#toxic lessons

[girltalkcollectives]

The Dark Side of ‘Boys Will Be Boys’

I still remember sitting in the principal’s office, knees scraped and uniform dirty, trying not to cry while explaining why I pushed Tommy back on the playground. For weeks, he’d been pulling my hair, chasing me during recess, and ruining my art projects. That day, he’d grabbed my favorite hair ribbon and thrown it in a puddle.

The principal’s response? A warm smile and those words I’ll never forget: “Oh sweetie, he’s only mean because he likes you! Boys don’t know how to show their feelings at this age.”

I was six. That was my first lesson that my discomfort was less important than a boy’s feelings.

And before anyone jumps in with “boys will be boys” or “it’s not that serious” — let me tell you how that lesson played out over the years.

By fourth grade, I stopped telling teachers when boys would snap my bra strap because I was tired of hearing “that means they think you’re pretty!” I learned to be flattered by harassment before I even knew what harassment was.

In middle school, when Jake wouldn’t stop following me between classes and grabbing my backpack, my own mom said, “He probably just doesn’t know how to tell you he has a crush!” So I stopped mentioning it, even when it escalated to him “accidentally” running into me at my locker every day.

“But they’re just boys!” people say. “Stop making everything so serious!”

Okay, let’s talk about how “just boys” grow up.

That same Jake who learned his harassment was “just showing affection”? By high school, he was the guy who wouldn’t take no for an answer at parties. But hey, he “just liked me,” right?

Tommy from first grade? Last I heard, he had multiple harassment complaints at his college. But I bet someone’s still saying “boys will be boys!”

And me? I spent years unlearning the idea that love is supposed to hurt. Years figuring out that someone making me uncomfortable isn’t a compliment. Years understanding that my instincts were right all along — I wasn’t being “too sensitive,” he wasn’t being “sweet,” it wasn’t “just a crush.”

To everyone saying “it’s not that deep” or “stop overthinking” — you’re part of the problem. Because while you’re dismissing these “little” incidents, girls are learning lessons that follow them into adulthood:

When my first boyfriend threw my phone because he was “passionate?” I heard: “He’s only mean because he likes you!”

When my college classmate wouldn’t stop asking me out after ten nos? I remembered: “He just doesn’t know how to show his feelings!”

These aren’t separate issues. They’re the same lesson playing out over years.

We’re teaching girls that love looks like discomfort.

That harassment means attraction.

That their boundaries matter less than boys’ feelings.

That being hurt means being loved.

And to those saying “not all boys are like that” — you’re missing the point. It’s not about all boys. It’s about what we teach ALL girls about what they should accept.

Because that six-year-old girl with scraped knees grew up to be a woman who had to relearn what love actually looks like. Who had to realize that real love doesn’t pull your hair, push you down, or make you cry.

So no, it’s not “just boys being boys.”

It’s not “making a big deal out of nothing.”

It’s not “too serious.”

It’s the first chapter in a book too many girls have to unwrite later.

And maybe if we stopped telling little girls that harassment means love, we’d have fewer women trying to convince themselves that abuse means passion.

[selfhealingmoments]

[ceaselessims]

the fact that martin blackwood haters exist is so confusing to me like he's a bitch who moans and complains but also sets fire to things for fun and successfully manipulates avatars and gets jealous about the avatar of death waking up his boyfriend up from a coma and is both jon's staunchest defender and not afraid to call out jon's bullshit

[elainiisms]

[fellthemarvelous]

Holy forking shirtballs

I'm choosing violence today. I started this on Twitter, but I'm going to finish my thoughts here like I always do.

But what really blows my mind the most is the way that people look at Aziraphale's "choice" at the end, as if he had one to fucking begin with.

I'm sorry, but Aziraphale knows how messed up Heaven is. He told The Metatron, more than once, that he did not want to go back to Heaven! We can debate what each of us means by "choice" all night because my "choice" and your "choice" might be two different concepts. He could have been strong armed by The Metatron or he could have looked at where things were headed and realized he had no choice but to intervene himself.

You need to ask yourself what Aziraphale has a moral imperative to do.

What do we owe to each other?

Seriously, if you have not watched The Good Place, I recommend you go and watch it, because it absolutely shaped how I've viewed Good Omens 2 since its release.

My levels of frustration with the bad faith mischaracterizations of Aziraphale are off the charts. If you are blaming him for everything, implying that he should have to grovel and that Crowley has a right to hurt him back, you have missed the point of Good Omens entirely.

