#to let the world know i am in 2010 all over again sorry

[bunniboiz]

you cruel cruel man

[watermelonsugacry]

I’m so curious to how ur going to do loml since the lyrics are in past tense👀👀👀😥

Building Harry's House: Love Of My Life

A/N: i'm sorry this one came out late but ficmas day 3 is here! tysm for your patience lovies! i love you all so much!

SUMMARY: With the world knowing of their once secret relationship, Harry and YN navigate life together as an official couple and everything that comes with it. (3.5k)

GENRE: 1dbandmember!yn

SINCE 2010 MASTERLIST // Building Harry's House masterlist // previous song here! 🇬🇧

—2013—

“And over there—right up against that weird lookin’ tree—is where I had my first kiss,” Harry points to the path of trees near a stream of water. 

It was the first time in months since the band has had a break long enough to go see their families. It’s been nonstop with writing and recording a new album, interviews left and right and performing in a different city every night. 

So with the extra time they’ve spent with their families, Anne was insistent on inviting Penny and YN over for so much needed family time. 

While the mums and other family members sat around the kitchen table and chatted the morning away (and told embarrassing stories about their children), Harry leaned over to his bandmate’s ear and whispered, “Wanna take a walk?”

He tried not to get too excited when she quickly accepted his offer with a small nod of her head with a breathtaking smile.

“Bet it was pretty steamy, huh?” YN teases as she playfully bumps her shoulder with his.

“Definitely above the PG-13 rating, m’sure,” Harry tucks his chin into his chest as he smiles at the sound of her giggle. “Yeh know, sometimes when I walk around here by myself, I feel like I’m six again.” 

With that, YN breaks into another fit of giggles when Harry suddenly and dramatically lays down in the middle of the field, limbs spread out beside him like he’s making a snow angel without the snow. 

YN plops down to lay beside her band mate and she closes her eyes with a sigh. It's been such a long time since they've all had a break from their hectic schedules that it felt amazing to simply pause.

“Harry? Can I ask yeh something?" She keeps her gaze above to the overcast sky, her favorite type of weather, and when she hears him hum in response she continues, "Have yeh ever been in love?”

She's not all that sure as to why she suddenly asks her question. It's just one of those times when she feels comfortable enough to ask her best friend anything. She's lost count of the number of times they've stayed up till the early hours of the morning talking about anything and everything that comes to mind: how to came to love music, who were their first crushes, what might have they been doing if they weren't in the band (a scary thought that they only entertained for a brief moment).

“Yes. I’ve actually been in love my whole life it seems,” He decides to answer truthfully. When he turns his head to meet her gaze, Harry’s eyes flicker back and forth with hers. “England is my soulmate, I think. I know every crook and cranny of this place. I’m in love with the view, the feel, the smell of it here. When I get older, I’ll probably buy a house here.”

YN smiles and turns her face to the greenery around her, letting out a soft chuckle, “That’s beautiful, Harry.”

Was it silly for her heart to sink a tiny bit when he didn’t say he was in love with her? She surely couldn’t have expected for her nineteen-year-old friend to be in love with anyone at the moment, let alone her out of all people. 

If she only knew that he was stupidly in love with her since he was merely sixteen years old...

“Have you?”

“Have I whot?” She challenges, already knowing what he’s asking yet too scared (and embarrassed) to answer him so quickly.

“Y’know what I mean,” He gently pushes an elbow to her arm. “Have you ever been in love?”

“I don’t think so...” YN pinches her eyebrows together, feeling his eyes burn into the side of her head. “Nevermind, I take that back. I have and I am.”

“Really?” Harry asks in disbelief, trying desperately to hide his disappointed tone. “Do I know the lucky lad who stole your heart?”

“Yup,” When she turns to head to meet his eyes, she gives him a cheeky smile before touching her chin to her shoulder, “S’me.”

She laughs at the playfully disappointed shake of his head, “‘Course it is.”

She only laughs harder, clutching her stomach when he gives a wistful push of her head. Although he must admit, he’s utterly and wholeheartedly relieved at her answer. 

—2020—

“M’not gonna let you pack my house up all by yourself. That’s what professional movers are for, darling.” 

Harry’s voice comes from the bathroom connected to the master bedroom. YN sits with her legs criss crossed on his bed, fidgeting away at the rings scattered along her fingers. 

Harry’s packing some of his stuff as he prepares to head over to LA to start filming his new movie Don’t Worry Darling. He’s going to be staying there for a couple of weeks while she'll stay back a few days to help pack and sell his beloved London house.

Harry and YN both lay on the couch together in her home in LA. She lays on her side, her back towards the back of the couch with Harry resting his head in the crook of her left arm while she holds and reads her book with the other. His arms are wrapped around her middle section with their legs tangled out in the rest of the couch. 

While Harry naps, YN has been gently carding her fingers through his hair and massaging his scalp. She’ll occasionally retrieve her hand away in order to turn the pages of the book.

"Hi, baby," YN gives him a soft smile as she continues to massage his scalp. An action that has him humming back in satisfaction with a sleepy smile of his own.

"Hi," He mumbles still in his sleep-induced state. As he snuggles further into her, he kisses her shoulder before digging his face into the crook of her neck. 

YN suddenly gets deja vu at this, well more like deja vu in reverse when the two were merely nineteen years old and she couldn't seem to take a well-needed nap in an airport private waiting area. When Harry offered her his arm to cuddle into him, she was hesitant as she's never done something like that before, let alone be fond of physical touch in general.

But she was desperate to fall asleep and he eased her into it, letting her come to him and adjust herself close to him as she saw fit. The two teenagers were woken up not even an hour later and found themselves cuddled like a couple. Her face was snuggled deep into the crook of his neck while his arms were fully and securely wrapped around her. 

It was the first of many late night cuddles and the first of her baby steps into becoming more physically affectionate—well at least toward Harry, but growth nonetheless. He's shown her so many things and has exposed her to aspects of life she'd never even thought to dream of. If someone were to tell her 10 years ago that she'd be officially in a relationship with Harry, cuddled up with him on her couch, falling head over heels in love with him, she would have laughed in their face and told them to fuck off before her knees going weak at the thought of their life together.

But out of everything he's been able to guide, teach, and show her things about herself, the one that sticks out the most is to let her feel her emotions. For far too long, she has suppressed her true feelings; whether that be keeping on her media-trained mask during nasty interviews, holding on to the truth about her father for so many years, or her deep love for her band mate. In more ways than she can possibly count, he's made her comfortable enough to say what she wants to say and feel her love even if it makes her uncomfortable at first. Maybe that's why she says what she wants next without giving it a second thought.

“Move in with me.”

YN feels his breathing on the column of her neck come to a pause. She can tell that it takes him a second to process her words in his sleepy state as he lifts himself up a bit to be able to fully look at her, “What?”

“I want you to live here. With me. Officially,” Harry just continues to blink up at his love with his slightly puffy eyes from his nap. “I mean unless you don’t want to, of course. That’s completely alright if yeh don't. I was just thinking,” He raises himself up on his elbow, a smirk forming on his lips. 

Harry leans up over her and presses his lips to hers, silencing his girlfriend of her rambles.

“Yes,” He says against her lips. "I wanna be your official roomie," Harry smiles at the giggle that bubbles past her soft lips. He wonders if he's still asleep or living in a daydream of some sort, “I love you, YN.”

“I love you more, Harry.”

“I adore you.”

“Don’t make me take back me offer.”

“I just want to help pack the small stuff then. Don’t like the idea of people snooping around your things.” 

Harry’s head peaks out of the doorframe and he gives her a pointed look, “Really?”

“Whot?” 

“Whot?” Harry teases back. “What’s the real reason you want to do it y’self?”

“It’s just," YN mindlessly draws random shapes on the comforter with her finger, "That house has a lot of memories in it. Memories that we made together. Whether when we were ‘together’ or not. I at least want to help in saying goodbye to it s'all.”

“Aw, baby. Why are you getting all sentimental about a house? M’right here.”

“Don’t patronize me,” She laughs, swatting his hands away from her face. “You don’t feel sad about leaving a place you lived in for so many years?”

Harry gives his love a gentle smile at her words. He pads his way over to her and makes himself comfortable next to her on the bed.

“Well, before I didn’t. Remember how I told you that I didn’t even really live in it until you, honestly. And, yeah I am kind of sad to leave it because we’ve made a lot of memories in her but,” The dimples begin to dig into his cheeks in a smile, “I think my excitement and happiness outweigh the memories we’re gonna make over there. We’re officially going to be living together. No more sleepovers. No more having to live without something we forgot back at our own homes. And all those memories are gonna live and stay in m’heart, not in these four walls. And I don’t see us leaving London indefinitely. We still got our seasonal home here that we can go back to whenever you want.”

“S’just, I remember yeh saying how England was your soulmate. The love of yeh life and all tha’, you know?”

Harry tilts his head to meet his shoulder in a shrug, “S’just coordinates to me now.”

As scary as it might seem, it surprises the two of them at how truthful his words are. England has always been a safe space for Harry but as the years go by, he finds himself finding that same comfort—and then some—somewhere else; or someone else, more like. There’s no denying the fact that earlier that year at Jonny's place on New Years day shoved the couple into the public eye with the brightest spotlight either one has ever experienced before. With traveling for his job, Harry doesn’t know his land’s creases and ends as much as he used to; it's all a part of growing up, he guesses.

“[The album is] named after the Japanese pop pioneer [Haruomi] Hosono, who had an album in the ‘70s called Hosono House. I immediately started thinking about what Harry’s House might look like. It took time for me to realize that the house wasn’t a geographical location, it was an internal thing,” Harry smiles to himself at the thought of YN being his home. As cheesy as that sounds, it just feels wrong to picture another place in this world where he feels the most safe, the most secure, and the most loved. 

“When I applied that concept to the songs we were making here, everything took on new meaning. Imagine it’s a day in my house or a day in my mind. What do I go through? I’m playing fun music. I’m playing sad music. I’m playing this, I’m playing that. I have doubts. I’m feeling stuff. And it’s all mine. This is my favourite album at the moment. I love it so much.”

...

“Oi, what’s all this?” His love’s words make him turn around with a smile, his dimples digging into his cheeks at her attire. YN is currently rotating back into her dress phase and she’s wearing a long blue sundress with a slit up the side to deliciously show off her toned thighs—a dress that’s been one of her favorites (and his) as of late.

“M’taking you out somewhere.”

“Where? We can’t really go anywhere since everything is closed,” YN wittily points out since they’re in the middle of a global pandemic and travel is very limited.

“Does a date have to be at a restaurant?” He playfully challenges her with a rise of his eyebrows as she approaches him, swerving past all the cardboard boxes scattered on the ground and eyeing the picnic basket on the counter in front of her boyfriend.

“Oh so it’s a date?” Her eyebrows pinch together with a playful shake of her head when he gives her a hum of agreement. “And what’s the occasion? An anniversary m’not aware of? That’s make me a bad girlfriend if it was.”

“Does there need—woman, just let me take you out on a date. Don’t make this overly complicated.”

“I’m a woman. It’s practically in me nature to make things ten times more complicated than they need to be. Or the other way around. Depends on the situation—”

“For fucks sake, baby just go get yeh shoes!” Harry huffs out a laugh, grabbing onto her shoulder and turning her around himself, giving her a pat on her bum to aid her along the pink carpeted stairs. 

When he leads a confused YN past his yellow Ferrari, he basks in the way she lets out a surprised laugh at the two bikes he set up for them in the driveway. She lets him lead her down the concrete trails that lead to grassy ones near his home. She takes in the moment of riding her bike through the secluded area and briefly closes her eyes to feel the rare, warm London breeze on her face. After a couple of minutes of peddling through the greenery, they finally come to a stop. She looks around at what looks like a small garden. Trees keep the area closed off from the initial public eye as well as bushes upon bushes of roses. 

Harry doesn’t dismiss the way she lets out a breathy laugh once she’s gently placed her bike on the ground, reaching up to fluff her hair and look over her shoulder to her love, “I haven’t done that since I was a teenager.”

While he begins to set up a blanket and the food he brought, he fondly watches her walk around the bunches of flowers, plucking a few and bringing them to her nose. 

After sitting down to eat the small array of food and sipping on the bottle of red wine, the couple takes the time to enjoy their environment. The pandemic has caused the two to come down from their busy schedules the past ten years their careers have to offer them and do practically nothing. The time off has caused them to self-reflect more than they ever have before, making them look at their lives through a new lens of gratitude.

It makes them grateful for things they took for granted: the flexibility their careers have allowed them to have during this time, investing time in other relationships with their friends and family, and physically being with one another during this scary time in the world.

“It’s a bit exciting to be filming for that type of era,” YN gently swivels her wine glass as the red liquid inside swirls around the bottom. “I think the 50s are gonna suit you, babe. From what we rehearsed together, you’re gonna fookin’ nail it, m’sure.”

Harry mindlessly picks and twists at the grass there by his hands, “You think so?”

“Oh I know so,” She takes a sip from her glass after giving him a reassuring nod. “And you’re gonna have so much fun with it, too. Especially when yeh get on the set for the first time—like for Little Women—I was instantly transported into the 1860s. I was worried I would act too modern just because of how I normally act in me day to day, but the set pieces were just so cool and...”

As YN goes on talking about her experience in the acting world, Harry can’t keep his eyes off of her. Her natural beauty is incomparable to any of the women his past management team set him up with. Her hair was down and in its natural state where it seems like she’s pushing a curly lock of hair behind her ear every other minute. The tattoos scattered around the expansion of her arms complement her so well and they look exceptionally beautiful under the cloudy London sky. And her smile...he could talk about all the ways her smile manages to take his breath away every single time.

If he could stay here forever, he surely would without a second thought. 

"YN YLN?" The use of her full name captures her attention and she’s instantly drawn into his green gaze. He looks down and smiles to himself before continuing, “Knowing you for as long as I have, I’ve learned my lesson about how to approach things with you. I know you and I think you more than anyone how much I tend to jump in feet first and land in a bit too hard. I know we’ve wasted five years hiding our feelings, almost three years jumping back and forth between friends and something more, and not even a year into an official relationship with each other, but baby, I knew I wanted to marry you for about 10 years now. You’ve flipped my world upside down.”

YN’s breathing stops completely at the mention of marriage. Over the years, the two have playfully thrown around the idea of marriage, mentioning how they want to spend the rest of their lives together, but have never had a sit down conversation about it before. 

“Now, I don’t expect you to give me an answer right now. All I’m asking is for you to think about it, okay?”

“Think about what exactly?”

Harry hums out a soft smile. He gently takes her left hand in his and slides a makeshift ring on her finger made of grass blades and a small flower bud. 

“If y’wanna be my wife.”

As excited as she is for the potential of being his wife, his partner until the end of her days, it terrifies her to no end. If this were a perfect, fairy tale story, YN wouldn’t hesitate to say yes. She wouldn’t think twice about her answer and should be flailing herself into his arms, bringing herself to tears. 

But that’s not realistic for her. Harry’s right, he does know her. He knew that if he officially popped the question to her, if he brought out the ring he’s had for her since he was twenty-one years old and slipped it onto her finger, she would have had an anxiety attack. He knew that her mind would be racing a mile a minute and would not let her rest until she thought of everything her intrusive mind would allow before giving her peace. 

She loves him and wants to spend forever with him, so why can’t she say it?

Meanwhile, Harry almost wants to laugh. Not at her lack of response of her worrisome state of mind, but of how right he is. He silently watches as the gears in her mind pump oil—she’s physically here, but she’s mentally somewhere else. 

Knowing her like the back of his hand, he doesn’t interrupt her thought process but instead lifts her hand to press a gentle kiss to her knuckle, her shoulder and her cheek before getting comfortable on his back. 

I’ve always wanted to write a song about like home and loving England and all that kind of stuff. And it’s always kinda hard to do without being like ‘went to the chippy and I did this thing’”

“‘Love of My Life’ was the most terrifying song because it’s so bare. It’s so sparse. It’s also very much in the spirit of what Harry’s House is about: I wanted to make an acoustic EP, all in my house, and make it really intimate. And because of the circumstances, it was made very intimately; everything was played by a small number of people and made in a room. For this song in particular, YN and I made it in between my home in London and in her's in LA," Harry holds himself back from mentioning that it's not his home in LA as well but decides to leave that bit of information out for obvious reasons. "We produced it together and it's always that much more meaningful when it's her being the one that's playing on the record. To me, it’s everything. It’s everything I’ve wanted to make.” 

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[ladyhindsight]

We are doing this again. Unlike with City of Bones, the revisions in City of Ashes deal more with narrative mistakes being corrected and some utterly incomprehensible changes rather than the world-building being so blatantly unprepared that it needed to undergo full-on metamorphosis.

Here I've compared three different e-book versions of City of Ashes, one of which I presume is the original 2008 text, one that is the 2015 edition, and one I quite frankly have no idea which it is but most likely somewhere in-between the other two. This, I figured out so smartly, is because some things have remained unchanged as in the 2008 edition, but it also includes later changes that have been made in the 2015 edition which are not present in the original text.

I was looking for a nicely formatted file and then noticed by chance that these three are all different. While I understand and know that it is perfectly normal for a book to undergo changes and corrections throughout different editions, I am no less confused by some most of these.

And here we have one of the many boomerangs because what. Why. The second one was the best because now you've just repeated the word 'floor' unnecessarily, so it sounds just dumb:

→ he strode across the floor, his boots echoing against the floor

The prose has truly peaked.

Here's a good example of how some changes made after the original release are also in the 2015 edition but not in the original text, which places the 2010? release in-between the two. In some cases the 2008/2010? are the same but 2015 one different.

→ Daniel was first Maia's twin brother but was then changed to an older one. It's a minor change but also inane. Because what does it matter, why couldn't Daniel be Maia's twin?

→ Maia's character being introduced with her full name is better.

→ Where did the mahogany go?

It's gone as it should. In City of Bones it is said that "in the center of the room sat a magnificent desk. It was carved from a single slab of wood, a great, heavy piece of oak that gleamed with the dull shine of years."

It was oak. So you just couldn't replace 'mahogany' with 'oak' then? So you just deleted it altogether? Okay.

Another boomerang. Let's go with 'body'. No, let's change it to 'form'. No, let's go with 'body' again.

I am left with the impression that Clare didn't know what to do with this interaction/scene or what she wanted from it, neither did she think how it would fit the structure of the part I of the book, because how are all these so different. Sorry, it's early. No, sorry, it's late. No, I'll tell you what, sorry for waking you up at all, really.

TIME. The scene before this is Luke, Clary, and Simon having dinner at Luke's some time after the episode caused by Jace in Hunter's Moon (Chapter 2 "Hunter's Moon"). It's the same day the book began. This part of the chapter that begins with Jace being woken up and then meeting the Inquisitor in the Institute Library intercepts that scene. The Inquisitor accosts Jace and then decides to take in to the Silent City as a prisoner. Then we get back to Luke, Clary, and Simon. Clary is helping Luke "clean up the remains of dinner" when Maia comes over. Simon and Maia talk and once Simon returns to the kitchen, it is said that "The smell of cold night air came in with him." It's the same day as the book began. It is night. Simon and Clary talk about tomorrow and prepare for bed. Then in the next chapter begins with Jace's held in a cell in the Silent City. Then we cut to Simon and Clary making out as they haven't gone to sleep yet. The narrative structure doesn't give any reason to think these scenes aren't happening somewhat concurrently. Especially when Clary then receives a message from Isabelle which reveals Jace has been taken away. When Clary, Isabelle, and Alec go rescue Jace, and the Conclave meet them outside, it is still night. ("The sun couldn't have risen yet--could it?" / "despite the witchlight illuminating the night.")

→ Jace couldn't have woken up 5 a.m. because he would've slept through the night and it would've been the next day, meaning the scenes with Clary happened previous evening/night, which doesn't make sense to write them in such order. Also it would've been morning already once Jace was rescued from the Silent City. This was corrected tooo..

→ Midnight, which makes more sense narrative-wise and structurally, because why insert scenes with Jace that take place in the small hours of the next, if the scenes with Clary are still the previous day and the events cross when Clary gets the message from Isabelle? So instead here Jace has merely taken an evening nap.

→ Eventually removing any indication of time propably gave more flexibility to the interpretation as to how long all of this took to happen. Which was still the one and the same night but whatever.

ALEC'S EXCUSES. There are three and they all mean different things.

→ First Alec has stayed up all night, not even trying to go to sleep. He looks tired, which by the following conversation they have could be also interpreted as him being worried about the situtation surrounding Jace.

→ Alec tried to sleep, and the rest is the same. Not that different, so I don't get why change it at all. Maybe Alec not getting sleep despite trying underlines his worrying.

→ Alec straight up says he went out. The 2015 edition removes all of the previous indications because how dare anyone else have dark shadows under their eyes but Jace. How dare Alec look like he might have something to worry about. Nay! He was with Magnus.

Also, Clary trying to rewrite history by having Jace seek out Alec? Also, "friend"? How about brother or, better yet, parabatai?

→ "They came" and "they explained" were erraneous to begin with since Maryse tells Isabelle (Jace and Alec as well) in the first chapter that Robert was "unfortunately [...] still in Alicante."

→ I don't know whatever that mess in between is, but in the 2015 version Clare seems to have sorted it out.

Boomerang. At this point in the story, the only Downworlders drained of their blood was the warlock Elias, who appears in the prologue. The werewolf cub that was killed in the allie was never drained. ("It seems whoever murdered the werewolf was intercepted before the blood could be taken..." -Maryse to Luke in chapter 3 "The Inquisitor")

→ As a side comment: It was a wild goose chase in the sense that this mission did not need the whole Conclave attending to it and leave the Institute utterly unmanned especially if someone needed to contact them.

I don't understand why.

Added badassery.

Added a nice explanation and rules to the creation of vampires.

This was also an error to begin with, because just couple paragraphs before it is literally said that "Clary yanked the blade back" in each version. She already did it, which it is only reasonable the sentence was eventually removed.

