over top. That way the steam heats it up more slowly, and you can easily remove the bowl whenever it gets too hot," Morgan said, abruptly spinning to look face her with an expression of extreme pride.

Again Lucina could only stare, this time in astonishment. "Morgan, since when did you know so much about cooking? This is the first time I've heard you speak as such on this matter."

"Oh, that! I've been having Noire teach me how to bake! It's actually really fun!" Morgan answered, weaving her hands behind her head and grinning proudly. "Plus with that newfound power, I can make dessert for myself whenever I want! I'm now unstoppable!"

Lucina's mood has begun to lift at the start of Morgan's explanation, only to abruptly plummet at the last part, replaced by a flat, stern look only a mother could give. "Morgan… you're not allowed to only eat sweets. You still have to eat your vegetables."

"Nuh uh, I'm unstoppable now, remember!" Morgan argued. "Fear me! I have become death, baker and devourer of cake!"

"Just because you can doesn't mean you will," Lucina warned, crossing her arms. "Give me one reason why I should let you?" And why must I even have this discussion? Gods, Morgan… can you at least try to act your age on occasion? she thought to herself

"Because if you don't then I won't help you make those chocolates for father in time!" Morgan countered sticking out her tongue. "I mean, if we got started now we could get them finished in no time!"

"Wait… you really believe there is still time?" Lucina asked, an ember of hope returning to her.

"Of course. I'll show you what to do! Trust me, it's easy once you know how!" Morgan said, hopping up and down excitedly. Without waiting for an answer she began sprinting around the kitchen, snatching up vessels and utensils for them to use.

"Alright, alright, I see you are quite committed then," Lucina said, unable to help herself but laugh at her daughter's enthusiasm. Certainly, her energy could do wonder to lift the spirits of those around her, especially in times like this. "However, we will still need to have a talk about your eating habits when we are done."

"Awwww, for real?!" Morgan complained.

. . . . .

"Alright, there he is" Morgan hissed, far too loudly to be a whisper. Lucina felt her daughter give her a shove from behind, causing her to stagger and nearly trip.

"Morgan!" she whispered back, making no move to approach her husband. From behind the row of tents they could see Robin making his way down the dusty road as he returned to camp from the nearby town, a bag held in one hand.

Lucina righted herself, clutching the wrapped box containing the chocolates she and Morgan had made, carefully not to drop or otherwise harm them. To do so now, after all their hard work would be the truest of shames.

"Go! Go! Kiss! Kiss! Go! Go!" Morgan urged, giving her another shove.

"Morgan, please. You do not need to-" Lucina started to argue.

"No time! He's here! I'll be rooting for you!" Morgan gave a final shove, this time even more forceful than before, pushing Lucina straight out into the open…

… and nearly crashing head first into her husband. There was a yelp of surprise and for an instant Lucina was certain she'd trip. But an arm shot out, gripping her hand even as she grabbed onto his shoulder, managing to remain on her feet.

"Lucina?" Robin asked, helping her right herself. "I'd say this is a surprise, but that would be cliché… if truthful, at least in this manner," he laughed, stepping back.

"Yes, I'm… I'm so sorry if I startled you, Robin. It was not my intention, but… well… Morgan…" she shot a glance back to Morgan, who wasn't as well hidden as she likely imagined she was behind the tents. For one thing the messy mop of her blue hair was just barely visible as she peeked over the top to peer back at them.

"Ah, right. That certainly explains things," Robin said, following her gaze to notice their daughter as well. His attention then turned to the box Lucina was holding. It certainly was hard to miss, wrapping in shiny blue paper and tied in a large red bow. "I take it that it's for me?" he asked.

"Oh, um… yes!" Lucina said, flustered as she gave a bow of her head and offered the box to him.

Taking it gingerly, Robin unwrapped the bow, opening up the container to reveal the chocolates she and Morgan had spent so much time crafting.

"I made them myself… well, with some help from Morgan in the end. I spent the entire morning in the effort. So I hope… I hope they are pleasing enough," she explained as Robin looked into the box. Truth be told Lucina was very proud how they turned out, nearly perfectly round and uniform in size, but each decorated with white chocolate in the pattern of a different flower.

"Honestly, Lucina, you really didn't need to go through so much effort merely for my sake. I would have been happy with anything. I don't quite believe I am deserving of this," Robin told her, his gold-brown eyes shimmering ever so slightly as he gazed back at her. It was a testament to just how touched he was by the gift.

Then he took out one of the chocolates and plopped it into his mouth, smiling as he chewed. "They're really good, Lucina. Better than anything I could have made… though I suppose that's a poor compliment considering that's not a particularly high bar," he added, chuckling at his own reputation for possessing truly dismal cooking ability.

"I'm glad you liked them," Lucina said. She fidgeted with her sleeve, tugging on it and looking around fervently. There were too many people around, Morgan included, to make her feel comfortable to show the more open gestures of affection she so desperately wished to partake in.

"Oh, I almost forgot. It's not something I made myself, but I got you these," Robin said, reaching into the bag he was holding. It was beaucette of flowers: red and pink roses mixed with the white flowers of the same type Robin had given her on the day he had confessed his feelings for her.

"Sorry that it's nothing elaborate, but I wanted to get you something all the same. I am afraid when compared to your gift, my own has come up short…" he said guiltily.

"No, it's quite alright. They are lovely, Robin," Lucina assured him Taking the flowers in hand she hesitated a moment, again reminded about how public the place they were in was. No, that was no excuse. She could find the courage for one kiss.

Sucking in a deep breath Lucina stepped forward, pressing her lips into his. His mouth tasted sweet from the chocolate. Then she pulled away, blushing. "Thank you. For thinking of me."

"Heh, and you as well," Robin replied. He chuckled nervously, trying to hide his own embarrassment. "But is this really the place for this. We're out in the open.

Lucina inclined her head, conceding to this point. "Shall we go then? To somewhere a certain someone won't be watching us?" Lucina asked, eyes glancing back to where Morgan was failing to remain hidden. "You know, for perhaps an, um… repeat performance of that kiss," Lucina blushed at this

Robin smiled at this, catching her meaning even if he blushed even more fiercely, torn between joy and embarrassment. "Ah… erm, right. Of course," he hooked his arm around here's the two of them turning to face the camp and the direction of their tend. "Let's go then."

With that, arm in arm, they started into camp… for about three steps before Robin abruptly yanked both of them back. The ground before them caved in, revealing a ten-foot deep pit that had laid hidden but a moment before.

"Nice try, kiddo!" Robin called out to Morgan's hiding place.

"Awwwwwww," groaned Morgan, her disappointment at her trap failing truly unmeasurable.

[bearseokie]

hug

— Wondering why your tutor stood you up, he shows up at your door bearing some emotionally tolling news.

DETAILS — [ PG-13 | drabble | 1k ] PAIRING — tutor! seungwoo x gender-neutral! reader GENRES — college! au, unrequited love! au, angst, fluff WARNINGS — slight abandonment, light storm/thunder, ouch warning

victon m.list | navi.

The coldest days were the loneliest. Rain pattering on your windowsill, you sat under the dim light of your desk lamp. Books sprawled out before you, your eyes began to go in and out of focus at the small words printed on the pages. The scent of ink from your colored pens filling your nostrils, you sat back in the chair with a sigh.

Your thumb pressed at your phone, the blank lockscreen making your lips press into a thin line. It was well past the time you were meant to be accompanied by your tutor, but his mind and body seemed to be elsewhere. You ran circles trying to think of him mentioning that he’d being late, but only the soft memory of the time last spent with him played in your brain.

He had chuckled loudly, laid across your bed with bright eyes as he stared over at you. “What? Can’t solve one equation without my help?”

You shook your head at the little memory, his smile causing chills to run across your skin. You wanted to reply to him, stand up to him, convince him you weren’t that needy, but you always faltered the moment his teeth shined through his lips. Seungwoo had you whipped, the older student nearing his senior year with perfect scores and your heart.

Your head fell back against the thick fabric of the chair at your desk, rocking backwards with the sound of the light storm outside, thunder clouding your hearing. Eyes shutting, the faint memory of his laugh sprung in your ears.

It was a complete coincidence that Seungwoo had pulled at one of the pieces of paper on the bulletin board of your dorm, the same page you pinned up requesting for a tutor. But what you hadn’t known was that it was him who also mysteriously pulled the entire page down instead of taking a single cut of your phone number. The man urged the need to tutor someone for the semester and you, a freshmen, was his exact target.

That same day he knocked on your door. Carrying a small container of cupcakes and his backpack filled with all of his notes from freshmen year, he had won you over the moment you met his gaze through the peep-hole of your door.

Welcomed in with open arms, it only took a single hour of studying a core class that he convinced your feelings to pull for him. Light exchanges between the two of you, the feeling of his fingers running past yours on the pages of the book to point something out, his warm body against your side so close that you could hear his heart beating, he was a focused distraction to you. Little cackles at your curious questions brought a smile to his face, asking if he was dating, what the answer to the equation was, if he wanted to get coffee sometime. He played along respectfully, and never actually gave you signals that he wasn’t interested.

And for that very reason it left you to ponder just what he was up to in the middle of the afternoon, not at his regularly scheduled tutoring session with you.

Seungwoo had tailored your notes to perfection, his handwriting mixed with yours on the pages. Your eyes caught where he scribbled over your mistakes, sitting up in the chair to let your back straighten out. He fixed your study habits, using colored pens as reminders, acronyms created by himself for easier memory, inside jokes between the two of you to maximize that you would recognize anything that would come up in any form on a test. He assured you that you would pass, and there was no doubt in your mind that you would.

But here you still sat, alone in your room without the very man himself. He hadn't taken into account that it was mainly him causing you to pay extra attention, work extra hard, listen to him so closely. Even his presence benefited your studying, causing every session you attempted alone to fail with you slamming the books shut and reading over the absolute gibberish you wrote down.

“Hello?” you typed into your phone. Staring at the word and punctuation for what felt like an eternity, your thumb pressing send. An uneasy feeling took over your stomach when the ‘read’ notification popped up, the typing symbol nowhere in sight for Seungwoo to respond.

It sat that way for another forty-five minutes. Blinking back tears, the bouncing dots finally appeared, Seungwoo’s response short and simple.

“Be there in ten.”

The knock at your door startled you, leaping from your chair to pull it to. Seungwoo stood with tired eyes, a toothless smile on his lips. He maneuvered around you, shutting the door quietly and standing before you. The energy changed, his heart in his chest beating rapidly as you blinked up at him.

“I don’t have a good excuse for this, I’m sorry.” he admitted, your cocked brow making him cough to clear his throat. “I was on a date. Last minute.”

His left cheek rose with the air he puffed into it from within his mouth, eyes growing shallow at your form. Your head tilted, staring past him at the blank wall before turning to peer over at all of the notes you had stared at for hours.

“A date?” you asked, voice broken as you fought back your emotions. “Was it at least fun?”

His smile broke the awkward air, a faint chuckle vibrating his chest. He relaxed, staring at you looking so small before him.

“I should have told you.” he sighed.