I defend Aziraphale, but I don't think one of them is more right or wrong than the other. They're equals. They're a group of the two of them, acting and reacting to each other throughout history. They're Alpha Centauri.

I cannot even begin to explain how fucking devastated I felt when Crowley said these words, knowing he was fighting a losing battle. What he said took a lot of courage because he's finally admitting something they've both been too scared to publicly define for 6,000 years. Crowley has had to spend so long with a rough outer shell because he fell and had to hide all of his softness.

The look on his face was one of pure joy when he created that nebula, but I think the fact that he got to share that moment with Aziraphale is what has always stuck with him.

So yeah, seeing Crowley with a broken heart at the end of "Every Day" was sad for me as well.

My brain still lives here!!

But Neil has said that Good Omens 3 is not quiet, gentle, or romantic. I imagine it's going to be more like the the first season in which they are not central to the plot. GO2 will help us make sense of how they ended up where they are when we see the bigger picture with all the other major players involved with GO3.

Aziraphale was still a soldier and accidentally got himself discorporated in his own magic circle in season one. He had a platoon waiting on him to start Armageddon, and he deserted them to go save the world with Crowley instead. Aziraphale is a deserter. I need everyone to remember that. He yeeted himself out of Heaven and sought out Crowley before even locating a body just to warn him about what was happening so they could try to save the world together.

I can't help but think of 1941 and that magician who had been arrested for being a deserter.

Aziraphale disobeyed orders. That took courage but it branded him as a traitor against Heaven. They tried to destroy him for it the same way Hell tried to destroy Crowley for his part in stopping the war.

Aziraphale and Job are the only characters we have seen interacting with God directly. Aziraphale has spoken to God before and he is determined to do so again.

Aziraphale knows Heaven is flawed, but he also knows it's supposed to be good. He wants it to be good. He does not like the way the system works and he wants to make a difference. (And I'm pretty sure he's also determined to talk to God without being intercepted by The Metatron.)

Since when is that a bad thing? I don't get it. And I've had this discussion before.

If you need to change the system by burning the old one to the ground, it's still change, and we don't know what Aziraphale has planned.

It seems to me that people just want to see Aziraphale fail because it would punish him for returning to Heaven instead of running off with Crowley.

Some of y'all take everything Aziraphale says or does and twist those things into malicious anti-Crowley actions because you think the only reason Aziraphale exists is to make Crowley happy, and if he isn't thinking only about Crowley then he's doing something wrong.

Aziraphale does not exist as a plot device to further Crowley's character. They come as a pair. They've been learning from each other for 6,000 years. Crowley challenges Aziraphale just as much as Aziraphale challenges him.

You can be mad at Aziraphale all you want, but villainizing him is gross. Defending Crowley does not mean you have to tear down and mischaracterize Aziraphale anymore than defending Aziraphale means you have to tear down Crowley (but I don't see that happen on nearly the same level it happens to Aziraphale). Stop painting Aziraphale as an abusive partner, for fuck sake.

Aziraphale knows there are flaws in the system. He wants to make a difference, and since he has seen that Gabriel can change, then maybe the whole system can. He has to at least try, and if he can succeed then maybe he and Crowley can stop hiding and finally be together without having to look over their shoulders all the time.

Why is that a bad thing? He's just as protective of Crowley as Crowley is of him!

But don't forget that Aziraphale's wing was covering Adam and Eve too. As much as a wants to protect Crowley, he has a moral imperative to keep humanity safe as well.

He sent Adam and Eve into the unknown with a flaming sword so they could protect themselves.

As much as he wants to be with Crowley, there are 8 billion people on Earth heading toward the Second Coming and Judgment Day. They'll work together to fight alongside humanity in the end. Aziraphale should not have to humiliate himself just to earn Crowley's forgiveness. That's a rancid notion.

The Resurrectionist was a whole ass moral dilemma for Aziraphale, which is why I brought up The Good Place earlier, but that's a post for a different time.

Aziraphale has his own motivations and they're just as important as Crowley's, and they don't have to be chalked up to Aziraphale being the bad guy. Weird, I know, but shades of grey.

"To the world."

[reality-detective]

If you wonder why hamburgers don't taste the same, here's a short history lesson from 11 years ago 🤔

[may-lutlone]

accomplice shooting lessons 💖✨💖✨💖

am I using this as an excuse not to study for many exams I have this week? sure.