Simon's love for Clary watered down, which I think is for the better. This is also relevant in a later part here...

Another thing I don't understand why.

This was also an error (depending on the interpretation). In this scene, before this part, Jace already closes his eyes once but opens them up. Without shutting his eyes again, him not seeing Valentine rather reads like he's so far away in his thoughts that he doesn't "see" him. But as this was corrected by adding the sentence about Jace shutting his eyes again, it probably was just an error.

→ 2008: Magnus was healing Maia, because Luke was outside being attacked by the demons that Jace and Clary went to investigate and then dispatched. Luke was brought in after the attack and Magnus healed him then. I can't help but wonder how Clare (or her editor for that matter) couldn't keep up with what was happening in the story.

Clary couldn't have been worse off because Magnus didn't have a chance to go help them while he was supposedly healing Luke inside the house while Luke was lying outside on a riverbank. So that was reasonably removed.

→ 2010?: Luke was corrected to Maia because that's who Magnus was actually healing. Only problem here is that only one of the lines were changed, and the "you would have died" is still inaccurate since Magnus couldn't have helped Luke before the demons were killed and he was brought inside to be healed.

→ 2015 is finally correct.

→ the person you love/someone I love were all corrected accordingly.

→ the blue part, however, was wrong in the same book, because if we return back to that part, Simon actually says you know what the worst feeling I can imagine is. Not the worst feeling you can have is.

This was also an error because Jace had given Clary his jacket and he only had the shirt on. It was also made a point since the demon shit had burned down his shirt sleeve pm his shoulder enough for Imogen to see his Herondale scar.

→ 2008 version never happened. The scene in City of Bones is the following:

Clary stepped back, but Jace stood very still as the glass rained around him, staring at the empty frame of the mirror. Clary had expected him to swear, to shout or curse at his father, but instead he only waited for the shards to stop falling. When they did, he knelt down silently and carefully in the welter of broken glass and picked up one of the larger pieces, turning it over in his hands.

and then, after no rocking back and forth in between (either in the original or revised version):

He said nothing, only whispered something under his breath. She couldn’t quite hear the words, but she reached out and took the bit of glass out of his hand. He was bleeding where he’d held it, from two fine and narrow gashes. She put the shard down and took his hand, closing his fingers over the injured palm. “Honestly, Jace,” she said, as gently as she’d touched him, “don’t you know better than to play with broken glass?” He made a sound like a choked laugh before he reached out and pulled her into his arms. She was aware of Luke watching them from the window, but she shut her eyes resolutely and buried her face against Jace’s shoulder.

It's like Clare imagined a whole other scene in City of Bones, recalled it while writing City of Ashes and kind of forgot that it wasn't how the scene even went.

Anyhoo. These are the ones I managed to catch. Ta ta.

[valuunit]

Cornerstone. i

Harry Styles x Reader

Inspired/based by the Arctic Monkeys’ song by the same name.

Content: Fluff to Angsty. Use of people to move on? Really shity environment. Use of Y/n. Use of she/her pronouns, sorry :(

Disclaimer: English is not my first lenguaje so if there’s any mistake i’m sorry, i’ll try to correct it. Don’t mind the face claims, they are just for illustrative purposes xd. Also, some dates are mixed up, so the real life time line would be a little bit affected.

3rd person narrator.

2010

Y/n and Harry were their lifetime sweethearts. That’s what everyone around them said.

They were inseparable, always sat next to each other in class when they had the opportunity. Always were their prom date. Always at each others house. Even convince their parents to make last minute changes to their summer vacations, just to be together.

Since they were kids, they had a sweet spot for one another. With the time, their innocent and adorable relationship had evolved into a less platonic one, still very adorable though.

As teenagers do, they started exploring new forms of seeing the world around them, including the relationships they have, re-evaluating everything about them. Including their close friendship, of course.

Harry started watching his friend into a more intense way, you could say. Starting with more superficial stuff like her physique. For example: her face wasn’t so round now, although he kind of misses her puffy red cheeks. Or her new style, with more experimental outfits that make her shine, as well as her body.

But what really made him fell head over heals for her was her new empowerment. When she was younger, she was shy and passive, always giving in for people choices over her. People perceived it as kindness and sweetness, but Harry knew her, knew how sometimes she wanted to speak out loud and protest, but always was afraid of what they will say. Over the course of years of ‘fake it 'till you make it’ and self improvement, she finally doesn’t care about the destructive opinions of other, having a lot of confidence in herself.

On the other hand Y/n also founded herself in a dilemma about Harry Edward Styles. How his sweet personality made her feel loved and wanted, important. How he was in her process of improving her self esteem and always was there to help, not only her, but others. And speaking of physical appearance, he also changed, his jaw was prominent now, he was getting more and more tall everyday.

“What’re you thinkin’ about?” his deep voice interrupted her string of thought.

“You know, the immortality of the crab” she put her head back on his shoulder, which shook a little bit as he let out a chuckle. They were watching to the nothing from her bedroom’s window.

“I wanna to tell you something.” Harry’s voice sounded unsure for a second. Y/n raised her head again, watching his eyes, before she could said anything he continued “Please, please promise me that you’re not going to get upset”

“What did you do Styles?” she joked, but he didn’t laughed at that. “ ‘S everything okay?” she asked in a more serious tone.

“Yeah, yeah, everything’s alright. It’s just… I-I” he let a pause to reorder his sentence. “We’ve been friend for a long time-”

“Y/n/n! Omg look!” Y/n’s sister entered with no warning. She erupted from the door and practically jumped to the bed, getting between Harry and Y/n.

Her older and only sister was holding her phone with the biggest smile you could see in someone, ear to ear.

“Why’d you look like the Joker?” Y/n laughed, Harry also let out a quiet laugh.

“Shush, look! Oh, hey Harry” the other one greet friendly. Harry only shook his head.

“Am. What am I suppose to look?”asked the younger in the room asked.

“Remember Walter, the guy you gave me advise for?”

“Oh, okay, this is Walt.”

“Yeah, he asked me out!”

“Yep, I see.”

“And all because of you! Than you, thank you!”

“No problem, always here to help, baby girl.” Y/n brushed her fist with her chin giving and wink. Harry wanted to laugh out loud so hard since moment one, but this killed him.

“I should start planning what to wear”

“Definitely!” everyone and everything in that room could see the sarcasm in Y/n’s voice, expect for her sister, apparently. Y/n wasn’t trying to be rude, well, a little, but she was annoyed of always hearing her sister only talking about boys. She could talk about girls also, Y/n thought.

Like her sister entered that’s how she went out of it.

“What were you trying to tell me again? Sorry about her” she directed her eye towards his.

“Uhm, nothing, it was nothing.”

“I don’t think so… tell me.” she began to insist. She was curious.

“No” he said calmly.

“Tell me.” again, this time she got up from the bed.

“No…” he said unsure of her next move.

“Tell… me…” she was getting close to him again, with a pillow, which he didn’t realized when or where did she grab it.

“No…” he let out a nervous chuckle. Getting further into the bed.

“You’re gonna get that attitude with me, huh, Styles?”

“What are you taking’ about” he said laughing.

“Come here.” she also got into the bed, being on top of him. She forgot about the pillow, beginning to tickle Harry. Both giggling, every now and then screaming. Very open to interpretation, to be fair.

“Stop it. Sto-op” he begged laughing, obviously.

“No, ‘till you tell me what were you were about to tell me.” her breathing was heavy, for the laugh and for the activity.

“Agh, all-right” laugh “just let me g-o”

“Okay” she raises from her core, didn’t realizing she still was straddling him.

He let a deep sigh laying in the bed, putting his hands over his forehead looking at the ceiling. That catches Y/n’s full attention. “I’ve been thinking ‘bout a lot of things-“

“What in the hell‘s going on here?”

“For fuck sake!”

“Y/n!”

“Mum!”

“Harry?”

“Mum?”

“Both of you, get out of that bed.”

It was their mothers. Anne and your mum. They were at the fully open door, with dropped jaws. Now they realized the compromising position in which they were found.

“I-It’s not what it lo-looks like” A very flustered Harry stuttered quickly. Y/n rolled her eyes at the sentence.

“What it was supposed to look like?” you muttered.

“Pardon me?” your mum asked. “You, young lady, don’t realize what you were doing? Here, all alone, with a guy, that you-” she stopped herself before speaking more than she should, Y/n also saw what was about to come if she didn’t stop. “A guy. In your bed?”

“Mum, you know Harry. He’s not just ‘a guy’ you know him and you know me, we wouldn’t to anything.”

Anne and Harry remanded in silence. But the looks that the woman was giving her son were scary enough.

“We just want you to be more respectful. Alright?” Your mum breathed.

“Yeah, okay, we know it.” Y/n said.

“Harry, i think’s time to go home, come on.” Anne said going to the other side of the bed, where the younger ones were.

“I, can you give us a minute? please?” Y/n asked.

Both women looked at each other before shaking their head in signal of a yes. They left, but they didn’t fully close the door.

Now the young ones were laughing and laughing and they couldn’t stop.

“I’m so so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault, in any case i should be thankful.”

“Why?”

“You know, you ‘defended’ me with your mum”

“My mum loves you, what are you taking’ about? She probably loves you more than me. It was just the hotness of the situation, i don’t know.”

“Right. Uhm.” he scratched the back of his neck “i think I have to go, see you later.” he was leaning to give his goodbye cheek kiss when Y/n pulled away shaking her head in disapproval. That made Harry froze.

“Tell me, please, I don’t care if it’s a silly thing, it won’t let me sleep at night” she laughed once again.

“Exactly it’s somethin’ silly, it doesn’t matter.” he shrugged it off.

“Tell. Me. I give you 8 seconds ir i will not talk to you tomorrow at school.”

“Seriously?”

“Mhm.”

“You know how to play, Y/n…” she started counting with her fingers. “Okay, don’t hate me, but…” another second passed by “I-I th-think i’m… in love with you” he started slowly, and the it was light speed, Eminem speed. “No. No.” at this point Y/n wasn’t counting anymore. “That doesn’t sound correct. I- I am in love with you.”

“What?” she muttered.

“I am in love with you… Y/n.” he said watching to the floor.

“Wow- I…” she was in shock, but she could put herself together to say “I am in love with you too, Harry, since like i don’t know so much time…” she was muttering at the beginning and got a bust of confidence in the middle of the sentence.

“Really?”

“Yes.”

The stare at each other for a couple of seconds.

“Then what are we waiting?” Y/n whispered, watching how Harry was leaning towards her.

“Right. Uhm, can I-can I kiss you?” Y/n smiles for a little second for the nervousness of the boy in front of her, she nodded and stand in the tips of her feet, with one hand wrapping sweetly Harry’s cheek and the other was in the nape of his neck.

He has a shit eating grin with the touch, he mimicked the move of the girl, cupping her face with one hand while on the other hand, literally, he let it levitate to her back.

With a clumsy beginning they started a sweet kiss, they understood each other pretty quickly. They wished they could stay like that for a little while, but the knock on the door let them know it could be in another occasion.

“Harry?”

“I’m coming mum…!”

“Go, i’ll see you later.” Y/n encouraged Harry to go giving him a peek, being new to that sensation.

“Yeah. Bye. See. You. At. School.” with every pause he let a kiss on Y/n’s face.

That summer was unforgettable for the both of them. They experienced so many new and exiting things together and apart that made them feel like the wanted to eat the world in one bite. They just had sixteen, but the felt so much older.

Then Harry got signed up for the X Factor by his mum. Y/n was so excited to see him perform his undeniable talent.

And after some months of uncertainty, One Direction was founded. It still was a shock for everyone. Now they were talking about recording an album and selling it and doing a tour, that with luck will be all around the world. That was obviously exiting, right.

To Y/n that was a daydream, even though she has almost nothing to do with the situation. She was exited for Harry.

Harry was as exited as Y/n, but also, thinking a lot about it, he would have to be apart, like completely apart for the people he loved the most for a very long time. He didn’t know any better than his girlfriend, friends and family, so he had to learn.

Harry’s POV

2013

I was stuck in my hotel room doing nothing. I was bored, and I could just easily sneak up into some of the boys’ rooms, but I just wanted some comfort. The type of company that is warming, and home-like.

“Hey, mate.” said Louis entering through the door. He never called me that, we are not 30.

“Hi.” I returned my gaze to the ceiling.

“‘S everything ‘lright? his accent sometimes could become very thick.

“Yeah, all good.”

“Are you sure?” that was not Louis’ voice anymore, it was more high pitched and sweet. I quickly get up knowing that voice perfectly.

“Y/n/n” I run towards her, picking her up while hugging her. God I missed this. I could hear an ‘Ouh’ from her, I almost make us fell over Louis, who was just behind her.

“Sorry Lou” Y/n apologized leaving the embrace for a slight second.

“Ah, ‘s okay, just don’t start fucking in front of me, lovebirds.” he said. “Now, I’ll let you guys catch up. Uh, and Harry, they wan’ us in the back lobby in an hour, don’t be late.”

“Yeah, thanks Louis. See you” We shared a side embrace, since Y/n was in cuddled up in my left arm. She sent a kiss towards him, he catches it and threw it to the trash can, Y/n/n gives him the middle finger.

“Hi.” I said.

“Hello, Mr. Bandana boy.” she smiled passing her hand through my hair, that I was letting grow.

“D’you like it?”

“I love it.”

“Thanks, m’girlfriend asked me to let it grow.” I said sitting down on the edge of the bed, I pulled her between my legs hugging her hips.

“She has such a good taste...” Her hand left soft touches all over my hair.

“I know, she’s a genius”

“I agree with you.”

She was fixated with my hair, I just stared at her while she is distracted.

“Hey” I whisper. She hums in response. “hey…” I drag my try to make her look at me. “Can you give me a kiss?”

“Sure” she says before smiling widely and leaning down to meet my lips. I felt like it was forever since the last time i felt like this, when it was probably less than a month ago. I feel my face warm up, my stomach tightened, i felt like the butterfly on my chest was about to fly out. “I’ve missed you.” Our forehead were together, our eyes looked funny being like this.

“I’ve missed you too.” I laughed.

“I know.”

“Nice” she giggled.

“How have you’ve been?” she sat down next to me.

“I’m ‘kay.”

“Are you sure?” she repeated her first sentence in this room.

“Yeah, and now that you are here with me i’m perfect.”

“You’re so silly sometimes.”

“And you love it.”

“Yeah, I have a thing for goofballs”

“Well, thanks. How have you’ve been? I feel like we haven’t talked in forever.” And it was true, with my weird and tight schedule and her university and projects we barely talked outside our daily good morning and good night messages.

“Yeah… but you have me this week, and the next one.” she said kissing my cheeks.

“Oh, I’m so so so lucky” I said exaggerating.

“Okay, then bye” before she could stand up, I hugged her waist pulling her towards me.

“No. You’re trapped now.” I laughed to her mute scream as I pushed her to the big mattress.

“I’m gonna fall off the bed” she exclaimed.

“I got ya, love.”

We stare at each other for a while. But it was enough of the corny stuff.

“Now, let’s make up the time apart.” I shoot an exaggerated wink.

“You have less than 20 minutes, hun” she said sassy.

“I jus’ need 3, don’t worry ‘bout it.” she laughed so hard I laughed at my own joke too, or it was more for her laugh.

Y/n’s POV

2018

“Please, answer…” It was the 7th call in the last hour or so. But nothing. Directly to voice mail.

Then I heard the door of the apartments open. I got into my robe and walked to the loud noise.

First it was the sound of the keys hitting the glass table, then the fight with the shoes to take them of, and the a curse.

“Agh, stupid shit” he said. I was so mad, but seeing him safe was a relief.

“Good morning Harry.” I said. Clearly upset.

“Hello, Y/n.” He said in the same tone before letting out a dumb chuckle, he was drunk.

“Oh, please welcome! D’you need something? A coffee, or an aspirin, maybe?”

“Nah, ‘m alright, thank you.” now he was staggering towards the couch. If I heard that condescending tone one more time…

“Oh, good, good to know you are okay. Thank you very much.”

“Yeh, now, can you let me sleep, please?” Oh god.

I wanted to yell on the spot, but now i was just gonna have no response, so i take a deep breath and went to bed again.

The next morning was like any other one in the past few months, i woke up in an empty bed. I was tired even thought i just woke up. I knew what was coming up, and i didn’t want to step out of the bed.

I was in the bathroom washing my face. Today was the day. I was going to give him the ultimatum.

It’s been months since Live on Tour ended, i supposed that Harry would be enjoying his time home, with his family, friends and, well, me. But it looks like he’s still in the chip of partying and wild rockstar life. At the beginning i was kind of okay with that but when he kept living as if he was single, not in a way of cheating, as far as i know, but neglecting that he has someone that is waiting for him at home, that’s what upsets me.

I’ve been staying up whole nights worried about Harry. He’s not a ‘normal’ guy, he is a world wide known celebrity and most importantly, my fiancé.

I went up to the kitchen counter for a cup of coffee that i definitely needed. I saw a the back of a messy hair sticking out of the couch. He was looking to the nothing, with a cup of coffee, a glass of water and some aspirins on the coffee table.

“Morning’ ” i said calmly. He turned his head in my direction.

“Hello, love.” he said under his breath, i saw a hint of shame in his attitude, i was hoping he understood the meaning behind our fight.

“Are you feeling good?” i asked. He went up from the couch and walk to the counter, right next to me.

“I don’t know how you do it.” he put me into an embrace from my waist. His head was in my neck.

“What’re you taking about?” i giggled lightly, i couldn’t be upset at the moment.

“You know…” he let moment of silence, thinking. “being… patient with me…” he started kissing and biting “and so good, so beautiful… so sexy...” what.

I immediately took off pushing him from his shoulders. I looked at him directly in the eyes, frowning “What?”

“What? What?” he joked. I shook my head saying no and returned my body to face the counter.

“You don’t know why I am upset, do you?” i began to play with the only ring in my finger.

“Are you upset?”

“Yes, Harry, I am upset. Thank you for noticing.”

“Did somethin’ happened at work?” Was he fucking serious?

“Unbelievable.”

“No, wait. Is it because I was out yesterday? Nothin’ happened, it was a band thing.”

“I don’t care about that, Harry. I wouldn’t mind if you drank all the bar or kissed every person out there, ‘cause i’m fucking done.”

“What are you saying’?” his tone had a bit of panic and another bit of anger.

“This Harry. Whatever this turned into.” i couldn’t look at him. “It’s been like, what? Three months, tell me, have we have eat together once, have we even talked more than ten minutes? I don’t know nothing ‘bout your tour, you don’t know nothing about this past months, and you don’t seem interested at all.”

“I’m no interested? What about you! Always stayin’ at home, never wanting to go out.”

“You have never invited me out since you return. Not in a date. Not in one of you funny little night bar adventures, saying that where ‘band things’. Even Sarah invited me over sometimes.”

“Then why didn’t you go?”

“Because if you, my partner, didn’t tell me about it was obvious that you didn’t want me there”

“Of course i wanted you there!”

“Congratulations, i don’t care!” i took a deep breath “I don’t want to fight or yell… I-I don’t think that this is working.” I removed the ring from under the counter.

“Please, tell me it’s not what i’m thinking, you are not giving everything of this up just for some nights out, are you?”

“It’s, not just ‘some nights out’ it’s you neglecting me. I just think if this is gonna be the same every time you tour and i don’t think i could handle it.”

“Then we’ll work on it” he grabbed my hand, the one without a ring on. I’m sure he did noticed, but decided not to comment on it.

“No, you haven’t seen how dysfunctional everything has been since i finished my major?” He shook his head “No you didn’t, you were focused on your album, and i understand, but right now nothing’s stopping you from being here.”

“I’ll do it. I’ll be here”

“Harry… I promised to myself that this would be an ultimatum, i do want to keep being a part of this relationship, i want to do a family with you. But i’m not gonna put my needs and mental peace under the carpet. It’s not worth it, nothing is.” I put the ring on the marble surface. I could hear Harry’s breath began to be faster.

“I understand that, and i promise you that i’m going to fight for this to keep going. Please give me the chance,”

“I’m gonna give it to you.” i simply replied.

“Why are you trying to give me your ring?” he said with shaky voice.

“H… I thought that you would see it. It’s obvious that we are not ready for a compromise as big as it’s being engaged.”

“We’ve been together for eight years, Y/n!”

“Okay, let’s calm down.” I don’t want yelling.

“You don’t want to get married, ‘s that it?”

“Harry.”

“No. It seems so convenient to me that when you’re about to go back to London for that… work opportunity… you magically try to return me this.”

“Harry, that was, like, half a year ago.” I couldn’t believe how quickly he was fucking this up. He looked at me, he was thinking the same. He tried to excuse his comment. “No, i’ve heard enough.” I began to walk trough the house, with him following me immediately. I blasted into the bedroom.

“Wait. Y/n.”

I didn’t responded. I entered into the closet, making sure that i closed it with lock, grabbed a suitcase and began to pack.

“Love”

“Don’t call me that.” I whispered while changing into the first thing that i picked out, a black loose pair of pants and a tank top, not the greatest, not the worst, but i couldn’t care less about that.

Before going out of the closet i picked up my phone, fortunately i had it in my robe’s pocket, as always. I called Nick.

“Y/n/n, please, i’m so sorry. This is exactly what i want to work on.”

“I was about to give you the opportunity, you were the one messin’ it up” I said through the door. Then i opened it, he was sitting in the bed, his elbows in his knees as he passes his hand through his hair, in frustration.

I walked pass him to go to my nightstand, grabbing my journal, my passport and a key.

“W-what’s that?”

“Your new car. Congrats for your album.” I said as dry as i could sound, my childish self wanted that, the hurt in him, like the one he made me feel. I threw the keys to the bed, getting out of there, also hoping that they were enough distraction for him not to reach me out.