He didn’t skip a beat. The moments you had spent growing a relationship through studying were mainly mutual, but anyone could see how heartbroken you were just by a single glance into your eyes. His arms stuck out, reaching for you. Your bottom lip poked out, allowing his form to swallow you into his chest. His arms wrapped tightly around you, the physical contact new and calming. Body warm and radiating, he twisted side to side gently, rocking you in his arms as his chin rested on your head. You were safe, content, but hurt. Heartbeat at full pace, you knew what was coming, and you could hardly bear it.

“I have someone already.”

[kiwi-bitchez]

can i just say that your writing style is absolutely phenomenal and that i adore the work you’ve put out so far. i know whatever you write in the future is going to be incredible and i can’t wait to read it!! in terms of suggestions, i was wondering if you could write something with virgin peter being with a more experienced reader? maybe she finds his lack of experience cute and calms down his nerves by being straight forward? maybe a little praise kink discovery as well?? totally up to you!!

Holy shit yes! Honestly, I got a little carried away with this... sorry I took so long lol, hope this holds up to any expectations ;) 

Straight Forward, Straight Backwards (a college!Peter Parker AU)

Warnings: SMUT, college!AU, sexy times, praise kink, Peter Parker is a cutie, also everyone is legal ages here obvi

Word count: 6.5k

Summary: You move into a new dorm building and a cute boy down the hall catches your eye. Little did you know he's a smarty pants who takes directions very well ;)

You should have done a better job packing. Your personal items lay strewn about in your new dorm room, clothes and other items all jumbled together in unorganized boxes. You typically didn’t leave things until the last minute, but moving across campus didn’t seem like a big deal until it was actually time to do it.

You flop back on your unmade bed and scroll through your phone, finding any excuse not to deal with the chaos of unpacking. Hopping up to your feet, you decide to wander down the hall to see if anyone’s doors were open. You hadn’t had much luck making friends in the last building you lived in and wanted to take the opportunity to try and meet some new people.

You walk down the hall searching for someone to introduce yourself to, poking your head into a handful of rooms and saying hello. You tell them your name and that you just moved in, having a quick few interactions with the people in the rooms next to yours. You venture a little further down the hall to a door propped open with a doorstop, faint music coming from inside.

You knock lightly and then poke your head in, not wanting to intrude on anyone. You see a curly-haired boy sitting at a desk concentrating on something. For a second you wondered if you should just let him be, but something told you to knock again and see if he noticed.

You knock a little louder this time, saying a quiet “Hello?” as you do so. He turns around abruptly, startled by your presence. He lurches back in his chair a little bit, rolling across the room and away from his desk.

“Hey,” you say again, “sorry, I didn’t mean to bother you.”

“Nonono, it’s ok,” he says quickly and nervously.

“I just moved in down the hall,” you gesture towards your room, “I just wanted to introduce myself, I’m y/n.”

“Oh, hi,” he still seemed nervous, “I’m Peter.”

He got up out of his desk chair quickly and walked a few steps over to you. He jutted his hand out, offering it to you. You couldn’t help but smile a little as you shook it tentatively. Most of the people you had met didn’t even bother to leave their beds, let alone get up to shake your hand.

“It’s nice to meet you Peter,” you say as you continue to shake his hand.

“Shit, sorry,” he pulls his hand away, realizing he had been shaking yours for much longer than necessary, “do you wanna come in? I have snacks.”

You chuckle a little before entering his small single dorm and comfortably plopping yourself onto a beanbag chair.

“Purple Doritos,” you gesture to the hoard of junk food he has piled on a shelf in the corner, “respect.”

“Totally underrated right?” he says with enthusiasm.

The two of you exchange the typical chit chat of college students, asking each other what your major is and how long you’ve been in school.

“Biomechanical engineering and robotics, but also maybe chemistry if I have the time to do that too,” he runs his hand through his floppy curls.

“Damn,” you look at him wide-eyed, “guess I’m coming to you for science help from now on, freakin genius over here.”

He laughs nervously and turns away, “I just think its all so interesting, and I love to build things.”

You can’t help but smile at the way he talks with his hands, spinning around aimlessly in his desk chair. He tells you about your school’s robotics lab, something you would never have had a reason to know about otherwise. He starts to tell you about the kinds of things he’s built, and the projects he was currently working on. Most of what he said went right over your head, but you liked how excited he was to tell you about it.

After shooting the shit for a while, you get up, “I guess I’ll head back to my room, didn’t mean to distract you from your work or anything,” you gesture to his desk, “it was really nice to meet you.”

“Yeah, if you um ever need a study buddy or anything like that you can usually find me right here,” he was a little jittery, and his voice was nervous. You give him a smile and tell him you will take him up on that offer.

You feel a blush creep up into your cheeks as you hurry down the hall back to your messy dorm. He was cute. And nice. And funny and smart. He was nothing like the guys you usually went for. He seemed awkward and shy, and you knew you’d have to be the one to make the first move. You were used to just letting others do the work when flirting, so this would be different.

A few days later you found yourself bored and alone in your dorm. You had spent the morning finishing up some school assignments, so you hadn’t had the chance to get any food. Only now were you realizing how hungry you were. Jumping up from your desk and throwing some clean clothes on you decide to venture out onto campus.

Peter’s dorm door is propped open once again, and something inside you tells you to pop your head in. You had seen him in passing since meeting him, and he would always give you a friendly wave and a smile.

“Hey,” you say as you knock quietly, “hope I’m not bothering you.”

He’s sat in his bed, big headphones on and furiously scribbling in a notebook. He only notices you once you enter the room, startling him.

“Oh, hey y/n, what’s uhh, what’s up,” he stumbles on his words as he takes off the headphones and hops off the bed.

“Just wanted to say hey and see if you wanted to come to the dining hall with me,” you help him gather his papers that had fallen on the floor.

“Oh, yeah, um, sure,” he looks up at you, big brown eyes meeting yours, “that would be nice, I haven’t eaten yet today.”

“Me either,” you hand him the stack you had gathered. The two of you decide on which dining hall is best and make your way across campus. He’s a fast walker, which you like, and an even faster talker. You can tell that you make him a little nervous, but you kind of like that too. It made it easier to hide how nervous he made you.

The two of you grab some food and find a table off in a corner to sit at. Despite his awkward nature, you found Peter to be incredibly sweet and a nice person to be around. He always seemed interested in what you were saying and would never cut you off or talk over you.

You start asking him more about what he does in the labs at school, liking the way his eyes light up and hands get restless when he talks about the projects he’s working on. He knows you aren’t a science buff like him, but he appreciates that you are interested in hearing about his projects.

You realize that you had finished your food long ago and you had been sitting at the table for quite a while, just going back and forth with Peter, telling stories and jokes and facts about your lives. He was an easy person to talk to, which was rare to come by.

“Maybe sometime you could sneak me in and show me what you’ve been working on,” you rest your head onto your palm.

“Oh, no sneaking necessary, I could bring you anytime,” he says casually, “you wanna go?” He gestures towards the door.

“Now?” you were a little surprised at the suggestion, but nodded in agreement and moved to clear your plate.

The two of you start walking across campus once again, you following his lead. You were excited to be spending so much time with him, growing to like him more and more as you got to know him better.

Your first years of college had been spent doing the typical partying and experimenting, as custom. You had your fair share of one night stands, good and bad. Sort and long term relationships, both good and bad.

As much as you were attracted to Peter, you truly just enjoyed spending time with him. He is hard to read, and you couldn’t quite tell if you had a shot with him. If not you were content with just being his friend, although you did think about jumping his bones most of the time.

He swipes his student ID in the door of a large grey building, letting the two of you in. You follow him down a series of halls and stairwells, he tells you about all the different labs as you go. You finally reach a large set of double doors that lead to the robotics lab.

It was a vast space with mounds and piles of mechanical equipment. Goofy drawings and photos were hung up on the walls by people’s workstations. You couldn’t even begin to conceive what all these machines are and what they do.

You wander around the space while Peter walks over to a desk and piles of boxes, telling you about the project he had been working on. You jumped up onto a large table, figuring it was alright to sit there when Peter didn’t comment on your position. He was talking in circles about the machine, using acronyms and names of things you had no idea about.

Walking over to where you were sat, he shows you a small mechanical spider, roughly the size of his hand.

“I’m trying to program him to follow instructions that I can give from a mobile device,” he starts to tell you. You think it's cute that he called the robot a “he.”

“Do you wanna see?” he asks, you were too busy staring at his face to realize he had asked you a question.

“Oh yeah, of course,” you snap out of your trance and turn your attention to the little spider on the table next to you.

As Peter controlled the robot with his phone, giving it basic instructions like to move or stop, you tried to keep your attention on the spider rather than the cute boy next to you. You felt the overwhelming desire to make a move, going back and forth in your head as to whether that is a good idea or not.

He takes a few steps towards you, really reaching for his robot, but in the process positioning himself comfortably standing between your legs. He reaches past you to grab his project. You lean forward a little so your shoulders touch.

“Oh shit, sorry y/n,” he backs up quickly, realizing he had been standing so close to you, “I didn’t mean to get all up in your space just then.”

“It’s ok,” you brush your hair behind your ear and try to give him a flirty look, “come here.”

Peter gulps, and sets the spider down behind him on a different table, tentatively stepping towards you. “Can I show you something?” you lean your shoulders into him again, moving to the edge of the table to move your body closer to his.

Peter nods, clearly nervous at your forwardness. You take his hand, looking into his eyes to see how he responds to the action. He was now stood between your legs again, head only a few inches above yours. You tilt your chin up, and bring your hand to the side of his face.

“Is this okay?” you ask in a whisper, lips parted and hovering over his.

He nods, giving you permission to follow through with your plan of action. You gently place your lips on his, finding them to be soft and inviting. He kissed you back, shakily bringing his hand to the back of your neck.

You could tell he was incredibly nervous. You were used to guys kissing you hard and fast, with little buildup, all tongue and grabbing. Which was alright after a few tequila shots at a frat party, but not your favorite. This kiss was nice. Slow and gentile and in the moment. You liked initiating it, and you liked that he was kissing you back, but not trying to eat you alive.

He pulls away, eyes wide and making contact with yours, “was that… was I…?” he starts a few statements but can’t seem to find his words.

“I like you Peter,” you take his hand again, “I think you’re really cool.”

“Thanks, I…um,” he was blushing furiously and was looking down at the floor, “I like you a lot too.”

“Would you maybe want to come with me to a party on west campus this weekend?” you ask, “You know, like, as my date?”

He breaks out into a big goofy smile, nodding and giving you hand a squeeze. The two of you go on to talk more about his spider, you tell him how awesome it is and how you can’t believe how smart he must be to make something like that. He never lets go of your hand, squeezing it tightly the whole walk back to your dorm building.

Saturday rolls around and you stand in your dorm, not knowing what to wear to this party. You settle on an outfit that is the perfect blend of cute and sexy, and head down the hall to meet Peter. You give his door a quick few knocks before he opens, eyes wide looking at you.

“You look really, really good y/n,” he compliments you and you bashfully tuck your head into the crook of your shoulder, “I mean it.”