[toskarin]

miss Toskarin you’re not convincing me that Skyrim was the ruin of all western rpgs. In fact you’re convincing me that the issues began with oblivion.

I'd better be careful or else I might convince you of my less loudly-held beliefs

[succulentsiren]

Judgements from others is never personal, so stop treating it like it is.

Some people may think you’re too skinny or too fat, too wild or too boring, or too loud or too quiet. But it is only if you agree with their judgements, that it’ll become your truth.

Don’t torture yourself by associating with something that has nothing to do with you because when you do identify with someone else’s lowly judgements of you, you are agreeing to a mindset of self-sabotage.

People who take judgments personally, constantly live in paralyzing fear of what others think of them, which is a waste of time because they’ll be judged anyways — Understand that people’s judgements are not something to be internalized, neither something to be controlled. It is simply just something not to align or identify yourself with.

Make the choice to live your best life regardless of outside judgments. Remain unbothered, self-focused and self-validated. Don’t let what others think define you. Define yourself. Have the mindset of, “I’m not who you say I am. I am that I am.”

Stop replaying painful memories — of when people aimed their judgements towards you, in order to plant guilt and insecurities into your psyche. Free yourself by detaching and disassociating. Let these memories go and understand that it was never personal anyways. (Spiteful people always project their own insecurities unto others because they want you to be as miserly as they are).

You can either choose to disassociate and not take judgements personally, or you can cause yourself pain by identifying with the judgements and hurtful opinions of others.

The choice is yours.

[classycookiexo]

[nico-di-genova]

A Lesson in Braking

Chapter 2

Read on Archive of Our Own

A/N: hehehehehehe (my only thoughts while writing this fic).

Warnings: NSFW and a brief mention of anti-harm dorm furniture.

“I fucked an old guy last night,” Lance says to Esteban, when he’s lying on the floor of his dorm room, head resting on the Spider-Man pillow he bought Esteban for his birthday last spring. “Behind the Barnes & Noble. Hand job.”

Esteban hums. He’s  sitting at his desk that he’s moved to slot beneath the single small window of his room, curled over his laptop and working on some complex string of numbers. Three weeks into the semester and Esteban is already drowning in assignments – Lance doesn’t envy him.

“He ate my cum,” he continues, picking at a fraying edge of the pillow. When he pulls at the red string it snags on the fabric and then releases, growing longer in Lance’s grip. He should buy Esteban a new one, maybe a whole bedspread to match. The thought occurs that he could buy a matching set, just to sleep on during the nights when he’s too drunk to get back to his own place and crashes in the living room.

Esteban hums again, pushes his glasses further up his nose, keeps clicking away on his laptop so that the number sequence only grows longer. Lance can only catch pieces of it from where he’s lying on the floor, head angled backward to stare up at Esteban as he works. But even the small bit he can see is enough to give him a headache.  

“When I kissed him I tasted it.”

That gets him.

Esteban sighs, leans back in the chair as far as it will go given its anti-tip design – dorm furniture made to prevent kids from hanging themselves from their light fixtures – rubs at the bridge of his nose and then falls back forward with a groan.

“You’re telling me this, why?”

Lance pouts, tips his head further back on the pillow so he can get a better look at Esteban with one arm on the back of his chair, leaning down to stare at him with mild judgement.

“You don’t want to know about the old man sex I had?”

“I can barely tolerate hearing about the normal sex you have.”

Lance laughs. The spider-man plush, also bought by Lance from the birthday trip to Disneyland last spring, rises and falls on his stomach with the movement. Technically, he has homework for his intro to Marketing class, but it’s more fun to laze around on Esteban’s dirty floor, talking about his sex life, than it is to learn about how to make people buy things. Besides, he’s grown up listening to his dad rant about his successes in the industry, so much so that his first word might as well have been entrepreneurship. It shouldn’t be a hard class to pass.

The dorm room is so tiny he almost runs the whole length of it, one foot nearly to the door, his head at the base of Esteban’s chair, one knee propped in the air. One of his arms is spread wide enough that it’s laying underneath Esteban’s bed, fingers toying with the shoelace of a sneaker that’s been kicked off underneath. It’s a familiar sight by this point, Lance taking up space in Esteban’s room, his life, with ease and spreading out enough that he can be found in nearly every corner of it. Esteban always makes room for him, sometimes will join him on the floor when his course load isn’t too much. But junior year is already different from the two prior, kicking off with a speed that is giving Lance whiplash.