I took the elevator until i reached the first floor, on my way down i couldn’t help but started crying, i was about to explote if i didn’t. Then, to get to the ground floor, i used the emergency stairs, exiting the building from the back door.

Just two seconds later there it was Nick, in the black van and his usual suit. “Is everting good, Ms, Y/n?

“Uhm, y…es, thanks.” i said giving him my suitcase.

Then I went to the airport and bought the fist ticket to the UK and fuckin’ go.

twitter !

Kaia @kaikei • 3h

This is clearly a very intimate moment. Leave her alone.

arg 👾 @argusbmd • 2h

and they were getting married????? 😭😭😭😭

sn @oldpanic •3h

i hope they are okay :(

rebb @revelrebecca • 1h

HOLY SHIT I i hust saw her gettting into a plane to th UK

Hssss 🐍 @snakeszs • 2h

Why can’t you just put her name without the [name of the partner]? she is a human on her own.

Part ii

[alightineverydarkness]

John Object, Life (description)

My name is Timur, I was a Ukrainian musician, and now I am a Ukrainian soldier.

Russia has sent thousands and thousands of soldiers into Ukraine, and I joined the army on February 26th. Currently we are all being bombed, and my life is nothing like what it was two months ago. I have no idea what it is going to be like tomorrow and how much longer I have, so it felt appropriate to share an archive of my 2010-2019 works, in case I never get to do that when I'm old and it's a nice remastered package.

These are sorted chronologically except where putting certain tracks next to each other would enhance the flow (parts of the same EPs etc). Most are horribly mastered. Many are boring and self-indulgent (I'm 27 now; was younger then). However, this was my life, and this is the music I made. 

I urge everyone to do everything in their power to stop fascist Russia, send support to Ukraine, heavy weapons, fighter jets, artillery. Sever all ties to Russian people, kick them off your festivals, cancel your collabs. I want to live.

Some important information to note. We are a sovereign country, with a culture, history, language, identity and path of our own, and we have never been "brothers" to Russians. We also do not have a right-wing government or anything resembling a right-wing faction in power – our current government is actually quite liberal and we have made great progress in human rights over the past years. The combined support for the far-right parties adds up to about 2% of the vote here, when, let’s say, in France it is around 30% and a far-right candidate could realistically win a presidential election – a candidate that claims Russia is a great nation. I am saying this, because I know Russian propaganda is calling us Nazis. 

The war began in 2014 and has been a process of Ukrainian forces defending the territorial integrity of Ukraine against Russian-backed separatists, with weapons and people provided by Russia in "secret" – it was always quite obvious, but they have denied having stepped into Ukraine until this week. The so-called "people's republics" (DNR and LNR) are puppet states, established in name only when Russia saw a chance to destabilize the situation after the country-wide revolution of 2014, and could never exist without Russian weapons, money, soldiers, political support. Ukraine has not been at war with these "republics" (which are Ukrainian territories), it has been at war with Russians, who came to aid a small gang of separatists that attempted to split off two regions of Ukraine. This I am saying because I know it's not fully clear to everyone else outside of Ukraine (e.g. American twitter tankies thinking Russia is building fucking communism – it isn't). 

I know this, because I am a Ukrainian. I've lived my whole life in Kyiv, been to Donetsk and Luhansk, and I have friends who escaped the war there only for it to follow them here. 

Anyway. I hope we will all get to celebrate the end of Russia in a peaceful world, and party again. Until then, I'll try to stay safe and do my job here in the army, though every day I believe less and less that I will get out alive. With or without me, we will win. 

To the every person in the world: whatever you would do to stop Hitler in 1943, you are doing it now.

I hear explosions outside. 

Death to Putin. No gods, no masters. To everyone I ever told I loved them: I meant it, and I still love you. There is nothing I want more than to wake up next to my partner tomorrow, and it hurts me to realise every day this won’t happen anytime soon.

P.S. The quality isn't great on these tracks, these aren't .wav files. I only had access to 320 kbps .mp3 versions, and I had to convert them to .wav to put them up here. I had about an hour to do all of this on my last evening home; I had no time to get my hard disk and find the originals, I'm sorry. Let’s hope I come back and find the true originals someday.

[akinformation]

Page 319

which is a philosopher’s stone. Not as an idea of the transformation. It is becoming very clear now. Yes, yes, I’m ready.

You see now? I started to research these five spots that I marked on the map of my territory. And one of the places...Hold on, I want to clarify something first. Some people didn’t understand me when I explained the numbers. In 2010, a messenger gave me a note. I showed it to you. The note had a number on it: 3-14-15-26-42-5. And when I was looking at the map of the area with my lake and a mountain, I was moving the map on the screen, and I saw the numbers 3, 14, 15, and 26 by chance. I didn’t type them in the search. I didn’t approach it with the mind. I was not looking for it. This is a fact. It doesn’t mean that this riddle didn’t work before, back in 2010, when it was given to me. It worked back then in St. Petersburg. I deciphered it back then and understood the riddle and what those numbers meant. But it worked again now. And this is normal. It’s abnormal in the human world; however, in the world of nature and “aliens,” it is the norm. This riddle may be useful again and play a role many more times.

All people live in illusions. Each one of you is in an illusion now. Not in a bad way. I don’t mean you are living a lie or that you are lost or confused, no. It is about the essence. The essence is that everything is an illusion. And it is a matter of your personal stage of the development. What is an illusion? Let’s say I am training my dog now. I trained her to come to me when she hears my call. I trained her to know the location of her house. How was she trained to do it? I created an association for her that when I call her, she comes to the spot where I give her food. I am creating the correlation. When she does something bad, she immediately gets punished and understands an unpleasant correlation. Timely association is important; otherwise, she won’t get it. She correlates the unpleasant outcome with something that she does. She understands she won’t do this next time because she doesn’t want the unpleasant event to happen again. If she wants something nice, she knows that she must behave the same way as before. People are acting in the same primitive way; I am sorry. Some people are even below this level. Over fifty percent of people don’t even understand why they get punched in the head by life when they do. They do it over and over again. This is a paradox. Certainly, people live in illusions, and you might get

[sojourner-between-worlds]

Rather than subject myself to the Complete Humiliation of posting old things anew on ao3 but since judging from that poll I made ages ago now that ya'll just as desperate for content as I am, lol, I have decided to link all of my old Yugioh 5Ds fics here, complete with short (spoiler-free!) commentaries about what you can expect from these ancient monstrosities. (Yes, the links are to ffn; don't complain about ads if you still aren't using an adblocker in the year 2023.)

Under the cut since there are quite a few and commentary doesn't help make it any shorter of a post, lol.

General Notes: **Posted in FFN publication order; fics posted on deviantArt at an earlier date have that noted. **The earliest fic is 13 years old. I won't tell you how old I was but... it was much younger than now, lol. I was 16/17 okay? A Baby. **As stated above, commentary is spoiler-free so feel free to read that before clicking through (actually, I'd recommend it; there are trigger warnings on a several of them that appear in those notes). **I had not seen the sub at all/ all the way through at the time, so all names/terms are from the dub. Similarly, some details may also be different. **Feel free to laugh at all of these, but please laugh about them here on tumblr and not on FFN. If you leave me a comment over there, I won't know you came from here and that it's in good faith instead of just being mean-spirited. (Or, if you feel you must comment there, at least tell me you came from this post. But I would love to interact over them and I probably won't do that with FFN comments.) Feel free to laugh (because God knows I did while re-reading some of these), but let me laugh with you.

Proceed at your own risk.

A Secret Kept Originally Posted: April 7, 2011 (First posted on dA -Aug 14, 2010) Summary: When questions of his past surface, Yusei uncovers a 20-year-old secret that someone will do anything to keep hidden - even if it means murder! Length: 22 chapters (~36.5k words) Commentary: -- This was originally posted in three parts on dA but was combined for ease of subbing on ffn. -- Trigger Warnings: ya know, murder if that wasn't clear in the summary, lol; gun violence (in relation to the murders), vehicle accidents, dubious science -- Don't ask me what I was on when I named OCs, okay? I don't know. Pretty sure in my head "Kale" was not pronounced like the leafy green stuff, lol. Maybe there was supposed to be an accent on the 'e'? I don't know so don't ask. (I'm laughing about this, okay? Feel free to laugh too.) -- There's one chapter early on that gave me second-hand embarrassment so hard that it is the reason I am not posting these on ao3 at this time. I contemplated cutting it out but then realized I couldn't because, as terrible and cheesy as it is, it's too relevant. Just. Just keep that in mind. -- Medical Inaccuracies. Because I was Young and it makes for better drama. I am sorry. I am so, so sorry. It's so terrible. It killed me ten times over. I am so sorry. -- I had zero concept of the layout of the garage apartment. But, then again, I feel like most people don't, lol. -- The timeline is waaaaaaay off in places. Whoops. In my defense, streaming as a whole was pretty new at the time and I didn't have a way to re-watch episodes yet except pirating, which, you know, I had to do for the last 20 anyway, but I digress, lol. -- I have nothing to say about the plot except: Yeah. It gets Weird in places. The resolution is also Weird. Probably not any Weirder than the sequel, though, honestly. (....or any weirder than some of the things that happen in canon, for that matter.)

Changing the World Originally Posted: April 25, 2011 (First posted on dA -Sept 11, 2010) Summary: Crow is fed-up with the way Kalin is running the Enforcers! What happens when he walks away? Length: 4 chapters (~4k words) Commentary: -- Slightly canon-divergent but still fits in the overall narrative. -- Trigger Warning: suicide (It wasn't actually suicide but you don't even find that out in this fic, so.) -- Why did I ever think first-person POV was a good idea? It is not. -- Very loosely tied to both a collab listed below (A New Hope) and Angels and Devils but not truly necessary to read this one first. (Its connected by one name and one event. That's it. That's all. lol) -- I started rereading this one and then Did Not. Make what you will of that.

Shattered Soul Originally Posted: May 1, 2011 Summary: Yusei has always been the quiet, almost shy one of the gang. Jack is the one to explain why this is since only he, Martha, and Dr. Schmidt know the truth. Some reasons were never meant to be understood... and this is one of them. Length: 12 chapters (~21k words) Commentary: -- Trigger Warnings: semi-graphic depictions/descriptions of child abuse, graphic self-harm, gang violence and murder (mentioned) -- The second half of this fic was entirely unplanned when I started, so there is an abrupt shift in story-telling about half way through. -- The timeline doesn't quite match up correctly with canon, but I'm just gonna blame that once again on not really having a way to rewatch episodes back then, lol. -- This one actually got a sort-of one-shot re-write, lol. The re-write ended up almost entirely different, but this was where that idea came from. (You can actually read that one on ao3 because it's pretty recent.) -- If I were to actually fully re-write this one in the future (I never will), I would absolutely not format it like this. The format is pretty terrible, and some things should just...not have been written the way they were, lol. (Please excuse the info dump that is chapter 4, for example.) -- This one is also loosely tied to the collab listed below (A New Hope) but not necessary to read first since we didn't actually get that far into the collab for it to make a difference. Just a fun fact for you. (There was an unresolved plot point that was intended to resolve in the collab, but we didn't get that far. So if you read this and wonder about something, yeah it was probably that, lol.)

Scattered Memories Originally Posted: June 7, 2011 Summary: 50 Yugioh! 5D's related one-shots and drabbles. Length: 18 chapters (~14k words) Commentary: -- Clearly this is not 50 chapters. I never finished it because I started writing for a different fandom and lost interest. Ironically, I also started a theme challenge for that fandom as well that I never finished (though that was because my hard drive crashed and I lost the list, lol). -- I did not reread this one since it is just one-shots. There's nothing terribly memorable about them that bares mentioning, however, so... make what you will of that.

Chain Reaction Originally Posted: June 23, 2011 (First posted on dA -Dec 28 2010) Summary: If you had the power to change the past, would you? This is the question Yusei receives from a mysterious stranger. Will he accept the invitation to stop Zero Reverse from ever happening? Length: 10 chapters (~18.5k words) Commentary: -- Ye old cringey "what if"/alternate timeline fic. Except it doesn't actually happen. And nothing is explained at the end. -- I read about the first page and noped out of it. Maybe it gets better, hard to say. Let me know if it does if you actually dare to read it, lol. So unfortunately I can't really warn you about anything since I haven't read it in who knows how long. Sorry. You're on your own on this one, folks. -- (I do remember it being fun to write, but that doesn't really mean much. I'm sure I had fun writing all of these, after all, lol.)

The Camping Bet Originally Posted: June 26, 2011 Summary: What starts out as an argument between Jack and Crow turns into an all-out bet, guys vs. girls! The guys don't think the girls can last in the wilderness without electricity and running water; the girls think likewise of the guys. Who will win the bet? Length: 8 chapters (~12.5k words) Commentary: -- I only wrote about the first half of this one, so when there's an abrupt shift in writing style, that's why. Debated not including it, but I still like the premise honestly, and it was a lot of fun to write. -- Features my former best friend's OC, Elodie Kumari. You don't really need to know anything about her for this fic, though. Except that she's dating Crow? I think? I didn't reread this one, either. -- Incorrect geography. I did not look up places in Japan. I used the Boundary Waters in MN, USA, because I've been there. I have no regrets about this, however. -- I did skim the first chapter, but since I didn't re-read it in full, I apologize that I can't alert you to anything weird. Like replacing all of the 's's with 'z's in Sherry's dialog since she's French. I'm sure that seemed like a good idea at the time... *shrugs*

Darkness Before Dawn Originally Posted: Sept 24, 2011 Summary: Sequel to A Secret Kept. The worst has happened: Yusei is dying and the doctors can't figure out why. Now the gang must call on an old enemy for help… But will he be able to help? Will the gang find out what's going on before it's too late? Length: 11 chapters (~17k words) Commentary: -- I don't know where this absurd premise came from, but also it's really not that absurd within the Yugioh universe, so. Whatever. (It's so nutty but somehow I still love it? Idek.) -- Medical Inaccuracies. In part due to the dubious science of the previous fic, but hey. Also because of, ya know, magic and stuff. But also because Drama. Same as last time. -- Look. All of these are cheesy. But this one? Takes the cake. By a mile. (Also very majorly shippy --YuseixAki-- if you're into that, lol. Very minor JackxCarly and CrowxSherry but like. barely.) I had to stop reading a couple of times to gather myself. It is an ooey-gooey mess. -- So many epithets. I am so sorry. -- Also so many typos. I don't know why its so bad in this one, but it really is. -- (Also, where were the twins through all of this? I have no idea but I didn't write them in this and it actually makes zero sense that they aren't present, considering certain events. Me @ past!me: care to explain yourself? lol)

Angels and Devils Originally Posted: Nov 6, 2011 (first posted on dA -Feb 7, 2011) Summary: Naomi Mori may live in the Satellite, but her life isn't as horrible as most - that is until one so-called friend turns everything upside down. No shippings, mostly OC's with mentions of cannons until the second half of the story. Length: 4 chapters (~12k words) Commentary: -- Ye old cringey OC story. 'Nough said. -- This one was originally posted in two parts (Looking for Angels and City of Devils) on dA but was combined for ease of subbing on ffn. -- Trigger Warnings: gun violence (someone does die), suicide (that's actually not but still), implied attempted sexual assault (me @ past me: excuse me but why) -- The only reason I posted this one over to FFN was because of the collab listed below because Naomi plays a large part in it and readers needed to know who she was and her history. -- Side note: as someone who actually plays the game now but didn't when I wrote this, the deck I created for her is absolutely terrible. As in, nonfunctional except for anime duels where you always get exactly what you need, lol. -- I have no idea if half the cards I use in these duels are real cards or not. I know I made some of them up, but at this point, I don't remember which ones, lol (with the exception of one that is very obvious when you read it). There is definitely some Absurd Things going on in this duel. I'm pretty sure I did not count cards and even though I'm not counting them now either, I'm pretty sure this character does not have this many cards available to him, lol. Little Me did not know anything about dueling, lol. Take everything with a grain of salt.

A New Hope Originally Posted: Jan 2, 2012 (First posted on dA -May 2011) Summary: Construction has begun on the bridge that will finally connect the City and the Satellite. But certain people aren't happy with the City's decision to unite the two places and will stop at nothing to make sure the bridge is never completed! Length: 12 chapters (~37k words) - Discontinued Commentary: -- I am still Mad at myself and my collab partner for having never finished this. It tied so many fics of both of ours together and resolved some previously only hinted at story lines. But -- wouldn't you know it -- we got stuck on a duel. We technically wrote past that, intending to just come back to it later, so there are probably at least 3 chapters that never saw the light of day because we never frickin got the duel written before we both moved on to other fandoms. *sigh* (She's also the one who had the notebook we passed back and forth so I don't even have access to those chapters anymore. Hard to say if she even has it anymore. It's very sad. I'm very smad about it, lol.) -- The first couple chapters are okay but a few chapters after are kind of a drag, not gonna lie. But they are also now essential because said collab partner decided to rewrite her OC story (that is rehashed in this one) and never finished the rewrite but also deleted the original. So those few chapters are really the only place the full story exists now, sadly. (If you really want to read what there is finished of the rewrite, you can here: Birds of a Feather. Also, if you are in desperate need of yet more really old and cheesy fics, her writing was always better than mine, haha.) -- After the first ~5 chapters, I really, really still love the plot, okay? Parts of it were really, truly genius. I kind of wish I could go back and finish writing this fic, but sadly...I cannot. For a lot of reasons, I won't get into here, haha. But yeah. If you can get passed the opening few chapters, I think you may still enjoy the rest of it. -- There's this really weird part where we wrote in first person despite the rest of it being in third person. I stand behind that decision for what we were wanting to do, but also terrible. Horrible. Should not have done that, and I think we could have found a way to write it in third. -- While I have reread this one recently, actually, that was still probably at least six months ago so I didn't reread it for the making of this post. Therefore, not a lot of commentary on the fic itself other than the parts I can remember.

Lay Your Weapons Down Originally Posted: May 27, 2012 Summary: After being married for two years, everything they fought so hard for is falling apart. Yuaki Length: One shot (~1600 words) Commentary: -- There was supposed to be a companion piece to this with Jack and Carly, but obviously I never wrote it. -- Contains the above collab partner's OC shipped with Crow but that's not the focus and you don't really need to know that much about her beyond that. -- Honestly? Didn't reread it. Super cheesy if memory serves, though, haha.

I Never Meant For This To Happen! Originally Posted: June 8, 2012 (First posted on dA Jan 26, 2011) Summary: Kalin is hauled away by Sector Security. Yusei wonders at his friend's mistake. Length: One shot (~750 words) Commentary: -- Nothing really. Didn't reread it either, honestly.

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There we have it; ye old 5Ds fics. If these haven't completely scared you off from my writing, I do have a whole three fics I've written recently that you can find on ao3. I hope you enjoyed reading these (or at the very least that they gave you a good laugh at the absurdity of it all).

[onlyswan]

meet me behind the mall | jjk

→ pairing: jungkook x f!reader

→ genre: smut sigh, fluff kinda

→ warnings: exhibitionism, public sex, dirty talk, slight ? degredation, calls her a slut once, fingering, handjob, oral (m. and f. receiving), choking, spitting, cum eating / swallowing, unprotected sex, facial (this term is so 😭) lmk if i miss anything plz

→ word count: 3.3k

summary: jungkook makes you live for the thrill of it all.

note: this was an impulsive write idk what possessed me today frends but have at it >_> semi proofread it’s 5am goodbyr

—

it’s one of the things you first learned about him. jungkook loves taking photos. he loves capturing moments with a simple click of a camera. he finds an unexplainable comfort and bittersweet nostalgia in finding old photographs in his drawer, in his pockets, tucked in between the pages of his textbooks. it’s like finding little treasures all over the place, you can hear his voice in your head, can see the pretty twinkles of passion and fondness in his pretty doe eyes.

so when he told you all about the new photobooth at the arcade, followed by a text that simply said meet me behind the mall, you didn’t particularly imagine that you would end up in this position. you can see the shutter going off even though your eyelids are closed as jungkook’s tongue is basically shoved down your throat. your panties is pulled to the side and two of his fingers are thrusting in and out of your cunt, curling deliciously to stimulate your sweet spot that has your thighs shaking uncontrollably every fucking time.

how naive of you to think that your boyfriend spontaneously texted you at eight in the evening to meet up and simply take cute couple pictures in film. of course, you do have a fair share of scandalous photos, but they’re all conveniently stored and locked away in your phones. this is something entirely new and as embarrassing it is to admit, thrilling. yourself from one year ago never would’ve guessed what her future self is doing right now. how the desires in you can easily be fueled to life just by the trailing of jungkook’s fingers on the smoothness of your thighs, his lips nipping at your neck, or even the simple thought of having his cock filling you up to the brim.

you can’t help but to giggle against his mouth. all of your senses are heightened at this moment, your heart beating aggressively in your chest. he pulls away slightly but his gaze stays on your pink and swollen parted lips, drunk eyes taking in your disheveled state.

“what’s going in that pretty little mind of yours?” he smirks, thumb sneakily rubbing your clit. you try your best to hold out your moan but a broken whine comes out, your head throwing back against the wall of the limited space you’re both squeezed into. only a black curtain and an ‘occupied’ sign in red bold and capital letters separated you from the world outside, where games are being played by people of all ages; loud sound effects and songs from the 2000’s and 2010’s mixing into an ear numbing noise that can only be recognized from an arcade center; and tickets gathered are being exchanged for cute stationary items and trinkets.

“you’re so, so dirty.” you say to him, eyes rolling back as his fingers never let up on their toe curling pace, only making you lose your inhibitions and self-control more than anything else. you clench around them involuntarily, drenching his hand with your juices. “was this your plan all along?”

your eyes widen in shock when the sound of his palm slapping your bare cunt filled the booth, the stinging pain registering in your mind next. “are you fucking crazy? someone might hear!” you whisper angrily at him, but his dark and blown out eyes made you shrink back in your seat. his intimidating, and almost condescending, expression have you gushing against his hand that is now petting your pussy to soothe the pain he inflicted.