The two of you relax in his dorm room until you get the text from a friend that its time to head to the party. You can tell that Peter is a little anxious, he doesn’t seem like the partying type, but you wanted an excuse to spend some time with him. You grab his hand reassuringly and walk together out of your building, meeting up with a group of friends.

They tried to play it cool, but your girls kept indiscreetly mouthing things like “holy shit he’s so hot!” and “where did you find him?” as you walked towards the party. You rolled your eyes and brushed them off, clinging to Peter’s arm.

The party was nothing special, just a typical college party. People were drinking, dancing, grinding, smoking, mostly drinking. You whip up some quick cocktails for you and Peter and join him with some of your friends in a more secluded area of the frat house. You made sure to stand close to Peter, tucking yourself closely into his arm. You wanted everyone to know you weren’t there alone, and you wanted Peter to feel like you were his for the night.

You weren’t quite done with your first drink when you noticed an off energy from Peter. You wanted to bring him to this party as your date, but never really considered if parties were his thing or not. He was talking and joking with you and your friends, occasionally taking a  sip from his pink cocktail, but you could sense an underlying sense of discomfort.

“Hey,” you pulled him into a secluded corridor, “what’s up?” You kiss him quickly, wanting to show him that you were having a good time with him. He kisses you back and your heart flutters. You love the feeling of his tentative lips on yours, light and soft.

“Just at a party with the most beautiful girl here, that’s all,” he says jokingly, but kisses your cheek after to show that he means it.

“Do you wanna get out of here?” you ask, raising an eyebrow, “I feel like you aren’t having a lot of fun.”

“Are you kidding? I love spending time with you,” he says earnestly, realizing what you meant, ‘“but parties aren’t exactly my scene if you haven’t noticed.”

“I’m noticing,” you joke, “and I think the two of us alone in one of our rooms would be much better.”

You lean up to kiss the side of his neck, leaning your head into his shoulder. Your wide eyes meet his, observing that he definitely agrees with you but is still very nervous. He nods at your suggestion, and the two of you abandon your cocktails on a coffee table and leave the house.

“I didn’t mean to imply anything, “you say sweetly, “I really just like spending time with you, no matter where it is.”

“That means a lot,” you see a smile creeping onto his face.

“Your room?” you suggest, “mines kind of a mess right now.”

“Sure,” he responds, “not that I mind mess though.”

The two of you make your way up the stairs and down the hall to Peter’s room. You instinctively kick off your shoes and set down your bag.

“Sorry if I ruined the night,” he apologizes nervously, “I just don’t really fit in with big crowds like that.”

You can tell that he feels genuinely sorry. “Peter,” you start, “are you kidding? I meant it when I said I like spending time with you no matter where. We could go to a party or the dining hall or the robotics lab, I don’t care, I just like being around you.”

“You mean that?” he looks at you apologetically again.

“Of course I do, I’ve really liked you ever since we first met,” you admit. You walk over to him, snaking a hand around his neck and bringing his face closer to yours, “I really mean it.”

You lean in and kiss him, with more passion and want than the kisses you had shared before. You latch your lips around his lower one, sucking a little. He is warm and slightly apprehensive. You kiss him deeper, trying to prove that you wanted to be with him. You let your tongue roll over his bottom lip, opening up the kiss.

A slight moan from the back of his throat catches your ear, and you keep kissing him deeper, knowing that he likes it. His hands have made their way to your hips, although you are the one guiding the kiss.

Before he realizes it, his back is up against his bed and the two of you are falling backwards onto it.

You land slightly on top of him but refuse to break the kiss. You love the feeling of his soft tongue against yours, lips parted and meeting halfway. Your hands tangle themselves into his brown curls, another soft moan leaving his mouth when you tug a little at his roots. You continue to suck on his bottom lip as your fingertips begin to graze the stripe of exposed skin between his pants and his pushed-up t-shirt. You can feel the muscles in his stomach tense up underneath your touch.

His heavy breathing comes to a harsh stop with a sharp intake as you run your hands flatly across his toned stomach.

“Are you okay?” you ask, concerned, as he seemed to seize up the moment you started touching him.

“Yeah, yeah, sorry. I didn’t mean to- I just- Ugh I’m sorry if I’m bad at this. I just don’t really know what I’m doing.”

You bring a soft kiss to the underside of his jaw, wrapping your hand in his reassuringly. “It’s okay, you don’t have to try and impress me or anything. I’m really enjoying myself so far, you’re a really good kisser, I promise.” You bring your lips back to his, cupping his face in the process.

He scooches back onto the bed, sitting up. “I don’t think you understand,” he starts, you can tell he’s on edge, “I’ve never really done this before. I’m… a virgin. I guess I just feel stupid, cuz I want this to be good for you, but I’m sort of clueless.”

“Okay,” you look him dead in the eyes, holding tightly onto his hand.

“Okay?” he asks, still feeling all over the place from telling you.

“Yeah, okay,” you try to play this as cool as possible, you want him to feel nothing but comfortable with you, “Peter, it’s fine, it's okay if you’ve never slept with someone.”

His eyes are wide and he’s still trying to read your reaction, “I promise I don’t care, and we don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. I just like spending time with you, no expectations.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to…” you had moved up on the bed to sit next to him at this point, legs still tangled together, “I’m just an idiot, and I feel bad, like you probably don’t want to sleep with someone who’s bad and inexperienced, and I really just want to make you feel good but I don’t know how…” he was frantically rambling at this point, face still flushed red.

“Peter,” you say slowly, trying to get him to focus, “I’m gonna be straight with you right now: you’re the first guy I’ve met in a long time who isn’t an egotistical asshole. You’re really sweet, and that’s honestly so hard to come by, I feel lucky to have met you. I can tell you’re super nervous, and you shouldn’t be. I like you a lot, so if you want to spend the night with me that’s cool, and if you don’t then that’s cool too.”

“Really?” you answer his question with a soft kiss, resuming the contact that you had before, “You’ll tell me if I'm horrible though?” His anxieties were slipping through again.

“I could… ya know, show you,” you suggest, his face lights up, “and if you’re bad it will only be a reflection of my poor teaching skills. And if I’m going to be completely honest with you here, most guys who are super experienced are still trash at sex, so the fact that you’ve even expressed concern about making me feel good gives you a massive leg up on most, so don’t sweat it.”

“You’re so fucking cool,” he brings a hand back up to your cheek, “sorry if I’m acting like a neurotic mess, I just honestly didn’t ever imagine being in this position with someone as beautiful as you.”

You feel yourself blushing at his compliment, pressing your face into his large palm. He tentatively guides your face to his, meeting your lips with his. You were glad to have had this conversation with him, because he kissed you with much more confidence. He was now sure of himself.

You decide to take the lead and swing your opposite leg over his lap, straddling him. You let your hands run up and down his arms, exploring his strong biceps, his toned sides and flexed stomach. You feel his tongue peek into your mouth, and you invite him in with an open-mouthed kiss, rolling your wet tongue against his.

You let your hands settle back in his hair, remembering how he liked it before when you gave it a tug. You found your hips rolling slightly into his with each kiss, effectively pressing your center down onto his. You couldn’t help but notice how hard he was, straining against his pants.

“Peter,” you say breathily into his mouth, “can I touch you?”

“Fuck,” his hips buck up slightly into you at your question, “please y/n.”

You let your hand trail down his stomach, fiddling with the hem of his shirt for a second. You tug at it, signaling for him to take it off. Before you could even take in the sight of his beautifully sculpted body, you trailed your hands underneath the waist of his pants, palming him above his boxers.

You knew you should move slowly, take your time with him and let it build up, but your senses were going wild. You wanted nothing more than to feel his cock in your mouth, inside of you. It felt so perfect in your hand, and although you couldn’t see it, you knew it was nice.

“Peter,” you whisper again between breathy kisses, “your cock feels so good in my hand, so hard for me already.”

You feel him shudder underneath you as you move from his mouth down to the underside of his jaw, sucking on a spot while you continue to jerk him off.

You slowly take care of the button on his pants, sliding them down his legs. The moment of separation makes you realize his hands had been placed firmly on your hips. After his pants were kicked off his legs, you grind down onto him again, less fabric separating you this time.

“Do you want to touch me?” you ask seductively into his ear as you continue to roll yourself down onto his clothed, but incredibly hard member. He gives you an eager nod, eyes blown and glassy from all the stimulation he was receiving at once.

You guide his hand from its place on your hip down between your legs. Up your skirt and over the sopping center of your cotton panties, his hands find their way to your center. You slow your movements over him, allowing him to feel around and get a sense of your body. He groans at the immediate contact, noticing the unavoidable wet patch around your entrance.

“Do you feel that?” you ask before kissing down his neck again, “feel how wet I am?”

He continues to meet your movements by pressing his hips up into you. You notice how responsive he is when you talk dirty to him, especially little compliments and words of praise. You could have your fun with this, make him fall apart just by telling him how well he’s doing.

“You did that to me Peter, you make me so fucking wet.”

He lets out a groan into your neck at your words. You take the opportunity to slip your hands under the waistband of his boxers, looking into his eyes for a second for silent permission to continue. You nip at his earlobe and whisper words of praise to him as you fully grasp his cock for the first time. Jerking him off slowly, you grind yourself down onto his hand, letting his fingers press harder into your underwear.

You move your other hand down to meet his, showing him how to rub circles on your clit. Moaning into his skin, you pull aside your underwear, completely wrecked at this point. You grant him access to your slick folds, ready and waiting for him.

“Fuck, Peter,” you fuck yourself down onto his long fingers, letting him comfortably slip inside you, “you’re doing so good, making me feel so good.”

You arch your back a little, giving him a good view of your face as he twisted his fingers inside you. You sit straight up, perpendicular to him now. Your full weight pressed down onto his hand, his middle two fingers fluttering perfectly inside of you with little instruction. You expose your chest by removing your shirt before leaning your arms down onto his shoulders. You grind your clit against his palm as his fingers work inside of you.

“Oh my god, Peter,” you bite your lip, “fuck, you’re going to make me come.”

He gives you a look before stuttering, “I- um, can I…”

“What is it,” you try to ask him genuinely but cant help the moans that slip out, “what do you want?”

“I, uh, I wanna taste you.”

“Fuck.” Your head falls back at his request, hair falling slightly over your face, mouth gaping open.

“Is that okay? Is that a weird thing to ask?” his voice was tentative, which made you chuckle a little considering his fingers were still fucking deeply into you.

“Peter, that’s so fucking hot.” You rush down to capture his lips in yours, letting your tongues meet. You bite down slightly onto his lower lip, knowing you wouldn’t be able to last much longer. You move down flat on your back, slipping off your only remaining garment, your skirt.

He takes the cue and removes his boxers as well, now leaving you both completely naked. You try to steal a look at his hard cock, but he quickly moves down in between your legs. He looks at your dripping pussy with wide brown eyes, a mix between glowing and uncertainty.

You start to give him instructions, trying to fulfill your role as teacher, “You can just- mmmmhhh fuck,” he meets his warm tongue with your entrance, licking a wide stripe up the middle.

“Fuck, just like that,” he continues to lick and suck, “and you can add a- fuck, Peter.” He always seems to know what you’re going to tell him seconds before you say it. He dips his two, already wet, fingers back into you as he sucks on your clit.