He misses Sovi, the freshman dorms that once made him feel caged, but provided infinitely more freedom in that they weren’t tied to the paths that had led them here.

“My normal sex life just involves Pato, you’d rather hear about me fucking Pato?” He asks, smirks, just barely dodges the pencil Esteban flicks down at him.

“I don’t want to hear about you fucking anyone! Get a journal!”

Lance muses, “I guess there was also that one guy a few weeks ago. From that party in Q,” the building a few doors down from Esteban’s. It sat on the shore of the lake and far enough away from the central hub that university police tended to overlook it. Esteban had called Lance four beers deep a week into school and told him to get there quick, didn’t specify where ‘there’ was, so Lance had to use Find My to even locate him. When he’d pulled up the party had been in full swing on the third floor, and he was welcomed into the cramped apartment by Esteban who reeked of alcohol and weed. Lance ended up fucking one of the guys who lived there, riding him hurriedly and enduring the guy keeping a sweaty palm pressed to his mouth so he didn’t make too much noise in the room they’d locked themselves in.

 Esteban squints at him, “You said that guy was shit.”

“He was.” He came first and then didn’t even bother to get Lance off.

“So why the fuck would you want to talk about it again?”

“Because you don’t want to hear about the good old man sex.”  

Esteban’s nose crinkles in disgust, “Well how old was he?”

“I didn’t ask.”

The mechanical engineering is quickly forgotten, Esteban spinning around fully in his chair and staring at Lance with wide eyes. Lance grins up at him innocently, flutters his eyelashes, scoots over on the pillow as a silent invitation for the man to join him on the ugly blue carpeted floor. Esteban doesn’t take it, yet, Lance is still confident he can convince him.

“How old did he look?”

“I don’t know, forties maybe?”

“Forties?! What the fuck, Lance!?”

“What?”

The deadpan stare Esteban gives him isn’t new, it’s pretty standard actually. “You are insane. And stupid.”

Lance, because he likes testing his luck, pushing at the boundaries of his and Esteban’s friendship, seeing where the line is so he can be prepared for when it snaps, keeps going, “I’m seeing him again tonight.”

He wishes he’d been filming, just so he could preserve the way Esteban’s eyes get impossibly wider. Finally, Esteban gets out of the chair, but he doesn’t join Lance on the floor, instead he paces the length of the room, hands held on his head and mumbles a rapid string of words that Lance doesn’t quite get but he thinks are mainly swears.

“You are joking, yes? Tell me you are joking.” Hands on his hips, towering over Lance, he looks like a giant. Tall and lanky with big eyes behind his wire-rimmed frames.

Lance hadn’t been. He’s been texting Fernando since late last night, ignoring calls from his dad in the process. So far the conversation has consisted of little substance, just enough to establish that Lance is a junior, Fernando is retired, and lives in one of the mansions on the other side of the lake that is right outside Esteban’s prison cell-sized window. Mainly they’d talked about Fernando’s cock, how Lance is upset he didn’t get to see it, taste it – how he’d like to return the favor preferably outside of the backseat of a car and somewhere a bit more comfortable.

He wants to be called beautiful again, reverently, spread out on silk sheets and spread open by Fernando’s fingers. He blames the accelerated horniness on the dry summer he’d just had, the time spent at his father’s house with little else to do and no one to hook up with because Lawrence had insisted on spending as much time as he could with Lance. They’d gone to the track to watch a few races, the office where Lance was meant to be shadowing, galas and banquets, and the golf course most mornings so Lawrence could ensure Lance actually had something to show for the tuition he was fronting. Lance knows it was mainly a last ditch effort on his dad’s behalf to maintain their relationship, before Lance slipped off back to Florida and began predictably sending him to voicemail. Which is why he had even bothered enduring it in the first place, when he just as easily could has gone off to the Mykonos with a group of guys from his frat.

He'd refrained from debauchery all summer, was paying the price for his abstinence now. But, like always, the cost was something to which Lance paid very little, until the bill began to raise eyebrows, as Esteban’s now are.

“Lance. Tell me you are joking!”

“Why would I be joking?”

Esteban glares down at him, while Lance sprawls out further across the thin carpet, concrete flooring beneath digging into his shoulder blades, and smiles. It’s wide, lazy, slow to draw across his face. The sort of shit-eating, self-assured, smirk that Esteban hates.

