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lostinlovingrevery · 1 day ago

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He's Definitely Obsessed With You (Series)

Origins! Logan X Fem!Reader

Plot: You're an army nurse, deep in the trenches of the Vietnam jungles, doing everything you can to keep yourself together, and the infantry that come into your tent. One day a soldier you aren't familiar with is brought in, and you find out something about him that leads to the start of an important relationship between you both that changes the course of your lives together...

A/N: This is basically the plot of Origins, but with my own spin on it with a Fem!Reader! This is my first time EVER writing an X reader, so comments appreciate! I plan to make this a series, but I wanted to put out a prologue first. Okay, it's not really a prologue and more like a chapter, and ended up being super long because I started writing and then didn't stop, and prologues are short- but IT'S MY STORY AND I'LL CREATE MY OWN RULES. The prologue is just how reader and Logan meet! (PS, there's eventual smut...Soon as I figure out how write it without getting embarrassed) Also, I'm still figuring out how to format on Tumblr, so please don't mind any funky design choices. Probably spelling and grammar mistakes somewhere in there

Warnings: Reader POV only (for now) Reader is female, also an army nurse, also a mutant- but powers aren't specified, blood mention, medical stuff talked about (like amputations), injury descriptions, Vietnam war and slight politics mention, probably a lot of historical inaccuracies i just googled things but I tried! implied reader could be religious but honestly there's nothing concrete to that. The only description of reader is her clothes and that she has hair, and wears makeup (lipstick). Reader has a hard on over Logan (she has a cruuuush), let me know if there's anything I missed!

Word Count: 4753

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Prologue:

Rain rapped lightly along the top of the large tent, creating a soothing sound throughout. A radio, playing an american music station, played a rock song, of some new band slowly making a name for itself, sat nearby on a metal cabinet. Stacks of manila folders and papers were disorganized and spread, almost completely covering a desk. A clock ticks rhythmically. The tent was lined with cots, tables, ratty mattresses, IV stands, and small tables covered with empty food trays, water canisters, and paper cups filled pills. Some of the beds were taken up by injured men, snoring and groaning as they attempted to sleep, only slightly more comfortable here in the medical tent than out in the muddy, rainy trenches. It was monsoon season in Vietnam, and you were at your wits end with paperwork in the middle of a small but-not-that-small camp, set up not far from an American fire support base.

You were sitting at the desk, half asleep as you attempted to fill out another request form for medical supplies. Halothane, Methoxyflurane, Morphine, Penicillin - are common medicines that you find yourself constantly having to restock. Of course bandages, gloves, needles, saline, tubing, multiple surgical supplies, other things you find yourself low on often too, considering the amount of amputations, large and minor, that happen around here. The medical tent that you currently reside in was a revolving door of soldiers, both American and Vietnamese, as well as nearby villagers who come for aid after the American presence near their homes led to viruses they can’t combat on their own, or other unfortunate injuries if war breaks out in their village.

You were simply an army nurse, this was not your usual duty to perform, it was normally left to the assigned doctor of the camp. Your job was to assist the doctor, take care of the patients, administer medicine, IVs, change bandages, wet baths, feed them, and hold their hands as they cry for their momma and to God. You were busy enough, and the doctor, Doctor Frank Jones, who you were assisting had got shot by a stray bullet when out in the jungle, and had to be taken back to the main base, and back to the States. Due to a communication failure, his replacement ended up somewhere else, and transportation wasn’t an option due to the fighting happening.

Fortunately, Doctor Jones had seen potential in you and believed you would be an excellent doctor one day - something you wanted to pursue after your service was fulfilled. He became a mentor, helping you study and learn medicine, and giving you skills that an average nurse- even an army nurse- wouldn’t usually have. Now, it was just up to you, and a few young army medics - teenage boys who were given no choice in going to war, and their skills were found best in assisting injuries on the battlefield, but they were eager to help, and their light-hearted jokes and company helped relieve some stress for you, especially with the pain you watch day in and out. You didn’t always have the luxury of their help though, as when patrols went out, they required at least one of them to join. It leads you to have to order around other grunts who have no idea how to even measure the proper dosage of cough syrup for themselves whenever a serious injury comes in, having to give detailed orders on what to do- usually just getting you the supplies and medicine you need, as the grunts are typically too distracted and upset over their fallen brother to assist you in anything medical and complicated.

With being the only medical authority in the camp- as well as the only woman- you were well respected and popular. Your compassionate personality, and comforting presence, as well as your “Take-no-shit” attitude, led to soldiers of this camp visiting you all the time, usually making up excuses like having a cough, or a splinter in their finger, just so they could have the pleasure of your smile and encouraging words. The CO here made sure that they all treated you with respect, as a woman- and a nurse, so you never once felt unsafe- or unappreciated. Besides, a good section of this camp is young boys, too nervous about their situation to worry about trying to flirt with a woman like you. You're more of a comfort figure in these parts than anything else. Despite the stress and worry you face in day to day life, in the middle of the war, you were just happy to be doing something. You weren’t exactly a supporter of this war, but the moment you saw young boys lining up to go to war, something in you made you fiercely determined to follow, and do whatever you can to make sure those boys can go back home to their mothers and fathers.

The Rolling Stones was now playing on the radio, this was a band you were more familiar with - one of your favorites. Your foot tapped to the beat of the song, as you checked off another item you needed to be stocked up on- and hoped the supply chain doesn’t hold out on you again. For some reason, they seemed convinced that you must surely be lying about the supplies and will not send you the full amount of what you requested, leading you to storm into the CO’s tent on more than one occasion and rant to him with a few unsavory words about the supply lines commander. He always listens though, and does his best to get you what you can- which you can appreciate.

“Hey turn that up-” You heard one of the patients call out, and she smiles, reaching to the radio and turning the volume higher. She looked up from the desk to see one patient in bed moving his foot with the beat of the song, and the other, who asked her to turn it up, raised his arm in the air, hand in a fist as he rocked with the song. “This is a good one, hadn’t heard this one yet.”

“It came out in 65’ dumbass.” the other called out. “How’d you not know it?”

“I’ve been here since 64’ asshole! Think we always had access to a radio?”

They all chided each other, making you laugh as you shake your head, turning back towards your paperwork, determined to finish it today so you can send it out. It was rare you get these moments of quiet, so you appreciated it when you could. Things could turn on a dime in a second, especially since the fighting was getting closer to where this camp was set, and you’re hoping that you would get some help before anything serious came. You were just starting to get absorbed in the letter you were writing to the CO of the supply line, something slightly passive aggressive, when one of the soldiers yelled to you from outside.

“Hey! Nurse! There’s some guys coming this way! They got someone injured-”

You looked up, dropping your pencil, and turning the radio down as you readied yourself, brushing the pants of your army fatigues to straighten it out, and rolling your sleeves farther up your arms. You watched as the flaps of the tent get pulled open, as two men carry someone resting on a cot. You didn’t like how quiet the man was being.

“In here-” You lead them to another section of the medical tent, ment solely for treating wounded, in an attempt to keep something sterile and clean- well, as clean as you can get it. The soldiers set the man onto the table that sat in the center of the room, small trays and medical supplies, as well as a large overhead lamp that provided lighting to give you a better view at what you’re working on, surrounded the table.

“We got ambushed on patrol, fortunately he’s the only one that got hit, a VC jumped out of the grass and stabbed him. We got pressure on the wound, and he’s still alive- for now.”

You nodded as you went to a basin to pull on some sterile gloves, and walked over to examine the soldier. He was handsome- you couldn’t help but noticed but quickly put that out of your mind. A full head of deep beautiful brown hair, and a thick beard framed his face. He looked older, possibly in his mid 30’s. A sheen of sweat covered his skin, as his teeth were gritted and eyes cinched shut in pain. A wave of sorrow hit you, as you never liked seeing people in pain, it hits you bad enough to wonder why you chose to go into the medical profession of all things. Nevertheless, you push through, and began working on removing the uniform so you can see if you can save this one. At least he wasn’t screaming.

“Whats his name?”

“Logan ma’am. He’s Private First Class.” The private responds, voice professional, but quickly drops into something softer. “He’s a good guy, and smart, usually quick on his feet, its surprising someone ambushed him…”

“Need any help ma’am?” The other private who brought him in ask.

“No, I got it, thank you.” You tell them as you grab some sheers and began cutting through Logan's army garments. “Just make sure others are alright. See if any of the boys out there need water.”

They nodded, saluting- leading you to roll your eyes- and left your section of the tent, just as you manage to cut off the white wife beater he was sporting underneath his army garments, giving you a complete view of where he had been stabbed. You breathed a small sigh of relief, the wound appeared in the part of the torso where nothing vital was located and you managed to roll him to his side- seeing the stabbing didn’t go straight through, meaning this guy had a good chance of surviving, assuming he doesn’t succumb to infection…

“Alright Logan,” You turned you head to look at the man, who was still tense, eyes squeezed shut. He was somewhat awake, with his breathing and the way his muscles contracted, but he didn’t seem to be aware of what was going on, you still felt it important to talk to whoever you were treating though. You had to hold the hands of many scared soldiers, and quickly have learned the right things to say when comforting. “I’m going to take care of you, and in return, you’re going to need to be strong for me here.” You say softly but firmly to him, hoping that he’s hearing you through the pain, as you went and quickly grabbed a wet cloth out of a basin nearby, squeezing out the excess water, and gently placing it over his forehead, in order to soak up some sweat, and provide some more comfort to cool his skin that seemed to be burning hot. You couldn’t help but note that you don’t recognize him- you wouldn’t have forgotten his face that’s for damn sure, if he’d ever came to visit you, which most privates in this camp has at one time or another. You shook the curiosity out of your head, you had to move quickly, fighting the urge to wanting to take in the details of his face- his very handsome face, and moved to focus back onto the wound on his torso.

You started by slowly removing the packed bandages, examining the blood flow to make sure nothing gushed, but he really wasn’t bleeding much anymore- actually, it didn’t look like he was bleeding at all now. Confused, you began cleaning the area of the stab wound so you could get a clear view of what you were looking at. At first, you thought you were losing your mind, you had to been because what you were seeing…

It was as if the skin was growing back, the wound, going inwards seemed to almost pop out, before the skin stitched together, going through what the bodys usual healing process would look like- except doing it within a matter of seconds. Turning from a bright red inflamed wound, into a baby pink scar bump that slowly faded off, you couldn’t even tell anything had happen there- except from the blood stained around it. You were blinking in disbelief, mouth slightly agape, before it suddenly occurred to you what you were just seeing.

Oh shit-

He’s a mutant.

You looked at the man, who’s muscles seemed to be relaxing now, as he took deeper breaths, the sweat on his face began to dry and disappear. You weren’t sure what to do at this point, you’re so used to every minute counting to fix someone, and this guy just healed himself in seconds!

And by god, he was so handsome. You thought that already, got to stop thinking about that. Turning away from his face, you went to examine where the stab wound used to be, gloved fingers gently pressing on the area- before the soldier- Logan, practically yelped- and sat up rushed on the table, startling you even more so than him, as you jumped back, hands in the air in surrender- as if you did anything wrong.

He was panting, the cold wet cloth you had placed on his forehead fell into his lap, as he looked around with wide eyes, pupils dilated, his nostrils flaring, he almost looked animal-like in this state. He turned to look at you. His eyes took you in, and suddenly you felt embarrassed by your army clothes you were sporting, green cargo pants, and a green collared button up shirt, tucked into your pants, making you feel less than girlish in them, despite their comfortability, your forehead was covered in sweat, and your hair pulled back in a bun neat bun with baby hairs sticking out everywhere. At least you had lipstick on to give yourself a little bit of a pop in your plain looking outfit. That should be the last thing you should be worried about.

“You’re okay-” You finally found your voice, holding your hands out to him, “You got ambushed, but you’re okay now.”

He blinked, then let out a small sigh, his whole self seeming to relax, his expression turned more human-like, as he faced forward, then looked down at himself. His hand went over where he had been hurt- seeing that there was no longer any injury there, although something in his expression told you he could still feel it. He swallowed, jaw tensing, before realization struck him, and his head snapped to look at you.

“You saw- You know, don’t you?” He asks, his voice was deep, but sounded a little dry and scratchy. Still, it was enough to make your knees weak.

You turned, going to a cabinet that held medicines and various other supplies, but on the counter was a pitcher of water and a few glass cups. Pulling off your gloves, you poured a cup from the pitcher, turning back and handing it to him.

“Yeah. I saw.” You say cooly, holding it out for him to take. He looked at you, his deep and should you think gorgeous hazel eyes felt like they were piercing your soul; as if he was trying to decipher what was going on in your head, which you wish you knew as well because his stare was making your brain fuzzy; then glanced at the cup and finally took it from your hand, your fingers brushing together, making your heartbeat just a little faster, and you could feel a small heat blooming in your cheeks.