You arch your back, grinding yourself into his tongue slightly. Through pants, you tell him how close you are, how well he’s doing. With a final flick of his tongue, you clench around his fingers tightly and scrunch your face up in pleasure. Your hips gyrate against him, thighs shaking, hands grasping at the sheets, at his hair, at anything.

You let out his name with a strangled moan, knowing he would love hearing his name come from your lips as you reached your high. “Peter, fuck, Peter,” over and over.

You pull away slightly, telling him he can stop. You flop back, panting, hand coming up to your forehead.

“Um, was that? Was I okay?”

You couldn’t believe that after you had been writhing and coming underneath him, he would still question himself like that. “Yes,” you were still a little out of breath, “that was really fucking good.”

You move down the bed to meet him, pulling him into a deep kiss. You relished in the feeling of his warm mouth, the taste of yourself on his lips. You wrap your legs around his torso, kissing him more fiercely.

You look up at him, hair a mess and face red, “I want to make you feel good now.”

“I mean, we don’t have to, like, you don’t have to…”

“Peter,” you wrap your legs around him a little tighter, “do you want to fuck me?”

He groans slightly and thrown his head back, hands coming down to grab your ass.

“Please,” he half moans as you attack his neck with your tongue, “I really want to.”

“You have condoms?”

“Mhm, just give me sec,” he doesn’t want to stop toughing you, but untangles your bodies to move over to the side table drawer. He stands next to the bed, fiddling with the unopened condom box.

You have a devious idea, and decide to position yourself at the edge of the bed, legs propped up behind you, ass in the air, hands and mouth perched and ready for him. He turns slightly, condom package in hand.

“Before you put that on,” you bat your eyelashes up at him, “I want to taste you.” You quote his words from earlier as you take the base of his cock in your hand, pumping it slowly.

“Can I?” he gives you permission before you slip the tip between your puffy lips. He is fully stood above you as you take him into your mouth, gagging a little on his length. You bob your head back and forth, giving him the perfect view of your ass.

You run your tongue firmly against the underside of his shaft, giving a harsh suck to the spot where the body met the head.

“Y/n,” your name was shaky in his mouth, “I need to fuck you right now.”

You like the directness in his tone and reach up mid-blow to take the condom from him. You flip around, so you are now simply seated on the edge of the bed, Peter still standing. You rip the foil with your teeth and take the rubber out.

Pumping his shaft a few times before rolling the condom on, you bite your lip and look up at him, “I’m so fucking excited to have you inside me, gonna make me feel so good.”

You were impatient, so you simply laid back on the bed where you were sat, letting your legs dangling off the side. You could tell he was too impatient to move either, as he ran his cock up and down the length of your entrance, waiting for your signal to push into you.

You motion for him to grab your legs by the thighs, allowing him to fuck into you deeply.

“Holy shit,” he grunts out as his length fills you for the first time. You arch your back and grind yourself against him, letting out little desperate moans mixed with his name.

“Fuck, Peter you can move now, you can fuck me.”

Although this was an unusual position for someone’s first time, both you and Peter were loving it. He got to see all of you as he pushed into you, your face, your tits bouncing with each thrust, the way your pussy opened up and took his cock so well. His grip on the back of your knees tightened as he fucked you harder, slightly shaking the bed.

“Oh my god, Peter,” you make eye contact as his hair flops against his forehead with each thrust, “touch me, please, fuck, I need you.”

His stamina was incredible, relentlessly fucking you as his hand seamlessly found your clit, rubbing the tight circles you had shown him how to do earlier. He loved having you splayed out before him, making you feel good, hearing you tell him how well he was fucking you, how you needed more, more, more.

He notices the familiar look on your face as he feels your walls tighten around his length. He moans out, loving the feeling of you squeezing around him. His thrusts become deeper and slower as he brings you to your second orgasm. He observed the way you squirmed when he would touch you one way, back fully arched when he would touch you another way.

“Fuck, I-” you try to communicate, “Peter, I want to come all over your cock, please don’t stop fucking me, oh my god.”

He can’t help but close his eyes as he feels you tighten around him for the last time, letting your wet orgasm drip all over his dick. You shook underneath him, legs vibrating under his grasp. Your mouth fell into a perfect Oh, and the sounds that were coming from your lips almost sent him over the edge.

He wanted to keep fucking you though, he never wanted to stop. He wanted to make you feel good over and over for the rest of forever. You were coming down from your orgasm, still letting moans and words of praise fall from your lips to him. You loved how you could feel his dick twitch a little when you told him how good he was doing.

Fully fucked out from your last orgasm, you wanted to move onto the bed for him. You move back, causing him to slip out of you. For a moment, he thought you were done, which would have been fine, he only wanted what you wanted. He would just have to go take care of himself somewhere else…

It wasn’t until you moved up onto the bed and propped yourself up on all fours, arching your back perfectly for him, leaning down onto your forearms.

“Peter,” you coo to him, “will you fuck me like this?”

He couldn’t find the words to answer, only to hop onto the bed over eagerly and position himself behind you.

“Just grab my hips and- fuck,” he filled you up perfectly, rucking your hips back onto him with his hands.

The feeling of his strong hands grasping your hips, and his dick perfectly hitting that spot inside you was almost enough to push you over the edge for the third time. You had no control over the noises that were leaving your mouth, and you suspected the same was true for him.

His hips were snapping directly into yours, and you could feel his cock swell a little inside of you. He didn’t have to tell you for you to know he was close, but regardless,

“Y/n,” you name barely made its way past the grunts and profanities, “I’m gonna, fuck, I’m-”

You felt him fuck deeper into you, hitting a new spot for a few thrusts that made you see stars. You couldn’t do anything but fuck yourself back onto him and scream his name. His orgasm washed over him, his sweaty chest quickly falling to meet your back. His hands grasped around you, something in between a hug and gripping for dear life.

He pulled out of you, and rolled over onto the pillow next to you.

“How was that?” you asked, less nervously than how he had asked you earlier, but curiously, “for your first time?”

“I-” he couldn’t even begin to come up with the words to tell you how fucking amazing it had been, he pulls you down for a long kiss, sweaty foreheads meeting. “We can do that again, right?”

You let out a laugh, “right now?” with raised eyebrows.

“Nonono, just like, in general?” he already knew your answer with the way you smiled at him.

“Peter, nobody has ever made me come like that, of fucking course we can do it again.”

You offer to take care of the condom, and head over to the bathroom to pee and clean up. Peter laid back with eyes closed, feeling unreal about what had just happened. He couldn’t help but let his mind wander to all the things he wanted to do with you. He wanted to use his spider strength to lift you up, fuck you against a wall, in the shower, on the floor, everywhere and in every position.

You returned with a hand towel for him, “Was I an okay teacher?”

“You tell me,” he joked.

You flop down on the bed next to him, letting your sticky body tangle with his in a new way.

“You’re fucking amazing,” he tells you, “but I think there are some new things I want to show you next time.”

You look at him with raised eyebrows, and let out a giggle as you bury your head into the crook of his neck. He kisses the top of your hair softly. You couldn’t help but feel a little flustered at the notion of fucking him again, of getting fucked by him again. But also, the notion of spending more time with him just in his bed, wearing one of his nerdy t-shirts and getting your hair stroked as you doze off to sleep.

[nat-20s]

i woke up at 4:30 in the morning with this messy meta about the comparative horror styles of welcome to nightvale vs the magnus archives and how i like them both very much this is not a one is better than the other post because they’re DIFFERENT but also why, personally, nightvale has freaked me out more than TMA  (the magnus archives- im gonna use the abbreviation from now on and in scientific papers u gotta ESTABLISH the acronym and it’s actually kind of annoying bc they’ll establish it ONCE in the abstract and then never say what XJFEFJDOSM or whatever stands for again so if ur like wait WHAT was that again u gotta scroll all the way back up and it’s a whole thing but I digress)   and it has to do with WORLDBUILDING and FRAMING DEVICES and USE OF SECOND PERSON and only a little bit how if a character unironically says “innit” i automatically can’t take them seriously. Anyway it’s stuck in my head so you know I had to make it your problem. Also I’m putting this under a read more bc fjsdjlks holy shit this is gonna get LONG and RAMBLY and D E E P L Y nerdy 

WORLDBUILDING, FRAMING DEVICES, AND (THE USE OF) YOU IN MANGUS AND NIGHTVALE

Part A: whose universe is it anyway? Welcome to horror where the lore is made up and the logic doesnt matter

so I am not the first or last to compare (/maybe wanna crossover a little) the worlds of

wtnv (welcome to nightvale) and TMA and like for good reason bc in many ways they feel very similar but in TMA it’s like What the FUCK is going on with all of these horrors and nightmarish scenarios I am FREAKED out where as WTNV treats it’s horrors as typically mundane which

A: plays into why when WTNV is like “remember how we’re a horror :)” it’s like OH SHIT bc if Jon Archivist is scared you’re like well yeah it’s scary out there but if CECIL PALMER, general attitude of a peppy cheerleader when facing terrors beyond imagination, is scared, you KNOW shit is FUCKED

B: isn’t entirely accurate, because I don’t actually feel like they are set in the same world. here’s where things get sticky when it comes to realities and whatnot but I do wanna stress that yes I know WTNV and TMA are both works of fictions BUT I would personally say that

TMA is set in a parallel universe:  a reality that’s similar to our own but also distinctly separate from anything that we, the audience, can witness but never participate in

WTNV is set in a hidden universe: it is set in our (the listeners) own reality, and is done in such a way that it feels like if you looked hard enough for it or if you just had a bout of bad luck or if you happen to drive down a certain road in a long stretch of US desert (side note: if there’s any real life place nightvale would be set in it’s definitely new mexico have you ever been in new mexico it’s called land of ENCHANTMENT for a reason if I drove into new mexico and drove back out a few days later and like THIRTY YEARS had passed I’d be like yeah that tracks) that you could end up in the reality of nightvale. Who’s to say there’s not a faceless old woman secretly living in your house? Are you sure there’s nothing odd in your mirror? Who can ever be sure time is working correctly?

Which brings me to

Part B: You(yes, you!)’ve Been Framed!

Listen. I fucking love a good framing device. Every time a podcast is like “here’s why the events of the story are recorded in the world of the story” I go bonkers in yonkers that shit SLAPS. TMA and WTNV both do this, but (at least up to ep 176 of TMA, this whole fuckin essay could still be blown out the water) TMA’s framing device doesn’t account for an audience, where as WTNV’s the audience is a core component

the framing device of TMA is that these spooky stories are being recorded by an archivist in order to have an audio version of written statements. Cool! It tells the audience why these recordings exist, and why they’re episodic. Later in the story, the tapes begin to spontaneously show up because of Spooky Reasons that have yet to be Fully Revealed, but it still isn’t for an audience. When Jon Archivist records these tapes, they’re basically being recorded for a Void. Yes, the tapes are originally for a potential researcher to listen to, but that ain’t you chief. You are not part of the narrative (so far at least! Again, maybe the audience will be brought into the story when it’s revealed What’s Up with the spontaneous tapes, but so far nah), there’s no in universe explanation for why you personally are listening to these stories. You aren’t present in the story, in the framing device, so you are not a part of that world.