“It was good sex, Este! He did this thing-“

“Stop! No! Stop! I don’t want to know.”

Lance stops, goes quiet, but continues to smirk. In his pocket, he feels his phone vibrate, probably Fernando again. They’re meant to be meeting in a few hours, once the suns gone down enough that being outside doesn’t make him feel like he’s melting. When Fernando can take him to the bar in the shopping plaza nearby and treat him to a beer before he fucks him senseless, as he’s been promising all day.

He doesn’t tell Esteban this, figures he’s maybe traumatized him enough for the day. Instead, he changes the topic to Esteban’s course load, feigns interest in the math still open on his laptop. Esteban is all too willing to explain it to him, to turn his attention away from the phone Lance pulls from his pocket and grins at with cheeks turning red.

Fernando has sent him a photo of his outfit, button of his slacks undone, zipper pulled low,  hand holding the waistband below his hips. He has a tattoo on the inside of his forearm, close to his wrist, something Lance hadn’t noticed in the dark of his car last night, but that he now can’t draw his eyes away from. It’s a cross of some sort, produces the sort of sacrilegious thoughts that he can’t linger on for too long for fear of losing his religion.

‘Wear something nice,’ Fernando’s text says, when he manages to read it.

Lance doesn’t own much that fits the description, other than a suit he saves for formals, but he figures it maybe doesn’t actually matter that much. Fernando promises to rip whatever it is off of him anyway.

Esteban throws another pencil at him when he tries to show him the photo, holds his hand up to block the view and then lands the writing utensil right on Lance’s nose.

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

His dad calls when he’s fresh out of the shower of his own apartment, steam curling in the air around him and his phone vibrating steadily against the granite countertops of his humid bathroom. He answers before it goes to voicemail, figures he owes his dad this because it’s the third time he’s called since that morning, and he doesn’t want to risk pissing the man off too much.

“Hey,” he says as he’s wrapping a towel around his waist, slicking his wet hair back out of his face with his free hand. He leaves the phone on speaker, lets his dad’s voice fill space as he busies with getting ready.  

“I’m going to assume you’ve been ignoring my calls because you are going to class.”

He only has one class on Tuesday’s, and it’s finished by noon. Advanced golf merchandising, a pointless elective where he’s meant to be learning the management of a retail location. He takes notes, enough to retain the important bits, but he already knows management isn’t where he’s going to end up. His dad would secure him some corporate position within his company before that was even an option. Which, he doesn’t want either, can’t stand the thought of being forced to wear a shirt with a collar every day.

“Yeah, I just got back from campus,” he lies, he’s been hiding out at Esteban’s since class ended, it’s seven now. The lie comes too easy, but the truth would only hurt the both of them – that Lance is avoiding his father because their conversations hurt more than they help these days. That Lance is growing, but it’s in a direction away from Lawrence, from the idea of who his dad thought he would be.

His dad wishes Lance were still small, and Lance wishes that too, but only because when he was a child hurting his dad only resulted in a brief scolding. Now it leads to awkward silences that neither of them know how to fill.

“Class is going well?”

“Um, easy so far, yeah.” They’re only three weeks in. “Other than this financial accounting class, it’s brutal.” He’s already had to ask Esteban for help, already knows he’s going to need to visit the library for tutoring.

He wipes steam from his mirror with the palm of his hand, catches a glimpse of his dripping reflection. Somehow, he needs to assemble himself into something relatively attractive within the next ten minutes, only for it to most likely come undone the second he slides his helmet over his hair. There’s a twisted sort of humor in him wondering how best to style himself for Fernando, while he’s on the phone with his father, pretending to care about classes that had stopped being fun once Lance realized they were actually supposed to lead to something.

“You spent all summer looking at the books,” Lawrence says. Which is true, but it had made more sense when things were hands on. Now it’s just a jumble of words and numbers on a whiteboard, a professor who knows the course is meant for weeding out those who are too weak to continue, and who looks at Lance every time he shows up late with a knowing sort of disappointment.

People didn’t used to look at him like that, it’s a growing sentiment the more Lance stumbles.

“Yeah, I know. It’s just- it’s different. All reading and equations and- I don’t know. I’m not a numbers guy, dad, you know this.”

“You got it pretty well while you were here.”