Jesus christ, pull yourself together

You thought to yourself. You cleared your throat while he took several swigs of water, dropping his hand with the cup to his side as he took a moment to breathe once more.

“Got anything stronger?” He asks, his low and smoother now, quirking a brow at you. You smiled,

“Sorry, anything alcoholic you may want to drink in here, I gotta save for the guys who can’t heal themselves within minutes.” You say teasingly. “Supplies are low enough already.”

You could see a small quirk of his lips, in something resembling a smile. He was still tense though, his eyes seemed to be somewhere else. He looked at you again,

“Does it…scare you? Me being a mutant?” He asks, his voice low

“Um….No?” You responded, confusion on your face, a small shake of your head, “Why would it?”

He seemed relieved- and surprised by that answer, his shoulders finally relaxing, and he took another drink of water, eyes closing as he finished the cup, and handed it back to you, where you set it back on the counter. Wiping his mouth with his arm, he sat up more confidently, bending his leg as he brought his knee up to his chest, and propped his forearm over it, and leaned back on his other hand, taking a few deep breaths as he lowered his head down, then looked back up at you, his expression suddenly stern.

“You gonna tell them?” He asks. You knew he was referring to the army. Mutants weren’t well accepted in the world- much less the US army. The American government is actually sitting comfortably in the capital and writing out bullshit laws on mutant regulations, rather than trying to figure out a solution for the war here in Vietnam. You, a mutant yourself, albeit your powers were easy to hide and conceal, you still feared of a day that someone somehow discovers your secret. You’ve heard stories of American soldiers revealed to be mutants being killed, due to some bullshit excuse that they “lied” about who they were, and couldn’t be trusted. Whether those stories were true or fearmongering to keep mutants hiding their true identities, you didn’t know, but you certainly weren’t gonna find out yourself. You definitely wouldn’t put another fellow mutant, just trying to survive like you, in any sort of danger like that, even if he could probably just heal if he got put in front of a firing squad.

You pursed your lips together. Then smiled. “No. I’ll keep your secret.” You say. “All it means to me is that I have one less person to worry about around here. I was actually wondering why I hadn’t seen your face in this tent yet before, and now I know why.”

He softened at that, but his face quickly fell back into something more serious and stern once more, which you’re starting to think might be his baseline.

“You okay?” You asked, your voice was soft, and sweet, and borderline angelic for a man like him, who’s been in wars almost his entire life- which you don’t know about that. “That probably didn’t feel good, what happened.” He nodded.

“M’ fine….Thank you.” He grumbles lowly, looking down at his hands. “I heard about you- actually I-I seen you around. You’re the only nurse on camp?” He asked, looking back up at you, there seemed to be a bit of curiosity in his voice.

“Yeah. I’m pretty popular.” You say, in a teasing voice, blushing at the thought that he’s noticed you. Which shouldn’t be a surprise, you are quite literally the only woman around, save for the women in the village not far from here.

“Must be busy.”

“Oh… Nah-” You playfully wave him off. “Some days are so slow, I’m actually bored.” You say matter-of-factly, but you both knew you were kidding. Another quirk of his lips. You smiled softly at him, but there was a voice in your head telling you, that since he doesn’t need your help, you should probably get back to helping the ones who do. Not that you want to leave, he was so damn handsome, you could stare at him all day. It wasn’t just his good looks though, his whole self drew you in with just a few words, and you find yourself wanting to get to know Logan, because the look in his eyes told you that he was someone worth knowing. Or maybe that was just your hormones talking. There was just this energy between you both, some type of unseen connection. His eyes trailed down you again, this time fully taking you in, stopping at your chest, and for a moment you were about to be completely turned off by this man being a pervert, but he nodded towards it.

“Your necklace?” He asked. You looked down, oh, you thought to yourself. You pulled the string of your necklace, lifting the small coin that it held, string carefully wrapped around it so it doesn’t fall off.

“It’s a prayer coin. A priest gave it to me.” You explained. “It’s the archangel Raphael. A protector, patron saint of medical workers, like doctors, nurses.”

“Like you?”

You nodded. He examined it, before you tucked it back under your shirt. You usually keep it hidden, but it must have fallen out while you were rushing. Now it was silent again, and you both weren’t sure what to do or say.

“Well….” You took a breath, you glanced down at his abdomen, and suddenly your brows creased in concentration.

“What?” He asked, by your sudden change in demeanor.

“You can’t exactly walk out with no injury. Those two privates were pretty worried about you.” You say, putting your hands on your hips and pursing your lips together. You clicked your tongue.

“I can figure something out-”

“No no-” You held your hand up and looking around the room. “Those privates brought you in, there’s probably an incident report written right now, not to mention I have to write a report on your injuries too-” you explained. “I mean, how are you gonna explain it if you walk out, completely A-okay?”

Logan shrugged simply. “I can think of something, it isn’t the first time this happened.” You rolled your eyes. Men.

You rather not waste bandages on a pretend injury, but you need someway to get his injury to look believeable, thats when you spotted your answer. His white tank top that you had drop to the floor, it was good enough to wrap around him, making him look as if he’s been all fixed up from his stab wound. The shirts cotton texture looked similar to the pattern of a bandage, and was good enough, especially considering no one would be looking hard enough at his wound anyway.

After a few minutes of “fixing him up” with your solution to keep his regenerative abilities a secret, you stood back examining the fake bandage/shirt that you tore up and wrapped around his torso, using bandage pins to hold it in place. Then shrugged.

“It’s good enough.” You say. “You’re not going anywhere anyway, so it’s not like you’ll raise a bunch of questions. It looks like you have an injury, it’ll match the incident and medical report. You won’t get found out.”

“I’m not going anywhere?” He raised a brow.

“Nope. You were injured, which means I gotta keep an eye on you. So you’ll be sleeping here, and you’ll have to pretend you’re in pain, whining and moaning and all that. Give it your best performance.” You encourage. “Take it, not many around here get a chance to get a break like that.”

He looked at you, pondering what you were offering him- well, you weren’t offering, he was going to have do it because you weren’t gonna risk him revealing himself as a mutant, which for some reason you were now more concerned about than he was. A small smirk appeared on his face, “That mean you’ll be waiting on me then, hand and foot?”

You smiled, “Don’t get ahead of yourself soldier.” You say teasingly. “You can stay in here a little longer, rest up, maybe shed some tears to make it look like you’re suffering tremendously.” You added a little flair as you brought your hand up to your forehead, pretending to faint, before turning and walking away to leave the room, now knowing you really needed to get back to work.

“I don’t think I need to shed any tears.” He mutters, but there was amusement in his tone though. “Hey bub” He called after you as you were about to leave the room, lifting the tent flap, but you stopped to look at him. “Why are you seen keen on helping me out? Making a plan to make sure people don’t find out what I am…Seems like too much trouble to go through for you.” He frowned.

“Well…” You dropped the flap of the tent, “Us mutants gotta stick together, right?” Logan looked surprised at first, eyes widening a bit, and jaw slacking, but then a soft, genuine smile stretched across his face, the corners of his eyes crinkling, leaving you thinking that was a smile you never wanted to go without again. Smiling back at him, you winked, and turned back before stopping and looking at him again, “Plus, you seem worth the trouble.” You add, before finally leaving him to himself.

Maybe it was too much trouble. You could leave Logan to figure it out himself. You two didn’t know each other, you weren’t friends. Yet you, the compassionate self you are, and also slightly bull-headed, was not going to leave Logan hanging alone. Maybe it was the fact that you were both mutants that urged you to help him, let him know that someone like him out there has his back, even if he had many brothers at his side watching his back too. Or maybe it was because you felt an undeniable pull towards him- and him towards you.

While he stayed in the medical tent with you for about a week, the standard time for stitches to stay in. While staying, you both got to know each other better. You found a deep friendship with Logan quickly, both of you having an understanding of each other, not just as mutants but as individuals as well. You were able to laugh, usually at his snarky remarks to the other privates and even his comments to the higher-ups, surprising you in how he likes to occasionally challenge authority despite how quiet and reflective he can be some moments. You saw him as brave, smart, and he was protective, always going first in patrols, and keeping an eye on the younger privates. He’d hid it well, rarely making it seen, but he had a compassion that made your heart swell, especially when you came across him comforting a young private who was homesick and scared. He had a good instinct that seems to attest to his mutation- which he later revealed the full aspects of it to you later on, claws and everything- which did nothing but fascinate you, leading to a full acceptance of him he hadn’t felt or seen in a long time. He’d visit you in late nights when he wasn’t assigned guard patrol, bringing you something to eat or drink, and you’d both quietly talk about your lives, and how’d you ended up there. He listened to you complain about the lack of supplies, and how you got into medicine in the first place. You’d learn of his brother Victor- another Private First Class there at the camp, who you quickly learned a distaste for after meeting him, and how old they both really were- leading you to bombard him with history questions, that he simply answered “I wasn’t there bub.” There was an unspoken yet mutual physical and spiritual attraction between you both, but before anything could have gone further in your relationship, down in the thick muddy jungles of Vietnam, you suffered a similar fate as your mentor Doctor Jones. A stray bullet having shot through your shoulder while you were out, attempting to help a young private who’s leg unfortunately got caught in a dirt trap. You were okay, but orders sent you home on a medical discharge, saying you fulfilled your duty to the States.

You missed Logan, and you also found yourself struggling to find your place back in civilian life again, the stress and the trauma of the things you saw weighed heavy in your mind, not to mention the worry you felt over Logan's safety while he was still over there. The only thing easing your worries was the letters you wrote to each other, until one day his letters stopped coming, and your own got returned back to you with no explanation, leaving you in fear of the worst….

#logan howlett #logan howlett x reader #wolverine #logan howlett x you #logan howlett fanfiction #logan howlett fic #wolverine x f!reader #wolverine x reader #wolverine x you #wolverine x men #i know the title will throw you off but TRUST ME #especially with the vibes of this fic #also like i said my first reader fic SO PLEASE BE GENTLE

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quicktimeeventfull · 2 days ago

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i had to sit through the most egregious speech about npd yesterday so this is just my little reminder that if u can't be normal about cluster b disorders you are profoundly unwelcome here.

#like. u have to be normal about all of them.#'oh but i know a bad person with a cluster b' ok well thats unfortunate. i know loads of shitty people whose behaviour is influenced #by autism or adhd or depression or w/e & it doesn't give me the right to generalize or be ableist about that #ableism tw

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jhyoos · 2 days ago

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REBEL GIRL

Chapter 5: Pose For Me

rockstar!sevika x influencer!reader

summary: caitlyn and sevika tags along with (y/n) for a lingerie shoot.

mentions: sevika being a perv and a asshole, modern au, fame au, swearing, touching, kissing, angst

notes: thank you guys for over 100 followers! also the next five chapters are gonna be so good you guys I promise. this is lowkey a filler.

When you arrived in Las Vegas, you were hit with the dazzling neon lights and the chaotic energy of the city, but all you could think about was crawling into bed and shutting out the world. Unfortunately, rest wasn’t on the agenda.

Your manager, Lauren, had set up a last-minute photoshoot with Skims to promote their newest lingerie line. The shoot was scheduled downtown, right in the heart of the bustling city. Normally, you’d jump at the chance to work with a brand like Skims and maybe even brag a little about being handpicked by Kim Kardashian herself—but not after a grueling seven-hour bus ride.

The ride had been less than ideal. The band, as much as you loved them, had been in full chaos mode. Between Vi’s questionable playlists, Jinx’s random outbursts, and Sevika constantly finding ways to tease you, it was a miracle you hadn’t lost your mind.

And now, with your stomach growling and a headache forming, you had to somehow look flawless in a shoot that demanded nothing less than perfection.

“You okay?” Caitlyn asked as you slumped into one of the hotel lobby chairs while waiting for your room key.

“Yeah, just need a nap before I can even think about being seductive in front of a camera,” you muttered, rubbing your temples.

Caitlyn smirked. “You’ll be fine. You always pull it off.”

Sevika, standing nearby, raised an eyebrow. “Wait—you’re doing a lingerie shoot? In Vegas?” she asked, her tone carrying a hint of intrigue.

“Yes,” you sighed. “And no, you’re not invited to watch.”

Sevika chuckled. “I wasn’t asking to. Just… interesting timing.

“Tell me about it,” you replied, rolling your eyes as the front desk finally handed over your key cards. You made a beeline for the elevator, desperate for even a moment of peace.

When you woke from your nap and dragged yourself out of the hotel room, you were surprised to see Caitlyn and Sevika waiting by the lobby entrance.

“What are you two doing here?” you asked, slinging your bag over your shoulder.