“watch your mouth. you and this fucking skimpy dress are the only ones dirty here. you know what this shit does to me.” he smiles at you sweetly. “are you sure this was my plan? are we playing mind games here, baby girl?” his hand comes down from your face to play with the cloth of your blue dress, the other thrusting two of his fingers in you again, then adding another. the stretch has you gripping tightly on his shirt, not having anything else to hold on to.

“fuck, ahhh- jungkook. don’t stop.” god, you are dripping all over, your wetness staining your seat. it makes your cheeks flush in shame.

“just wanted to look pretty for you, i-is all.” you mewl at him, blinking innocently. the camera is not forgotten by jungkook. in fact, it’s one of the things getting him more riled up. the almost blinding light of the flash shines on your soft skin, and the sweat that has formed on your temples and your neck. your pupils are blown and eyelids drooping caused by the pleasure he is giving you. it’s visible how difficult it is for you to keep in all your noises from the people outside the damn curtain when you’re so lost in the feeling of his fingers inside of you. all because of him. your fucked out state got jungkook gritting his teeth, his dick twitching inside his pants. jesus christ, you get him so fucking turned on and desperate for it without even trying. your beauty is seductive and enchanting and effortless. there is no point in hiding how crazy he is for you.

“my pretty girl. you dressed yourself all nice for me?” he presses a chaste kiss on your lips, before he wraps his hand around your throat, pressing at the right places just enough to make your mind all fuzzy. “i’m such a lucky man. i love you so much.”

your eyes roll back at the back of your head at the all consuming feeling taking over senses. you don’t think you can answer correctly if ever someone asks for your name or the colors of the goddamn traffic signs. “y-yeah, for you, of course. love you so much.”

he gives you a satisfied hum, moving down to squeeze one of your breasts with his large hand before pinching your nipple from outside the cotton of your dress. “mhmm, holy fuck. you’re always so sensitive. so easy to please. am i making you feel good?” you don’t know how he can act so casual while you’re basically falling apart in his hands, but for some sick reason, it stirs up the arousal in your belly even more.

“y-yes, kook, i’m so close, please, please, please,” you cry out desperately, tears forming at the corner of your eyes as you squeeze his fingers with your walls uncontrollably. “wait, ohhh, stop. stop. i can’t cum here. i- it’s gonna be a mess, this is so embar- fuck, jungkook!” your squeal dies down in your throat when your boyfriend kneels on the ground and starts sucking your clit in his mouth as his fingers inside of you became more aggressive, hitting all the right places that makes you see stars behind your eyelids. you cover your mouth with your hand to muffle your desperate and whiny sounds, suddenly becoming aware of where the two of you are right now.

you grip his hair with your hands to steady yourself and unconsciously grind your cunt against his face, his eager tongue doing very sinful things for the sole purpose of making you come undone. he pulls you closer to the edge with his strong arm so he can have better access, eating you out like a man feasting on the divine food of the gods. divine. that’s one perfect word to describe you.

he flicks your clit teasingly before wrapping his pink and plump lips around it again. the overwhelming sight almost makes you want to burst into tears. “hmm, cum for me, baby.” your body jerks in his hold, his words of permission acting as the trigger for your orgasm. he drinks you up greedily, his tongue replacing his fingers’ place in fucking into you, letting you ride out your high.

he comes up to kiss you, making you taste yourself in his mouth. you can even feel his wet chin. you moan against him when two fingers dip inside you again, and then he’s having you suck on them almost too enthusiastically. you’re still in a daze from your release, and with jungkook, you’re basically down for anything and everything. you open your eyes to meet his, and if you aren’t already fucked out with his fingers choking you, his hooded eyes will have reduced you into a blabbering mess.

“you’re always so good to me.” he says with a raspy voice. he takes out his fingers and wipes it on his shirt before pulling you in for another kiss. “let’s get out of here so i can fuck you properly like my girl deserves, okay?” you nod meekly, trying to hide your excitement. he fixes you up to make you look presentable enough to walk in public, combing your hair with his fingers and straightening out your dress.

“can’t forget these. don’t want anyone else seeing you like this. it’s for my eyes only.” he gathers all the developed films from the booth, facing you with a teasing smile.

“for your eyes only.” you agree, looking up at him. you open the small backpack you brought along with you and he stuffs them all inside mindlessly, his cock still straining painfully in his pants and he might just lose his mind if he’s still not inside of your pussy in the next five minutes.

“can’t walk properly,” you whine out once you step out of the booth, your boyfriend supporting you by the waist.

“sorry, baby.” he presses an apologetic kiss on your temple. “but i’m not done with you yet.” he really doesn’t give a fuck if anyone heard the both of you at all, but he knows that you’re starting to worry, so he makes sure that you keep your eyes on him as you walk your way out of the place.

“are we going to your place? or mine?” you ask once you get out, the cool air of the mall embracing you. you shiver lightly. your boyfriend doesn’t respond, but when he starts dragging you towards the movie theater that is just beside the arcade, you realize the answer to your question.

“jungkook, really?” you hiss at him, but don’t make any efforts to stop him as he leads you to the restrooms.

“i’m so fucking hard right now, babe. i can’t wait anymore.” they’re about to close up in an hour, so the place is basically deserted. but still, you can’t believe what you’re about to do right now. he peeks in the women’s and once he made sure it’s clear, you go in to the farthest cubicle.

“damn woman,” his throaty chuckle makes your center throb again as you immediately pull down his sweatpants along with his boxers, his big cock slapping against his stomach. you lick a stripe from his balls up to his tip, then gathering saliva in your mouth and letting it drip down his length. his breathing gets heavier at the sight of doing such a filthy action without him asking you to. he strokes your cheek as you jack him off and give his head kitten licks, your spit acting as an effective lube.

“put it in your mouth now, baby.” he says softly, grasping your hair to guide your mouth on his cock. “choke on it, yeah?” you hum in submission to his request, relaxing your throat to take in as much of him as you can. you start to bob your head up and down to get used to the feeling, your hand still wrapped around the few inches left.

“fuck, you look so pretty like this. i’ve been thinking about it all day.” his confession made you all warm inside. you’ve always wondered how you managed to become his girlfriend. sometimes, it feels to good to be true. knowing the effect you have on him even when you’re not around made you even more determined to blow his damn mind. to be the only star of his wildest dreams.

you go down on him until your nose reach his pubic area, carefully breathing out through it. “oh my god, that’s my girl.” he thrusts his hip forward and holds your head down in place, making you choke on him like he wanted to. his moans sends tingles to your pussy and you rub your thighs together in a pitiful attempt to relieve yourself of some pressure. he lets you breathe in some air before you take him in your mouth again, swallowing around his length as you move your head up and down.

“ohhh, fuck. your mouth is s-so warm. you like this huh? sucking me off outside our rooms for the first time?” he can’t help but to move his hips as well, instinctively following your mouth. your moans vibrate on his dick, and he hisses at the added sensation. “and you called me what? so, so dirty? turns out you’re just as fucking filthy, baby.” and there it is again, the mischievous smile on his face that makes your knees (that you’re sure will be bruising soon enough) weak. you know that he’s right. you can’t help but to whimper around him when you feel wetness drip from your hole. you want to touch yourself so bad but your hands on your boyfriend’s flexing muscular thighs are what’s keeping you steady and grounded.

“ohh- ah, fuck fuck fuck! are you fucking kidding me?” his body jerks when you take all of him and stay still, contracting your throat around him and massaging his balls in your small and soft hand. his brain goes on a frenzy at the waves of pleasure rippling in his body, sweat rolling down his temples and abdomen working hard to stop himself from cumming down your throat. “s-shit, stop it, stop it, stop, i’m gonna blow my load.”

you pull him out with a pop, hand gripping his base to keep his orgasm at bay. his glassy eyes meet your own, and you give him a wink. “are you gonna fuck me now?”

a shiver runs up jungkook’s spine. “you’re so fucking hot. come here.” he helps you get up and snakes his tongue in your mouth, pinning you on the other side of the cubicle. his hand sneaks in under your dress to cup your center, groaning against your mouth when he felt how wet you are. “shit, you’re soaking. did you get this turned on by sucking my dick?”

“really turned on. i love blowing you.” you twirl a strand of his hair around your finger, blinking up at him with a smile.

“you’re actually killing me here.” he chuckles, squeezing your ass and pulling you close to grind himself on you. he drags down your panties until you step out of them, throwing it on top of your backpack. he tucks your hair behind your ear and whispers. “jump.” you obey, wrapping your legs around his waist.

he pumps his cock a few times before teasingly running the tip along your wet folds, a nudge on your clif making you moan quietly. “put it in, please. jungkook? i’ve been good, right?”

“shhh, i got you.”

you hold on to his neck tightly as you let yourself succumb to the pleasure. it’s amazing how you can feel so stretched out from the very beginning, only his tip yet breaching your walls. you never really got used to it. “you’re so big, kook.” you cry out against his shoulder as he sinks his entire length into you. your praise inflates his ego. he lets you adjust for a moment, peppering kisses along your neck and shoulder.

when you gave him the signal, he begins thrusting into you, gradually picking up to a rough and unforgiving pace he knows you like. the lewd squelching sounds of your connected sex filled the empty room.

“sh-should’ve done this sooner. ahh fuck, why does this feel so good?” you’re out of your mind. you can’t remember a time you felt this horny. and to be brutally honest, he’s fucking you dumb right now. you can feel every ridge of his cock in you, can feel his tip furiously and consistently stimulating the spot in you that has you writhing in his arms, that along with his pelvis grinding against your clit each time he fucks back into you.

“jesus, are you hearing yourself right now? you like doing it outside with me, baby?”

“yes, yes! oh, harder, please. m-more, i’m close again.” you sob out, biting on his shoulder to cover your cries.

“can’t believe i got myself a filthy little slut here.” he shakes his head in mock disbelief, adjusting his hold on you and fucking you with a much fiercer drive to make you cream on his cock this time. “f-fuck, you’re squeezing me so tight.” he breathes out a laugh followed by a broken moan, your soft walls enveloping him in your wamth. “cum when you need to, hmm? you’ve been so good to me.”

you mutter countless thank you’s mixed with your moans and whimpers, the pleasure getting too much to bear. you throw your head back as you orgasm on your boyfriend’s cock, clenching around him uncontrollably as he fucks you through it, desperate to reach his own high. your juices drip down to his balls, and it makes him crazier. he takes the opportunity create marks on your neck, sucking and biting red and purple on your skin.

it’s not long before overstimulation takes place, but you don’t complain, not when it feels this good. another orgasm hits you, not as intense as the first two, but it still got you seeing stars and your body shaking against the wall.

“did you just cum again? oh god, fucking shit. i’m there- so fucking close. you feel so- oh, so good. love you. love you a lot.”

“i want to swallow your cum.” your voice is barely there, but jungkook hears you just fine. he almost chokes on his own spit upon registering your words in his brain. without wasting any time, he sets you down on the floor and you kneel infront of him, mouth open and tongue out.

he jacks himself off while you generously lick at his frenulum, looking up at him expectantly. the sight of you all eager and impatient for his cum finally triggers his release, aiming for your tongue but some still landing on your cheeks and chin as he’s too overwhelmed and shaken to see straight. you swallow happily, licking the rest from your fingers.

“god, i love you.” he says quietly, pulling you up from the floor and embracing you, but you wiggle out of his grasp.

“love you too but gross, gross, gross. i need to go home and shower.” you whine out, twirling as you try and fix your appearance again.

“not you acting like a brat once you got what you wanted.” he pinches your waist jokingly. he takes tissue from the dispenser to clean up the wetness that dripped down all the way to your thighs, being the loving boyfriend that he is.

“i don’t know what you’re talking about.” you pout at him. “i’m so tired and gross. i hate you.”

“are you asking for it again?”

“no, i swear to god. you owe me a bubble bath and a massage.”

“okay, fine. my place then.” he gives up, shaking his head with a laugh at your change of mood. “i love you. can i get a kiss then?”

you tiptoe to reach him, slightly pulling him down by the collar of his shirt to give him a smooch. “i love youuu.”

once you both make yourself presentable (again) to the best of your abilities, you head out of the restroom first. you notice the cashier at the popcorn place eyeing you suspiciously, especially when jungkook comes out to meet you a few minutes later. you hide yourself behind him in shame.

you walk out of the mall with his hand over your shoulder, yours on his waist. you look at him questioningly when he covers your neck with more of your hair. “maybe i made a little too much.” he winces apologetically.

“we are never doing that again.” you sigh, your legs still feeling weak but you will yourself to make it all the way to the parking lot.

“what? you said you liked it!”

“it was during the moment. i was delirious.”

jungkook rolls his eyes. “you’re lying. let’s see, because that’s also what you said the first time we tried choking.”

“jungkook! shut up!”

—

note: i never know how to finish these runs and hides

[trentaafcsblog]

Midnight Memories

Mason Mount

This isn’t like him at all. Trapped in a crowd of drunk and disorderly people who are staggering around to the beat of the music, sloshing their drinks all over one another when the pink and purple strobe lights descend upon their bodies and start flashing in a series of random patterns, enhancing their alcohol-induced illusions and perceptions of the world as they flail their limbs around and claim they’re flying or walking on clouds - a stage that Mason isn’t willing to reach tonight, or any night, for that matter. 

A sea of girls in overly tight dresses and heels that barely support them crowding around him and slurring things in his ear. Running their fingers up his bare arms and begging for another drink as he awkwardly shakes his head and tries to break away from them, only for another person to grip onto him from the other side and smear their cheap sticky lipgloss all over his neck in an attempt to add ‘I kissed a footballer’ to their CV. “Just kiss meee” they whine, pouting in his face and trying to pull him closer before giving up and making a move on the next available man, one who’s willing to explore their mouths and buy them endless rounds of multicoloured shots for the rest of the night without gently shoving them away or not-so-subtly avoiding their alcohol-coated lips.

This isn’t your type of place either, although you’re five cocktails deep into the stack of pornstars that your friends insisted on ordering. A stain down the front of your white bodycon dress thanks to an escapee half a passion fruit that decided to leave your triangular glass in order to explore the vomit-tainted floor. Your lips all patchy now that your lipgloss has migrated to decorate the rim of your empty glasses with sparkly nude smudges, although you’re slightly relieved because it means that your hair won’t get coated in it anymore, and it minimises the evidence if you end up kissing someone too, not that you came here to do that, or risk putting yourself in the same category as the girls that are now trying to climb into the VIP section with a bunch of semi-famous people, all because they want a drunk kissing video to plaster across their social media, hoping that it takes them to the front of the papers in the morning for being such-and-such’s ‘mystery girl’.

You’re looking up at the VIP area cordoned off by security guards in black puffer jackets and walkie talkies in their hands, feeling an overwhelming sense of empathy for all of the people that have to tolerate that kind of behaviour. Your eyes start scanning across the section of the club that is far too expensive for just a few hours’ stay, wondering if you can recognise any famous faces, but it’s just the ‘I lasted one day in the Villa and still managed to secure a Pretty Little Thing brand deal’ Love Islanders and the friend of the friend of the friend of a semi-professional footballer that made one twelve minute appearance for Arsenal back in 2010 and thinks he’s God’s gift. All of them either eating each other’s faces or taking boomerangs of them cheers-ing their margaritas before having to retake the same video five times because they’ve lost several lime slices in the process and it’s ruining the aesthetic. Your focus sharpening on someone with their back to you and at least ten girls around them, taking it in turns to have a drunken selfie or begging him to buy them a bottle of champagne with one of those fancy sparkler things on the top that gets brought out by women wearing elaborate carnival-inspired feather headbands and very revealing dresses. And you can’t help but feel sorry for him because you can tell just from the back of his head that he’s incredibly uncomfortable, even more so when he gets offered a blowjob from a girl who’s now threatening to get her boobs out in exchange for a whole bottle of Don Julio, in a bucket of ice, just how she likes it.

He’s turning around to face the rest of the club just as you go to look away at the menu that’s being wafted under your nose by one of your friends, and you can’t help but do a double take at his familiarity. Squinting your eyes so that you can get a better look at his features. ‘Nice drink’ you think when your eyes catch the glass of Diet Coke in his hand, quite obviously not accompanied by a swig of vodka going by his incredibly tense frame and stiff dance moves. Well, it’s not really dancing, it’s more of a ‘I’ll just copy what my friends are doing so I don’t look awkward’ move, aka a two-step shuffle from one side to the other. You can’t help but giggle as you watch him from across the room, your friends completely giving up on trying to entice you with a selection of expensive cocktails as they leave you to stare at some random man on the other side of the club, their need for a second stack of bright coloured drinks clearly overriding the want to look out for their friend.

You’re watching him for a bit longer. Becoming completely fixated on this familiar stranger who you can’t help but sit and giggle at. Part of you wanting to cringe with him at how hellish this night has become, but at the same time, it’s kind of funny watching someone who should be so used to having a large following blush and laugh awkwardly if anyone happens to recognise him. Okay, maybe it’s slightly uncomfortable to sit and watch a swarm of girls attack him with their overdrawn lips whilst he does everything in his will to not shove them into next week, especially when his friends start laughing and taking little videos of the awkward encounters, clearly ready to embarrass him at a later date. But regardless, it’s nice to know that fame hasn’t gone completely to his head, unlike an ex-reality TV star who’s screaming ‘do you know who I am?’ at one of the bouncers who won’t let her hang out with her ‘friends’ in the VIP section.

But you’re quickly forced out of your trance when you feel somebody shoving something into your hand. Looking down at your palm and clocking the ten pound note before your eyes are lifting to the hand that it’s been given from. “Go and get us those cocktails” your friend slurs before slumping back in her seat and falling to one side slightly, her pink lipstick slathered all over her chin from where she’d tried to apply it without a mirror when a man wearing an extremely tight fitting top happened to settle down in the booth next to you, obviously hoping that he’d look her way. “Hurry up, I’m thirstyyy” your other friend whines, making you sigh and mutter something under your breath in reference to them being lazy and ruining your evening, as you slide out of the row of pink arched seats and stand up. Having to grip onto the back of the chairs when your legs go all warm and fuzzy from the one too many cocktails you’d already consumed, pulling your dress down to a more appropriate length before heading off in the direction of the bar. Trying to catch a glimpse of Mason as you swerve in and out of the sea of dancing bodies, but you just end up feeling as though you’re going to fall to the floor when the strobe lights start spinning on the ceiling before dispersing their blue and green beams around the room at the most ridiculous speed. Everybody around you swaying from side to side and elbowing you in the ribs as you try your best to dodge them, kicking yourself for wearing the most stupid pair of heels as your toes crush into each other more and more with each step, cursing when you skid in a puddle of what looks like - or at least you hope is - vodka, and you have to grab onto a stranger’s arm to steady yourself, much to their dismay until they catch a glimpse of your apologetic face and suddenly want to make out with you.

You’re breathing a sigh of relief when you finally make it to the bar, setting your bag down on the counter and ordering what you think your friends want, although you probably should have double-checked with them first considering you were too busy having a nosy at someone across the club to pay any sort of interest to their alcohol preferences. “What?” you’re shouting at the barman when he tells you the total of the drinks, hoping that you’ve misheard him but ten pounds clearly isn’t going to cover the cost of sixteen cosmopolitans with added shots of vodka. Panicking when he repeats the price and turns his back to get started on making them, your hands now frantically searching your bag in the hope that you manage to find the extra money before he starts yelling at you for ordering things without being able to pay. “Fuck” you’re hissing as you turn the contents of your bag out onto the countertop, checking the inside of your phone case and a pressed powder incase they happen to house the remaining money. Your heartbeat pounding louder in your ears the closer it gets to having to admit that you’ve actually only got a quarter of what you need. 

“I’ll get it” someone’s saying, clearly sensing the tension between you and the barman as you shrug your shoulders in response to him sticking his hand out for the money. “I’m not a charity” you snap back, your slightly tipsy state giving you a rush of confidence as you continue to search your bag in the hope that the money has magically appeared just so that you can laugh it off and shut everyone up. “I know, but it’s on me” they’re saying again, leaning forward and tapping their card on the machine before you can even consider fighting back a second time. “Thank-” you’re starting before realising who it is that’s just saved you from an incredibly awkward situation. Surely not. Surely Mason Mount hasn’t just bought you, of all people, a load of cocktails for your mates.

“It’s okay” he laughs nervously, making your heart melt because clearly he’s just as awkward around you as he is everybody else in this club. “Prices have gone up, haven’t they?” he smiles as he takes a step closer to you, propping himself up on the countertop with his elbows before asking the barman for a lemonade, with ice, just so it isn’t too fizzy. “Yeah, I don’t normally come out so I underestimated it a bit” you laugh shyly before looking off in the other direction, simultaneously cursing and thanking your friends for leading you to believe that you could get sixteen cocktails for a tenner, because without their stupidity, you wouldn’t be talking to the boy that you’ve been watching all night. “Prefer to stay at home then?” he asks as you turn back and nod your head. “Me too” he’s saying, “I’m normally in bed by now” he giggles as his gaze rises to the clock above the bar, the time reading 00.04am. The slight dark glow under his eyes letting you know that he’s normally tucked up by 9pm in his pyjamas. “What are you doing here then?” you ask. Stupid question really. He’s here for the same reason that you, and probably half of the people here, are - he’s been dragged along and forced to pretend that he’s a right party animal whilst he sips his non-alcoholic drinks and fights off every woman in sight. “My mates made me tag along, I’m kind of glad they did now though” he’s telling you, the second part of his sentence almost becoming inaudible as his voice quietens just as the volume of the music rises with the chorus of ‘My Yé Is Different’, ironic since you’ve just spotted the twenty grand watch decorating his wrist whilst you’re stood there in a passion fruit stained dress. But you’re still managing to hear it, and you can’t work out whether that’s in reference to you, or the fact that he’s been able to drink fizzy drinks when he’d normally only have water. Except you’re not stupid. 