Only because he’d felt his dad’s eyes on him the whole summer, felt the pressure and the weight and need to prove he could do something. His professor doesn’t bother to look at Lance once he’s sat at a desk, which means Lance zones out, doodles designs in the margins of his notes and then wonders why the numbers don’t add up while he’s doing homework later.

“It’s different,” the exasperation in his voice is audible, he pauses where he’d been drying his hair with a towel pulled from under the sink. Closes his eyes. Breathes. “But I’m trying. I’ll- I’ll figure it out.”

“I know you will, Lance. I didn’t say you wouldn’t.”

They’re being careful around each other, the eggshells just beginning to crunch beneath their feet. Neither one of them want a fight and Lance can feel the tension of it through the phone, the tightening of something in his chest that threatens to break every time he speaks to his father now. This is why he lets it go to voicemail.

Fernando texts him, he sees the notification come through as he’s staring at the phone, hands braced on the bathroom sink. Probably asking if he’s on his way. Lance’s hair is still dripping water in cold tendrils down the back of his neck, a puddle forming on the carpet at his feet. He hasn’t even bothered to find an outfit or brush his teeth.

“Look, dad- I- um, I gotta go. I have a, uh, a study thing with Pato-“

“Oh, okay, yeah. I’ll talk to you soon.”

Lance closes his eyes again, bows his head, tries not to care about the hurt that’s audible in his father’s voice and finds that it somehow manages to dig between his ribs anyway. He hangs up before there’s the chance for the line to fracture further, and then he busies himself with texting Fernando back.

‘You are still coming?’ Fernando asks.

Lance says he’ll be there soon, and then he focuses on the toothbrush in his hands, getting himself ready, and ignores everything else.

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

“I need a drink!” Lance yells over the music, leaning further into Fernando, who holds him up with ease. “A shot!”

Fernando’s hand on his waist tightens when Lance rocks on his feet. They’re standing in the press of bodies on the dance floor, people on all sides. The crowd makes it easy for Lance to press against Fernando, the flashing lights adding to the disorientation. No one notices the way Fernando’s got one hand gripping Lance’s hipbone, the other on his ass, tucked into the pocket of his jeans and cupping the curve of him.  

They’re the same jeans he’d worn last night, pulled from the crumpled heap on his floor and slid back on because he couldn’t find anything else. If Fernando has noticed he doesn’t say anything, too distracted by the white linen button-up that Lance wear, only half done-up and exposing nearly the full expanse of his chest in the multicolored lights. Lance knows it puts the chain around his neck on full display, makes his collarbones stand out, shows how broad he is, and produces the impressed reaction Fernando had exhibited upon first seeing him.

He’d bought Lance his first drink, and then the first requested tequila shot, leaning on the bar top and staring at the exposed column of his neck as Lance tipped the liquor back and downed it with practiced ease. Lance had seen the way Fernando’s eyes had darkened as his adams apple bobbed, looking from the corner of his eye just to see the response that would be elicited with the movement.  

“What do you want?” Fernando asks now, hand on his hip coming up to pull Lance down to him so his lips just barely brush over Lance’s ear.

He shudders, breath stuttering when Fernando’s fingers tangle in the hair at the nape of his neck and pull just enough that there’s the promise of something better later. He’s been teasing Lance since Lance first arrived, the ghost of a touch, a tongue tracing over the sweaty line of his neck, enough to have him hard in his jeans but never doing anything to solve the problem.

It’s the most public foreplay Lance has ever engaged in, even if everyone is too drunk or too involved in their own games to even notice.

“Vodka?” Lance yells, knowing he probably seems young for only ordering shots, but he’d only just turned twenty-one last October. Most of his experience with alcohol has been bagged wine fountained before entry to a party or the mix of Kool-Aid and whatever liquor could be procured into a giant tub for jungle juice. Shots are simple, uncomplicated, and he knows he can handle them. Plus they hit fast, or at least feel like they do, give him the liquid courage needed to grind against Fernando as Pit Bull blares around them in the crowded bar.

The Keys is a mixed sort of space, half occupied by college kids who were too lazy to drive all the way to Rusty’s and half-filled by the locals who are looking for fun outside of their mansions. It means he and Fernando don’t draw attention, Lance fits in with the group of kids in their backwards caps and low cut shirts, Fernando blends with the guys in their pressed button-ups and black slacks. He just looks hotter than the others, the pants hugging his waist and ass well, clearly tailored. And the peak of a tattoo Lance gets on the back of Fernando’s neck as he follows him back up to the bar, Fernando’s hand around his wrist towing him through the crowd, separates him enough from the older guys smoking cigars outside on the patio. He wants to know what the tattoo is, slide Fernando’s shirt off his shoulders and trace the ink with his tongue.