“We’re coming with you,” Caitlyn said, arms crossed. “You’ll need moral support, and I figured it would be nice to see how these shoots work.”

“Sevika doesn’t seem like the type for moral support,” you teased, raising an eyebrow at her.

“She’s just curious,” Caitlyn said, giving Sevika a pointed look.

“Curious about what?” Sevika asked, feigning innocence.

You rolled your eyes but secretly appreciated the company. “Fine. Just don’t distract me.”

The photoshoot location was stunning—a sleek, high-rise building with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the dazzling Las Vegas Strip. The studio was set up with luxurious props: velvet couches, golden lighting, and a team of stylists buzzing around like worker bees.

Lauren greeted you as soon as you walked in. “You’re late,” she said, glancing at her watch.

“I needed a nap. You took a first class flight. I had a 7 hour ride with annoying children that know how to play instruments,” you said unapologetically, pulling off your jacket. “Let’s get this over with.”

You were ushered to the dressing area, where racks of silky, lace-covered lingerie awaited you. The stylists worked their magic, curling your hair into soft waves and giving you a glowy makeup look that felt effortless yet glamorous. You slipped into the first set—a sheer black bralette and matching high-waisted bottoms with delicate floral embroidery. Paired with a silky robe, the look screamed elegance with a hint of edge.

As you stepped out of the dressing room for the Skims shoot, the atmosphere shifted. The sleek black lingerie hugged your figure perfectly, highlighting every curve and giving you an air of effortless confidence. You adjusted the straps slightly before walking onto the set, where Caitlyn and Sevika stood in the corner, watching. Caitlyn gave you a supportive smile, while Sevika leaned against the wall, her arms crossed and her expression unreadable.

The photographer directed you into the first pose, asking you to stand tall with your hands on your hips and your chin tilted slightly upward. The bold stance exuded power, and you felt the lights warm against your skin as the camera clicked. You risked a glance toward Sevika, catching her staring a bit too hard. Her sharp eyes were locked on you, and when she noticed you looking, she didn’t even bother to look away.

You quickly returned your focus to the shoot, deciding to let it slide. The next pose required you to sit on a plush velvet chair, crossing your legs and leaning forward slightly, your hands resting delicately on your thighs. You caught Caitlyn whispering something to Sevika out of the corner of your eye, her expression one of thinly veiled disapproval. Sevika shrugged, muttering something back, but Caitlyn’s brow furrowed even more.

The photographer asked you to stand and turn your back to the camera for the next shot. You glanced over your shoulder, giving a sultry look that would sell the new lingerie line effortlessly. The camera flashed again and again, and with each snap, you felt Sevika’s gaze burning into you. Caitlyn nudged her at one point, whispering something that made Sevika roll her eyes and look away briefly—though not for long.

Finally, the photographer directed you to lay across a chaise lounge, your arm resting above your head while your other hand trailed lazily along your side. The pose was elegant but daring, and you couldn’t help but feel a little self-conscious. The energy in the room felt heavy, especially with Sevika’s lingering presence.

When the shoot wrapped, you thanked the crew and headed back to the dressing room to change. Caitlyn and Sevika stayed behind, but you could hear their hushed voices just outside the door.

“She’s doing her job,” Caitlyn hissed, her voice sharp but quiet. “Don’t make this weird.”

“I’m not making it weird,” Sevika shot back, her tone flat but defensive.

“You’re staring at her like she’s the only thing in the room,” Caitlyn countered. “It’s disrespectful.”

Sevika didn’t respond immediately, and you could imagine her shrugging nonchalantly. “She doesn’t seem to mind.”

You rolled your eyes at their typical behavior. The photoshoot had been beautiful but exhausting. You were more than ready to get out of the lingerie set and back into something comfortable. Shrugging off the silky robe, you reached behind to unclasp the delicate lace bra—only for the door to open.

“Sevika, what the hell?” you exclaimed, quickly clutching the robe to your chest.

She stepped in and shut the door behind her, leaning back against it with that signature smirk. “Relax. I just came to check on you.”

“Check on me? Really?” you asked, arching a brow as she moved closer.

“Fine,” she said, her voice low as she towered over you. “Maybe I just wanted to see you.”

You rolled your eyes but couldn’t stop your heart from racing as she reached out to tuck a loose curl behind your ear. Her fingers lingered against your jaw, and before you could process it, her lips were on yours.

The kiss was slow at first, like she was testing the waters. But when you didn’t pull away, Sevika deepened it, tilting your head back to claim your mouth fully. Her hands moved to your waist, gripping you with enough force to make your breath hitch. The kiss was electrifying, full of tension that had been building for far too long.

Her lips left yours, trailing hot kisses along your jawline and down your neck, her hands moving over the silky fabric of the lingerie. “You look so damn good in this,” she murmured against your skin.

You gasped softly, her words sending a shiver down your spine. Her lips returned to yours, hungrier this time, as she pulled you closer, her fingers brushing over the delicate lace of your outfit.

“Sevika…” you managed to whisper between kisses, your hands gripping her jacket as if to steady yourself.

She hummed in response, her lips traveling back to your neck, her teeth grazing the sensitive skin there. One hand slid to the small of your back, pulling you flush against her, while the other ghosted over the strap of your bra.

“Wait,” you said breathlessly, pulling away.

Her grey eyes met yours, full of heat. “What?”

“You’re gonna ruin the lingerie,” you said, trying to catch your breath. “I have to return this… I can’t exactly hand it back with lipstick stains and stretched straps.”

She smirked, leaning in as if to steal another kiss. “You don’t need to return it. You could just keep it. Looks better on you anyway.”

You pressed a hand against her chest, stopping her. “Sevika, I mean it. I can’t… not like this.”

Her smirk faltered slightly, her brows knitting in confusion. “Why not?”

“Because…” You took a deep breath, your voice softening. “I can’t keep doing this—letting things get carried away. I don’t want this to be about… just pleasure. It’s getting too complicated.”

For a moment, she didn’t say anything, her gaze searching yours. Finally, she nodded, stepping back with her hands raised in surrender. “Alright. I’ll behave.”

“Good,” you said, exhaling in relief as you moved toward the mirror to finish undressing.

But when you noticed her still standing there, watching you with an amused grin, you turned back to her, pointing toward the door. “Get out. You’re not seeing anything else, ma’am.”

She chuckled, raising a brow. “You sure about that?”

“Out!” you said, shoving her toward the door.

Sevika opened it, still laughing under her breath as she stepped into the hallway. “You’re fun to tease,” she called over her shoulder.

You slammed the door shut and locked it this time, leaning against it with a groan. “She’s impossible,” you muttered, shaking your head as you finally managed to get changed.

When you emerged from the dressing room in your hoodie and sweatpants, tugging the hem of the oversized top down, Caitlyn was already seated on the lounge chair outside, arms crossed and an unmistakable look of disapproval on her face.

You frowned, running a hand through your hair. “What?” you asked, genuinely confused.

Caitlyn arched a brow and gestured toward the hallway Sevika had disappeared down minutes earlier. “Sevika said she’s gonna take a Uber back. Vi called her to make some last minute changes to the set tonight. Sevika was in there for quite sometime…”

Your eyes widened slightly before narrowing in mock irritation. “Seriously?” you asked, crossing your arms.

Caitlyn didn’t blink. “Well?”

You sighed, sitting down in the chair opposite her. “Fine, yes, I kissed her. But that’s it. Nothing else happened.”

Caitlyn leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees as her expression softened. “And why didn’t it go further?”

You hesitated, staring down at your hands. “Because… I don’t want to keep doing this back-and-forth thing with her. It’s fun in the moment, but I’m starting to feel something real, and I know Sevika isn’t the type for… whatever this is turning into.”

Caitlyn tilted her head, her voice calm. “Have you told her that? Or are you just assuming what she wants?”

You blinked, caught off guard. “I mean… no, I haven’t said anything directly. But I don’t need to. I know Sevika. She’s not a relationship person.”

Caitlyn gave you a pointed look. “People can surprise you, you know. And Sevika might not be as closed off as you think. It wouldn’t hurt to at least talk to her about it.”

You leaned back, pulling the hood over your head with a groan. “Why are you making this sound so simple?”

“Because it is simple,” Caitlyn said. “You’re overthinking it. If you feel something, say something. If she doesn’t feel the same way, at least you know where you stand.”

You peeked out from under the hood, your gaze skeptical. “And what if she just laughs in my face?”

Caitlyn smirked. “Then I’ll let you borrow one of my guitars to bash her over the head with.”

You snorted, finally cracking a small smile. “Thanks for the moral support, I guess.”

Caitlyn stood, brushing off her jeans. “Anytime. Now, are we grabbing food, or are you going to sit here overthinking for the next hour?”

You sighed, pushing yourself up from the chair. “Fine, food. But I’m not promising I’ll do any of that talking stuff you’re suggesting.”

“Baby steps,” Caitlyn said with a grin as she slung an arm around your shoulders.

The two of you headed for the hotel’s restaurant, the conversation lingering in the back of your mind. Talking to Sevika felt impossible, but Caitlyn’s words had planted a seed of doubt. Maybe it wasn’t as complicated as you were making it out to be.

And maybe—just maybe—Sevika wasn’t as unreachable as you thought.

Later that evening, after dinner with Caitlyn, you found yourself lounging in your hotel’s room. Caitlyn had gone back to her room, claiming she wanted an early night, and the others were scattered between the casino floor and their rooms. You were scrolling aimlessly on your phone when Sevika walked in with a spare room key. Her presence was commanding as always, but there was a subtle edge to her expression—something unreadable.

She didn’t say anything at first, just grabbed a beer from the mini-fridge and sat across from you on the couch. The silence between you stretched, thick and heavy.

Finally, she broke it. “So, about earlier,” she said, her tone flat.

You tensed but kept your eyes on your phone. “What about it?”

Sevika leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “You stopped me.”

You hesitated, glancing up at her. “Yeah, I did.”

“Why?”

You sighed, setting your phone down. “Because I didn’t want it to go further.”

Sevika frowned slightly, her dark eyes narrowing. “Why not? Didn’t seem like you wanted to stop at the time.”

“It’s not that I didn’t want to,” you said, your voice softer now. “I just… I can’t keep doing this with you.”

Her brows furrowed deeper, confusion and frustration flickering across her face. “Doing what?”

“This,” you said, gesturing vaguely between the two of you. “Whatever it is we’re doing. Hooking up, fooling around… it’s fun, Sev, but it’s starting to mean something to me. And I don’t think it means the same thing to you.”

Sevika’s expression hardened instantly, her features locking into something cold and unreadable. She leaned back, her jaw tightening.

“Wait a minute,” she said, her voice tinged with incredulity. “You’re catching feelings?”

Your stomach twisted at the way she said it, like it was absurd. “Yeah. I am.”

For a moment, she just stared at you. Then she scoffed, shaking her head. “I thought we were having fun. I didn’t think this was supposed to be anything serious.”

Her words hit like a punch to the gut, and you swallowed hard, fighting the sting in your eyes. “Of course you didn’t,” you said quietly. “Why would you?”

Sevika exhaled sharply, running a hand through her hair. “Look, I didn’t mean it like that. I’m just… not that kind of person. I don’t do the whole ‘serious relationship’ thing. I thought you knew that.”

“Yeah, I do know that,” you said, your voice trembling slightly despite your effort to stay calm. “And that’s exactly why I can’t keep doing this. I’m not built for… whatever this is. I can’t just turn off my feelings, Sevika.”

She stood up abruptly, pacing a few steps away before turning back to face you. “So what, you’re just done? That’s it?”

“What else am I supposed to do?” you shot back, the frustration and hurt spilling out now. “Keep hooking up with you while I pretend I’m fine with it meaning nothing to you? That’s not fair to me.”

Sevika’s jaw clenched, her hands balling into fists at her sides. “I never promised you anything.”

“I know,” you said, standing up too. “And that’s the problem. You didn’t promise me anything, and you don’t want to. So I’m doing the smart thing for once and walking away before I get hurt worse.”

She didn’t respond right away, her gaze fixed on you like she was trying to find the right words. But whatever she wanted to say, she didn’t. Instead, she just nodded stiffly.

“Fine,” she said, her voice colder than you’d ever heard it. “Do what you gotta do.”

And with that, she turned and walked out, leaving you standing there with your chest aching and tears threatening to spill.

You stood frozen for a moment, staring at the spot where Sevika had just been. Her words echoed in your mind—"I thought we were having fun. I didn’t think it was anything serious."

The tears that had been welling up finally spilled over, but you quickly wiped them away, not wanting anyone to walk in and see you like this. You sank back onto the couch, your mind a storm of emotions. Anger. Sadness. Embarrassment.

It wasn’t like you hadn’t seen this coming. You knew Sevika’s reputation. You knew she wasn’t the type to settle down or make commitments. And yet, you let yourself fall anyway.