The framing device of WTNV is that you are tuning into the community radio of a small desert town, Nightvale, that you are a part of. After all, if you are tuning into something local, you’re strongly implied to be local. Thus, we have a framing device that explains both why it’s recorded AND why you’re listening. The audience is absolutely involved in the narrative rather than a simple spectator. Cecil Palmer is not recording into a Void, he’s talking to listeners of which you are a part of. (side note: this makes nightvale liveshows SUPER fun if u get an opportunity to go to one I HIGHLY recommend it bc while there’s not ‘audience participation’ in the classic sense of like magic or comedy acts the narrative IS constructed in a way that you feel less like a witness of a story and more of a participant like the one I went to most of us pulled our legs onto out chair bc oh SHIT maybe there IS an escaped librarian under your chair making a grab for your feet SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF IS FUN AS HELL YALL)

These framing devices are enforced and enhanced upon by who the “you” in a narrative is.

In TMA, when there’s a “you” being referred to, when there’s a listener, it’s usually an in universe character. When there’s lines like “i’m sorry, that’s not what you came here to listen to” it’s not referring to you personally, it’s talking to Jon Archivist or Gertrude Archivist or Insert Archival Assistant. When TMA does use a more general “you”, it’s still in universe rather than the external listening to audience. You can include yourself as part of that general you, but it’s not inherently built into the narrative. If you want to distance yourself, you can also do that. You are not automatically in this world, even if much of it feels repeatable and/or similar

WTNV sometimes uses you to refer to an in universe character, because conversations do happen, but in the episodes where it’s like LMAO THIS IS A HORROR, the “you” and general second person is actively both discussing a known character and the listener personally. One of the most recent episodes, ep 171 “Go to the Mirror?” is a BRILLIANT example of this, where Cecil is simultaneously discussing himself and his experiences AND you as well. There’s something he can only see in the mirror, something with such sharp claws, on his shoulders, but it’s also something you personally can only see in the mirror, something on your shoulder.  You are not exempt from the story, you can’t be exempt from the story, because you’ve always been a part of it. (Also side note go to the mirror is SO fuckign good it made my heart fuckin POUND the amount of times that despite knowing it was fiction I looked over my shoulder so many times. I know a shit ton of people listened to WTNV in like 2012/13 and dropped off and felt guilty and never caught up again but like. Catch up on nightvale it’s good for body and soul and also Cecilos just keep winning)

WAY too long; didn’t read: to me personally while I LOVE both TMA and WTNV, WTNV is scarier to be because TMA feels like a story that you’re bearing witness to (also thank god british people aren’t real and were made up for the Peppa Pig Cinematic Universe), WTNV feels not just like a story that you could be in but actively already are and that makes things SPOOKY

Also this isn’t related to the essay but shout out to whoever first decided that horror narrators should have nice even voices we really all be soothed by some grisly ass stories the amount of people that fall asleep to WTNV/TMA is WILD

[sapphia]

the argument that “you can literally say whatever slur you want but the cost is that you might be traumatising/upsetting someone, so that’s why you should never say them” has been rocking around in my head for days and i want to get some thoughts out about it because i feel that like... this doesn’t work for reclaiming slurs. 

and i’m not just talking about queer, although that’s the one that seems to attract the most heat. 

because sure, i can censor my language so that i can no longer use my preferred word to define my gender and sexuality. those academic papers I took in university on queer studies? i guess i’ll find a different word to use for them, even though the term queer theory hasn’t really been replaced by any common parlance (i suppose it would be gender theory, but i’ve never heard anyone use that). 

i can stop referring to my community as the queer community, and stop referring to my vast array of lgbt friends, not all of whom fit within that acronym or even know which letter they are, as my lgbt friends. i can cut a word that i use in common parlance out of my vocabulary, despite the fact that it’s MY word, that it’s a slur against ME. i can do it for all those people out there who don’t like the word queer and think it’s a slur. 

but who’s doing that for me? i grew up in the early 2000s where the word gay was thrown around like a piece of trash. anything that was bad was ‘gay’. i still know people who use it as a negative term to this day. like, in every other sentence, teenagers would be saying the word gay as a bad thing. and that has had an effect on my psyche, and while i’ve made efforts mentally to “reclaim” it and can refer to myself and other people as gay, it still catches in my throat. and there are times where it genuinely makes my stomach twist, because i do associate it negatively, i do have anxiety and shame and fear around it. so should we stop using the word gay?

i’ve never got on board with dyke. it wasn’t used against me but it feels harsh and hateful, and i never managed to be comfortable around it. i also dislike the word fag and faggot, though i’m not a gay man, and have often felt mildly uncomfortable when gay people have referred to themselves as that in my presence. 

reasonable? what about the word fat. because that was thrown at me more than the words queer and dyke and fag ever were. not as much as the word gay perhaps (i literally can’t understate how common gay as a negative was). but when the word fat was used against me, it was also a lot more powerful and hurtful and hateful than any of the others. of course, fat people, especially fat women, have been trying to reclaim that as a descriptor for decades now. “fat and proud” “I’m not ‘heavy’, i’m fat” “fat isn’t a bad word”. so i guess because I am quite reasonably uncomfortable with it, they should stop their reclamation efforts. 

and while we’re on slurs that have been chucked at me personally, i’ve been called a bitch and a cunt and those have mostly been very horrible experiences a the hands of angry men who were trying to yell me into submission. and you can’t tell me bitch and cunt aren’t gendered slurs. but cunt in my country (nz, and also australia) is common parlance. and women seem to be reclaiming the word bitch just fine, because i hear it fucking everywhere. and i don’t love it. if it’s referring to me, i hate it, (though not as much if it’s referring to me as a part of a group), and i prefer that people don’t do it. but i would never tell a women she can’t refer to herself as a bitch, that she can’t call her friends bitches, that she can’t say it at all.

what about the n word, that black people are trying to reclaim? if this applies to us, this must also apply to them, surely? yet i’ve never heard anyone tell a black person they can’t use the n word. 

the word “jew” is often used as pejorative, and while it isn’t necessarily a slur by itself, you can’t tell me tumblr hasn’t spent 15 years telling goyim to say jewish person and not jew because it doesn’t have a hateful past. so this needs to apply to jewish people as well, who should now no longer be able to refer to themselves as... well, that. 

if you do not agree that every single one of those words cannot be used - if you would not tell every person of that identity that they can’t refer to themselves in that way if you heard them doing it - even if you feel that way because it’s not your place to tell them they can’t reclaim their own identities (which I would argue it is not), then you have to acknowledge that reclaiming a slur is much more complicated than “this word is a slur and using it could make someone else feel bad”. 

[demauryss]

sail the wildest stretch; 1/6

Summary: Lucas is in a mess. His roommate is his ex-crush. He gets years worth of hairfall if he thinks a minute too long about his philosophy class. His penis-drawing talents are just out of the ordinary. And the cupid assigned to his case is a hair breadth short of committing his murder.

But it’s okay. As long as he has to worry about Eliott Demaury getting to murder him first.

or, cupid8776 has a lucas problem. lucas has an eliott problem. and they are not as unconnected as one might think they are.

enemies to lovers/matchmaking au.

ao3

chapter one: april thunders may blunders 

(next)

Dear Lucallecoeur456,

I’m extremely disheartened to announce that your request filed under letter no 654lgb has been denied. According to my records, it is your tenth letter in the past five months which is getting rejected. Personally, I feel saddened as you’re the only person assigned to me who’s over eighteen and still hasn’t found a match. I’d be able to help you better if you consider the following points while writing to cupidint.com next time:

While forming the letter, please consider typing in a computer before you write it down by hand. Or just consider inscribing neatly. You’re the reason our Server turns into a whimpering mess when it transcribes Coup de Foudre - assuming it’s what you write because frankly, your handwriting is garbage – as Coup de Foutre.

Please refrain from using acronyms in your letter. Writing ‘brb’ every time you deviate from a thought does not make you look good. Especially when the abbreviated form has the same number of syllables as the original word. Even better, just totally refrain from straying from an original thought only to come back to it after five pages. Makes me feel like I’m walking through a maze as I’m reading your letter.

While we’re on the topic of refraining, also stop drawing pictures of dogs when you’re asked for what you’re looking for in a partner. I know they are cute, but they can really not be an ideal partner for you.

Consider saving your satirical remarks for the real life. Our Server isn’t smart enough to detect sarcasm and thinks you are being serious when you describe a trash can in the space specified for explaining your qualities.

If you would ponder over these suggestions then I believe I’ll be able to find you a match and it’ll make both mine and your life a lot easier.

Yours truly,

Cupid8776

(They/Them)

*

The day Yann gets his letter, it’s everywhere on the news. local loner boy, Lucas reads somewhere, having qualities worse than the loner boy from gossip girl has a match. There’s a post circulating on twitter which goes friendly neighbourhood pretty man is officially off the market. And another after reading which makes Lucas wants to wash his eyeballs with hydrochloric acid: hot, tall, model-like being ready to dick down some pink canoes. it’s a trip you’ll never forget!!!

It doesn’t help that Lucas suspects Basile’s fan-account for Timothee Chalamet to be behind half of these posts. Especially the last one. And it also doesn’t help that Yann’s latest letter is currently getting glued to the roof of their bunk bed, right where Lucas would sure be made to stare at it for the rest of his puny life in the lower bunk.

“You’re a fucking prick,” Lucas grits out as he smothers the liquid and ugly look to the back of Yann’s letter. His hands are slimy, and Yann’s fucking face is smiling at him from the small chair he’s perched on. “You don’t even have the fucking decency to do it yourself. Can’t believe I ever thought that I like you. Fucking unbelievable.”

Yann tuts, low and too sure of himself. His face is glowing. His eyes are crinkled. And he desperately needs a punch in one or both of these areas, “You’re being dramatic, you know that?” Yann gets up from the chair, a marker in his hands. If it were up to Lucas he would have used that same object to ruin Yann’s pretty pastel pink blanket. The asshole deserves that and even more. Muttering some more curses, Lucas goes back to the task at hand – pasting the paper in smooth cursive writing courtesy of Cupid5644 on the roof of his bunk bed. Yann looks towards him in the middle of drawing a tally across the four small lines marked on the cupboard above the handle. His face is glowing. He desperately needs a punch or kick to dull that fucking shine. “Besides you signed this up for yourself. So shut the fuck up.”

Lucas groans, resting his head against his pillow, the letter he just pasted staring down at him in all its glory. “This whole thing is ridiculous Yann,” Lucas starts, hands crossed on his chest, “I still believe it’s a world-government scam meant to lure people in for their assassination later. Like, can you believe even Sully from 231-9 has a match. There’s no way you can expect me to believe the System is genuine.”

Lucas looks over to Yann who’s now leaning against the cupboard, scrutinizing Lucas from afar, “Are you sure your reason for not trusting them has got to do with that and not with the fact that in the past three months, each one of your request has been rejected with no guarantee of you ever finding a match?”