But that’s for later, for now he lets Fernando guide him, lean him against the bar top, slide a hand back into the pocket of his jeans because the shape of his palm over his ass is becoming familiar. He flags down the bartender, orders two shots of Vodka and then they tip them back together. Lance can feel how flushed his neck is getting, wonders if the red of it is spreading to his chest, his cheeks. His hair that was still slightly damp from the shower is frizzing in the humidity of the packed space, falling over his forehead.

Fernando stares up at him, lips wet with vodka and his own spit when he licks them, Lance follows the movement, starts to lean forward like he intends to taste the lingering alcohol himself. Fernando stops him with a hand on his chest, fingers splayed across bare skin, index finger dipping into the hollow of his clavicle. Lance shudders, Fernando feels it.

“Let’s get out of here, yes?”

“Yes.”

Lance can’t drive his bike, just drunk enough that he knows he couldn’t keep his balance. Instead, he climbs into the passenger seat of Fernando’s Aston Martin, and deposits his own keys in the cupholder, casting a forlorn look back at his gear in the backseat. The same seat he’d come undone in last night, now occupied by his motorcycle helmet with the sticker of a cat waving the Canadian flag – something Pato had found online and ordered because ‘it’s Canada, Lance! You know, you!’. Fernando had asked him about it when he parked earlier, traced the outline of it before Lance had taken his helmet off, lifted Lance’s visor so he could see his eyes more clearly as he did so.

When he looks back at Fernando in the driver’s seat the man is staring at him. Lance knows what it looks like when someone wants him. He knows the way Pato gets all slack jawed and dopey-eyed, eyes flicking to Lance’s lips every two seconds even though he wouldn’t even try to kiss him. But Fernando’s look of want is different, more demanding and all-encompassing. He looks like he’s plotting the best course of stripping Lance out of his clothes before they’ve even reached their destination, like he is thinking of the best way to take him apart.

Maybe it’s because he’s more experienced, or maybe it’s because he’s less. Lance doesn’t know enough about him, anything really, to know if he is the first man Fernando has hooked up with or not. They still haven’t found much time to talk, or maybe just haven’t wanted to make the effort. Lance is okay with that, his idea of foreplay is not long discussions and get-to-know-you’s. He doesn’t have the patience for that, much prefers Fernando’s method of cutting to the quick and easy of it.  Which Fernando does when he leans across the console enough to grab Lance by the chain around his neck and pull him in for a kiss.

Lance is still not used to the kissing, just opens his mouth and lets Fernando’s tongue slide into it because he’s not practiced enough. He’s okay with letting Fernando take control, likes how he doesn’t have to think about it, just follow. Fernando tastes like vodka, and Lance swallows the familiar taste of it when their spit mixes and he can no longer tell whose is whose.

When Fernando pulls back Lance tries to chase him, is stopped again by a hand on his chest, firm and unyielding.

“You are still okay with coming to my place?” Fernando asks, and something in the way he says it is slightly sobering. It makes Lance remember his bike two spots over, prepared to be abandoned for the night and hopefully still there come morning.

“Yeah. Definitely.”

“I will drive you home, instead. If you want. Up to you.”

“No. No I’m good. Trust me.” He’d prepped himself in the shower and everything, knew what he was getting into before a drop of alcohol ever touched his tongue. “I’ve been thinking about this since last night.”

Fernando eyes him, glances down at his chest where his skin is still red and hot and bare against his hand.

“Okay. God, you are beautiful.”  

The praise shoots straight to Lance’s cock, has a quiet moan escaping him, something he only just barely manages to bite back with the press of his teeth into his bottom lip. Fernando catches it anyway, grins like he’s realized the praise wasn’t just a one-off from the hand job last night, but something Lance actually enjoys.

"Don’t worry, pretty boy,” he promises, “Make you feel better soon.”

[selfhealingmoments]

[kitti-luvs]

this is peak romance

[wahroh]

Haters gotta hate.

[katyspersonal]

hey, I saw that you and your friend got some unwarranted nonsense for your lore posts on Marika. I thought it was nice to see people give Marika some agency for once.

Thank you for a message, and support, I suppose; I am glad that you liked the analysis and takes themselves.