You didn’t even realize how much time had passed until Caitlyn walked into the lounge, her brows knitting together as she took one look at you.

“Hey, what happened?” she asked, sitting down beside you.

You shook your head, brushing off her concern. “Nothing. I’m fine.”

Caitlyn wasn’t buying it. She crossed her arms and gave you a pointed look. “You look like you’ve been crying. Did something happen with Sevika?”

Her name was enough to make your chest ache all over again. You sighed, leaning back against the couch. “Yeah. I told her how I felt… and she basically told me it’s not mutual.”

Caitlyn winced, her face softening. “I’m sorry. I know that must’ve been hard to hear.”

“It’s my own fault,” you muttered, rubbing your temples. “I knew what I was getting into, Cait. I knew she wasn’t serious about me. But I let myself believe, even for a second, that maybe she could be.”

Caitlyn placed a gentle hand on your shoulder. “It’s not your fault. You can’t help how you feel. And Sevika… she has her own issues. You shouldn’t beat yourself up for wanting more than she can give.”

You looked at her, appreciating the comfort in her words. “Thanks, Cait.”

She gave you a small smile. “Of course. Look, why don’t we get out of here? Clear your head a bit. There’s a café downstairs that makes great coffee, and you could use a break from… all of this.”

You hesitated for a moment before nodding. “Yeah, that sounds good. I just need a minute.”

Caitlyn patted your shoulder before standing. “Take your time. I’ll be in the lobby.”

Once she was gone, you took a deep breath and leaned back, staring at the ceiling. You wanted to be mad at Sevika, but deep down, you weren’t. She had been honest about who she was. You were the one who had hoped for more.

Still, it didn’t make the pain any easier to bear.

Later that evening, Caitlyn returned to the room, already dressed for the concert in her sleek, edgy ensemble. She looked at you, still curled up in your hoodie and sweatpants, and frowned.

“I thought you’d be getting ready by now,” she said.

You sighed, pulling your knees up to your chest. “I’m not going tonight. I just… I’m not feeling it.”

Caitlyn stepped closer, concern flickering across her face. “Are you sure? It might be a good distraction.”

You shook your head firmly. “No, I’m sure. I was going to record a vlog or something, but… I don’t even feel like doing that. Would you mind recording it for me? Just some clips from the concert?”

Her expression softened. “Of course. Anything specific you want me to get?”

“Just the usual—crowd shots, the band playing. Maybe a bit of backstage stuff if you can. Here.” You reached over to the desk and grabbed your camera, handing it to her. “I trust you with it.”

Caitlyn took the camera with a small smile. “I’ll make sure it’s perfect. Are you sure you’re okay staying here by yourself?”

You hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah, I’ll be fine. Just… bring me something sweet after the show. Chocolate or something.”

She chuckled softly. “Deal.”

As Caitlyn left, the quietness of the room enveloped you. For now, you had to focus on picking up the pieces.

You could deal with Sevika—and your heart—later.

taglist : @moodient @whatlefoop @nonexistentsourcherry @graciebloom @swordfemm4 @m00npjm @sevikasleftarm @fayecreates @artfairyyyyy @mulan-but-gay @inlovewithsevikaandambessa @sapphiellar @fudosl

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newkatzkafe2023 · 2 days ago

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Crazy idea.

Yandere Monkeys x Yandere reader

They've been stalking each other without knowing and they only found out when a guy was flirting with reader and a girl was flirting with the monkeys and the monkeys decided to k💀ll the guy and bury the body only to find reader burying the body of the girl that was flirting with them.

Great deadly minds think alike 🥰🔪🩸

(Lmk Wukong) He's been stalking you for a couple of months now, he saw you at a bakery eating a slice of peach cobbler and he was smitten ever since. He followed you everywhere ever since learning about your daily routine, where you work, your friends, your hobbies, and more. Then one day he saw something that made his blood boil, a guy was flirting with you at the mall you clearly looked annoyed but maintained a polite smile. Wukong would be out for blood if this girl wasn't blocking his few, he was annoyed and ignored her only to find that you disappeared from his field of vision. Oh well, he'll find you later right now he needs to bury the corspe but before he can he saw you burying a body yourself. Wukong Quickly saw the dead body of girl from earlier and he was in love with you all over again. He soon found out you were stalking him way before he even say you.

(HIB Wukong) You know, I think he would be bad at stalking, considering he sticks out like a sore thumb. Though you made it quite easy for him to follow you around as you would do the same thing every day, mainly because you were doing odd jobs around the village. One day, he saw a guy flirting with you he was very into you and wanted to ask you out, and that's when Wukong found out they'll be hell to pay now. So one night, Wukong followed the guy home, glaring at his back with red eyes, and when he saw he was totally alone, that's when Wukong strikes. Though here's the thing he didn't know, he was being flirted with by a merchant, and He's about to find down What happened to her. Wukong had found you burying the charcoal body of the woman who flirted with him, and for once as you ran to hug him he finds out you were Stalking him as soon as he got here.

(NR Wukong) He is the master of stalking and invading personal space. He saw you in a bar, and he was immediately obsessed. He followed you from a safe distance every night to different clubs. Heck, he'll even follow you to the liquor store or whatever store is open at night. Everything was fine and normal until one night the cashier kelp flirting with you, as you paid for your chips pissing off Wukong but another pretty lady came up to hit on him. Unfortunately, Wukong was already occupied, making that young man pay with his life, but when he went to bury the body, he had found you. Casually dragging the dead body of the woman who was with him earlier, when your eyes met you both were in shocked but soon smiled with blushes and After disposing the bodies you both went on a lovely date. Thank goodness you decided to stalk him again tonight, Otherwise, you would have lost him to that floozy.

(MKR Wukong) He stalks you whenever he has to patrol the camp and protect the monk, his territorial and possessive Instincts going into speed drive. He would Secretly , follow you all around town and Forrest whenever your heading home. Wukong need he needed to have you for himself and worked his way to make you fall for him, that was until he saw a man talking to you. When Wukong saw that he also saw red in blind bloodlust and vengeance he swiftly kid that guy and when to bury his corspe. That was until he saw you burying a girl from the market, turns out he was to angry to notice The girl flirting with him. That's how Wukong knew that you were the one for him forever, he was so turned on when he found that you stock him too.

(Netflix Wukong) I just feel like he would end somebody out of jealousy, and paranoia. You were the prettiest monkey he's ever seen and he need to somehow get your attention and interest. Though the but the straw broke the camals back rather quickly when he found a human male flirting with an uninterested look, ohhhhh to say Wukong saw red was the understatement of the new year. He was too mad to notice another girl's flirting and walked off without a word, following the guy who split from you. The guy stood no chance as Wukong crushed him under his heel ending his life once and for all, then came another shocking twist. Wukong found that you were following around to and killed the girl who was flirting with him. Life is sweet.....and kinda bloody.

(BMW Wukong) He gets whatever he wants, whenever he wants and what he wants now is you. Wukong stalks you like he's the predator and your the prey wanting you so bad and doing whatever he has to just to get you to look his way. That's why when he finds out that another man has been messing with and flirting with the woman who he owns, and the guy planned cold hard revenge against him. He tortured the guy painfully and slowly before he died and went to bury the body, that's was when he found you burying the body of a demon lady Who thought she stood a chance with Wukong. Let's just say you celebrated your union by making it a blood moon to remember.

(Destined one) Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh crap you don't want the Destined one stalking you or else It won't be just you that goes missing. The Destined one is the reining king of stalking due to his quiet personality and ability to blend into the background, you wouldn't even know he there that was until he saw a man. A man flirting with you like he's worthy of you and your time so the Destined one strikes the fear of God into that guy's soul as the Destined one Tortured him to death. Then he heard screaming and saw the dead body of a young girl who offered D.O cookies and bury her dead body. The Destined one gave you a look of shock and love, and you both soon began to go Stedy.

FEEL FREE TO REBLOG😈

#monkey king reborn #monkey king x reader #monkey king netflix #nezha reborn #lmk monkey king #monkey king hero is back #x female y/n #black myth wukong #the destined one x reader #yandere x yandere #yandere reader #Yandere

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thewalrusespublicist · 3 days ago

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"Tbh I was starting to feel a bit down about my blog and what I was putting out ( the eternal crisis on how to give full answers and opinions without being stupid, boring and annoying lol)"

OMG no way! Your blog is one of the best here! What i love the most is reading the analysis and meta from the users, there's always more information and good takes, and yours are always quite deep and insightful.

I would love if you share your opinions about Stuart as well. I feel like he is obviously more sanctified that he should be since he died young (like that insane quote from his mom saying that Brian told her that Stuart could have been the Beatles' manager, no way lol) and i feel his memory has been used to attack Paul, sometimes in a very unfair way. Like, i don't deny the teenage drama and jealousy that Paul felt about him but he *was* a shitty bass player and the band was Paul's future, he was allowed to criticized him not only for being John's new bestie. I also think John played with them both but i lack of your eloquence so i will love to read your take about it.

Hi anon! And the other anons!

Thank you again and to all the other messages I got, they were extremely sweet and really made my day. :)

From my inbox, it's clear you guys want to know about Stu and his role in the Beatles legacy. Well you asked for it and a novel you shall have. Be warned this might be the longest post I've done so grab like a drink or something.

A few disclaimers: I wish and had intended for this to be more of a deep dive into Stu as a whole person rather than just his relationship with John and Paul. Unfortunately I just didn't have the space to do it. If you want to know more about Stu I would highly recommend @eppysboys' blog which is the source for all things Stu Sutcliffe and where I got a lot of this info. Please check their stuff out. Also, I'm going to be a bit blunter on this than maybe I usually am because this topic has been irritating me for some time. Oh also I’m trying my best to answer a lot of asks in one post so please forgive if I don’t fully answer your specific ask about this!

Stu in a perfect world should be a fandom darling: an exciting cipher, a handsome artistic talent that died way too soon who had a major influence in the early Beatles style. It's like there’s this secret other James Dean looking mf Beatle hidden away to uncover, that's cool and he is cool! The problem is that he’s sort of becomes radioactive to talk about in a normal way due to how he's been portrayed and utilised in some biographies and fandom spaces, particularly those that have been infected by John Lennon aspirational boy bestie syndrome. As those types of spaces cannot seem to exist without tearing down Paul to prop John up as their special lil guy, Stu as John's other best friend has become the ideal heavy object to hit Paul McCartney over the head with. It's like a corrosive element, the minute Stu hits a Beatles bio, the biographer suddenly loses all training in objectivity and source work and starts waxing lyrical about 100 percent reliable never biased or wrong Saint Stu of Hamburg who died for our condom arson sins and that Paul McCartney should feel bad about every day of his life for not worshipping Stu and not accepting his own ‘place’ in life as John's just-some-guy placeholder best friend. I’ve personally seen so many posts and forums where Stu being mentioned leads to a legion of comments about how Paul could never have been Stu (correct both ways) and how John would never have even glanced at Paul for much longer if Stu had been alive. Sidenote: If you seriously think that the musical savant from down the road whom John went on to produce the most prolific song writing partnership in history with couldnt have kept his attention for long then I'm begging you on hands and knees to get your head out of the arse of your John Lennon body pillow and be serious. But anyway…

This boy bestie battle royale approach has in turn lead to a reflex reaction where Stu gets studiously ignored by other sections of the fandom as a precedent has been set that shining a light on him diminishes Paul and John's relationship with Paul. It's frustrating because if people weren't so keen to cut Paul out of his own story then we would get a much better nuanced view of every single person involved.

So let's put aside all of our defenses, cut the John Lennon loved one ranking system bullshit and lets look at the actual question here which is what was John and Stu's relationship really like and what did he mean to John?

John and Stu met at art college a year or so after Paul and John met. Up to that point John and Paul had their fun little codependant thing going on but Stu quickly became a huge fixture in John's life. Stu had things that Paul couldn't really offer at that point in time. John was at his heart a musician who aspired to be seen as an artist (he would later express surprise that he didn't become an artist). Stu was the passionate artist who knew tons about the art of the period that could teach and inspire John. Their creative leanings meant they could work on projects together and share art notebooks and poetry. (Including yes the one with anti-semitic story which I mention again as I believe it's an important thing to remember when it comes to both John and Stu and the culture of the time.) Stuart by the sounds of it was even writing a novel about John at the time of his death. They were fascinated and inspired by each other.