“Fuck you, Yann,” Lucas scoffs, turning his back to Yann, his front to the wall. Let Yann believe whatever he wants. It doesn’t affect Lucas, nor does it have any ring of truth to it. Fucking douchebag. Let his match turn out to be some astrology-loving, Harry-Styles-listening, ravenclaw-ass-fanatic. She’ll leave Yann’s Scorpio ass in seconds.

He hears Yann’s footsteps before Lucas feels him crouching behind him, Yann’s finger poking the back of Lucas’s shoulders, “Hey now,” he sounds apologetic, Lucas will give him that, “Life isn’t all about that jazz; your match or partner or whatever. Don’t worry about it. At least you haven’t fallen for their scam yet.”

Lucas laughs as he turns to Yann. His face is glowing. Lucas has changed his mind. The former Yann might deserve a slap in the face with a brick but this Yann deserves all the Kit-Kats Lucas has stashed under his bed. Cupid8776 will have a field day if they found Lucas’s current train of thoughts. Shocking, Lucas can imagine the magnitude of their gasp, Lucallecoeur456 does have a heart after all. Who would have thought.

 Lucas smiles at Yann as he extends his arm for him to take. “C’mon now. Basile will have both of our heads on a plate if we waste another second.” He gets up, stepping into his shoes as Yann walks out of their dorm. Something crunches under his foot – Lucas’s blunder; his newest message from Cupid8776. He had thought maybe Letter No 654lgb – lonely gay boy, for clarification – would finally tire them out. But apparently, that wasn’t the case.

Yann had laughed for ten minutes straight when he had read the letter. “Your cupid is going to commit mass murder one of these days. And I think you’re going to be the first.” Lucas had shook his head at Yann’s analogy; he isn’t that horrible. He sighs as he bunches the paper into a ball and bullseye’s it into the trash can – the one he’d described in his letter. Cupid8776 has a big storm coming next.

*

So here’s the thing in quite simple terms.

The world’s currently under the secret matching agency Cupid International. Before that it used to be SoulsBound, with the tagline where we find your soulmate for you. But then the name changed to Cupid Int. after getting involved in one too many scandals which Lucas remembers vividly; bold headlines on the front page of several newspapers: Soulmate leaves Soulmate for another, better Soulmate #SoulsBoundFails. And Soulmate doesn’t buy eco-friendly products. Puts the planet at risk #FixItSouls. And another, much dangerous and serious than the rest, which still gives Lucas nightmares to this day: Gryffindor finds out Soulmate is a Slytherin. Says even pet stones can tell they’re not compatible #FuckSoulsBound.

These outrages demanded an instant name change, so SoulsBound transformed to Cupid International; with a union of specially trained cupids from all over the world designated to find your potential match anywhere on the planet after you turn eighteen. The changes were justified and a long time coming, Lucas would say, as for him the term soulmate warranted a much deeper, not an ephemeral meaning; which couldn’t be forsaken for anything. But the soulmate that they suggested were anything but that.

And that’s what brings Lucas to the now: the thought that why people hassle so much for getting their letters to Cupid International as soon as they turn eighteen. Why instead of trying the conventional dating method - which has been getting much recognition as of late - they relied on some unknown person’s (or spirit? Who even were Cupids?) judging of whom they’d be compatible with. But then he guesses it has something to do with the fact that the conventional method is for people the Agency has dubbed hopeless – whose matches they still couldn’t find after years of research and rejection. Lucas is halfway turning into one of the people what with his letters of rejection piling up in the trash can.

But that’s not it. The Agency has more success than its scandals, which puts Lucas off. His grandparents met through the former SoulsBound. His neighbors that have been married for over forty years when he started university met through that. Yann’s parents met through that. Everyone he knows has some kind of emotional success story regarding SoulsBound/Cupid Int,.

And then his father had gone against the system and met his mother through the conventional dating method. Look where it had brought them now.

And here’s a thing in even simpler terms.

 Lucas hates Cupid International with a passion which burns his sternum and makes his stomach coil in disgust. And it has nothing to do with the way he has told Yann how he thinks the whole System is a government scam. But it has everything to do with the way how Cupid8776 has denied all forty of Lucas’s letters sent in the past nine months of him being eighteen. It makes his heart boil in his blood when he thinks about how he’s turning nineteen in three months and he still has no fucking chance of ever being matched with someone. Which sucks because out of all the remaining 6,999,999,999 people in the world, there still isn’t someone with same interests as him.

Which is cool. Fine even. Lucas isn’t petty about it. And definitely an ass. No. He’s anything but an ass about it. Because you see. He keeps in contact with Cupid8776 when he’s not writing to them on the specified days of the week. He asks them about their health, their lives. If they have someone special in their life. If they took their dog to a walk. If they’re remembering to stay hydrated.

He makes sure to send in an email every week, even if all he gets in reply is a monotonous Dear Lucallecoeur456, I’d appreciate if you would stop sending me non-work related messages. This email is reserved for work queries only. I’d also appreciate if you would use the time you took in composing this message on your request letter as I’m sure it would be more useful than this. Yours truly, Cupid8776 (They/Them) every single time.

So that’s what he does every time, much to the cupid’s dismay. He spends more time drafting his grocery list than the letter. Spends more effort in drawing stick figures of his enemy than correcting mistakes in the letter. Takes more interest in Cupid8776’s private affairs than his own. And still complain every fucking time why he hasn’t found a match yet.

But like he said, it’s fine. He’s fine.

*

The first damper on Lucas’s already damped mood comes a little after one. When a pretty fucking important experiment is turned in incomplete. The second comes in the shape of a person. And it’s much significant than the other.

Lucas has just crawled out of a brutal microbiology lab, his clothes tattered, voice bruised from screaming at his group members who don’t even know how to work around a fucking microscope. One would disrupt the lens and the other would somehow mess with the resolution. And then Lucas would curse his life and begin the whole fucking experiment just for the thrill of it, really.

So it goes without saying that after seven unholy tries on the experiment, it had been left incomplete as they ran out of time. Unfinished experiments aside, Lucas was fucking exhausted. He could feel the tired in every cell of his body as he walked from the class to the cafe in the campus where he’d agreed to meet the boys. Now not only was he about to drop down any second, he was also fourteen minutes late.

“You’re so early, Lu,” Arthur drawls out, dull, “Couldn’t have come even earlier if tried.”

Lucas shakes his head and plops down loudly on the bar stool in between Arthur and Yann. He dumps all of his stuff on the ground, wincing as the muscles in his neck scream in protest. “I’m sorry,” Lucas sighs, reaching over Arthur to hit Basile on the back of his head who appears to be sleeping with his head resting on the curve formed by his arms which are folded on the counter. He jolts up, eyes wide, as he looks around the café with hand rubbing where Lucas hit him.  “This fucker left me on my own in the lab. It was a nightmare, honestly.”

Arthur smiles his head as Basile pouts, “What was I to do, man? Daphne asked for my help, I couldn’t say no to her!”

Lucas shakes his head, looking over to Yann as he nudges his shoulder. Yann motions towards Basile, “But you don’t have a match, right? Where does Daphne come from in all of this?”

A proud smile takes over Basile’s features. Lucas finds it funny how the words Daphne and match in the same sentence makes the sadness and the sleep to literally dissipate from his face. “I know that, Yann. But to answer your second question, I sent an email to the cupid and he reassured me that I’d find a match in the next attempt so.” Basile shrugs like it’s no biggie, when to Lucas, in definitely is. “I’m hoping it is Daphne.”

“Here’s to fucking hoping,” Lucas’s attempt at muttering is intercepted by Yann, who looks at him weirdly. As if in a question. Lucas shrugs, no biggie. He also finds it funny how Basile’s cupid is replying to his emails reassuring him about the whole fucking ordeal, while Lucas’s cupid can’t be bothered for anything. Lucas gets this: Cupid8776 definitely has something against him.

They place their orders for their beverages: coffee for all of them except Lucas. He goes with cardamom tea. It’s when the café’s beginning to fill up with people getting freed from classes that Arthur speaks up. “But like, you haven’t met the person before right? What if they have the emotional range of a lentil?”

Out of the four of them, Arthur was the one who cared the least for the System, even less than Lucas did. He hasn’t sent a single request to Cupid International, saying he isn’t the one for dating or love. And Lucas respects all his choices. He looks up, affirmation on his tongue. But then his eyes fall over Arthur’s shoulder, in between the barricade of tired students blocking the door. And he thinks, he thinks – holy motherfu-

“Speaking of lentils,” He takes a sip of his tea, meeting the boys’ confused stares, “Here comes one, heads-up.”

And it’s just that – how Lucas spots him and a murky grey takes over his surroundings. Metaphorically speaking, of course. Something weird settles in his stomach as his friends look over to the ill lentil as a smile blooms across his ugly face. Fucking traitors.

“Eliott!” One of them shouts. It’s probably Basile. It’s definitely Basile with the way he’s waving his hands in the air. Lucas would have probably knocked them off of the face of the earth had it not been for Yann seizing him by placing both of his hands over Lucas’s shoulder. Lucas inhales deeply as Eliott walks over to their little settlement of barstools and idiots, a bounce in his step as he plays with the strap of the bag over his shoulder. Lucas looks anywhere but at him as he comes to stand next to Basile as he yells excitedly, “Good to see you here.”

“You too.”

Lucas just about murders Basile with nothing but his mind as Eliott’s shirt comes into his line of vision. And as Lucas looks up - goes against the well-being of his eyes - his eyes take a quick sweep of Eliott’s tall figure. Nothing out of the ordinary. He’s currently smiling warmly at Basile, then at Arthur. It’s when that his eyes fall on Lucas that the previous warmth in them is sucked out of them, like a vacuum, and they harden like stones as Eliott looks at him. And Lucas thinks he’s probably remembering the latest stick figure drawn on a piece of paper which Lucas had hit him with earlier as he was bent over an old, tattered book in the library.

“Have a seat, mate.” It’s Arthur. Double fucking traitor. Lucas should consider getting new friends. (But then, he thinks quite sadly, who would ever befriend him if not for these completely insufferable idiots?)

Lucas watches, stomach in knots and million things on his tongue, as Eliott’s face softens as he turns to Arthur. He smiles, “I have a class soon so I should get going.”

Basile murmurs something about it being a bummer. Arthur tells him that they’ll see him around. Lucas doesn’t know a bummer or what that is but he knows the look Eliott gives Lucas over his shoulder as he leaves – he knows the menace which is coiled in the white of his eyes, the absolute anger and disgust  he’s reserved for Lucas comes pooling out in that instant, and Lucas almost washes away with it. Fucking pretentious asshole.

Lucas swallows his heart beating in his throat as Eliott disappears from his sight. Un-clenches his hands which have formed a fist without his knowledge. He turns on his stool, passes Yann a smile who’s been weirdly quiet during that encounter, watches as Basile’s contemplative face comes into his line of vision. And curses whoever put him in this situation: A Thinking Basile is not a Good Basile.

“Do you know apparently Eliott still hasn’t found a match either? Which is odd, since the guy’s a deity. I mean, just freaking look at him!”