Honestly, the whole thing was really unfair to Val. That post was not even about Marika, it just tangentially involved her! @val-of-the-north was addressing the situation of people seeing Marika as that noble hero who was up to rid the world of "Hornsent's evil" and making the world better by only obliterating the filth that ruins it of sorts. Correctly pointing out how much injustice and cruelty happened under her reign, caused or allowed! Yesterday I've made a post ( x ) about Marika that is the best reflection of mine and Val's opinion on her! Sounds rather humanising and positive even all things considered, right? And the reason why Val did not do a giant disclaimer explaining how Marika is not 100% cruel monster was because that post was not! about! her!

And yet, imagine how VAL was feeling. The original reblogger maybe earned (my) disrespect by admitting they hated any interpretation of Marika and Messmer that weren't their, as well as using an oddly specific made up story as a proof, but on conceptual level, it is not wrong to start a debate! Debates are good, debates are healthy, debates are vaccine against being stuck in hostile echo-chambers believing you are superior and others are "media illiterate weirdos"! They were switching goals wildly like a bunny making its traces on the snow a labyrinth, BUT, it was fun to double-check Marika's lore there! But it stopped being okay when another person faaaaaaar not Val's size got involved and not only made it some sort of 'affirmation', but then also continued to mock his post as aNoThEr CaNcEr tO MaRiKaS jOy before their followers uncritically approving of everything they say! I know I should not act like he or me are special, because this is just a constant in any fandom/community!

Imagine that big, radiant, loved by everyone artist with more followers than there are people in your country, whose creativity and presence stands in the fandom seen from every spot much like the notorious Erdtree itself, for the first time having a direct interaction with you...... only to unfairly write you down as "just another Marika hater" and "part of the problem in the fandom" with "a post so bad they wish they could remove it from the addition" pure upon virtue of agreeing with their biased subjective vision. In front. Of their. Huge. Fanbase. When they also didn't even read the post and admitted to not even loredig. (Why do you think you can be the judge whether someone's lore is right or wrong when you do not even research it? Seriously why?) There are very vitriol-filled posts about Marika that do not offer any nuance, yet from my knowledge, they only ever earned vagueblogs? Just getting readsomewhered, as 'some weird takes I've seen'? But it was a fair, researched post, dealing only with facts, that earned the "honor" of directness?

Besides, it was rich saying the post was wrong and better be removed to only keep the addition, when the post was about people approving of Hornsent genocide! And the reblog of disagreement that made it about Marika..... justified Hornsent genocide. So, proven Val's point, hilariously? Literal Queelign behavior, all. 🤦‍♂️

[nyxofdemons]

“one day im going to have to make like a three hour long video essay that's just called In Defense of Helluva Boss” Please do. I see more anti videos than I do with defense ones. Like the ones that say season 2 is terrible even though it’s barely completed and the ones that say Stolitz is a bad despite them barely having a relationship.

no literally i am sick of seeing more anti content than actual appreciation videos but the anti talking point i see most that drives me up the fucking walls is that it's "bAd RePrEsEnTaTiOn," as if that is all that queer people are allowed to have; just the vague nebulous concept of "Rep(TM)." the fact that if a straight character is a bad person then it's just that This Character is a bad person, but if a queer character is a bad person then This Is Bad Representation Of The Community And Is Homophobic. can we not just HAVE characters?? vehicles to tell a story??? tools to craft a compelling narrative??? this is part of why Helluva/Hazbin being adult shows is such a THING because i see this get shut down a lot under the guise of "uhh well just because it's an adult show doesn't mean that it can handle whatever topic it wants however it wants" and like. yeah buddy! that's true! and that's not what this is fucking about!! when people say "it's an adult show" what they mean is that it's made to be engaged with under the assumption that you would know better than to take information to shape your worldview and perception of other real life people from a fucking cartoon! the show doesn't NEED to tell you that Um Hey Guys Just So You Know This Isn't Actually Meant To Reflect How All Real Life Gay Relationships Are because you are an adult who should already be able to discern this.

"bad rep" doesn't mean "characters that are nuanced, morally gray, or just bad people." "bad rep" would be if helluva boss was a show that said "the REASON these characters are in toxic relationships / are bad people is BECAUSE they are queer, or at least directly correlated to that fact." which is. you know. very fucking different than "these characters are in toxic relationships / are bad people because they 1) live in a classist society that actively encourages them to be their worst selves and 2) are extremely traumatized."