So, creatively they fired each other up but more importantly perhaps, Stu and John were peers. It's funny to think about when you see the Beatles later but at the time Paul and George were the kids in their school uniform coming to see their cool older friend at art school. That's an important divide. When Paul and George's parents insisted their kids do their homework and go to bed, John and Stu could stay up and talk all hours of the night, which they did. They also could rent a place together and spend long hours chatting (despite John moving out later after realising electricity cost money lol.) There's a different dynamic that the age similarity offered as well. Whilst Paul would later somewhat grow into this role, Stu could act as an authority figure to John as well as open up to John in a way you can really only do with your peers. Stu was the person John opened up to throughout Stu's life:

How long can one go on writing and writing like you. I now don’t really know who I’m writing to or why it’s quiet peculiar. I usually write like this and forget about it but if I put it in a little part of my [almost?] secret self in the hands of someone miles away who will wonder what the hell is going on or just pass it off as toilet paper. Anyway I don’t care really what happens because when I think about it, it’s so bloody unimportant – but what is important who has the right to say that this letter is not important and this is a something any way – anyway – anyway – yeah! I wonder what it would be like to be a cretin or something. I bet it’s gear. & how are you keepin Stuart old chap are you as ok – is life as good – bad shite, great – wonderful as it was or is it just a thousand years of nothing and coolness on and on and on. I think this is it Goodbye Stu don’t write out of – er what is it? well not because you think you ought to write when you feel like So goodbye (from John you know the one with glasses) ANYWAY BYE BYE see you soon I don’t know why I said that I remember a time when everyone I loved hated me because I hated them so what so what so fucking what I remember a time when belly buttons were knee high when only shitting was dirty and everything else clean + beautiful I can’t remember anything without a sadness So deep that it hardly becomes known to me so deep that its tears leave me a spectator of my own STUPIDITY + so I go rambling on with a hey nonny nonny nonny no

Extract from a letter to Stuart Sutcliffe from John Lennon, 1961

By lots of accounts Stu was gentle but firm when it came to telling John he'd gone too far. John references this aspect of Stu to Hunter Davies:

"I looked up to Stu. I depended on him to tell me the truth. Stu would tell me if something was good and I'd believe him."

The Beatles: The Authorised Biography (Hunter Davies)

In this way I kind of see Stu as a proto-Yoko. John was so insecure and uncertain about his grip on the world and reality that he relied on Stu to be his point of reference and guide. Paul did this too later and I think in Hunter Davies John mentions this, but not at this time period and not as much due to their competitiveness. This may be why some people saw Stu as the person that really understood John at this time period:

"During the turbulent adolescence that prefaced a turbulent manhood, hardly anyone knew Lennon as intimately as Stuart Sutcliffe. If they weren't exactly David and Jonathan, June Furlong, one of the life models at Liverpool's Regional College of Art, had "never seen two teenagers as close as those two."

The Gospel According To Lennon by Alan Clayson

Now this person likely never met John and Paul together but this is only one of many similar quotes and even Julia captain of John and Paul's friendship boat seems to agree there was a period where Stu dominated and Paul 'kept his distance' from the John-Cyn-Stu 'menage-a-trois'. But the friendship wasn't perfect and his position as John's ultimate best friend was never iron clad. This is best outlined by the shit they pulled when John convinced him to join on Bass for the Beatles.

Despite being John's best friend, Stu was teased and bullied:

"They argued as usual amongst themselves, but most of all they picked on Stu, the newest member of the group. John, George and Paul had been with each other long enough to know that rows and arguments and criticism didn't mean much. If it did, you just argued back. "We were terrible," says John. "We'd tell Stu he couldn't sit with us, or eat with us. We'd tell him to go away, and he did." At one hotel they stayed at, a variety show had just left. There had been a dwarf in the show and they found out which bed he had slept in and said that would have to be Stu's. They certainly weren't going to sleep in it. So Stu had to. "That was how he learned to be with us," says John. "It was all stupid, but that was what we were like."

The Beatles: The Authorised Biography (Hunter Davies)

Why John encouraged this I have no idea, maybe jealousy over Stu's looks and wanting to play people off each other? Things were tense in both Scotland and Hamburg, especially between Stu and Paul. As I said in my last post, the girls were fighting and it was mutual. Paul was mad for both fair and immature teenage-boy reasons. Stu could not be bothered with the bass most of the time and couldn't really play well and was only there as he was '(John's) best friend' (ouch for Paul). Paul conversely had given up higher education to be there and was sending lots of money back home. He also was dating the girl Paul fancied. Stu was popular with the new group and also did mean things like help John steal Paul's money when money was really tight for him. Paul in turn was a passive aggressive, jealous and mean. It all came to ahead in the punch up onstage which according to Spitz came about from Paul wanting money back and saying that Stu could borrow some from Astrid. Stu goes for him and reports vary from full-on bust up to embarrassing scuffle. Stu then goes to where Astrid and Paul's gf Dot are, demands Dot leaves and goes on a rant about Paul. Now all of this must be framed in the context of Stu receiving increasing brain damage from his condition that seemingly lead to mood swings and anger. Nevertheless, the mutual needling and anger, as well as John's refusal to do/say fuck all about it, especially given how protective John was of Stu, suggests that it wasn’t straightforward and/or John may have been playing some games to make both feel threatened. This would also make sense as to why we hear conflicting accounts of John and Stu being the centre of everything and everyone else in orbit AND John and Paul being the centre and everyone else playing catch-up, as well as John giving Paul the lead to take him round the Reeperbahn when John got dressed in the gorilla costume. (I know Paul may have just been the closest there but that always gave off bestie behaviour to me.)

(I did get an ask about how John and Paul's friendship survived it, I think it was damaged by Hamburg. When Paul got back home he got a job at a construction site and there's just a vibe of everything being a bit on tenterhooks. John also acts a bit weird at the period, not talking to anyone for a few weeks then making a lot of weird demands from Paul. I'm really not sure what to make of it.)

Even when he's back in Liverpool, John still writes long letters to Stu and vice-versa. I can't find it at all but I’ve read a really sad interview with John saying he missed his best mate and it's a shame that he's not with them. He had no idea at that point that Stu had already died of a brain hemorrhage at 21.

John is said to have gone into hysterics when he found out Stu had died. A lot of people who've spoken about this time (Aunt Mimi, his sister Julia, the Exsis) concur that at this point Stu was his best friend and the death shattered him. He even told Astrid he wished he could give his life for Stu’s. This is backed up by the fact that John never forgot Stu and his shadow lingered for the rest of John's life:

Stu was recalled in In My Life

Years later, after John composed the first of his truly poignant and heartfelt Beatles songs, "In My Life"—with its lines about "friends I still can recall/some are dead and some are living"—he revealed to me that the two people he had had uppermost in mind were myself and Stuart Sutcliffe. And then he stunned me with a statement that I'd never heard him address to anyone—least of all to another man. "You know, Pete," he said softly, "I do love you. But," he quickly added, "I loved Stuart as well."

Weird that Paul isn't mentioned surely you think that he would be mentioned if Pete was there too okay, okay my tin hat is going away this isn't the time

Pete Shotton, Nicholas Schaffner, John Lennon: In My Life

In 1965 John drew Stu on a postcard

He apparently said this about Stu prior to sending the postcard, prompted by an article about Stuart.

The card had been sent from Genoa mid-way through the Beatles' Italian tour. [...] But the conversation had become maudlin when I reminded him that he was going to talk to me for an article about Stuart. [...] In that sad telephone conversation before they set off for Milan, I asked him if he was happy: 'I'd be a lot happier if Stuart was still part of us,' he said, 'The Beatles would be complete.' And before he rang off he said 'Ill send you something.'

He also appears on the cover of Sgt Pepper

As mentioned, Stu gets mentioned in Hunter Davies in terms of wistfulness and guilt AND he gets a mention in John's insane 'if I were a homosexual' ramblings in early 70s. According to Yoko, John also wanted Yoko to write letters to him and didn't think it would be strange because Stu wrote letters to him.

I have a pet theory that as with a lot of things for John, his unresolved grief over Stu really came to the fore in the late 60s now that he had actually had a chance to sit down and think about things. I believe it was partially why he wanted Yoko to write letters and why he gets mentioned in the early 70s as a collaborator/best friend and not in 1980 where John only gives that credit to Paul and Yoko. I think with the cracks with Paul, John had started to think back on his old friend and guide and what advice he would give.

Stuarts presence is still felt throughout the seventies:

“He told me everything. He loved to talk about Hamburg. There were no secrets. It was the kind of life I never knew��. It meant total freedom. At his side always was Stuart, sweet Stuart. There wasn’t a time in John’s life when he didn’t think about Stuart. He spoke always of his love and respect for Stuart.”

Yoko discussing Stu in When They Were Boys: The True Story of the Beatles’ Rise to the Top by Larry Kane

Coming to grips with his death is also present in Skywriting

SEAN O’HAIRE: What happened to Stuart Cliff? DR. FISCHY: What happened was a full exchange of energy where it was not needed within the expression of your own self or in the energies involved around and about you. We cannot call it a happening. We’ll say it is an awakening, for in that way it has served an expression from the past to the present and to the future to where there shall be more of that incomplete vibration expressed to you in a more fuller understanding.

Skywriting by Word of Mouth, John Lennon

This isn't exhaustive but I think from all this it's pretty clear that John adored Stu, John grieved Stu and kept grieving Stu. Stu had a specific place in his life as a confidant that he tried to recreate with Yoko. At the time of Stu's death, he was John's best friend, probably slightly over Paul. Stuart had been able to be both a friend and paternal presence, a confidant and an artistic collaborator. His presence and loss was one of the foundational points in John's life.

But as we've been asked to play this stupid game and so many bios like to make a hoopla about it, were they at their closest ever as close as John and Paul were at their height?

No.

How do we know? Because John told us so:

" He [Paul] still is the closest friend I've ever had, except for Yoko, so I'm still close to him whatever goes on."

John Lennon to an interviewer, 1971

But Walrus! John just says shit! How do we know he isn't leaving out Stu because the press don't know Stu. Well true John does just say shit but this is at a time where John isn't the most glowing about Paul and he's had no problem mentioning Stu in this time period ('one of my best friends ever' would have made a similar point).

But Walrus again! If John picked Stu over Paul when they were young why wouldn't he be the boy bestie of all time, and why would John say that he was closer to Paul? Well, because of the environment and timings. Stu's death happened near the beginning of John and Paul's major bonding moments. If you look at their personal timeline, Paris, the Nerk twins, and getting signed happened just before Stu died. That's missing the major years of Beatlemania, Key West, LSD, Paul growing more into being John's peer and a load of other huge moments in their lives. It's like how John writes to Cyn in 1962 about wanting the house to themselves and not have Paul around all the time. Would you say because he feels closer to Cyn then that John in his overall lifetime loved Cyn more than Paul? No, because relationships change over time and theirs were no exception. (One thing to consider as well is that we don't yet have many letters between John and Paul during their Beatles years and earlier, probably because they were spending so much time with each other. We know a couple exist that Paul considers too personal for publication but I'm sure there are others. It's easy to understand what John felt for Stu as we have the letters, I think we would also have an easier time understanding what John felt for Paul if we had the equivalent of those.)

At the end of the day Paul was the man he believed he had a psychic bond with, the man he couldn’t shut up about, the man whom he’d conquered the world with with their endless collaboration, the man with a twin personality to him and according to John spent more time with throughout the 60s than he had with Yoko ever. To be frank if Paul had died in 67' I don't think this would have been a conversation.

As mentioned early, in early 1970s John elevates his partnership with Stu to his collaborations with Paul and Yoko but by 1980 he’s pretty clear that Paul and Yoko are their own category.

"I was saying to somebody the other day, “There’s only two artists I’ve ever worked with for more than a one night stand, as it were. That’s Paul McCartney, and Yoko Ono.” And I think that’s a pretty damned good choice!!"

John Lennon interview with DJ Dave Sholin, 1980

There are of course the what ifs. Would Stu still being alive mean that John was not as close with Paul? Maybe, highly doubtful though as the Beatles experience was so intense. If Stu remained a Beatle would John be as close with Paul? If Stu remained a Beatle he wouldn't be Stu so no. At the same time who knows what it would have been like if Paul and John were peers from the off? I said this to @the62ndbugsfan when it comes to Stu vs Paul (hi girl sorry i've made our chat a whole ass post lol) but to go a bit Wuthering Heights, soulmates are made as much from the earth as they are of the stars. What binds us is our experiences just as much as our personalities. There may be a universe where Stu and John took on the art world together or became inseparable bffs again after the Beatles disbanded, but it is not our universe. In this universe Stu tragically died and John and Paul chose to become Lennon/McCartney and artistically unite themselves forever.