“Bet you say that to everyone” you tease, gaining his attention again as he laughs nervously and shakes his head. “Only the special ones” he replies, which is true, but now you can’t help but wonder if his drinks have been accompanied by a few shots of something or another because those words and the sincerity of his tone aren’t a reflection of the awkward man you spotted ten minutes ago, let alone the fact that he clearly considers you to be one of these ‘special ones.’ “Yeah, yeah” you’re saying back, flicking your hair over your shoulder before taking a sip of one of the cocktails that are sat before you, still waiting to be taken back to your friends. “Got quite a few drinks for somebody that doesn’t go out much, no wonder you needed me to pay” he winks as you roll your eyes and blush at the thought of somebody having to give you a helping hand with the price. “This is my last one, I’m off in a minute cose I can’t keep up with everyone else” you’re shouting over the music, watching him throw his head back and laugh because he thought he was the only one in that position. “I’ll join you” he’s replying, thanking the barman for his drink before taking a sip through the straw. “Not the sort of thing you say to a girl after only knowing her two minutes, Mason” you’re teasing, studying his face as his eyes blow wide slightly and he shakes his head, quickly swallowing his lemonade before stuttering on his words. Unsure whether he’s panicking about you jokingly misinterpreting his comment, or if he’s uncomfortable over the fact that yet another girl knows his name, but either way, he’s laughing awkwardly when you tell him that you’re only messing. 

“I wouldn’t mind though” you say smugly, causing another nervous giggle to escape his lips. Your alcohol-induced confidence only adding to the butterflies that are already batting their wings against his rib cage, something about your slight feistiness and sarcastic sense of humour attracting him to you, even more so when he takes in how beautiful you still look despite being on the verge of your alcohol limit.

“Where are you going afterwards?” he’s asking once the lights have swivelled around in the opposite direction and the blush on his cheeks isn’t so evident. “I’ll just go to the chippy down the road and then get a taxi home” you’re telling him, looking down into the fluorescent pink concoction in your glass and feeling your stomach churn at how rough it’s going to make you feel in the morning. “Mind if I join you?” he’s asking as you look across at him in disbelief, watching as he downs the last few sips of his drink and stands the glass back on the countertop. Is this a dream or something? “Sorry, that was a bit forward...again” he panics, feeling a surge of anxiety run through his body incase he’s greeted with newspaper headlines in the morning about him unintentionally trying to latch onto girls that aren’t interested in him, even if half of the club know his name. 

“No, it’s fine, of course you can” you laugh, your cocktail glass almost slipping out of your grip thanks to the layer of sweat that is now developing across your palm. “I’ll just take these over to the girls and then I’ll be ready” you smile, looping the strap of your bag over your shoulder and grabbing as many glasses as you can, which really isn’t a wise move since you’ve partially lost all sense of coordination thanks to Mason’s ability to wipe any drop of confidence out of your body and replace it with nervous butterflies. 

“I’m off” you’re announcing once you’ve made your third trip back to the booth your friends are sitting in, their drunken reactions to your words making you giggle as you reach over them to grab your jacket. “Where are you goinggg?” one of them whines, gripping onto your leg and pouting before another one is drawn to the verge of tears at your confession. “I’m just tired” you nod, blowing them all a kiss and ensuring that they text you when you’re home as you turn around and head off towards the exit, not wanting to keep Mase waiting any longer. Praying that he’s stood just around the corner outside as he’d promised as you stagger across the dance floor and dodge a sea of flailing limbs and slurred shouts of ‘can I get your number?’. A sigh of relief forcing itself out of your nostrils when the ‘exit’ sign hanging above one of the fire doors becomes within touching distance and the bouncer in charge anticipates your departure, pushing down the grey bar across the middle of the door and letting it swing open, enabling you to step out into the night.

“There you are” you smile as you approach the back of his figure, his head kept down and a cap adding a nice accessory to his outfit, although it’s definitely worn as some form of disguise. “Hi” he’s smiling nervously when he realises that it’s you, a swarm of butterflies invading his tummy again when you link your arm through his and gently rest your head on the top of his shoulder - a move that you’re aware might push you into the same category as the other girls that have been after him all night, but your crippled feet and wobbly legs are grateful for the extra stability, even if your motivation to make that move takes you both by surprise. 

“Let me get this” you’re saying once you’ve made your way into the kebab shop, your arm dropping away from his as you gesture towards the table up against the front window. “You sure?” he’s asking, dipping his hand into his back pocket ready to pull his wallet out just incase, but you’re nodding and confirming that you’re more than capable of paying four-pound-fifty for a kebab and a couple of drinks - just as well really after the events earlier this evening. Giving him a small smile as he turns and heads off towards the table in the corner, his celebrity instincts kicking when he takes the seat right in front of the glass, conveniently covered by a sticker of the menu, and some extra protection offered from the back of his body. 

You’re setting the gold foam kebab box down on your table for two, along with two plastic forks, a bottle of water and a Fruit Shoot because you noticed him eyeing them up in the fridge when you came in. And it turned out to be one of the hardest decisions of your life trying to work out what flavour he wanted. Maybe it was the alcohol that was messing with your brain, making you think that he was more of an citrus guy than a berry one. Or maybe it was the fact that you were buying a child’s drink for a fully grown adult, a famous one too, who probably hasn’t had one for ten years, which only added to the pressure. Or maybe it was because you liked him and you didn’t want to ruin your chances by getting him the wrong flavour. But after flicking your gaze between the stack of bright coloured bottles and his body cowering away in the corner, you settled for the blackcurrant one, just because he looks like the type of person to play it safe - well, he is the type of person to play it safe, going by his Diet Coke and lemonade choices tonight. 

“This for me?” he’s asking as he picks the purple bottle up, smiling when you nod to confirm his answer. “How did you know this was my favourite flavour?” he’s questioning, a smug look appearing on your face as you shrug your shoulders and reply with ‘only the ‘special ones’ know that kind of information’. A giggle escaping his mouth at your words before he’s pulling the plastic lid off the drink and taking a sip, humming at the familiarity despite not having one since his seventh birthday party. “Still as good as they used to be” he’s saying, something about the additional happiness that’s now surging through his body after a drop of blackcurrant juice making your tummy fill with butterflies because he really is just the cutest, biggest child.

You’re both sitting in a comfortable silence as you pick at your shared kebab, trying to eat from separate ends so that you don’t cross any boundaries or run the risk trying to stab your forks into the same piece of chicken. But the fuzzy filter that the alcohol has brought to your eyes and the slight delay that it’s caused between your thoughts and your actions means that you find yourself diving into the last piece of pitta bread just at the same time that Mason does. And from his side it’s a poor judgement call. The sugar from his Fruit Shoot clearly giving him an extra boost of energy and causing his arm to extend outwards towards the polystyrene box, clouding his mum’s reminder that ‘you need be a gentleman and let girls eat whatever’s left, even if you want it’. And truth be told, he doesn’t really want it, which is why the pang of anxiety as soon as his plastic fork clashes with yours is stronger than ever. His cheeks turning a violent shade of crimson as he quickly pulls his fork back, leaving just four little holes from where the prongs had been as you panic and do the same.

“Sorry, no you have it” he says quietly, nudging the box towards you in the hope that you get the hint. “No, you eat it” you smile, pushing it back towards him. The two of you just repeating the same movement as the box moves two centimetres one way, and then two centimetres back the other. “Mason, just eat it!” you whine as he sits opposite you and shakes his head. “I said you could have it” he smiles nervously, subtly wiping the sweat off his palms and onto the material of his jeans when he realises that you’re staring straight into his eyes. “Why are you getting all nervous for? Just eat ittt” you groan, a giggle escaping his lips because there’s no way you’re backing down on this one. “Fine” he huffs, stabbing his fork back into the little holes that it made earlier before slowly moving it towards his mouth. Your eyebrows raising more and more as you watch it edge closer to his lips. And then he’s doing the unthinkable and quickly changing the direction of his fork so that it starts heading towards your mouth instead. Involuntarily parting your lips whilst you wait for what’s just happened to register, and the next thing you know, you’re swallowing the piece of pitta bread. 

“What a fuss about nothing” he hums as you roll your eyes at him. “You’re quite romantic, aren’t you?” you tease as his eyebrows furrow in the middle, waiting for you to clarify your comment. “Is that all of the alcohol that’s made you so desperate to share the last piece of food with me?” you question, another layer of blush painting itself across the tops of his cheeks. “Oh, sorry, you didn’t have anything to drink, did you? Lightweight” you smirk, making him roll his eyes this time. “I’m just being a gent, plus you’ve been drinking so you need something to sober you up, maybe it’ll stop you being so rude next time I offer to buy you a drink” he says smugly, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back in the chair. A wave of composure washing over him now that he’s left you slightly speechless and he’s matched your sense of humour. “Next time? You’ll be lucky” you sass as he scoffs at you. “You’re the one that needs to buy me a drink to apologise for snapping at me, so there will be a next time to call it quits, thank you” he smiles, his sudden burst of confidence talking to you allowing his real personality to shine through, and you can’t help but start to get lost in it. “Was I really that rude?” you ask, secretly dying as you think back to your ‘I’m not a charity’ comment at the bar. “No, I’m just messing” he laughs, eliciting the same response from you as you erase that memory out of your brain. “You’re just confident, I like it” he’s saying, the last part of his comment getting lost when a group of people come staggering through the door, drowning out his words for the second time tonight, but you’re ninety-nine percent certain you managed to catch it. And now you’re the nervous one.

You’re quickly moving the conversation on to something else when you feel your chest starting to heat up with anxious prickles. Mason going all funny inside because it’s clear that he has the same effect on you as you do him, but he’s trying to push that to the back of his mind as he listens to you rambling on about your favourite breed of dogs, and how you had a fish finger sandwich for tea before you came out tonight, and how you actually know quite a lot about football but you’re reluctant to bring it up because you don’t want to embarrass him, although your drunken state causes you to let a few football facts slip out, all of them relating to Mase but you’re too caught up in your fuzzy alcoholic state to even recognise. But he does, obviously. Finding it sweet how you know exactly how many appearances he’s made for Chelsea, and what minute he came on in his debut against Manchester United, and what colour boots he wore against last season’s match against Newcastle. Just sitting back and letting you talk in between the occasional swig of water, hardly being able to get a word in edgeways because the alcohol is well and truly running through your veins now, making you come out with all kinds of mismatched comments and slurs. But he doesn’t mind, which takes him by surprise a bit, especially as he’s secretly scared of drunk people and he can count the amount of times he’s felt a bit tipsy on one hand, but there’s something different about you. Maybe it’s your sense of humour and how you’ve got him in stitches, or how your drunken state leads you to be more concerned about the welfare of a stray cat outside than it does anything else on the planet, or maybe it’s how deep beneath that strong outer shell you’re protecting yourself with that he knows you’ve got a heart of gold, an inside of ‘pure mush’ as his mum would say. 

“What time is it?” you slur after knocking back your last swig of water. “Nearly one o’clock” Mason’s replying, glancing at his overly-expensive watch as you sit there and wonder how he actually knows what hour of the day it is when all of the numbers have been replaced by diamonds. “Better head off” you mumble, staring blankly into the empty kebab box and trying to process what move you need to make next in order to get yourself back home in one piece. “I’ll order you a cab if you want, or I’ll walk you back, I don’t know how far away you live” he’s saying, forcing you out of your trace as you look up at his tired, bloodshot eyes. Knowing full well that as soon as you’re gone he’ll be running home to bed with a glass of water to tone down the bubbles in his tummy from his fizzy drinks, paranoid incase they give him a fizzy version of a hangover. “I live about half an hour away and I can tell you’re ready for bed so I’ll go with the cab” you smile, making him giggle nervously at the fact that his tiredness has been uncovered, although it’s not difficult to pick up on the fact that the only other time he stays up this late is on New Years Eve, and even then he normally sets an alarm for 11.57pm so that he can wake up from his nap in time.

You’re letting him help you put all of your belongings back into your handbag after you insisted on showing him your favourite lipgloss midway through your earlier conversation. Linking your arm through his and stepping out into the coldness of the night, a breeze nipping across your legs and causing you to let out a little squeal as you start pulling your dress down to try and hide your goosebumps. “Here” Mason’s saying, taking his jacket off and draping it over your shoulders. “Mase” you’re replying. Mase - he likes that, and he likes how naturally it’s left your mouth too. Trying to give it back to him but he’s adamant that you keep it. “Gives me another reason to see you in order to get it back” he winks, making you roll your eyes as you stand snuggled into his side on the edge of the pavement. 

“Did you want my number?” he’s asking, already taking his phone out of his pocket and holding it out in your direction before you even have chance to respond. “You’ve not really given me an option have you?” you laugh, making him giggle as he shuffles awkwardly from side to side, waiting for your digits to appear on the screen. “Only because I need to give your jacket back, there’s no other reason for this” you tell him, smiling as he nods his head but you both know that’s a little white lie. “There you go” you’re saying, passing his phone back to him as his eyes study the new contact in his hand. A new number written beneath Y/N. 

‘Shit’ he’s thinking. He didn’t even ask for your name before this. Awkward. 

“Pretty name” he smiles, trying to play it off cool, but you’re not drunk enough to not notice his mistake. “So pretty that you didn’t even know that’s what I was called until now” you reply, making him giggle and let out an awkward ‘oops’. “I’ll let you off this once” you’re saying as you look up at him stood beneath the lamppost that’s towering above the two of you. A golden glow adding a filter to his face and making him look even more gorgeous than he did when he was sipping his lemonade in the club and shoving lettuce and chicken into his mouth. And you’re desperate to just kiss him, especially since he’s got a bit of dried Fruit Shoot in the corner of his mouth and you know his lips will taste all sweet like they do in the movies. But considering he’s only just learnt your name you don’t think it’s the right time, and there’s also a bunch of Tottenham fans making their way up the street, not wanting to have to make him endure any teasing, especially when he’s already stayed up late in a part of town he wouldn’t usually be seen dead in to spend time with you. 

“Thanks for tonight” you whisper as you briefly rest your head on his shoulder, pulling it away when the taxi he’s ordered for you appears at the side of the curb. “My pleasure, thank you” he’s saying back, removing his protective hand from the small of your back and stepping forward to open the back door of the car for you. “Told you that you were a gent” you tease as he mumbles ‘shut up’ and pretends to shove you into the back seat with a giggle. “See you soon for that jacket, yeah?” he winks as you reply with ‘yeah yeah, whatever’, making him let out a little chuckle as he closes the door on you. Giving you an awkward little wave as you head off down the street, standing and waiting for your car to turn the corner before heading home himself. Leaving just a message of ‘thank you again, can’t wait to get my jacket back cose it’s freezing without it ;) x’ that’s just appeared on your screen connecting the two of you. And even if you have been slightly tipsy tonight and now can’t remember half of the things you spoke about, there genuinely doesn’t seem like a better person to sit in a kebab shop with in the early hours of the morning after stumbling across him by pure chance a club that neither of you particularly wanted to spend the night at. Thanking your lucky stars for allowing your paths to cross because you already know this is the start of something special. Very special.

[shipskicksandgiggles]

will you write some platonic tonynat with them just being Bros and annoying the shit out of the government?? bc i feel like they’d make a game out of it

you're right, they would. I've written them as best friends before, and just causing general shenanigans, but they're so good. that being said, this fic reflects some current issues in today's world, so read at your own discretion. I'll include the same warning I have on ao3 as well

before reading the fic, I recommend you read this. I am american, and unfortunately have been watching the news, and that sort of bubbled over into this fic. my heart goes out to anyone who has been a victim of gun violence, or lives in an area where their civil rights are being impacted by lawmakers restricting their healthcare

I don't make a habit of letting the real world reflect in my writing, but this prompt sort of called for it. if you are sensitive to these topics, I wouldn't read this. a lot is glossed over, but it's there