Arthur side-eyes Lucas as he nods his head in agreement. Lucas should seriously consider getting new friends. The ones he currently have differ largely from on certain matters. And it fucking sucks that they know it too. “Yeah,” Arthur is saying, “he’s pretty. And nice too.”

‘Nice’ my fucking ass. Lucas shakes his head, finishes his cold tea in a second, and picks up his bag which he dumped to the floor. It is common knowledge that Eliott Demaury is good-looking. He’s the person everyone in their uni flocks up to. He’s also pretty fucking amazing at everything he does. Which only irks Lucas more. He gets up, adding onto Basile and Arthur’s conversation with a silent Yann in tow.

“I’m gonna head to the bathroom,” he speaks to no one in particular, not really expecting the three people to stop their oh-so-important conversation about Eliott Demaury to pay him any attention. Shaking his head, he runs through a crowd, past a sulking worker, stressed students and mahogany colored back door to an alley o sheltered light and soft breeze.

Lucas breathes in deeply. His bag makes a sound as it plops to the ground. Closing his eyes, he focuses on calming his heart down which is beating so erratically Lucas has trouble keeping his mind on one place. If he could just wrap his hands around that fucker’s ne-

“Fancy seeing you here,” Oh fucking hell. Lucas fires off every curse he could think of in his heart. There is an off feeling in his stomach as he opens his eyes to Eliott’s hooded figure sitting off to his right, a cigarette placed between his lips. Lucas has to look down to place the full expression on his face, and it thrills him a little. (The act of looking down at him, for once. Not the clever smile which is placed on his face.

“Well, how’s your day doing?”

“Oh, it’s you.” Lucas shrugs his shoulders like it isn’t taking a great deal out of him to plaster the absolute fake smile on his face. “I was wondering why suddenly all the clouds turned grey.”

Even though he’s standing five to six feet away, Lucas doesn’t miss the brie fall of Eliott’s smile. But it’s coming into place faster than Lucas has the chance to feel good about the whole ordeal. He watches, against his will, as Eliott takes a long drag of his cigarette, the end of the stick burns brighter in glowing red embers before he blows white puffs of smoke in the air. He’s just so –

Lucas bites down on his lip to prevent the stupid thoughts from slipping out. Eliott watches him with (feigned) interest.

“Ahh there he is,” Eliott straightens his back. Even though he’s sitting on the steps to the side and Lucas is standing, it still – somehow – feels as if Eliott’s looking down on him. “I was wondering where the meanie in you has wandered off to.”

He didn’t just call Lucas a meanie. What the fuck.

Lucas heaves in a sigh. Wills his heart to stop hammering. “You wouldn’t know a thing or two about that, now. Would you?”

Lucas notices the little shake of his head, the light which falls over his face making it look like it’s dropped the sneer which has now become a part of his features whenever he’s around Lucas. And Lucas should revel in the thought of getting Eliott to show his real colours, but it grates on him regardless.

Eliott rubs his thighs over his jeans. Lucas traces the motion with narrowed eyes. And when he speaks, it’s to a completely different wave.

“You know, when someone asks about your day, you reply and then ask the question back. It’s called having a conversation, you know?”

Lucas bites the inside of his cheek, words already spilling out before he has a chance to assess them, “And what part of me actually looks like I would want to have any conversation with you?” Just. Who does he think he is? Pretending to be nice and all that. It doesn’t mean Lucas would forget when yesterday he doused Lucas’s workplace in some sticky as hell material which ruined not only his assignments which he spread on the table but left a permanent damper on his mood.

There’s a tilt to Eliott’s lips, his eyes bright and every bit gauging Lucas with the way they’re trained on him. The structure in his chest gives a painful squeeze.

Lucas doesn’t like it. At all.

“I should have known,” Eliott says with an air of nonchalance that has Lucas’s insides firing up in anger and – “You’re not one to have a conversation with.”

“Glad to have that sorted, then.” Lucas decides for the same tone Eliott chose earlier. He turns on his heels. And with Eliott’s eyes digging holes in his back, he returns through the same door he came out of earlier.

*

So here’s another thing in the simplest of terms. Lucas isn’t fond of many things in his life. He hates the System, his philosophy professor, Sully from 231-9. But what he hates even more than all of these things is the fucking lentil Eliott Dick Demaury.

*

There’s a dull buzzing seeping into his bones as Lucas walks towards consciousness. His limbs are still heavy with sleep, his eyes glued shut as he pats around his pillow for the vibrating device around him. He picks the phone up around a yawn, voice groggy as if he hadn’t used it in years.

Well, he hasn’t used it in hours. So. There’s that.

“Hello?” He croaks out, snuggling his face into the pillow under his head.

“Lucas Lallemant! Why are you still sleeping?”

The voice, filtered through the static, still compels Lucas to bolt upright in the bed, eyes now opened wide as he rubs away the sleep with his hand. “Mama!” He wills his voice to sound as if a trail of drool hadn’t had been drying at the side of his mouth. “You’re still up!”

His mama chuckles a little, as Lucas is left to smile sheepishly. Her voice comes clear now, “I would have called you at crack of dawn and you would still have said the same thing. Besides, don’t you have to go to your shift in half an hour?”

Lucas frowns, and then gets out of the bed. He finds Yann gone, his bed properly made. That’s why Lucas was able to sleep that much, considering Yann has reserved a distinct hatred for Lucas’s sleep.

His limbs are heavy as he changes out of the moth-ridden (not exactly, but its appearance justifies the statement) shirt he slipped into before his nap. “How have you been, Mama?”

“Great,” his mother speaks on the other line. There’s a brightness to her voice which lessens as well as increases the cut of homesickness lodged inside the muscle of his heart. Lucas doesn’t let himself dwell on the sudden sadness which grips him. Instead he focuses on the smile he can hear in his mother’s flowery tone, “I’ve been spending a lot of time in the garden these days. You know the plants Willow got me? They flowered yesterday and they’re so beautiful Lucas!”

Lucas smiles as he picks up his bag lying by the door.

She hums on the other line. “And Dr. Noelle changed my medication. We’ve switched to lighter pills instead of those heavier ones that always made me drowsy and loopy. She said I’m doing better so no need for the heavy dosage.”

There’s something like relief travelling with the air he inhales right to his heart. The sun is bright as Lucas makes his way outside. “That’s good, Mama.”

His mother launches into details about stuff about her new medication like the schedule and the amount of pills she’s required to take each time. Lucas walks out of the campus, listening intently to his mother’s retelling of the shenanigans happening in the various clubs she has joined now that she doesn’t feel so drained anymore. Lucas tells her about his classes and life in return.

 “Oh, yesterday in the cooking club, Nadine switched Hira’s container of salt with baking powder. It was quite fun to watch them two bickering afterwards. And there’s a betting pool going around the club about how much time they’re going to take before they get together.”

Lucas shakes his head, a smile pulling up on his face as he crosses the road, “Mama, you should help them sort out their differences instead of enjoying their fights!”

Lucas can hear her shaking her head. She continues, “We should, but it won’t be fun anymore. Besides, I do like some slow burn if I say so myself.”

“You’re spending too much time on the internet,” Lucas muses, “Next thing I know you’ll tell me that you’re reading fanfictions.”

His statement is met with silence. Suspicious silence. He has a minute to be terrified at the prospect before he’s breaking out in laughter, “What the fuck, Mama!”

“Language, Lucas!” She chides, but there’s a smile in her voice which grips Lucas’s heart. Even though he’s kind of wary about the stuff she must find on the web, Lucas knows she can fend for herself.

“Anyways,” she steers the conversation to another direction. Lucas goes with it. “You’re coming on Saturday, right?”

Lucas nods, “Yeah Mama. I’ll try to make it on Friday if the boys haven’t got something planned already.”

The store comes into view, so Lucas says his goodbye into the phone. “I need to go, Mama,” Lucas swallows down the bile which rises in his throat. He misses her so damn much. “I love you.”

“Love you too, honey.” The lines drops, and Lucas is let to chase away the sudden sadness he feels. For a minute, he stands there outside the store, his heart beating with a pang of homesickness. But then he forces air into his lungs, clears his mind, and goes inside the store.

The store is blissfully silent when Lucas enters through the door. There’s a faint smell of lavender still left from the candle Mika must have burnt earlier. Lucas drops his bag behind the counter before he picks up the various records and CD’s piled on the counter and places them in their racks. He starts making his way to the store room for the stuff which was shipped earlier. Might as well get a head-start if he’s early.

The store’s owned by Mika’s aunt, and Lucas works part-time here. It’s a vintage record store; the business is okay. He had earned a full scholarship in the university, but needed a job for the basic necessities in his life. Mika offered a job – and the wage was enough to pay off his expenditures. It is okay, better even. Except – except for the –

Lucas ends up walking face first into a rock-hard chest. His nose gets squished against a set of solid pectoral muscles, the cartilage singing with pain. There are hands grabbing his forearms; stale cigarettes and citrusy bubblegum taking up a better half of his brain. If it hadn’t been for the way the systems operating his reflexes have trained him to be repelled away as soon as the scent hits his nostrils, Lucas is a hundred percent sure he would have delivered a leg straight into the dick in front of him.

“Hey,” there’s an iciness which Lucas feels even though he’s overtaken by the pain in his nose. Lucas looks up, up; and here he is – the dick in all its ugly glory. Lucas tries not to fall on the spot.

“Lucas Lallemant is early? Am I dying or is it really happening?” Eliott cocks his head to one side, lips tilted up a fraction. Lucas smiles back sarcastically. What if he is late to almost everything in his life? That’s none of Eliott’s fucking business. Forcing the very delicious image of Eliott choking to death in his sleep to a dark corner of his brain, straightens his shoulders to stare at Eliott square in the eyes. He’s sad and he’s tired. So he doesn’t have any energy to deal with Eliott today, “Please crawl to whatever grimy hole you’ve crawled out of this time, Demaury.”

Footsteps follow his as he spots up the cardboard box holding the new records in the store room. Mika told him to stack them once he gets the time. He’s picking it up when the slime-covered asshat opens his mouth, “What are you doing?”

Lucas sighs, “Operating a spacecraft.” He moves towards the box, hearing Eliott’s footsteps falter behind him. “What does it look like?” Lucas picks up the box, but Eliott isn’t up to giving it a rest.

“Actually, leave it there. You’re on dusting duty today.”

The fuckin- “What?” Lucas turns on his feet. His stomach is doing weird somersaults. He crosses his arms across his chest and looks at Eliott, whose eyes are narrowed as if he’s examining Lucas. It’s like he’s plotting Lucas’s murder. And Lucas – he has a flashing thought. That would be the highlight of Eliott’s life, no?

He shakes himself into the present. And then gets the words out with great distaste. “Mika told me to stack them so.” He turns around once again, moving towards the box, only to be stopped by a hand on his shoulder. Lucas shakes it off quickly.

Eliott stands off to one side, his face in its perpetual state of frown around Lucas. “Mika left me in charge,” he says, leaning his wait on the door as he looks down at Lucas. He won’t be intimated. No.