Even going back to Stu's lifetime, I've said it before and I'll say it again I find it interesting that not only did John choose to go to Paris with Paul rather than pay to meet up with Stu somewhere but that they arranged to meet up with Juergen and nobody told Stu until they'd already gone. Stu was shocked and didn't know if it meant the end of the Beatles which is a pretty big thing for him not to know about. Why didn't John tell him if they're apparently still writing long letters? Was it because he really wanted to do this with Paul and didn't want to hurt Stu's feelings? And that's really the point I want to make here. Due to his trauma John was preoccupied with reinforcing ranking of relationships within his life. But the thing is friendship rankings are made up guidelines and the reality is far more complicated. You can have a designated best friend but feel closer to another friend at times, you can want to do one thing specifically with one friend and not the other for various reasons. You can (as I do) have more than one equal best friend. Friendship as with most relationships are in a constant state of flux and each friendship you have will give and mean a different thing, even if they are of similar value to you.

Paul may have ended up closer to John than Stu had been, but that doesen't make John's relationship with Stu any less special. Nor does Stu negate the significance of Paul. Whilst both fit into John's pattern of intense relationships and demands related to that, both had unique positions and meaning to him. Considering what I've gone into about John's closeness to Stu, it actually says something deeply, borderline unnervingly, intense about John and Paul that Paul pipped Stu to the post. Maybe it's time Beatles bios accept the fact that John Lennon just wouldn't be into them like that, stop using a tragically prematurely deceased young man as a prop in their jealous psychological warfare against Paul McCartney, stop perpetuating one of the most damaging games that John did to his loved ones and allow both relationships the space to shine and showcase the amazing talent that was the Beatles and those that surrounded them.

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luvergirl-866 · 1 hour ago

Text

that’s so true

word count - 8.3k

pairing - paige bueckers x azzi fudd

c/w - language, toxic p/toxic relationship (situationship) (kinda toxic a too)? i guess you could call it angst? but it’s very unserious bc i’ve been doing too much serious stuff. fluff and happy ending. very dialogue heavy

a/n - i don’t usually like to incorporate music into my fics but the anon who gave this prompt specifically recommended it so i hope i did it justice! also, this takes place azzi’s freshman year so like 2021/2022, and i know this song didn’t exist then but this is fiction so i can do what i want 😛. hope yall enjoy!!!

They only have five minutes before they’re supposed to leave with everybody else to Ted’s. Unfortunately for Azzi, Paige Bueckers is very hot and also very much on top of her, and both of these things coincide to create quite the predicament: they can’t stop kissing.

It’s normal for them, lately. Kissing is easier than talking, concerning talking has gotten harder since they started—whatever this is. Or maybe restarted is a better word, considering they did this same thing in high school. But back then, the kissing was a little clumsier, often fast and desperate, whereas now they’re older, mature (yeah, right) and they take their time with these things, often just making out for hours before they move on to other things, relishing in not having to worry about either of their parents or siblings barging in on them like they used to.

There’s also another difference—back then, they were dating. Like, introducing each other as their girlfriends, going on dates, holding-hands-in-public dating.

That’s different because today—and for the past six months—they’ve been decidedly not dating.

“We don’t need distractions,” Paige had said after they’d fucked, only a month after Azzi came to UConn. (They had both agreed to stay just friends—best friends—but nothing more. But then they had to live in the same building and watch each other get all hot and sweaty at practice and see each other in skimpy pajamas and who were they to blame, really, when they fucked in that club bathroom one heated but sober night? They had spent a year broken up, a year of being long-distance besties, FaceTiming and texting and posting each other on socials with captions like “happy birthday i miss you” and “come see me”. It honestly would’ve been wrong for them to not fuck.)

“Mm—Paige, wait,” Azzi whispers when they finally separate for air.

“What’s up,” Paige says, eyes roving over every inch of Azzi’s face. Her voice is a little raspy from lack of use and it does things to Azzi’s tummy.

“I—you don’t—we need to go,” Azzi urges, pushing at Paige’s shoulders. Paige, of course, just smiles at that, pressing her knee up in between Azzi’s legs. It’s really not her fault when she gasps a little.

Paige chuckles, leaning down to kiss her forehead, then between her eyebrows. “Do we?” she mumbles, pecking the tip of Azzi’s nose and the corner of her mouth. “Like, do we really?”

“Yes, Paige, we do.” Azzi moves one of her hands down to Paige’s occupied thigh, trying desperately to separate the toned muscle from her aching core. “C’mon, it’ll be fun.”

“Definitely not as much fun as this is.”

“Well, we can continue later, when we get home.” That gets Paige to move her knee back, offering Azzi both relief and leaving an ache between her legs. She does her best to flash a sultry smile. “It’s a weekend. We can stay up all night if we want.”

Paige looks at her skeptically. “I thought you were stayin’ sober?”

Azzi moves her head back and forth. “Might not.”

“For real?”

“Uh-huh.” Azzi winds her arms around Paige’s shoulders, then scratches a little roughly down the length of her back, something Paige has always been into. It works, Paige’s jaw dropping just enough to show the pink of her tongue. “I want it, too, P. We just can’t ditch the team again. I think they already suspect us.”

“What?” Paige makes a face and scoffs. “Nah, we’re sneaky.”

“You called me babe in front of everyone at practice.”

“That’s a friend thing.” Paige waggles her eyebrows and plants a kiss on her lips, as if to prove just how friendly they are.

“Nika saw you basically groping me the other day, too.”

“I never did that.”

“My apartment, the kitchen. Movie night. I was making popcorn and you came up behind me and grabbed my tits.”

“Hm. Don’t remember that.”

“You said ‘I wanna fuck you from behind right now,’ and poor Nika walked in and stared at us and said, ‘This doesn’t look like you’re making popcorn’.”

Paige groans, dropping her head into Azzi’s shoulder and effectively laying the entire length of her body on Azzi’s. “I did wanna fuck you from behind. You were wearing those jeans…”

“Paige!”

“Okay, whatever.” Paige is a little muffled now, buried in the crook of Azzi’s neck. Her breath tingles, sending hot shivers up the length of her arm. “I do that to everyone, Nika won’t think anything of it.”

“Oh, really,” Azzi says, tone dropping into something utterly unamused, and Paige’s head pops up when she hears it. “So you say things like that to every bitch?”

Paige’s eyes widen. “No!” she grapples for something to say, and Azzi just raises an eyebrow at her. “I don’t—I meant—I just didn’t wanna admit you’re right, I wasn’t—baby.” Paige juts out her bottom lip. It kinda works. “You know I wasn’t thinkin’.”

This is another interesting thing about their current situation: because they’re not dating, they’ve never discussed where they stand in terms of other people. Sure, at the very beginning, they agreed since it was just casual sex, there was no reason for them to be exclusive. They didn’t want to get anywhere near that line of the all-consuming, intense relationship they had in high school, and they figured seeing other people—or at least having the option to do so—would steer them clear of that. And it worked for about…two seconds.

But then somewhere down the line things got a little blurry and slowly but surely Azzi stopped thinking of them as friends with benefits and as more of a slightly complicated but also fun situationship. Because at some point they started kissing without the goal of sex or even third base, just little pecks here and there when they had a second alone. And then they started staying a little longer each time after they’d fuck—at first, they’d leave directly after. But then they would stay for some basic aftercare, and then it got to full-on snuggling, and then it got to their clothes in each other’s apartments from how often they’d stay the night with each other. And the most recent development which really cemented things for Azzi: Paige has started using pet names outside the bedroom, something she only ever did while they were girlfriends. It’s only been a few weeks since this started and Azzi was absolutely floored when Paige had picked up her phone call with a, “Hey, baby.”

And now here they are, late for yet another night out because Paige is very clearly scandalized at the mere notion of her seeing another girl—even though it’s supposed to be allowed—and Azzi has to be honest, she doesn’t love the idea, either.

“Aw, c’mon,” Paige says when Azzi doesn’t reply. “Don’t be mad at me, mama.”

Azzi blinks up at her, officially not jealous and not overthinking about their complicated situation any longer. “You’re stupid,” she teases, scooting back and sitting up.

Paige follows closely, so that by the time Azzi is propped up against the headboard she’s on her lap. “You’re really stopping us?” she asks.

“We’re already late, I’m sure everybody left without us,” Azzi says, tapping Paige encouragingly on the hip, “so yes.”

Paige doesn’t yet move and doesn’t look like she’s going to until a sharp knock at the door makes both of them jolt. “Hey!” It’s Aaliyah’s voice. “Y’all cannot be taking this long to get ready.”

“I don’t…we just…” Azzi stammers as Paige scrambles off her, and they both get quickly to their feet, making as little noise as possible, “our hair wasn’t cooperating,” she says, reaching up to fix Paige’s tousled hair. “We’ll be right out!”

“You better be, we’re all waiting outside and it’s fucking cold.”

“Coming!” Azzi calls, letting Paige wipe some of her smudged lip gloss, rolling her eyes when Paige smirks at her and says, “Oh, you will be.”

She has no idea what Paige Bueckers is to her, but an annoyance will always take the top spot.

————————————————

When Azzi had claimed she’d stay sober with the other freshmen, she hadn’t accounted for the fact that she has a best friend who loves to party and who loves peer pressuring even more.

“C’mon, just a few shots,” Paige pouts, leaning in too close to her. Azzi glances around the bar, trying to see if anybody is watching them, but she can’t tell. There’s too many people.

“Nobody can hear us,” Paige assures her, placing her hands low on Azzi’s hips, pressing her into the wall of the corner they’re semi-hidden in.

Azzi swears this girl is horrible for her blood pressure. “Paige,” she hisses, removing Paige’s hands, “not here.”

“You shoulda let us stay home,” Paige says, and now that her hands are placed firmly at her sides her eyes do all the wandering for them, raking slowly down Azzi’s body and back up. “I woulda had you fucked out by now, I swear.”

“Oh, I believe you,” Azzi mumbles.

“You seem anxious, baby.” Bravely, Paige holds her again, though this time it’s at a more friendly place, higher up on her waist. Azzi tries to meet her eyes but they’re held firmly on her lips. “Fuck. I wanna kiss you so bad.”

“No, Paige,” Azzi says, as sternly as possible. She would rather like to kiss her too, but not here, not now, not when Paige is tipsy and Azzi is horrendously sober.

“Okay, I’ma go get me another dirty shirley.” Azzi swears she would marry that drink if she could. “And I’ma grab a couple shots for you while I’m at it. And then we’re gonna fuck in the bathroom.”

Azzi smacks Paige on the arm. “I’m done with public restrooms. Once was enough.”

Paige, still sober enough to have some sort of common sense, wrinkles her nose. “Yeah, you’re right. But I’m still grabbing shots.” She smacks a wet kiss onto her forehead and with that, turns around to head toward the bar.

Azzi doesn’t get a second of peace before someone else is sidling up to her. Though when she looks over she sighs with relief when it’s just Caroline. “Hey, Carol.”

“You’re so lucky you have a girlfriend who’ll buy you shots,” Caroline says, looking wistfully in Paige’s direction.

“She’s not my girlfriend.”

Caroline side-eyes her. “Uh-huh.”

“She’s not. We broke up.”

“And then got back together.”

Azzi shoves her away before pulling her back, linking their arms together as she leads them towards their team’s section of seats. “Nope. We’re still exes.”

“Exes who are romantically involved.”

“Carol,” Azzi groans, urging her to shut up as they approach the rest of the girls. “We’re just friends.”

It used to leave a bitter taste in her mouth, lying to her closest friend, the one whose shoulder she cried on when she and Paige broke up. But after six months of doing it, she’s used to it. And it’s not like Caroline believes her, anyway.

“Okay,” Caroline says skeptically. “So if the guy that’s been looking at you since we got here asked for your number, you’d give it to him?”

They’re at the team’s booth now, and Amari perks up at the mention of the slightest possibility of drama. “What guy?”

“I haven’t noticed a guy,” Azzi says, which is the truth. As it usually goes, she’s only had eyes for Paige tonight.

“Over there,” Carol says, leaning against the table and gesturing subtly across the bar. “Muscle shirt.”

“Immediately no,” Azzi replies, not even looking for him in the group of guys across the room. But he must be actively searching her out because just as she’s about to look away she catches his eye, and even though she immediately looks away, she can still see him grin out of the corner of her eye.

“Uh-oh,” Amari mutters. “You engaged him.”

“Don’t make eye contact,” Azzi says, turning away from him to face her friends. “Make yourself unapproachable.”

Caroline turns away, too, and the two of them lean over the table.

Aaliyah looks up from the conversation she was having. “What’re you guys doing?”

“Hiding,” Azzi hisses.

Amari peeks around Azzi’s shoulder, then settles back in her seat. “He’s coming over.”

“What?” Azzi wants to look at him but doesn’t, instead inching herself closer to Caroline. “Save me.”

“Who is that?” Aaliyah asks, not-so-subtly staring at the guy.

“A man about to flirt with Azzi,” Caroline says, nudging her away.

“Oh, Paige is gonna be maddd,” Aaliyah sing-songs, and they all giggle like this is funny and not absolutely awkward and stress-inducing.