anyways, do what's best for you

Read Matter at Hand here on ao3

~~~

“Mr. Stark, if you could please focus on the matter at hand, that would be greatly appreciated.”

“I’m sorry, what exactly is the matter at hand, Senator?”

The senator who had been talking at them for the past ten minutes dragged a hand over his face. “For the last time, Mr. Stark, we’re trying to discuss your involvement in the US military.”

“I have no involvement,” Tony said flatly. 

“Well, this council seems to think otherwise.”

“Sorry, this isn’t 2007. I don’t do the military anymore unless you’re talking about my husband, who I somehow doubt this is about.”

Somewhere, Rhodey was rolling his eyes. 

“Given our present company, I think we can safely conclude that this isn’t about Colonel Rhodes.”

Tony sat in the middle of the small group of Avengers he was sat with. Natasha was on his right, Sam on his left, as they were typically good at keeping him out of trouble. 

That being said, they were all hot, tired, and weren’t fans of these sorts of meetings, so neither of them were trying too hard. 

“Senator, listen,” Tony started, leaning forward in his chair. “I have been able to predict when you people will decide to call me to testify every year since 2010, give or take a week. Every single year. And always about the same thing. Iron Man, the Avengers, SHIELD, HYDRA, aliens, gods, what have you. And every year, I have to tell you again and again that I’m not interested in working with you or your soldiers. What is so difficult to understand?”

“Well, seeing as your involvement on the global stage has grown, we thought we should discuss it again,” the senator said, a frustrated edge growing in his voice. 

“Cool, so that’s why only American based Avengers are here then? And wouldn’t this then be more appropriate for a UN meeting. I know the last one of those with us in attendance didn’t go according to plan, but you live and you learn, right?”

Sam let out a sudden cough, and shifted in his seat. Nat was less subtle in her amusement, leaning back and smirking at the representatives at the front of the room. 

“Mr. Stark-”

“Alright, alright, let’s get down to business then, shall we? The Iron Man armor, while no longer a prosthesis, is a suit of armor. Armor is designed as protection to the wearer, as well as anyone in the vicinity that can also be shielded. Due to the technological marvel that is that suit, I can protect a lot of people from threats no military on earth can match.”

“The Avengers still operate to combat threats no one else can, as agreed upon by the United Nations. We aren’t government agency attack dogs anymore, and will never be that again, so don’t try it. SHIELD doesn’t exist anymore, we’ve been neutralizing the last remnants of HYDRA as they come up, and we keep tabs on all of the gods and aliens we know about. Is there anything else you wanted to cover, or can we leave?”

The room was silent for a moment as the senator glared at him. “We wanted to discuss the potential of your help in potentially dangerous combat situations. For instance, you say the Iron Man suit is a shield, so why isn’t it being used to protect our troops?”

“My god, do you hear yourself?” He turned to Natasha. “This is worse than the warehouse situation.”

“You’re right, this is somehow worse,” Nat said. “I think he’s dumber than that guy too.”

“Exactly! It’s like he’s completely unaware that I have no military involvement, and haven’t since I was almost blown to pieces in a combat zone.”

“You have to understand that we could lose fewer lives if you helped, Mr Stark.”

Tony let out a short laugh. “Is this what you’ve stooped to? Are you really at this level? Let me tell you something, Senator,” he said, growing suddenly serious . “I was on the ground with people being hurt by my technology, and I said that would stop. I don’t support any kind of military action because I know the impact it has on an individual. Do you understand me? So I took the funding I used to use on your military and I redirected it. I tore apart weapons so I could build something that has a positive impact on society. Because that protects more people than any branch of the military does. No offense, Sam.”

“None taken,” Sam shrugged. 

“Education and clean energy that are actively making this planet a better place has been a much more beneficial use of my time and resources.”

“Mr. Stark, are you aware that our enlistment rates have dropped in recent years?” a different man asked. Tony suspected he might be the Secretary of Defense, but he forgot what he looked like. 

“Have they?”

“Yes they have, and in the event of a major global event, this could become a serious issue, one you and your team would be well equipped to help solve.”

“Lower enlistment rates,” Tony murmured, ignoring the secretary’s argument. “Could that be because kids don’t have to rely on your GI bill to afford college? Or could it be that young people now have the resources to pursue their passions without the impending doom of everything the world tries to throw at them? Because again, if you didn’t realize, these are children you’re talking about, who aren’t risking their lives for you anymore. I would call that an improvement, wouldn’t you?”

“And just so we’re all on the same page,” Natasha said, leaning forward over her microphone, “please keep in mind that I was trained in the Red Room when I was practically a baby. I know it seems like a good idea to use young minds that you can manipulate into doing your bidding, but you’re fucking both them and yourselves over.”

“This is America where you don’t train ten year olds to assassinate people, but 17 or 18 years old is still a child. Their brains aren’t fully developed, and they won’t be until a few years down the line. Now, that’s not to say that you’re not fucking ten year olds over, or frankly every child from before they exit to the womb to when you can legally put a gun in their hands, but my point stands.”

“Tony putting his fortune into education, energy, and protecting people in ways no one else can is something you should be thanking him for, not trying to control, and that same sentiment goes for every single one of us on this team. We are not your puppets.”

Once again, there was silence. 

Tony held out a hand for Nat to slap, and she obliged. 

“Are we free to go?” Tony smiled, sharp and sarcastic.

“Captain Wilson, do you have any final remarks,” the senator asked in lieu of an answer. 

“No sir. I think Mr. Stark and Ms. Romanov said it perfectly. The work we do individually and as a group helps a lot of people in ways you couldn’t imagine. I don’t think talking about it any further will be of any use to anyone.”

“Fine. Dismissed,” the senator said, waving them off. 

As they walked out, Tony turned back around. “Hey, could we maybe schedule this for August next year? I have plans in June.”

Natasha let out a particularly loud laugh as the senator just sighed loudly. Maybe the lack of being cussed out meant they were finally wearing them down about these god awful things.

[shining-magically]

so I’ve wondered this since the trailer came out years and years ago and Chloe defended the movie - was the red shoes teaser written by the same team that made the movie? were they forced to market it like that, was that based on an earlier draft, etc?? not sure if you know but you seem like the leading expert!

Sorry, this is gonna be an absolute novel because you know I’m an animation fan and the history and production of Red Shoes and the Seven Dwarfs is SO interesting and insane. Like, Tangled levels of insane. Thanks for calling me an expert, no one else was gonna do it so I just kind of took up the helm lol.

Here’s the low-down... The timeline of the movie’s production is an absolute mess and kind of an extremely wild ride. It was in production for ten years, went through a lot of different crew members, and went through at least two other major versions of the story before landing on the final version.

Since there’s not a ton of info on the movie’s production, a lot of this is pieced together from different interviews and context clues, and also a lot of what I’ve read and what I am quoting has been translated from Korean, sometimes pretty roughly. But yeah.

Here’s the story of why the Red Shoes and the Seven Dwarfs teasers and poster were so, so bad and fatshame-y and the actual movie was so, so good and body-positive. (With pictures and production artwork!)

(This is a beast of a post so I’m putting it under a cut.)

All right, so. After its conception originally as a short story by the South Korean studio Locus Creative in 2009-2010-ish, Red Shoes and the Seven Dwarfs was being worked on and was set to come out in Summer 2017, as evidenced by this poster at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, featuring a different logo and very different character designs for most of the dwarfs.

In early-mid 2016, the first teaser (in which we see Snow White undress and then two dwarfs recoil in horror at her fatness when she takes her magic shoes off) was released, after the film had kind of been slowly chugging along for 6 or so years. (I am having such trouble pinpointing when the second teaser was released (in which one of the dwarfs basically attacks Snow while she is sleeping to steal her shoes), but I believe it was around the same time.) The teasers didn’t get that much traction because this was a small film from a small indie studio in South Korea.

None of the final actors had been cast yet. At this point in the production, the story was different, one of the many versions that the movie went through. As in the final movie, the dwarfs were actually cursed knights/princes and Snow White switched back and forth between two body types due to her magic shoes, but in this version, the dwarfs needed to steal the shoes from her in order to break their curse (rather than needing “a kiss from the most beautiful woman in the world” like in the final movie).

The weird thing is, I believe they had JUST changed the movie’s story when the teaser came out. I’m almost positive it was released more as a proof of concept than as an actual trailer for the movie. They had just recently combined two separate characters (seen above), a typical pretty, skinny princess character (Snow White) and a cute chubby girl character (’Bonnie’), into one single character that switches back and forth between the two appearances when she wears the magic shoes (also they had just dropped literally half of the movie taking place in the real world, with a magic mirror portal, it was a whole thing). 

They didn’t have the details of this aspect of the new story hammered out yet, and the first pass at presenting Snow’s magically changing body type, was, yeah, not good and super offensive. This was a really inexperienced indie studio making their first film on a low budget, so even the animation and voice acting wasn’t great. I think they just wanted to get SOMETHING out there because it had been 6 years and they wanted to have something to show for it.

But here’s the thing. Despite how the teasers make it seem, this was always supposed to be a movie about body positivity, letting go of appearance-based prejudices, and loving yourself and others for who you are and for who they are, which we see in the final film.

I like to think of our film as a kindhearted one. Our intentions are nice.

- Director Sung-ho Hong

It’s important to keep in mind that this movie was made in South Korea by a 99% Korean crew, and, as I understand it anyway, in Korean culture, ‘fatshaming’ is not really a thing that is seen as overtly offensive. Also, children’s media there seems to have more adult things in it than in the US, which probably accounts for the more risque parts of the teasers. That said, I really believe that at this point in the timeline, the movie was on-track to be bad (or at least not very good) when it was released, and it would have ended up bad IF a few key players hadn’t signed on (which I’ll get to in a moment).

Interestingly, the movie’s producer, Sujin Hwang, said in a 2017 interview:

“[Both teasers] were solely produced to induce curiosity. They’re completely irrelevant to the actual story.”

- Producer Sujin Hwang

I think what she was trying to convey was that neither one is a scene in the actual movie, because while the teasers didn’t reflect the revamped story as it existed in summer 2017 (the time of the interview), they DID reflect the earlier version of the story where the dwarfs wanted her shoes, which is what the story was at the time they were made.

Now that we’re in post-teaser 2016, HERE’S where things start to turn around. After the teasers were released, my guy Disney veteran and native Korean Jin Kim joined the project. He and Red Shoes director Sung-ho Hong had been buddies for about eight years and Sung-ho had been trying to get Jin to come to Seoul and work with him at Locus for a long time, and he finally succeeded.

Jin and his twenty years of Disney experience as an animator and senior designer on films like Tangled, Frozen, Big Hero 6, Zootopia, and Moana, had a HUGE HUGE HUGE influence on the movie. He redesigned almost all the characters, oversaw all the visual development from the moment he signed on, and heavily (HEAVILY) supervised the animation, literally going frame-by-frame through preliminary animations and drawing over them, teaching the inexperienced animators at Locus everything he knew. (Literally almost everyone except him either only had TV experience or had no professional experience because they just gotten out of school.)

From an outsider’s perspective, it really seems as though Jin joining the project (and his gargantuan effort) made the quality SKYROCKET. Not just in character design and animation, but also in things like effects animation, story, etc. After he joined, Locus really started pushing HARD to make a good, high-quality movie, and his influence and experience from being a prominent figure at Disney was absolutely key. The studio also began to really study Disney films and other well-made animated films from other studios to really try and pinpoint what the DNA of a good animated movie really is.

I don’t have any solid evidence, but I’m pretty sure that Tony Bancroft (an animator and the co-director of Mulan) then joined the project because he’s good friends with Jin Kim. He is only credited as the voice director (the movie was recorded in English and the characters were animated to the English dialogue), but I am SURE that he probably also had a pretty big influence on the movie, because like... How could he not? I really really think there was more to his role than his title would have you believe, even though there’s almost no info out there about it.

So now the movie goes through a gigantic metamorphosis. Character designs, visual development, and animation quality are all rapidly improving, the story is tightening, and the themes of the movie (which, again, were always the same and intended to be positive) are being presented in a more sincere way. The movie is becoming the sweet, self-love-encouraging and body-positive movie that was eventually released.

I’m putting a gif from the credits of the final movie here. As we move into 2017, when the giant eruption of backlash occurred, please keep in mind that the story was finalized at this point and that THIS was the movie people were so mad about:

Chloe Grace Moretz accepted the role of Snow White immediately after she read the script and she recorded her lines (I think) in early-ish 2017. Her co-star Sam Claflin also immediately accepted the role of the romantic interest, Merlin, after reading the script and recorded his lines in (I believe) July 2017.

In the summer of 2017, the story and script were more or less the same as in the final movie. Promotional images from that time show that most of dwarfs had been completely redesigned by this point and didn’t have their teaser designs anymore.

They also released a few screenshots that look exactly like the final film. The movie was advertised as coming out in ‘2018′ at this point. Here’s a promo image from 2017 that is MUCH more tactfully worded than the infamous Cannes poster:

So now we’re in summer 2017. The Cannes Film Festival. The movie’s script and story have been basically nailed down, animation is underway, and the Korean film company Finecut is beginning to market and sell the movie to worldwide audiences. They are planning on showing some footage to potential buyers at the festival, and they make a poster to advertise the film there.

Unfortunately, it’s THIS POSTER:

Now here’s where there are some unknowns. By this point, the movie is basically in its final form, which is an adorable, body-positive story about loving people for who they are, loving yourself for who YOU are, and that provides commentary on society’s standards of beauty and how they affect how people are treated/viewed. So why this poster??? All I can really tell is that someone (I think Finecut) really, REALLY messed up and either horribly mistranslated the tagline, or didn’t do enough research to know that this kind of thing is REALLY NOT OKAY in western culture.

The above picture is shared and the internet backlash begins, fueled by tweets from prominent body-positivity activists like Tess Holliday. Even Chloe Grace Moretz speaks out against it, because she of all people KNOWS that that’s not what the movie is about. The internet then finds the old teasers from before the movie was revamped and it makes things worse. Producer Sujin Hwang profusely apologizes and says that that is NOT the message of the movie. Locus pulls the advertising campaign, and takes down the two old teasers.

“Our film, a family comedy, carries a message designed to challenge social prejudices related to standards of physical beauty in society by emphasizing the importance of inner beauty.”

- Producer Sujin Hwang

Voice director Tony Bancroft also tried to explain the situation:

���The truth is the film has a body-positive message as its core theme–it’s the opposite of what reports are saying. The problem is one poorly translated movie poster that has been taken dramatically out of context.” 

- Voice Director Tony Bancroft

And then... There was nothing for a while. The movie didn’t come out in 2018 and was delayed. From what I can tell, I DON’T believe this delay was related to the Cannes backlash. I think it was mostly due to Locus’s limited budget and resources, because as we know, animation is difficult, time-consuming, expensive, and easy to do badly but hard to do well. Also, probably with Jin Kim and Tony Bancroft’s influence, they REALLY wanted to make sure to do a good job with the animation because they now had a great story and they really wanted the movie to be a quality, worldwide hit that would kind of put South Korean feature animation on the map. Just take a look at how nice the final animation was:

The movie was released in South Korea on July 25th, 2019. Unfortunately, the damage was done in the English-speaking markets and it was not released to an English-speaking audience until June 22, 2020, when it was released digitally in the UK. At the time of this post, there is no set US release date, but the distribution rights were recently bought by Lionsgate and the MPAA gave the film an official PG rating.

So who’s to blame? There’s no good answer. You could blame Locus for making those old teasers. You could blame Finecut for the competely tonedeaf Cannes poster. You could even blame cancel culture for raging against the movie based on one poster and two old teaser trailers without researching what the movie was actually about.

All I know is, it’s a damn shame.

[snelbz]

Life As We Know It {Chapter 9}

Summary: After the sudden deaths of Nesta’s sister and Cassian’s best friend, they gain guardianship of their nephew, Nyx.

Based on Life As We Know It (2010) and a prompt sent in by anonymous for our Nessian fanfic contest. This is a modern au.

Instead of doing a tag list for this story, we have decided to have a set posting schedule. Chapters will be posted weekly on Mondays and Thursdays. Chapters will be posted on both my and Shelby’s blogs! >> @snelbz​

Life As We Know It Masterlist

Shelby’s Masterlist

Tara’s Masterlist

A/N: SURPRISE. Enjoy this chapter a day early. I had my days wrong and legit thought it was Thursday, but since it was ready…. Y’all get to enjoy the spoils of my frazzled brain. 😘

Nesta waited with Nyx in the waiting room of the pediatric office.

His rash didn’t seem to be bothering him much, but she wanted to get ahead of it before it became a problem. He was absolutely enamored with the TV playing a bright children’s show in the corner, and Nesta couldn’t help but smile down at him as she checked her email.

The usual stuff greeted her, some open catering order invoices for the restaurant, a few wayward resumes from high school kids that had managed to get her personal email, and, of course, spam.

“Nyx?”

Nesta’s head shot up, and Nyx began looking around, wondering who had called his name. Nesta was instantly on her feet, pushing Nyx’s stroller toward the door that the nurse held open.

She smiled. “Hello, Nyx.”

Nyx babbled in greeting.

The nurse chuckled. “Such a cute little guy. You’re Nesta, I assume?”

“I am,” Nesta confirmed. “I’ve not been here before. It’s a nice office.”

The small talk went on. Nesta had never been a fan of small talk, of polite pleasantries.

It just made her feel awkward.

Nyx didn’t seem to mind. He just kept babbling and babbling and babbling, without a care in the world.

The nurse led them into a room and she checked Nyx’s height and weight before telling them that the doctor would be there shortly.

Nesta had picked Nyx up, looking around at all the educational posters on the walls, when a quick knock sounded on the door and a man cracked open the door.

Nesta blinked once as he stepped inside, not expecting the tall, muscled man that appeared in front of her.

“You must be Nesta,” he said, extending his hand. “I’m Dr. Kamaras.”

This man was Nyx’s pediatrician? She had known that Nyx’s doctor was male, Feyre had mentioned him in some stories a few times, but Nesta had always pictured an elderly man.

Not this sculpted, handsome man, who could easily graced the cover of one of the ridiculous smutty books she kept well hidden in her bedroom.

She shook his hand, finally remembering how to speak. “Yes, I am, it’s nice to meet you.”

Very nice to meet you, she added in her head.

His face sombered. “I was very sorry to hear about Rhys and Feyre. They were great people.”

And just like that, Nesta was back on earth, holding her sister’s son in her arms, standing where her sister should have been. She tried to keep her smiling from dimming, but she cleared her throat. “Thank you. It’s…been an adjustment.”

As if they both remembered why they were here, Dr. Karamas blinked and said, “Yes, Nyx, right. You told the nurse he has a rash of some sort?”

“It’s just a diaper rash but it seems to be getting infected,” Nesta explained. “I’ve tried a few different things but nothing seems to be working.”

“Ah,” he said, nodding. “Well, let’s take a look.”

Dr. Karamas took one glance and whistled. “Definitely infected. I’m going to give you a steroid cream. Put it on after every diaper change. It should clear up within the week.”

Nesta let loose a breath. “Oh, great, thank you.”

“Absolutely,” he smiled.

He had a nice smile.

He scribbled something down on his clipboard, signed it, and handed it to Nesta. “The number on the bottom is my office number. If you have any other concerns, no matter how small, give it a call.”

Nesta looked at Nyx’s prescription and the number that was beneath it, along with his name.

Balthazar Karamas.

“Thank you, Dr. Karamas,” Nesta said, and she meant it. She was still new at this, and every little medical thing concerned her.

If it wasn’t normal, she was freaking the fuck out.

“Bal, please,” he said, taking her hand again, shaking it. At the look on her face, he added, “I work with kids. They do better on a familiar name basis than with titles like doctor and mister.”

She nodded, smiling. “Bal, then.”

Nesta was getting Nyx resituated in his stroller in the waiting room, about to head back out into the bright sunlight, when she felt someone approach. She wasn’t expecting to find Balthazar standing a few feet away. She quickly checked the stroller, making sure she had her purse, the diaper bag, and, of course, Nyx himself. “Did I forget something?” She asked, finding everything exactly where it was supposed to be.

“No, no, it’s not that,” he said, pausing in front of her. “I just…can’t shake the feeling that I know you from somewhere.”

It was strange, since Nesta felt the same way.

“You’re not Illyrian,” he said, and it wasn’t a question, nor was it rude. Just an assumption. She only knew of a few other Illyrians in the area, and Balthazar definitely had the same coloring as Cassian and Az. And Rhys used to have. She, pale skinned and blue eyed, certainly did not.

“I’m not,” she said, at last.

Bal chuckled.

That smile, yet again, had her toes curling.

“Interesting,” he said, that smile remaining. “Well, maybe we can figure out just where we’ve run into each other before...over lunch this weekend?”

Nesta blinked. A date?

“Not a date,” he said, quickly, reading her mind. “I would never ask the aunt of my patient on a date. That would be incredibly unprofessional.” Nesta laughed. “Just…two acquaintances figuring out where they were previously acquainted.”

“Lunch sounds nice,” Nesta said, unable to shake her own smile. “Saturday, then?”

“Saturday,” Bal agreed.

They set up a time and place and then Nesta was out the door.

*

Cassian’s day had been as long as it was the day before. It seemed that the teenagers visiting Velaris had gotten the message from their friends that Cassian’s bar was checking every single ID of every single drink that was ordered. So instead of being slammed and busy and frustrated the whole day, he had been bored out of his mind.

He’d gone through his inventory sheets twice, ordering anything they might remotely run out of in the next few weeks.

It didn’t help that Kallias had the day off, covering the evening shift tonight, leaving him alone with his thoughts all day.

And those thoughts constantly reminded him that he’d been an absolute dick to Nesta the night before.

As he drove home, he contemplated the apology he needed to make.

Although Cassian believed his intentions were typically good, apologizing wasn’t one of his strengths. He ran through what he’d say a hundred times, had come up with an unbearable amount of ways in which he could apologize, but everything he thought of wasn’t good enough.

He knew Nesta well enough to know when she would laugh in his face.

He’d come up with about fifteen different scenarios of how this could go by the time he pulled into the driveway, parking next to her little car. He took a deep breath before unlocking the front door and letting himself in.

The house was quiet, neither Nesta or Nyx were anywhere to be found. It was barely six-thirty, but he knew Nesta was taking Nyx to the doctor earlier in the day, which may have tired him out so thoroughly that he was already down for the night. A peek into his cracked bedroom door confirmed it, his little hand curled next his face as he slept.

When he finally tracked down Nesta, on the back patio, her feet propped up in a lounge chair, he definitely hadn’t expected to find her with a bottle of wine. Or what was left of it, at least.

The mostly empty bottle of wine sat next to the baby monitor.

He cleared his throat, announcing his presence.

Nesta’s sigh was the only acknowledgement she showed.

“Everything alright?” He asked.

She shrugged and took a sip from her glass.

“Bad day?” He continued.

She shrugged again.

“Is this the silent treatment?” He asked.

“I assume you’d know,” she said.

Cassian began rubbing his temples. “Look, Nesta-.”

“I’m a little busy if you don’t mind,” she continued. “I prefer to relax alone.”

“This is my house, too,” he said, shutting the sliding door behind him as he made his way onto the patio. “What if I want to sit out here with you?”

“Then I’d suggest continuing the silence,” she said, not looking at him, her face tilting back up to the sky, where it had been when he’d come outside.

So he sat down on a nearby lounge chair, and didn’t say a word.