Eliott’s eyes flick to the box Lucas has picked up as he turns around, heart and head set in determination despite the initial bout of anxiety and something else which still sings inside him somewhere. Eliott almost has a foot of height in Lucas, and if that isn’t enough to make Lucas flee to the mountains, there are parallel lines drawn on the skin his forehead. His eyes are green, the one which reminds Lucas of moss gathered on stones settled to the ocean bed. Solid. Firm. Steady. Lucas wants to reach out and slap that look off of his face.  Preferably with a chair. He raises an eyebrow; a challenge.

Something like light flashes on Eliott’s face, giving Lucas a look into an annoyed feature before turning neutral again. Like the plants viewed from the askew perception of water floating above the surface, Eliott’s eyes turn infinitesimally greener. “You’ll dust off all the records in the A to M section. Or if you’d rather I tell Mika about the time you scratched one of his Stevie Wonders vinyl, I’m down with that too.”

There’s no wonder in the way the box previously in Lucas’s hands retains its original place. No. Definitely not him getting intimated by that giant goo of citrusy smelly being with his head too far up his head. Eliott’s face transforms into one of his ugly smirks; the one which is belittling and totally hateful towards Lucas. Lucas just about launches his self upon him.

“If we’ve figured that out,” Eliott straightens his body, his eyes have that weird sparkle that they always gain whenever they see Lucas miserable, which is just about every fuckin time Lucas comes in contact with Eliott. “I also would like if you could hurry up. We don’t have all day today.”

Lucas bunches his hands in fists to his sides as Eliott walks out, all pretentious and glad as he is to have the final word. He blesses Lucas with one final boastful look over his shoulder, the green now as bright as day.

 It’s no biggie, Lucas thinks. He can easily refuse. There must be atleast a thousand records in the A to M section. Well, not a thousand but you get the gist. And Céline has been in Léon for the past week to attend her brother’s wedding. Which means the records wouldn’t have been dusted for years. Not only would Lucas have a stellar day cleaning them, but his terrible allergy would cause him immense pain. But the scratched vinyl and Mika’s wrath after knowing about it would cause him a direct ticket to his grave.

So with heavy steps and an equally heavy heart, Lucas stomps over to the racks holding the worn out records covered with dust. There’s something tingling in stomach. He swallows down the feeling, and pushes Eliott out of his mind. That fucking asshole. No wonder he hasn’t got a match.

He goes towards to the record player he persuaded Mika to get for the store. Eliott had brewed a shit storm when Mika had agreed. His ‘Music would be distracting’ was countered by Lucas’s ‘What kind of a music store would it be if it had no music playing?’ and in the end, Lucas had watched a brooding Eliott triumphantly as Mika brought in his uncle’s record player the next day. And so it beings him a great deal of joy as he places in a record in the player that Mika has given his permission to be played in the store.

The records in front of him glisten with the reason Lucas would be walking out of the store with his eyes on fire and respiratory track on a lock down. Elton John croons in the background as he takes out the sticky notes from his pocket (they come in handy when the situation is like this, okay?), tears off a note. Eliott doesn’t, thankfully, surprisingly, bother him once as he gets to work.

*

It’s to a violet and pink merging together that Lucas looks up to when he makes his way out of the store. Even though his eyes are stinging, and his throat feels like the surface of a cemented wall; all rough and scratchy with cheeks stained with the water his eyes won’t stop producing, Lucas still looks up as a bird takes flight into the setting sun, a silhouette of the fucking time and energy Lucas lost removing years’ worth of dust off of records and cursing the asshole parading the halls with a stick in his ass.

Lucas doesn’t know why Eliott has made it the mission of his life to make Lucas’s life hell. And he also doesn’t know why Eliott’s like warm, soft sunshine when faced with anyone other than Lucas. Hell, if Céline had been the one asked for the task, Eliott would have stepped right up as the fucking gentleman he is to offer to do it himself. And it is funny how once he’d spot Lucas, his face would twist like he’s sucking on a sour lemon or something. Lucas doesn’t get that. He can’t.

With a sigh heaved out of his super congested nose, Lucas starts walking back to his dorm, his bag slung over his shoulder. He had been thankful for Eliott’s absence as he was walking out. It gave him a chance to stick the drawing which he made onto the first page of some deep shit book Lucas knows Eliott keeps in the drawer of the counter. Eliott was nowhere to be found, and Lucas was left with the proof to reinforce his theory. He firmly believes that besides being a fucking dick, Eliott Demaury is also a ghost which keeps appearing out of the blue and then disappears as if it hadn’t been there before. And Lucas is quite okay with that. The role suits Eliott in more ways than one – but it’s also sad Lucas’s won’t be able to get the pleasure of murdering Eliott if he’s already dead.

A rain droplet falls from the darkening sky over Lucas’s head. It lands cold in the center, making Lucas quicken his pace as he rounds the final corner near the dormitory. Yann would already be there, and Lucas can pester him all night to get him some chicken soup.

He makes it to his room just as the rain starts pelting on the ground. Lucas kicks off his shoes as he enters the room. Yann’s hunched over the study table, half asleep from what it appears to him. It’s when a particularly loud sneeze bursts through Lucas that Yann looks up.

“You look like a vampire,” Yann snickers as he looks at him. Lucas doesn’t need to look in the mirror to see what mighty image he’d be painting with red eyes and pink nose and tear-stains on his cheeks. He drops his bag, takes off his wet clothes and jumps into the bed in his boxers. Muffling his face into the pillow he lets out a groans, “I hate that asshole so much.”

“Whom do you not hate?” There’s a smile in Yann’s voice. Lucas chooses to ignore it. He sighs, turning on his back and staring at the abomination he glued to the roof of his bed earlier.

“That’s not the point, Yann,” Lucas exhales, “He knows I have a dust allergy. But still he fucking blackmailed me into dusting the records. It’s like he was getting me back on something.”

“Well, you do keep making those drawing of him,” Yann stops just as Lucas sits up. He scoffs, “Whose side are you on Yann? I can’t believe he’s bewitched you too.”

Yann shakes his head. He looks like he’s regretting every of his decision which brought him here, to this second, with a Lucas with a quarter of his brain working. Fucking Eliott Demaury and his fucking charm. Lucas doesn’t get what’s so special about it.

“-and then I had to walk in the rain,” Lucas continues, sighing into his arm. There’s a light pitter patter which is reaching Lucas’s ears. Lucas would have been able to take in the sandy smell that must be wafting in the air if his nose hadn’t been so congested. It’s Eliott’s fault. All of it. “Fucking pretentious asshole,” Lucas mumbles.

Lucas turns his head. Yann has his contemplative face on, “Don’t take it the bad way Lu, but don’t you think you’re kind of hung up on him?”

Lucas sits up, shocked to his very core. With a gasp he splutters like a fish out of water, “I’m not!”

Lucas doesn’t know where Yann is getting these terrible thoughts. Lucas won’t fall a prey to that. Fuck. Yann doesn’t seem fazed. It’s like he’s done this every other day of his life. What, Lucas doesn’t know. “If you ask me, or Arthur, or Basile, it kind of seems that you are, Lucas. You bring him everywhere, you know? Even if the situation doesn’t call for it, you’ll somehow make it so it has something to do with Eliott. And I think that’s where your fault lies: You give him too much thought.”

And that is…..totally not wrong. Maybe partially, but – Lucas does bring him everywhere with him. And that’s totally on Lucas. It’s maybe the reason he’s so miserable half of the time. He gnaws at his bottom lip, then, as in afterthought, speaks, “Well, then, fuck the rain, I guess?”

Yann’s face lights up as a chuckle passes his lips, “You know what they say Lucas: April showers May flowers.”

Lucas looks at him from the corner of his eyes, “More like April thunders May blunders but whatever floats your boat, I guess.”

And like expected, Yann starts shaking his head, exhaling heavily. The sound makes Lucas grins and he looks up just as Yann clicks his tongue, “You’re a hassle, Lallemant.”

 “What do you mean? I’m a delight to have around.”

Yann clocks his head to the side, eyes narrowed, “Listen, I know atleast one person who would greatly differ with your statement.”

Lucas sighs, plopping his head back on the pillow, “Yann, you and I both know that Eliott hates my guts, so.” He shrugs. It’s common knowledge now. And wasn’t Yann just lecturing him about giving Eliott to-

“I was talking about your cupid, actually,” Yann has a terrible looking thing crawling into the fibers of the cells constituting the skin Lucas so badly wants to punch right now. The corner of his lips hitch up a fraction before he gets up from his chair, slinging his leather jacket over his shoulder. “I’m gonna go out for a smoke,” Yann says, a smile crinkling his eyes, “You sit here and think about him, okay?”

He’s out the door in a second; the pillow Lucas throws at him landing on the ground after harshly colliding with the door.

Fucking assholes.

*

 cupidcollns@cupidint.com

Dear applicants,

Requests for the new sessions have been opened. Kindly take out the prints of your forms from cupidint.com. Please make sure to send in your requests to your designated Cupid before Friday. Any and all requests received after the deadline will be rejected.

Yours truly, Cupids

Lucas stares at the bright flashing and too depressing email displayed on the computer screen. There’s a dull throbbing behind his left eyebrow, his eyes are burning, and Yann still hasn’t returned with the food Lucas messaged him to get for him a few minutes after his departure.

His eyes move from the screen severely damaging his brain to the ugly yellow form Lucas keeps stashed in case of emergencies. His pen rests on top of in a bit slanted. Lucas hates the very sight of this form; apart of tree wasted for nothing. He remembers the many papers like this he sent many times before, and still end with fucking disappointment. What or who is to say this time won’t be the same.

With a dejected sigh he picks up the pen and presses the clicker. Might as well sign up for another disappointment. It is as he starts reading What would you pick to describe yourself as? Please pick one of the choices and is in the process to bang his head against the table cover over the answers that his phone pings with a notification. He unlocks the device, squinting at the light flooding his burning eyes. His stomach coils in on itself.

Eliott D 💩         

céline will be back on friday

so it’s your duty to dust the records till then

also, you draw terribly. thought i should let you know

Lucas stares at the words with a newfound hatred which now boils beneath his skin and rises up like a tide ready to consume all of him. But if that happens Lucas would so something extremely petty and stupid. Eliott won’t let him live, and besides, Lucas is above that. He turns his phone off, and with a bout of energy coming from somewhere inside him, underneath his sternum, he picks up the pen and, because he’s inspired, starts drawing penises everywhere there’s a blank for answers he’s supposed to write. The letter’s going to be rejected anyway; Lucas might as well go down with dignity.

This is it, Lucas thinks, when Cupid8776 finally gives up on him. Ha. Lucas would finally be free of their trap.

(And, because he’s inspired, he also takes a picture of the penis, lines them up with the various shots of the stick figures currently accumulating in his photo library, and sends them all to Eliott D (Poop Emoji). In response to his last message, Lucas provides: i don’t think i’m terrible. i’m getting better at drawing your portrait, see and presses send.)

Lucas folds the letter into an envelope and is on his way to mail it. And when Eliott replies back with a chain of messages including some very gruesome you are fucking annoying and extremely threatening crawl back to the whole YOU have come out of, psychopath somewhere between that, Lucas doesn’t feel any remorse.

Like he said, he’s above that.