Azzi glares at them. “She has no reason to be mad.” And it’s true, she kind of doesn’t, but that doesn’t mean she won’t.

“Oh, yeah?” Caroline asks, glancing behind them just as Azzi feels the man come up behind her. “We’ll see about that.”

And then there’s a tap on her shoulder, and Azzi takes a deep breath before turning around with a strained smile on her face.

“Hey.” Muscle shirt is standing a little too close for comfort, which she’s sure he’ll excuse by the crowded bar but is obviously just him being weird. “You’re Azzi, right?”

“Uh-huh,” Azzi says, leaning back against the table.

“I’ve seen you around,” he continues, smiling cockily, obviously very proud of himself for being brave enough to approach her. “You come here a lot, right? To Ted’s?”

Azzi shrugs, looking casually to her side in the hopes that Caroline will rescue her, but to her astonishment she has slid into the booth next to Aaliyah and is now chatting happily with the rest of the team. “I guess.”

“Noticed you weren’t with Bueckers,” he says, and she winces. Not five sentences into the conversation and he’s already brought up her current situationship. “Thought it was a good opening.” He laughs. She doesn’t.

“How so?” she asks, a little nervously.

“I mean, she obviously doesn’t want anybody coming near you.” A girl squeezes past behind him and he takes it as an excuse to inch even closer to her. Azzi presses herself further back into the table. “Can’t even look your way without her looking like she’s gonna fight someone.”

“She’s just protective,” Azzi says. As if Paige would do that for any of their friends, as if that level of pure possessiveness is normal.

“Right.” He doesn’t sound fully convinced. “You didn’t ask my name.”

God. Why are men so…gross? “My bad.” He stares at her expectantly. “Uh…so…?”

“I’m Elliot,” he says, grinning at her. That muscle shirt is really not doing good things for him. “You want me to buy you a drink?”

“Um, actually—“

“She’s good.”

Azzi’s shoulders sag at the mere sound of Paige’s voice. She can’t help but smile when Paige approaches them, moving roughly past Elliot to sidle up next to her. She hands her two brightly colored shots before slinging an arm around her, firmly ignoring Elliot. “Gotchu these. Lemme know if you don’t like ‘em.”

Azzi nods, and usually she’d shy away from the physical contact, especially right in front of their friends, but now she leans into it, safe under Paige’s arm. “Thanks.”

“Sorry I took so long.” As if sensing her discomfort—which she probably can—she rubs her thumb soothingly over her shoulder. “They’re super busy up there. You okay?”

Azzi opens her mouth to respond, but Elliot interrupts her. “She’s fine, dude. We’re just talking.”

Paige looks at him. “Aight. Well, you can be done talking now.”

Their teammates have gone mostly quiet behind them, and Azzi rolls her eyes when she hears them snickering.

Elliot scoffs, but he’s skinny and a little shorter than Paige, and when her arm tightens around Azzi’s shoulder he puts his hands up. “Damn, okay.”

Azzi breathes a sigh of relief when he’s gone. “Thank god. That was so awkward.”

“You shoulda called me,” Paige says, dropping her arm to turn around and face their teammates. “And y’all shoulda helped her out.”

The girls look up at them innocently. Amari smiles charmingly at Paige and says, “We knew you were gonna do it soon enough.”

Azzi shakes her head and downs one of the shots. It is as disgusting as it looks.

“You guys suck,” Paige says, pulling Azzi into her side once again. “Leaving my girl in the trenches like that.”

Dozens of eyebrows raise at that, and it’s then that Azzi smells the booze on Paige’s breath. She flushes, trying to pull away. “P,” she mutters.

“I know,” Paige says, holding fast to Azzi’s waist, setting her shirley on the table so she can wrap the other around her, too.

“Paige,” Azzi urges, pressed completely now into Paige’s chest and trying desperately to ignore the scrutinizing looks from her teammates. She hopes they’re all too drunk to think hard about Paige’s behavior.

“Yeah,” Paige says, her hand creeping slowly down Azzi’s back.

“Did you have another drink?” Azzi asks, trying to walk them away from the booth, but Paige keeps her feet planted.

“I might’ve had another shot.” Paige grins, and Azzi would easily admit she likes it a lot more than muscle shirt’s. “Missed you, baby.”

The girls are pretending not to eavesdrop, but they’re clearly listening, sharing furtive glances with each other. Which is just—great. Because tomorrow the girls are going to have questions and Paige will be sober enough for that to stress her out, which will in turn stress Azzi out, and there will be no saving face if she lets Paige continue on like this.

“Not now, Paige,” she hisses, trying desperately to push her back.

Paige pouts. Their faces are far too close together. “What, you wanna go back to that guy or sum’?”

Azzi knows she’s not serious, but it still annoys her, and she doesn’t feel quite as comforted in Paige’s arms anymore. “Seriously, I’m not in the mood.”

Paige scoffs, maybe a little more serious now. “Course you aren’t.”

Azzi blinks at her, and when Paige’s hands drop to her sides she takes a step back. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I dunno.” Paige gestured between them. “Just that you never wanna be around me unless we’re fu—“

Azzi’s overstimulated and irritated, but she still has enough common sense to shove Paige hard enough to shut her up. “Don’t.”

Paige watches as Azzi drinks her other shot. “What? You really don’t want anybody to know, huh? You that embarrassed or something?”

Azzi shakes her head in disbelief, stepping back towards Paige so they can at least have this conversation to quiet for anybody to hear. “Are you dumb? You’re the one who wanted to keep this secret.”

“Because I didn’t my teammates thinking I was distracted!”

“Our teammates, Paige.” Azzi gives her another little shove for good measure, and then she steps away again. “You’re acting stupid. Go chill out and come back when you wanna be normal.”

“Fine. I will.” With that, she turns on her heel and disappears into the crowd. Azzi rolls her eyes at her hot-headedness. They’re both too stubborn for their own good, but Paige is ten times worse when she’s drunk and Azzi has always been more logical. Little, senseless arguments like this never happened when they were dating—or even when they were broken up—but now that they’re at this weird in-between, they’re becoming more frequent.

Hence why they prefer to kiss instead of talk.

Azzi plops down beside Amari, grateful when nobody questions her, and feels a little better when she thinks about how good the make-up sex will be later.

—————————————

There will be no make-up sex tonight. Or ever, Azzi thinks bitterly, glaring daggers at the girl Paige is currently feeling up.

Okay, feeling up might be an overstatement. She has a hand on her arm. But Azzi knows better than anyone that for Paige, hand-on-arm action might as well be foreplay. And the girl seems to sense it, too, if her batting eyelashes and twinkling smile have anything to show for it.

“She’s just doing it to make you jealous.” Once again, it’s Caroline, sidling up next to Azzi to study the tall blonde across the bar.

“I have no reason to be jealous,” Azzi all but spits out, and Caroline smirks.

“Pretend all you want, Az. But it’s impossible to not see what’s going on with you and her.”

“There’s nothing.” Paige’s fingers trail down the length of the girl’s arm and it’s almost like Azzi can feel it, too.

“Are you guys exclusive?”

“No,” Azzi responds immediately, too tipsy to be thinking straight, and when Caroline smiles proudly to herself, she backtracks. “I mean, obviously not. We’re not anything.”

“Well, if you’re not exclusive, she’s not doing anything wrong.”

Azzi hates this bitter reminder and turns her anger onto her best friend. “Shut up, Carol.”

“You two should probably talk about not seeing other people,” Caroline says, as wise and perceptive as ever. (She is also significantly more sober than Azzi is.)

“She can see whoever she wants,” Azzi seethes, stirring the ice in her drink. “I don’t care.”

Paige’s eyes flit from the girl’s face to Azzi. And then, with a little smirk, she leans in to whisper something in her ear, blue eyes never leaving brown as the girl giggles and grabs onto her arm. She smiles, too, and Azzi takes some satisfaction in the fact the girl has no idea she’s not the one Paige is doing this for.

She’s always been good at putting up a show. And Azzi has always been her captive audience.

Not tonight, Azzi decides as she looks firmly away. It’s about time Paige learns to behave herself.

—————————————-

It’s been a long night of drinking and trying not to watch Paige attach herself to this random girl’s hip when Azzi is approached by none other than random girl herself.

She’s gorgeous up close, but Azzi can’t help but notice her brown curls and crescent dimples, the way they’re the exact same height. It nearly makes her laugh.

“Hey,” the girl says, drop ping into the bar seat next to Azzi.

“Uh,” Azzi says, vey tipsy and very irate. “Hey.”

“What’s that? It looks so good,” the girl asks, pointing to her drink. Her voice is soft and kind, nothing malicious gleaming in her eyes. Azzi hates it.

“Just a mango daiquiri,” Azzi responds, kind of unable to be snarky about it with the wide-eyed way the girl is looking at her.

“Oh, fancy! I’m definitely gonna cop that.” She smiles conspiratorially at her. Azzi can’t help but smile back. Okay, now she just kind of hates herself. She’s never been one to be rude to girls she’s jealous of. Especially not harmless, sweet ones.

“It’s so good,” she’s saying before she can help it. “And they come in all different flavors so there’s like, endless possibilities.”

“Stop,” the girl gasps.

“I know!” and then they both giggle like the tipsy college students they are. This is possibly even better than hating her, because it’s almost like a smack in the face: look at me, Paige, being the bigger person. Making best friends with your target of the night. How’s that feel?

“Hey,” the girl giggles, leaning her elbows on the bar. “You’re Azzi, yeah? You play so good.”

“Thank you!” Azzi gushes, flashing her dimples as the girl does just the same. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Haven,” she replies. Even her name is nice. Azzi thinks about how Paige must’ve thought the same thing when they met a few hours ago, but she doesn’t like the thought, so she pushes it firmly away.

“Hey,” Haven says, sounding suddenly hesitant. “Um, I actually wanted to ask you something. About…Paige?”

Azzi’s eyes snap to where the blonde sits at the team’s booth—she always seems to know where Paige is in a room, though she never remembers tracking her movements—before she quickly looks back to Haven. “What about her?”

“Well…that,” she says.

“What?” Azzi asks, stirring her drink casually.

“The reaction you just had to me saying her name.”

Okay, so Azzi apparently does not appear as cool and collected as she thought. “Oh, that was just—I mean, she’s my best friend.”

“Yeah?” Haven asks. “Because I kinda got the impression y’all were…”

“No,” Azzi says, trying to contort her features into something like disgust. “Ew. Never.”

Haven raises her eyebrows. “Never?”

Why is everybody deciding to clock Paige and Azzi’s shit tonight? “Okay, like, maybe at one point. But it’s over.”

“Really.” She does not sound convinced at all. Glancing over at Paige, Haven leans forward, as if she’s afraid they’ll be heard. “It’s just, she keeps looking at you and you keep looking back and I saw her all over you earlier, so like—“

“I wouldn’t say she was all over me.”

“She totally was.” Haven’s looking at her like she’s clueless. “I just…listen, Paige invited me over tonight.” Azzi’s stomach drops. So definitely no make-up sex then. In fact, Azzi might as well pack up her vagina right now because Paige has ruined everybody else’s for her, too. “And I don’t wanna get in the middle of anything,” Haven continues, completely oblivious to Azzi’s internal vow of celibacy, “especially nothing messy.”

“Yeah, no, I totally get that.” Azzi sighs heavily; considering their situation is exactly what one might describe as messy, Azzi figures it’s probably the right thing to do to tell this poor girl the truth. “To be honest, we kinda are…I dunno. I mean, we fuck.”

“Uh-huh,” Haven nods.

“She stays over most of the time. I stay at her’s sometimes, but she mostly stays at mine.”

“Spare toothbrushes in each other’s bathroom?”

Azzi winces. “Possibly.”

“Yeow.”

“And, like, generally, we don’t see other people. We used to, at the beginning, but not anymore. We were just talking about it today, actually. Well, not talking about it—we don’t talk about stuff. We’re not serious enough for Paige to wanna talk about stuff.” Azzi is rambling now, and Haven is hanging onto her every word, and Azzi thinks she loves making fast friends with other girls then realizes this is the exact thing that happens every time she gets drunk. Perhaps she crossed over that line awhile ago.

The two of them have their heads close together now, the rest of the bar completely shut out. “But anyway, she said something and I was like, what, you say that to all your bitches? You know, mostly joking but not.”

“Of course.”

“And she was all, no, baby, I would never ever have other bitches, don’t be mad,” Azzi says, deepening her tone in a stupid caricature of Paige’s voice.

Haven gasps. “That was today?”

“Like ten minutes before we came here.”

“And then she was all up on me tonight.” Haven glares in Paige’s direction. “Damn.”

“I know. But like, yeah, we’re not exclusive or anything so it’s fine. But it’s not, you know?”