Or he tried, but he didn’t last five minutes. The words that had building inside him all day needed to come out. He’d rehearsed different things he wanted to say, with reasons for why he was such an asshole, and promises to try and be better from now on. But as he looked over at her, the starlight on her face, all he could get out was, “I’m sorry.”

For a moment, Nesta said nothing. “About?”

“The way I acted last night,” he replied, keeping his eyes on the lawn. “It was uncalled for, and I’m sorry.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said, draining her glass.

Cassian’s eyes shot her direction. “I’m trying to apologize. You can at least accept my apology so we can move on.”

“Apologies mean nothing,” Nesta said, shrugging. “Words are meaningless.”

“Not mine,” Cassian argued. “I mean what I say.”

“Then you meant what you said last night?” Nesta pushed.

Cassian’s lips snapped shut and his jaw hardened. “No.”

“So, you’re a liar, then?” Nesta asked.

He groaned in frustration. “You’re infuriating.”

She didn’t deign to reply to that.

He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry I was an asshole last night. I was…embarrassed about how you found me the night before. I don’t… I don’t like to be seen like that.” He paused, but then he held a hand out in between them. “Not- not that that happens often. I mean, I don’t make a habit of having emotional breakdowns.”

She didn’t say anything. Just stared at him.

He cleared his throat again, remembering little things he had felt badly about through the day. “Nesta, I’m sorry I acted like an ass. I’m sorry I didn’t appreciate the dinner you made me. I was rude as hell and you did nothing to deserve it.”

After a second, she glanced away, out over the pool. He figured she wasn’t going to reply, and he stood, heading back for the back door.

He had slid the door open and was halfway inside when she said, “If you’re hungry, I made lasagna for dinner. It should still be warm on the stove.”

He turned back and found a hint of a smile on her face. “Thanks, Nes.”

*

A continuation of his apology, Cassian had told Nesta he'd be on baby duty for the rest of the night, waking Nyx up for his bottle, granting her leave to do whatever she wanted. She elected to finish off the bottle of wine, open another, and relax in the bathtub with a book.

The book of choice was definitely not appropriate to read in front of Nyx.

Or Cassian, for that matter.

She had appreciated his apology, even though a part of her still wanted to be pissed. There were very few things that agitated her more than male bravado, and Cassian was the spitting image of it. Embarrassed because he was emotional? Please. Get the fuck over it.

Then again, she could say that all day, but in honesty, if the positions were reversed, she would have reacted very, very similarly.

If not worse.

Nesta had always felt too much, far more than either of her sisters. It wasn’t like they were robots, of course. Elain had a bigger heart than anyone Nesta had ever known, and Feyre had been a light to be around.

But, Nesta…

She felt it all, and she felt it far too deeply. She had learned long ago to shut those emotions off, to let them go, to not let her emotions show. They could just be used as a weakness.

And she found life worked better that way.

There was a soft knock on the bathroom door.

Nesta sat up straight, even though the door was locked, in a sudden panic over the fact that she was nude and reading smut.

“Yeah?”

“Nyx is going to bed,” he said. “Just thought you’d want to say goodnight.”

“I- Ah- Just a minute,” she called, setting the book down and reaching down to grab for her towel. She was out and damn near opened the door in just her towel again, but remembered their agreed upon rules. She snatched her robe, wrapping it around herself, towel and all.

She opened the door, Cassian standing just by her bed, and Nyx had his head resting on his shoulder, rubbing his little eyes.

The image was so pure and innocent that Nesta couldn’t stop herself from taking a few steps towards them, reaching out to brush her fingers down Nyx’s soft cheek. “Sweet dreams, buddy,” she breathed, leaning up to press a kiss to his forehead.

She regretted it almost immediately, as bringing herself that close in Nyx also inadvertently brought her to Cassian. His heady, nutmeg-and-campfire scent enveloping her, reminding her of the morning she’d come downstairs and found him as naked as she was now. She stepped back quickly, clearing her throat. “And goodnight to you, Cassian,” she murmured. She pointed back behind her towards the bathtub, towards her book, and said, “I’m going to read a little longer and then go to bed myself.”

He nodded. “Alright, I’ll see you in the morning. Goodnight, Nes.”

The nickname didn’t bother her as much as it previously had, she realized as he made his way back out of her room, shutting the door behind him.

She didn’t let herself think about that, did her best not to think about him, as she sunk back into the warm water.

*

Nyx had gone down easily for Cassian, for the first time ever, thanks to the frozen toy he’d gnawed on to relieve the pain of his incoming tooth. He’d decided he deserved a treat, too, after that, and had sat down to watch the hockey game, a beer in hand.

Fifteen minutes later, there was a knock at the front door.

Cassian paused, glancing down at his watch, seeing that it was pushing nine o’clock. He stood, after a second knock sounded, making his way to the door. He opened it to find a woman dressed in a suit on the other side. “Can I help you?”

“Mr. Nazari, I assume?” She asked, extending her hand.

He took it, on instinct, shaking it, but he blinked. He repeated, “Yeah… Can I help you?”

Her brows twitched together. “My name is Alis Birch. I’m with social services.”

Cassian continued to shake her hand, staring.

“The courts told you we’d be making random visits to check in on Nyx,” she continued.

Oh, fuck, Cassian thought. Oh, fucking hell.

They’d completely forgotten about those random visits, in the past few weeks they’d been doing this, distracted by getting used to not only being parents, but getting used to each other as well.

“I see,” Cassian said, nodding. “I… I’ll…be right back.”

“I’d like to come in-.”

Cassian shut the door, quickly set his beer on the table in the entryway, and hauled ass upstairs.

He threw open the door to Nesta’s bedroom, only to found it empty, so he continued on, throwing open the bathroom door.

Where Nesta was still in the tub, completely nude, a book in hand, one hand disappeared beneath the water. Her head was thrown back in utter ecstasy.

Until Cassian barged in, anyway.

“Shit!” he yelled, just as Nesta gasped and sent the water sloshing out of the tub, over the porcelain edges.

Cassian quickly shut the door behind him, closing them into the bathroom together, and put his face in his hands. “Sorry!”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” she yelled, and he could hear her pulling the plug.

“It’s important, I swear,” he said, his voice muffled by his hands.

“If the house isn’t on fire or Nyx isn’t dying, it’s not important,” she cried, ducking behind the walls of the tub.

“It’s pretty fucking important,” he said, turning to give her a semblance of privacy. He heard her stand up, water moving and quiet dripping, before her feet landed on the rug outside the tub. “The social worker is here.”

She froze and he dared a look back at her. Thankfully, she was wrapped in her towel again, one arm pushed through her robe. “The social worker is here? Now?” He nodded, and she looked at the nearly empty bottle of wine next to the glass on the small table by the tub. It was the second one she’d had that night. “But it’s late,” she protested.

“It’s a random, surprise visit,” he replied. “I left her outside, but-.”

“You didn’t let her in?” Nesta demanded, eyes widening. “Cauldron, Cass, that makes us look so guilty.”

He blinked. “Of what?”

“I don’t know,” she said, throwing her hands in the air. “But it doesn’t make us look good.”

“Well, I didn’t know what to do,” he sighed, exasperatedly. “I sure as hell wasn’t expecting to come up here and find you doing that.” He gestured to the tub.

Nesta’s cheeks heated. He figured his own were going to permanently be the shade of red they were now.

No, that was the last thing he ever expected to catch Nesta doing.

“Just… Go let her in and stall her while I get dressed,” she sighed, crossing her arms, waiting for him to leave.

Cassian hesitated, then nodded, and hurried back down the stairs. When he reopened the front door, Alis Birch stood there. Her expression was hard, intimidating.

Cassian could feel himself sweat.

He prayed that Nesta somehow sobered up and got the fuck downstairs, because there was no way in hell he could do this without her.

[missymurphy1985]

The Strip Club - Cillian Murphy X Female OC

A/N - Set in 2010, and I've used fictional names for his wife/children

A night out with his brother and closest friends doesn't end the way Cillian expects it to.

Warning - Smut

Taglist @queenshelby @margoo0 @being-worthy @peakyscillian @ntmynouis @janelongxox @elenavampire21 @noctvrnalmoth @ysmmsy @cloudofdisney @lauren-raines-x @namelesslosers @misscarolineshelby @screemqueen @cilleveryone

"I'm really not up for this Pad, can't we just go for a beer at the Anchor instead?" Cillian complained to his younger brother.

"You haven't been out with us in months, Dermot has had this all planned out for ages Cill, come on!" He rolled his eyes, knowing he couldn't get out of it, no matter what he said. Pulling his boots on, the two of them left the house, getting into the waiting taxi outside.

Walking into the strip club via the VIP entrance at the back, Cillian kept his head low and his brother and friends close around him so as not to be seen. Last thing he needed was photos in the press of him coming here!

"We're here for The Secret Show? Booked under Padraig Murphy?" Paddy told the bouncer, who checked everyone's ID and led them through a curtained off section at the back of the club. No cameras, no members of the public, completely private.

The boys sat around the stage area, a waitress coming over to take their drinks order. Once she returned with them, the lights dimmed and the music from the movie Burlesque began to play through the speakers. A single spotlight on a stool on the stage.

Cillian could feel his cheeks burning, he genuinely had never felt so uncomfortable in his life. He'd never been to a place like this, had always avoided them like the plague. The idea of a stripper had never appealed to him. Someone he'd never met, stripping to her underwear to please him and his drunk friends and even more cringe-worthy, his little brother, was not something he was remotely interested in.

The dancer came out, swaying her hips as she walked to the stool. Perching herself on it, legs crossed. Dressed in a black corset, short black skirt, fishnet stockings, black stiletto heels, and a black masquerade mask covering the top half of her face. Her long, silky brown hair flowing loosely down her back.

She was beautiful, there was no mistaking it. Cillian spotted Paddy nudging Dermot and whispering something in his ear and rolled his eyes. Probably something incredibly inappropriate about the young girl in front of them. He couldn't help feel sorry for her - lecherous old men creeping all over her as she danced for them, throwing money at her like she was a cheap prostitute...

The routine began. Cillian remained stoic, arms folded across his chest while the other lads cheered, louder each time an item of clothing was sexily removed from her lithe body. Her heels had been kicked off, her stockings slowly moving down her thighs, he couldn't watch any more. Standing, he made his way over to the bar to order another Guinness.

"I'd have thought you'd be over there enjoying the show with your friends?" A familiar voice from behind the bar startled him.

"Kate?"

"Long time no see," she smiled.

"Wow! Last person I expected to bump into tonight, how are you?"

"I'm okay, I see you're doing pretty well too." He nodded, his latest film, Inception, had been a box office smash. Professionally, at least, he could say he was doing well.

"Yeah, I guess so." His head lowered slightly, as Kate placed his pint in front of him.

"You guess? You okay?"

"What? Oh yeah, yeah I'm fine. Although, no disrespect? Kinda wish I was anywhere but here right now!" He chuckled. Kate smirked.

"I get off in 20minutes, fancy a walk?"

"You know what, I'll take you up on that Kate. I'll meet you outside?"

"Deal."

Thirty minutes later, after Cillian had made his excuses to his brother, he was smoking a cigarette walking along the canal with Kate at his side.

"Did you travel the world like you planned after school?" He asked, stubbing the cigarette out on the floor.

"I did, a full year of travelling before I went to university."

"Where did you go?" She told him about Australia, backpacking across Vietnam and Thailand, before heading to California for three months on a work visa.

"It was amazing. Truly wonderful. I met some great people over there. But all good things must come to an end, right?" She looked at him, and quickly looked away.

"I couldn't stand in the way of you living your dream Kate, you know that. We ended on grand terms though, right?" She linked her arm through his and squeezed it.

"We did. Promised we'd stay in touch though didn't we..."

"Yeah, I admit that was my fault. Tanya wasn't overly keen on you was she?" His ex wife. Or soon to be ex, anyway.

"I'm sorry about what happened Cill. Are you okay?"

"I'm getting there, you know? If she'd rather fuck her friend's husband instead of her own, then so be it," he smiled as much as he could.

"Well if it's any consolation, she's clearly lost her mind." She squeezed his arm again, and he found himself moving it so it was wrapped over her shoulders. He could feel her shivering and pulled her a little tighter against him.

They approached a small apartment block around 100yards further down the canal, and Kate dug her keys out of her handbag.

"Thanks for walking me home. It was good to see you again," she smiled, unhooking herself from him.

"Maybe I could - " he was interrupted by the door opening, and a younger girl stood in the doorway with a toddler in her arms.

"I'm so sorry Kate, I gave her Calpol an hour ago but I couldn't get her to settle..."

"Hey it's okay, I'll take her now. Get yourself home sis, I'll see you tomorrow yeah?" The young girl nodded, before nodding at Cillian and heading off down the street.

"Liane grew up!" Cillian laughed. The last time he'd seen her she'd still been in primary school. "And who's this little one?" He reached for the toddlers hand, grinning when she took his little finger and squeezed it.

"This is my daughter, Lily."

"Well Lily, you've certainly got your mama's eyes, haven't you?" Cillian glanced quickly at Kate's left hand.

"Her Dad isn't around Cill, I'm not married." He bent his head down. Busted.

"Then am I allowed in for a coffee at least?"

"If you don't mind sharing me with a teething baby, then yes, you can come in!" Kate led him through and fetched the teething granules from the cupboard and a teething ring from the freezer. Cillian offered to take Lily while she prepped a cup of warm milk for her.

Seeing him bounce her on his arm made her smile.

"Reminds me of Jack and Niamh when they were teething. Had to be moving around, constantly needed distraction. You okay if I take her a walk around after? See if I still have the magic touch?"

Kate nodded, and took her back to give her the nurofen, teething granules, followed by her sippy cup of warm milk. Once she'd finished, Cillian offered his arms out for her. She reached up for him, surprising Kate as she normally shied away from strangers, and off they went around the apartment. She watched from a distance as he took her around, showing her the ornaments on the window ledge, her reflection in the mirror, bouncing her up and down as she giggled lightly.

After around fifteen minutes, he made his way over to the radio in the kitchen, fiddling with the buttons before he found the station he was looking for. Soft, gentle classical music played through the speakers. He turned the volume down so it was barely audible, and leaned Lily into his shoulder, rocking her side to side gently. She nuzzled into his neck, Kate watching, smiling, as her baby's eyes grew heavier. She could feel past feelings coming back as she watched them. As much as she'd pretended losing him when he left University to pursue his acting career was fine and she had gotten over it, she never had. And now, bumping into him again all these years later, those feelings were coming back with some force.

Lily was snoring gently in his arms now, and Kate gently took her from him. Taking her into a small room at the back of the apartment. Coming out ten minutes later and closing the door as quietly as possible.

"I'd say you still have it Cill," she laughed, switching the baby monitor on in the corner of the living room where he sat on the sofa, two glasses of red wine in front of him. "You read my mind."

She sat next to him, clinking her glass with his.

"Did you meet her Dad while you were travelling?" He asked, after taking a sip.

"Yeah.. he erm.. he died not long ago. Cancer."

"Shit I'm sorry... Oh Kate that's awful..."

"No it's okay.. it was just a brief fling you know, we weren't together or anything. But it's sad for her. She'll never have that father figure. Just me and her against the world now." She felt his fingers brush her hair out of her face and gently down her cheek. Turning to him, she put her glass down on the table and turned to face him. He placed his down too, and moved closer.

Their faces centimetres apart, she could feel his warm breath against her own.

"I should probably go..."

"Again?" She whispered. She didn't want him to leave her again, as much as he had no intention of actually leaving. Their lips met, a kiss that was fifteen years overdue.

"I haven't spent a day not thinking about you, Kate..." He smiled, pulling away.

"You mean that, or are you just looking to get your end away?"

"Which is why I'm going to kiss you now, and go home. But I want to see you again. If I can?"

"And what if I don't want you to go home..." She kissed him again, this time straddling her legs over his thighs on the sofa. Even if this was a one night stand for him, she needed him, and he wasn't getting away this time.

"Then I'm not going home." His hips rose to meet hers, gyrating over his erection under his jeans, both of them removing each others clothes in record time until they were left in just their underwear.

"My god, you're incredible... Let me taste you..." He flipped her onto her back on the sofa, spreading her legs and placing gentle kisses along the inside of her thighs. His fingers teasing against her underwear, softly caressing her mound, before sliding a finger inside and groaning at how wet she was already.

"Cillian please...." She almost whimpered underneath him, her hips squirming against his lips and fingers. He pulled her underwear down her legs, and unceremoniously threw them across the room before moving his lips to her open slit, drawing his tongue slowly up and down her folds. Her hand flew to her mouth, stifling the cry of ecstacy within it so as not to wake Lily.

"You need to be quiet, you're not going to want me to stop once I've started Kate..." He smirked, before attacking her clit with his mouth, drawing it between his lips, rolling his tongue over it, increasing the pressure. His fingers pressing into her thighs, surely leaving bruises, as his mouth worked magic on her, her hips rocking against him.

"Oh god... That's so good, please don't stop..." Her words coming out in breathy little moans as her orgasm built quickly. Her fingers tangled in his hair, pulling him where she needed him. Two fingers suddenly entered her, making her gasp as they found the small bundle of nerves deep inside her, pushing and rubbing against it hard, matching his motions against her clit. Suddenly his mouth was off her, his fingers pumping into her, the palm of his hand pressed against her clit now as he moved his body up, his lips now pressed to hers. The taste of herself on him turned her on further, and she could feel herself letting go.

"Cum for me..." He whispered in her ear, sending her over the edge with a small cry into his shoulder, her body writhing against him. His fingers removed, replaced with his now solid cock as it pushed inside her quickly, picking up the same pace his hands were, hard and fast thrusts as he hooked her leg up under his elbow, forcing himself deeper.

Her nails scraped over his shoulders as she buried her face into his neck, frantic thrusts against each other, fifteen years of buried feelings coming out of them with a force that took her breath away.

"Yes... God yes..." Her moans into his neck drove him wild, her walls contracting around him pushing him closer. He could feel another orgasm building inside her, and angled his thrusts to hit that magical spot inside her perfectly.

"I'm so close Kate... So fucking close, you feel so good around me..."

"Cum inside me Cillian, please..." He grunted against her ear, nibbling on it gently as his hips pounded into her relentlessly now. Reaching his high, he flooded her, spilling inside her with a deep groan into her neck, sending her into her second orgasm, her legs wrapping tightly around his back pulling him even deeper inside her as she felt his cock pulsate, emptying into her.

He rested his forehead against hers, both of them panting, smiles forming as they looked into each others eyes.

"You're on the pill, right?" He chuckled, coming back to his senses.

"No." He lifted his head quickly.

"What?" She started to giggle, grinning at him.

"I'm on the coil, you're fine, don't worry!" He rested his head back into her neck, breathing a sigh of relief.

"Good to hear. I think three kids between us is enough for now, don't you?"

"What do you mean, for now?"

"I made the biggest mistake of my life leaving you Kate, I'm not planning on doing it again," his lips gently kissed the side of her neck, running the tip of his nose along her jawline softly.

He pulled out of her with a groan, taking her hand and leading her into her bedroom - he'd clocked which one it was earlier that evening.

Kate smiled watching him grow hard again, knowing not much sleeping was going to be done once they got in there...

[boldlyvoid]

Amoreena | chapter eleven

chapter eleven

main summary: Heaven is a real place and it's located exactly 14.6 miles away from the FBI, Quantico Headquarters. Off behind a small park, under a fantastical willow tree surrounded by wildflowers, in every colour young minds can imagine.

Don't forget, heaven also comes with angels.

Chapter Warnings: Y/N POV: details of what happened to Stephen, her grandmas cancer, and very detailed explanations of how babies are made (as biologically accurate and not very graphic as possible) this is an angsty trauma filled chapter that made me cry a lot just writing it so I'm sorry in advance

word count: 3K

from the beginning <3

June 13th, 2010

There’s a knock on her parent's door at 4 in the morning, Y/N’s sound asleep on the couch back at her grandma’s, awoken by said grandmother as she hears all the noise beyond the porch. There are 2 cop cars at the main house, worry starts to settle over them.

She puts on a pair of shoes, taking her grandmother's hand in hers as they begin the early morning trek up the road, anxiety seeping in deeper and deeper as they get closer to the lights illuminating their driveway.

Her father is talking to an officer on the steps, her mother is crying behind him. “We’re so sorry for your loss,” the officer says and Y/N’s blood runs cold, numbing her from the impending despair.

“What happened?” Her grandmother asks, rubbing a hand along Y/N’s back in preparation for the worst.

“Evan was in a car accident,” her father says softly, knowing that Y/N knows Stephen was with him tonight. She breaks away from her grandma and without thinking she’s right in the officer's face.

“Which one of them died?”

“Ma’am,” it was never a good way to start the worst conversation of her life with that word or in that tone. She felt like a '40s housewife learning her husband wasn’t coming home from the war, only he wasn’t even her husband yet.

He would have been on next Saturday.

“I’m sorry, Stephen was pronounced dead on the scene,” he says the worst sentence she’s ever heard, and now she’ll never forget it. “The passenger side took the worst of it, once again, I am so sorry for your loss.”

She’s surprisingly calm, managing to whisper, “thank you,” before she’s walking off into the field, pushing everyone's hands away as she travels as far as he feet will take her.

She ends up at the willow tree by the pond as soon as the sun is rising, it happened a lot earlier in June than the rest of the year. The birds singing, the wind blowing against the leaves making them carry a tune in harmony together. The world is still spinning, life is moving on, but how?

She sat there against the tree for a while, picking blades of grass and weaving them into a chain, soothing her brain as she makes a pattern. Giving her hands something to do so they stop going numb, it’s the only thing that really reminds her that she's real, that she’s controlling the twists and tucks, the shape and length and the fact that it was created at all.

Ending the life of the single blade of grass as she picks it, never to be whole again. Snatched from its happy place, where it grew loved and surrounded by other matching green strands as they blew in the wind.

Then she's pulling fist full after fist full of grass out of the dirt, her hands covered in mud as she shouts, throwing handfuls of grass and dirt towards the pond. The once blue water starting to turn cloudy; disrupted and upset with her anger as it swallows her weapons, but it doesn’t make her feel better. All she did was disrupt the earth, changing the way this once beautiful patch of land used to look. She couldn’t help but sob, realizing that she was like this field now and her beautiful green pasture was disrupted, overturned and ruined.

The life that flowed through her died along with the love of her life.

“Stephen was pronounced dead on the scene,” the words echo in her mind in a constant circle like she’s stuck in a tin can.

It starts to reverberate, getting louder and louder as the same 7 words all run around in her head. Bouncing off the walls, smacking her down again and again as she hears them over and over and over… she’s holding her hands on her ears, shaking back and forth, sobbing when she feels someone wrap their arms around her.

She doesn’t open her eyes, instead, she's rushing to push them off of her, struggling out of their grasp as she fights them. Finally, she loses, being held in her brother's embrace as they both cry, he barely has a scratch on him when she finally looks at him.

she’s never been physical in her life, but she punched him right in the face. Her twin brother, best friend in childhood and the person she’s known the longest in her life. He held her close in the womb, crying if they separated as soon as they were born, she loved him deeply and yet she hated him something fierce at that moment.

“It wasn’t my fault,” Evan cries, “we were stopped at a red light, Y/N!”

“I don’t care! He was supposed to be my husband!” She swats at him, smacking his arms again and again as he tries to hold them back, holding her so tightly as she basically screams bloody murder in the field.

All she can see is his face, her beautiful happy Stephen. The first time she ever saw him, standing under a street light in Boston, papers in his hand and wonder in his eyes. The way he looked up at her, the glow of the light making a halo glow over his head.

She should have known he was too good to be true. Always destined to return to the heavens, he was truly angelic with his big emerald eyes that were only the tiniest bit yellow on the edge of the pupil, the way her name sounded on his tongue like a blessing coming true.

They buried him 2 days after what was supposed to be their wedding. Disrupting another beautiful patch of earth to hide him away forever, she placed a single rose on his casket, she never said goodbye and she never planned to.

“See you later, superstar,” she patted the glossy black box once last time before sending him down into the earth.

—

September 2012

This fucking willow tree and 7-word sentences…

“What do you mean you have cancer?”

Her grandma let a tear slip from her eye, “I’ve got colon cancer, honey, the doctors said I have another 2 years, maybe 5 if I'm lucky.”

Every time someone sat beside her in this one spot, she learned the worst information in the world. Sure Evan didn’t mean to kill Stephen, doesn’t mean she’s talked to him at all in the last year. with Grandpa dying only a few summers back, her favourite house cat now buried in the yard, she can’t lose her grandma now too.

“Okay,” she starts to plan in her head, her eyes about ready to jump out of her skull as she tries to think of all the things they need to do before it’s too late, “let’s go to England, let’s blow my bank account, you can’t leave me without going to England with me? We were supposed to get tea and pretend to be the queen and princess?”

She couldn’t stop the tears, her whole body heaving as she sobbed into her grandma’s dress, “you can’t leave me too!”

“Your grandfather and I have a fund for you, you were the last baby we got to raise when your mom went back to work, I want you to use it for that baby we talked about,” her grandma’s voice is barely a whisper, softly getting the words over her vocal cords as the tears joined Y/N’s on her dress.

Without another word, she took her hand and walked home, getting in her car together and heading to the closest fertility clinic, she booked her first insemination for February, pre-paying for a round of IVF hormones and everything to start in January, she had 3 months to plan.

Finding the perfect donor was the only hard part. She had 3 different books to choose from with all the clinics in the DC area sharing 1 sperm bank. She finally made her decision 3 weeks before they were set to get her pregnant when they updated the books.

Sample 2319, male 30’s, healthy, high IQ, 6’1, brown eyes, brown hair (curly). “Sounds a lot like Stephen,” her grandma agreed, saying his name for the first time in over 2 years, she knew this was her guy.

—

June 14th, 2021

Peeing on a stick shouldn’t be as terrifying as it is.

She hasn’t been this nervous since the first time Dr. Collins inseminated her. Laying back on the table at a weird elevation to make sure she got pregnant, her whole body tense as she thought of the possibilities of her future child.

Sample 2319 sitting in a cup not too far from her face as she prepared for a man she barely knew to put the semen of another man she didn’t know, inside her. She only picked this guy cause he was smart and tall, no health issues to report and the number made her think of Monsters Inc.

In her mind, she made a baby with a man she named mike wazowski, not knowing his real name was actually Spencer Reid and he was only just down the road at Quantico the whole time. It was the weirdest day ever, and then it became the second-best day of her life

Nothing could top holding her baby in her arms for the first time. Her grandma and mother beside her as they all cried, the perfect purple baby screaming on her chest as they tried to wipe the white gunk off her tiny body. her sweet little coos, seeing her swollen eyes open for the first time, the silence that overcame her as they made their first introduction to each other. Her little person, the love of her life, her wonderful Amoreena.

Her cry was perfect, like music to her ears she wanted to hear her little voice as long as she could because it meant she was alive and real. She was healthy and beautiful and the most perfect bundle of joy she could have ever made.

Now she was hiding in the bathroom to pee on a stick while her 7-year-old had breakfast in the next room. Oh, how times changed, but one thing remained the same, she was finding out alone again. Only this time she meant for that to happen, it was exactly 4 days since her period was supposed to start and it wasn’t there, neither was Spencer.

He had something to do that morning, but he’d be meeting them later that afternoon, it was Amoreena’s last day of kindergarten after all. She wanted time to either enjoy the thought of having another baby or cry in peace because for once it didn’t work, giving her a week to recover before trying again.

Amoreena was a miracle, the easiest IVF baby they ever made at the clinic, apparently. If she was pregnant this easily again it was a sure sign that he was Amoreena’s father too, only he could get her knocked up while not even trying.

She didn’t remember pregnancy tests taking this long, she flipped it over and walked out of the room, unable to think of anything else while she waited for 3 minutes to pass. Amoreena noticed she was being weird, studying her mother's movements as she paced the hall outside of the bathroom door.

“What are you doing?” She asked, curious as ever as she twirled lightly in her new princess dress.

“Can you keep a secret?”

“Always mom, I’m the best secret keeper in all the kingdom, remember?” Amoreena smiled, holding onto her leg as she stared up at her.

“Your dad and I tried to make a baby,” she whispered, petting the litter hairs on her forehead as Amoreena looked up at her, her first little baby. “I’m waiting to find out if it worked, but we can’t tell anyone in case it didn’t, okay?”

Amoreena’s eyes were wider than she’s ever seen them, her mouth opened slowly as she understood the words in her mind. She didn’t look happy or surprised, nor upset or worried. She looked confused, “how?”

She laughed then, shaking her head as she lifted Amoreena into her arms, she would have to know soon anyway. “You know how every month mummy has a bad week where she bleeds and her tummy hurts?”

“Yeah?”

“When people with our parts grow up they make little tiny eggs but we don’t lay them like chickens do, they stay inside our tummies and wait to become babies and if they don’t we have a period and release all the stuff our bodies saved up that month to make a little person. You’ll have one soon too in a few years, probably when you're 12 like I was, and when people with a penis get old enough they’re able to help us make the babies like roosters help the chickens. Our bodies are really special and make some really cool things when we try to,” she explained it in the most simple farmhouse way she could.

“Like when the goats are all born in the spring and they just show up?” She tried to clarify, understanding it at the basic level.

“Kinda, you’ve seen the photos of you in my tummy and how aunty Shannon’s stomach grew when she had your cousins, I’ll get really big like that too if I’m pregnant, the baby will grow for 9 long months till they’re nice and healthy and then we’ll have another person in the family,” she couldn’t help but smile as she thought about it.

“How do we find out?”

She opened the bathroom door then and carried Amoreena inside, setting her down on the sink and pointing at the upside-down test stick. “We create a special hormone when we’re pregnant, it’s something that can be detected in our pee!” she explained it like it was magic, watching her get excited instead of grossed out.

“So I peed on that stick and if it has 2 lines I have a baby in my tummy, if not then your dad and I have to try again.”

Amoreena picked up the test and looked at it, keeping it out of her mothers sight as she did so, “there’s two lines,” she lit up waving the stick lightly as she squealed.

Y/N wrapped her up in her arms and twirled her around, “you’re gonna be the best big sister ever!”

“How do we tell dad?” Amoreena’s soft voice whispered in her ear as she snuggled into her shoulder.

“I have an idea,” she whispered back before carrying her back into the kitchen.

Her All About Me project was sitting on the counter, ready for Y/N to drive her into school today. She set Amoreena down on the floor to watch her as she took some tape and taped the stick to the bottom corner of the project. “Pass me the marker, please?”

Amoreena ran to the counter to get it, coming back and placing it in her mom's hand before leaning in to watch what she was writing.

“I’m going to be a big sister sometime next February!” Amoreena read the words as her mother wrote them, unbelievably excited.

“Your dad can read that at the ceremony tonight!”

“I thought you said we can’t tell anyone yet?” Amoreena questioned her, like always.

“Your teacher can know, the other kids won't know what it means, it’s just important Spencer sees it, but we will wait to tell nanny and poppy, okay? Sometimes the babies don’t always stay, it’s sad so we keep it a secret until they’ve got a tiny little heartbeat in there,” she didn’t want to scare her, but she knew it was always a possibility.

“Then we try again,” Amoreena smiled, “It’ll be easier now that you don’t need Dr. Collins to help you, how did you even make me without Spencer?” She didn't use his real name often anymore, only in times when she wasn't referring to him as her father.

She sat down then, pulling Amoreena into her lap so she could hold her while she thought of the right words. “So we have eggs, but people with penises have something called sperm. When adults, and I mean adults you have to be at least 25 to have a baby it’s the rules,” she teased her slightly, ticking her arms.

“Adults have sex, babies are made when someone with a vagina and someone with a penis get together. But when you don’t have a partner with a penis to help, sometimes they’ll donate their sperm to the doctor's offices to help people like me make their perfect little families all by themselves.”

“Interesting,” is all her little mind can say, she has learned so much in one day, Y/N was surprised she was still listening and surprisingly still for once. “Is it a boy or a girl?”

“We won't know for a while,” she smiled, holding Amoreena closer to her chest. “How do you feel about all this?”

Amoreena was quiet as she thought about it, “is Spencer the guy who gave the doctors the sperm for me?”

“We think so, but we don’t know, why?”

Amoreena looked at her softly, “it wouldn’t be fair, I know he said I don’t need a father but why do they get to have him for both?”

“I think Spencer is your father, you’re just as smart and wonderful as he is, there’s no doubt in my mind that you’re his baby too. but if you want to know if he isn't, when you turn 18 the doctors will tell you who it is, it's completely up to you to find out,” she whispered, the tears starting to fall down her cheeks as Amoreena tried to wipe them away.

"I like thinking he's my father, so he is." Her mind worked in the most wonderful way. Y/N couldn’t help but hold her close as she lightly cried, “I had a dream yesterday that I had 8 sisters,” her voice was so soft and innocent as her tiny hand cupped her mother's cheek.

She gasped lightly at the words, remembering Spencer’s panic in the middle of the night last night, how scared he was to leave her all alone with 9 babies and no one to help her. They knew something that she didn’t yet, cheaper by the dozen seemed less like a dream and more like a prophecy.

“I’m so happy to make your dream come true,” Y/N whispered, “I promise I’m happy, the baby just makes me emotional.”

Amoreena placed her hand on her tummy then, “I love you, baby.”

Y/N stuck her tummy out as far as she could, “I love you too, big sister,” she said in a funny voice to make Amoreena laugh, leaning back in the chair as she held her.

And just like that, getting pregnant with Amoreena was bumped into 3rd place for the best day of her life. Sharing the moment with her and no one else was perfect, insuring she knew that she was just as important moving forward as the little person she was growing this time.

tag list: @shemarmooresfedora @spencers-dria @spookyspence @reidsfish @manuosorioh @mochionly @samuel-de-champagne-problems @jswessie187 let me know if you would like to be added as well!!

[blu-joons]

When You Support Them During The House Party Comeback ~ Super Junior Reaction

Leeteuk:

Your expression softened the moment you walked into the dressing room and saw Jeongsu sat with his head in his hands. “Everything going alright?” You asked him, noticing the chaos of the other members who sat around, frowning as he looked across at you.

“I’m just doing a lot of thinking,” he admitted, encouraging you to take a seat beside him.

You nodded understandingly, studying his face closely, “anything that you happen to be thinking about particularly?”

“Just how lucky I am,” he whispered, not wanting any of the others to here. “I never imagined when we released Twins that I’d still be sitting in dressing rooms fifteen years later preparing to perform on music shows still.”

Whilst Jeongsu had always been one to reflect as the leader, you were well aware that their recent anniversary had triggered a new wave of feelings in him. “It’s nice to see you perform without the rookie pressure these days.”

“I’m definitely starting to feel my age,” he chuckled in response to you, “one run through of House Party and I’m ready for a nap.”

“Just at least try and look young in front of the cameras,” you teased.

His hand reached out to push against your arm, “as long as everyone else still thinks I’m young, you can be the one to deal with my old bones at the end of the show.”

“You know that I’ll take the best care of you!”

Heechul:

As you walked in on Heechul running through his rap once again, a proud smile graced your face, noticing his eyes fall on you once he’d finished. “Sounds good,” you complimented, walking into his open arms as he reached out for you to approach him.

“I wish that I could do more,” he admitted, kissing softly against the top of your head.

Your brows furrowed instantly, “you do as much as you can, and I know the fans and the boys all appreciate it too.”

“At times I wonder how different things could be if I was able to perform on the stage though,” he sighed, “it still never quite feels the same only being able to spend a few moments on stage, it wasn’t supposed to be the way.”

You reached across and placed your hand into his tightly, “just being on the stage is huge for you, whilst you can’t change the years you’ve spent on the side-line, you’re here for this comeback, which I’m sure means the world.”

“It does feel nice to be around the group for a comeback again,” he confessed, taking a quick look around the room.

“And I know they’re all happy to see you too,” you noted.

His head nodded proudly, “I don’t want to get myself upset, I know that I should just be thankful for the chance to even be on the stage right now.”

“There’s nothing wrong with getting upset, it’s understandable.”

Yesung:

As Jungwoon placed his camera in front of you yet again, your hand reached out and pushed it away to face the members beside you. “I’m not a part of this,” you reminded him, pointing out to the carnage that was surrounding you both instead.

“You’re here supporting me, it’s a big deal,” he replied, turning his camera back around again.

Your eyes rolled at how persistent he was, “at least take some pictures of the group so that you can remember this time.”

“We’ve been together for weeks, I’ve got plenty with those losers,” he laughed, “but it’s my first time having you at one of our music shows, so I want the chance to take a photograph of you to remember this time.”

Despite your protests, you soon ended up smiling for Jungwoon to take a photo of you, only to be quickly interrupted by Hyukjae by your side. “I don’t remember asking for a group photo to be taken of us all.”

“I just want a picture of Y/N,” Jungwoon complained, pushing Hyukjae to one side, “my whole album is full of your ugly face.”

“I’ll have you know my face is very photogenic,” Hyukjae argued.

Jungwoon’s head shook, taking your hand and dragging you to somewhere where he could get you alone. “I’m determined to get a picture of you today.”

“Good luck with all of these guys around us.”

Shindong:

Your hand came over your mouth as you spotted Donghee miming against the mirror. It didn’t disguise the small squeal that came from you. “Sorry,” you whispered as his head snapped around to see where the noise had come from, grinning when he saw you.

“I’m just trying to create the perfect ending fairy,” he announced to you.

Your eyes rolled at his smile, “just smile and you’ll be perfect. What exactly are you trying to come up with for it anyway?”

“I thought I’d try and mime,” he spoke, repeating his actions once again so you could see what he was working on. “It’s something I’ve not seen anyone do before, even SHINee didn’t come up with something like that.”

You couldn’t help but be impressed not only by his creative mind, but also his high skills when it came to dance. “I think the fans will love it, and I know that you’re enjoying yourself whilst you’re creating it too.”

“I’ve definitely missed performing live,” he smiled, “I’ve just got the camera block to make sure that this looks as good as I want it too.”

“From what I’ve seen, it’ll be brilliant on the show,” you hummed.

His arm moved to wrap tightly around your shoulders, “if nothing else, knowing that I’ve put a smile on your face by doing it has already made it a good decision to make.”

“Everyone will smile watching you, I just know it.”

Eunhyuk:

His eyes fell on you as soon as you found him hidden away in the corridor of M Countdown, pausing his phone as you approached him. “You know the routine Hyukjae, there’s no need to worry,” you quickly tried to comfort him before he started again.

“I just want to make sure everything is perfect,” he frowned, letting go of a sigh.

You walked over and took a hold of his hands before he could continue, “you’ve danced for years, as soon as you step on the stage, you’ll be fine.”

“I know,” he frowned, leaning forwards to rest his forehead against yours, “I’ve been going through it so much with everyone else that suddenly it just feels like I’m the one who has no idea how the routine goes anymore.”

Your hand moved up to cup the side of his face, “why don’t you go over it once, with me? If you’re perfect, then you stop practicing, and if you make a mistake, you still stop practicing because you know you’ll be fine.”

“How’s that fair?” He laughed, “either way you end up getting your way, but what happens if I truly make a mistake Y/N?”

“I know that you won’t, that’s why,” you assured him.

His smile grew as you squeezed his hands, “I don’t know how you manage to make me feel better so often when I’m so full of self-doubt. How do you do it Y/N?”

“Because I know exactly what you’re like Hyukjae.”

Siwon:

Sweaty arms wrapped around you as soon as Siwon made his way off the stage, pressing a soft kiss against your forehead. “You’re gross,” you remarked, trying to wriggle out of his grip, but his strong arms kept you against his chest despite your protests.

“You should be telling me you’re proud of me,” he quickly retaliated against you.

Your eyes rolled, “you know that I’m proud of you, but not when you’re stuck to me, at least go and get a shower first.”

“You don’t normally complain like this,” he teased, unwrapping himself from around you as a member of staff began to remove his mic pack. “What did you think of the stage. anyway, did you enjoy being a part of our House Party.”

Without a thought, your head nodded excitedly. “You were centre a lot, but you absolutely killed it. Sometimes I watch you and I still feel like I’m watching you back in 2010, the last decade all feels like a blur.”

“My body is certainly starting to feel it,” he grinned, grabbing onto your shoulder, “can you believe we always used to perform at that intensity?”

“I reckon you still could if you tried hard enough,” you wisely responded.

Siwon’s eyebrows raised in surprise at your sudden remark, “this is my workplace, I can’t believe you’d even dare try and suggest such things right now.”

“I have no idea what you could be talking about.”

Donghae:

You sat back as Donghae moved around the dressing room, making sure to record as much as he could for his vlog. “Have you got any footage of yourself?” You asked as he passed you by again to record the mountain of food that was on the table.

“The fans don’t want to see me,” Donghae argued, keeping his camera out of your reach.

Your head shook, trying to grab onto it, “let me record you for a minute, you’ve at least got to show off that ponytail you’re rocking.”

“The fans have already seen my hair,” he tried to argue, but it was too late, you finally had a hold of his camera and quickly started following him around. “Are you really going to be alright with your voice being in the vlog.”

Your head nodded as you moved with him around the dressing room, “I’m sure the fans will thank me for filling them up on Donghae content, don’t you worry. Now, tell the fans a bit about what you’re doing right now.”

“I’m finding the right bandana to go with my outfit,” he informed the camera, holding up the selection that he’d picked out.

“What about the one that I bought for you?” You quickly suggested.

Donghae reached in and pulled out the black and white bandana you bought when he first started growing his hair out. “I was leaning towards this one anyway.”

“I know you were, because I bought it for you.”

Ryeowook:

His silence instantly concerned you as you walked back into the dressing room once everyone was changed and prepared for the comeback stage. “Feeling good?” You asked Ryeowook, desperate to get even a couple of words out of him to reassure yourself.

“It’s been a little while, even if there’s no audience,” he admitted in response.

Your head nodded, “I’m sure it feels strange without Elf there to support you guys, but they’ll all be watching, around the world.”

“I still feel like a rookie,” he sighed, brushing his hand gently through his fringe, “I look around and see all these younger singers, and that still feels like me, but it’s not. How have our fans stuck around with us for so many years?”

Your smile softened, taking a tight hold of his hand, “your fans have stuck around because you guys are amazing. Even if you’re far from rookies, you still have that rookie mind that makes people always fall in love with you.”

“I feel a lot better after talking to you,” he whispered, straightening out his suit jacket, “will you be there watching?”

“Of course, just have a little confidence in yourself,” you smiled.

His head nodded, unable to hide the growing smile that developed on his face, “I know what you’re trying to do, but I’m confident of putting on a good show.

“That’s what I love to hear from you.”

Kyuhyun:

The flash of a light coming across your face yet again caused you to groan, your eyes flickered up and pushed Kyuhyun to one side. “You’ll drain the battery of that before you get on the stage,” you sighed, knowing how bad of an idea it was to trust him with a prop.

“They’ve got hundreds of lights for Burn the Floor,” he smugly teased back at you.

Your eyes rolled, trying to reach out to take the light, “I’ll be blind before I get to see you guys perform the song too.”

“So dramatic,” Kyuhyun scoffed, placing the light down on the table. “If you play your cards right, I could try and steal one of these to take back to the dorm and give you your own private performance of the song.”

Your hand pushed against his shoulder, sending him stumbling back, “why would I want to watch it at the dorm when I could watch all of you here, live? And the proper dancers are here then, I don’t have to watch you.

“How dare you,” he chuckled, stepping back towards you, “do you not remember I was a lead dancer in Bonamana all those years ago?”

“Many years ago,” you laughed, “I think a lot has changed since then.”

Kyuhyun’s head shook, picking the light back up, “you just wait, the performance I give you simply won’t compare to what you’ll see on the stage in a while.”

“It won’t compare, but not in a good way Kyu.”

---

Masterlist

[qedavathegrey]

Hey, i've checked out that album by M.I.A. you mentioned. Do you want to elaborate on why you like it? Just curious from a musical standpoint

Oh yes, yes I do.

First and foremost, I think the entire album is an exploration of sound: from the feverish, whomping drums to the wailing sirens to power tools whirring. The lyrics are frequently distorted or overpowered to the point they become nearly indecipherable (as if being "silenced") while simultaneously relying so much on phonetics that voice and language becomes only noise. Her vocal performance directly reflects this same dichotomy between low, distorted hammering and high, sharp, metallic/nasal in a way that is nothing short of masterful.

Thematically and sonically, she builds on (and I think perfects) what she was doing on both Arular and Kala, managing to finally bring together the facets of herself into something that's cohesive (if at times overwhelming). The album is feverish, it's angry, but not without moments of tenderness and realization. I think you also get a sense of how tired and how frustrated with the state of the world she is. And probably how she's been portrayed. This was 2010, after all. In this regard, the album feels extremely personal, but the journey itself is universal: while not each of us understands what it means to be a political refugee, we all know what it's like to be frustrated, to be mad, to be tired of injustice and tyranny. And to an extent, the album is a rallying cry. But it also teaches us to find and hold what peace we can in a world that is fucked. Very punk rock, I think, but the album pushes beyond genre.

I also took the liberty of breaking the album down into sections that I think touch on the message of the album as a whole.

Let's go through it:

The Introduction

THE MESSAGE

STEPPIN UP

As with any good introduction, these set the scene: THE MESSAGE reminds us that we live in a society, basically. And that we are not immune to propaganda. It introduces the... well, the message and the message is: we're going to talk about shit, so strap in. STEPPIN UP introduces the artist herself. Both are noisy, loud, abrasive, foreboding. The first time I ever heard STEPPIN UP I was taken aback, shocked, confused: I'd never heard anything like it and I was put off. I think that's the correct response, especially for a first listen. This album is meant to challenge.

Feverish Club Bangers

XXXO

TEQKILLA

"Okay, this sounds like music again. I can get into this." But something's not quite right, is it? The lights are too bright, the music is too loud. And what is that weird noise? Why do I feel like I might throw up? Am I in danger? Yes. Yes, you are. Things are not as they seem.

Your Life is Lie

LOVALOT

STORY TO BE TOLD

Sorry, were you getting comfortable in your delusion? Too bad. Let me introduce you to Western Imperialism & Other Concepts. It's time you actually think about what you've been spoon fed for years. It's time for some perspective and it's time to take some responsibility. Mad? Good. Me too.

Try Not to Get Too Caught Up, Tho lol

IT TAKES A MUSCLE

IT IZ WHAT IT IZ

The world's fucked, but there are also some good things. Small as they may be, cherish them. Shit is heavy and it's easy to get weighed down, easy to get depressed, to want to give up, give in. You could do that or you could...

Get Pissed, Get Even

BORN FREE

MEDS AND FEDS

On second thought, fuck them. "I was BOOOOOORN FREE!" And I'm tired of being lied to and getting fucked over. I'm tired of all this fake shit meant to separate and divide us. I'm tired, I'm mad, I'm fed up and ready to fuck shit up because "I just give a damn" about people. PEOPLE > NATIONS/BORDERS.

Realizations Have Been Had, I Need A Minute

TELL ME WHY

SPACE

Now you're painfully aware of things, but no one else seems to be. You understand it's because they haven't been shown, but you also have to face the fact that you can lead a horse to water, but they'd rather stay crusty. It's annoying, I know. Take a second to collect yourself.

"Not This Bitch Again"

INTERNET CONNECTION

ILLYGIRL

You won't shut up about what you've learned and you've now been formally designated A Menace™. Ignorance would have been the easier choice, but it's too late for that.

A Menace in Isolation

BELIEVER

CAPS LOCK

More bad news: turns out there are few things as isolating as knowing the truth. No one wants to hear it, everyone thinks you're too mad, you're too "political." People don't like being notified when they're being racist or xenophobic, no matter how nicely you try to say it. Change is hard and no one wants to put in the effort. Good luck, though. Bye.

I will emphasize that I don't always agree with MIA (the person), but she certainly captured the message and the journey on this one. As I said, she's telling her story, but I think it's something many can relate to: the anger, the frustration, the hope and isolation of knowledge. And the pervasiveness of injustice.