“Oh, for sure. That’s fucked up,” Haven says haughtily. “So, wait, how long has this been going on for?”

“Uh…six months?” but no, that doesn’t feel right. “Well, I guess, like, four years? But six months.”

Haven blinks at her.

Azzi sighs. “We were super serious in high school.”

Haven nearly screams, slamming her hand on the bar. “She’s your ex?”

“Yes!” Azzi cries, and it feels so, so good for someone to understand her situation. “We were so in love and shit! And then things started feeling weird the summer before she came here—because, like, I’m a year younger than her so she was gonna be in college while I was still in high school and I—I could tell she didn’t wanna be tied down by her lame hometown girlfriend so I ended things.”

“Girl!” Haven yells.

“I had no other choiceeee,” Azzi groans. “She woulda broken me if I hadn’t broken up with her.”

“You’re crazy,” Haven says, shaking her head. “That girl is down. Bad.”

“Stop,” Azzi says, waving her off.

“She is, horrendously.” Haven gestures over to Paige. “As soon as you got to UConn she wanted to start something with you, right? And then y’all have a little tiff and she’s doing the most with another girl just to get your attention?”

“She asked you to go home with her,” Azzi points out. “That definitely wasn’t for my benefit.”

“Um, I’m sorry, have you not noticed how scary alike we look?” Haven asks, and Azzi flushes. “She was definitely gonna pretend I was you. Which I’m not down for, like, at all.”

“She’s such a dick,” Azzi says. Because she may have been in love with Paige Bueckers since high school, but yeah, she’s still kinda a dick.

“Totally,” Haven agrees. “But…

“Don’t tell me you’re about to defend her.”

“Listen!” Haven places her hands on Azzi’s shoulder. “I think her heart’s in the right place. She wants you. She’s just a little…misguided.”

Azzi shakes her head. “She was the one who said we couldn’t be serious. She said we couldn’t have ‘distractions’.”

“And you didn’t stop to think that maybe she was still insecure and hurt by the fact you broke up with her and was protecting herself from getting hurt again?”

Azzi blinks at this drunk, genius girl in front of her. “Whoa.”

“Yeah. You know what, I’m starting to think maybe you’re both a little stupid.”

Azzi shoves her. “Don’t get so cocky, you could be wrong!”

“I could,” Haven admits. “But where would that leave you? With an asshole ex-girlfriend who messes with your head for fun?”

Azzi thinks maybe, if they didn’t look so uncannily alike, she could kiss this girl. “I love you.”

“Girl, I love you more.” Haven pats her arm and leans back on her barstool. Now take Auntie Haven’s advice and give her the silent treatment for a few days. She’ll realize her mistakes and come running back real quick.”

“What if I don’t wanna take her back?” Azzi says, already knowing it’s bullshit.

“You do. But you gotta make her work for it. And then you have to communicate with her.”

Azzi makes a face. “Didn’t I already tell you we don’t like talking?”

Haven rubs her temples. “There’s your main fucking problem, Azzi.”

It’s then that Haven’s eyes trail to something over her shoulder and before Azzi can ask there’s a large, warm, all-too-familiar ringed hand on her shoulder. “What’re you two talking about over here?”

Azzi looks first at the hand on her shoulder, then slowly up to Paige’s face. Paige raises her eyebrows, waiting for an answer, and then Azzi looks back at Haven, meeting her eyes.

And then they laugh.

“What?” Paige nearly demands.

Azzi brushes her hand off, still giggling. “Leave us alone, Paige.”

“I just didn’t know y’all knew each other,” Paige says, and Azzi delights at how confused she sounds. “Because you two seem pretty buddy-buddy over here.”

“Didn’t realize you were watching so closely,” Haven quips. Azzi giggles.

“Never said I was.” Paige moves from behind Azzi, going to stand beside them, studying them closely. “You two are drunk as hell.”

“So are you!” Haven and Azzi both say at the same time, and tears are forming at this point. Azzi holds on to Haven’s knee to keep herself from falling off her chair.

“Aight, yeah, I’m getting you an Uber,” Paige says to Haven, before touching Azzi’s arm, “And I’ma walk you home.”

“I can get my own Uber,” Haven says haughtily, but Paige already has her phone out.

Once again, Azzi bats Paige’s hand away. “I don’t wanna go home with you.”

Paige rolls her eyes, still navigating through her phone. “I figured, Az. But we live in the same building. Just lemme walk you.”

“You’re not sober enough to walk me.”

“I’ve been drinking water for the past hour, I’m pretty much good.” Paige shuts her phone off and looks at Haven. “You car’ll be here in fifteen.”

“Wish you were pretty much good a couple hours ago,” Azzi grumbles.

Paige’s expression becomes a little less nonchalant at that. “I know, mama, we can talk about it tomorrow.”

And that almost works. But then Haven sends her a warning glare and she straightens up. “No, thanks.”

Paige’s face scrunches up like it always done when she’s shocked, and Azzi hates that it’s still the cutest thing in the world. “Whatchu mean?”

“Exactly that,” Azzi says, standing from her barstool. Her butt is sore from sitting for so long. “And I’ll walk home with the rest of the team, thanks.”

Paige splutters. Haven gives her the middle finger.

—————————————

Later, when they are walking home—stumbling, more accurately—Azzi is leaning against Aubrey when she hears familiar footfalls coming up behind them and braces herself.

“Hey, Azzi,” Paige calls, catching her arm as she catches up. “Come walk with me.”

“I wanna walk with Aubrey,” Azzi says petulantly.

Aubrey looks awkwardly between the two of them.

“Bro, just—“ Paige stops, mindful of their audience. “Let’s just talk, okay?”

“No, thanks.”

“Azzi, c’mon.”

“I’m drunk and I’m cold and I’m mad at you. Leave me alone.”

Paige looks desperately to Aubrey for help. Aubrey just shrugs and says, “What’m I supposed to do? She said what she said.”

“Thank you,” Azzi huffs.

“Man, fuck this,” Paige says. Azzi feels very satisfied when Paige falls back, leaving her alone. But her arm also tingles where Paige had caught it.

Oh, yeah. This makeup sex had better be good for the trouble she’s going through.

—————————————

It isn’t until the next day that, during a car ride with Caroline, Azzi disovers it.

The two of them have always had similar music tastes, so when an unfamiliar song comes on over the speaker, she’s a little surprised. However, as she listens to the lyrics, she finds herself even more surprised at how much they resonate with her.

I could go and read your mind

Think about your dumb face all the time

Living in your glass house I’m outside

“Hey,” she says, “what song is this?”

“That’s So True,” Caroline answers, still staring ahead at the road. “By Gracie Abrams. Why?”

Looking into big blue eyes

Did it just to hurt me, make me cry

Smiling through it all, yeah, that’s my life

“Oh,” Azzi says casually, “no reason.”

——————————————

It becomes very apparent there is a reason when, over the next week, the song becomes everyone else’s problem.

So apparent, in fact, that the team actually starts to worry about her.

“What did you do to her?” Aaliyah asks as soon as Paige walks into the apartment.

“You broke her,” Amari says.

“That stupid song kept me up all night and it’s your fault,” Aubrey continues, pointing menacingly at Paige.

“I didn’t do nothing!” Paige says, backing away from her angry friends.

“You better fix it,” Amari says. “Like, now.”

“Fix what?”

Oddly, they all go quiet at this. Paige is about to ask what’s up with them when music begins blasting from somewhere in the dorm.

“That,” Aaliyah says.

Paige scrunches her nose. “Bad pop music?”

“It is not bad,” Caroline says defensively, joining them in the entryway. When she gets judgmental looks from the other girls, she sighs. “Okay, it wasn’t bad. But Azzi’s been listening to it nonstop for a week and it used to be my favorite song and now I’m sick of it.”

“We’re all sick of it,” Amari adds unhelpfully.

“I still don’t understand what this has to do with me,” Paige says, but of course she’s lying. From what she can make out the lyrics are about a break up, maybe, something to do with jealousy and anger. With the way Azzi’s been dodging her this week (calls sent straight to voicemail, texts left on read, not even a hint of eye contact when they see each other) she knows she fucked up at the party.

It’s not like them to fight—really, it’s not. They’ve gotten into more arguments this year than they have in their entire friendship. Obviously, there’s a correlation there, something major signaling that this whole friends-with-benefits thing doesn’t work for them. Or maybe it does. Maybe it’s the whole best-friends-who-dated-then-became-exes-then-friends-with-benefits thing that they can’t do.

But either way—fights? Like, actual fights that Paige can’t talk (or kiss) their way out of? Those are rare.

She didn’t think their argument at the bar was that big a deal. Didn’t even think her flirting with another girl would make Azzi mad. (She’d been hoping for jealousy because dysfunctional as they may be, the sex is really good and it’s even better when one of them is all riled up).

She has a sneaky feeling this all has to do with that girl at the bar. Haven. The cute one who looked a lot like Azzi and seemed super into Paige until she turned around and became best friends with none other than Azzi herself. She should’ve known that would happen. Azzi always makes friends when she gets drunk.

She just wishes this bout of silence (and celibacy) between them would end already.

“You can’t be serious,” Amari says.

Paige shrugs.

“We all know you two are fucking, Paige,” Caroline says quite bluntly.

And, okay, the sheer panic that Paige feels at this is maybe a little ridiculous.

She never wanted the team—anyone, really—to know she and Azzi were back together. Because, well, they weren’t, for one, and there’s no good way to tell your parents, “Hey, you know how I was super emo about how the love of my life broke up with me before college? Yeah, well, it’s been a year and I’m not totally over it but I fucked her in the bathroom at a club and we’re going steady—as in, fucking—now!”

But the main reason she didn’t want anybody to know is because she was—is—so afraid of having her heart broken again. And if she keeps this to herself, then she gets to act like she doesn’t care if history repeats itself. Gets to move on and not think about it and use other people as rebounds without anybody batting an eye.

But it’s been six months of them going from friends with benefits to best friends who also kiss and have sex to best friends who kiss and have sex exclusively with each other. She may have gotten a little too cocky, may have thought they were finding solid ground, and may have not put so much effort into hiding it.

But Azzi hasn’t spoken to her for a week and she doesn’t even remember what solid ground feels like anymore so yeah, the notion of her friends knowing about them when they may be on the brink of ending is a little scary.

“Okay,” Amari says tentatively when Paige stares blankly at them, “don’t freak. It’s not a big deal. We don’t care.”

“No, I—I know,” Paige stutters.

“Seriously, P, it’s cool,” Aubrey says, patting her shoulder. “Just, you know, go fix it.”

That song has played three consecutive times since this conversation started. They may be right. Paige might’ve broken her.

Might’ve broken them.

“And while you’re at it,” Caroline adds, giving her a little push in the direction of Azzi’s room, “make sure you guys are official so we don’t have to deal with this again.”

Paige tries to plant her feet to prevent her advance towards Azzi, but Aubrey rounds to her front and starts pulling at her arms while Amari pushes and then she’s directly in front of a door with a pink ‘welcome’ sign hanging off the front. As that song thuds accusingly through the door, Paige doesn’t feel very welcome.

“Okay, stop being a pussy,” Aaliyah pipes up from behind them, “and go in there. Please.”

“Make it stop,” Aubrey says. She almost sounds like she’s about to cry.

Paige stares at them, wondering if they’re really going to make her do this. But they all nod at her before disappearing down the hall so it’s just Paige in front of Azzi’s door and she could leave, could just go back home but she’d never hear the end of it from her teammates. (And she might end up hating herself if she does that, too.)

So, with a deep, steadying breath, Paige lifts her fist and knocks.

“Coming,” Azzi calls. Blessedly, the song turns off and there’s some rustling inside before the door creaks open.

Paige expects a lot of things when Azzi first sees her—anger, upset, a door slamming in her face.

What she doesn’t expect is the satisfied smile that flits across Azzi’s face before she carefully fixes her expression into something more somber.

“Uh, hey,” Paige says. “Can I—“

“Come in,” Azzi says gravely, opening the door all the way to let her through.

“Uh, aight.” Nervously, Paige walks past Azzi, a little afraid that is some sort of trap based off the strange way she’s acting. Once she’s inside and the door’s shut, she faces the younger girl, though doesn’t quite look her in the eye. “So, I just…you know, about the other night. At Ted’s.”

Azzi nods. “Go on.”

“Well, I know I started that lil argument and I feel bad.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I was just drunk and I wanted your attention so I acted stupid.”

Azzi crosses her arms impatiently. Paige wishes she had written this down and practiced beforehand or something.

“And with that other girl—“

“Her name’s Haven,” Azzi says sharply.

Paige blinks at her, surprised. “Yeah. Her. Well—“

“She’s actually really nice. We’ve been texting.”

Paige can’t help but scoff a little at that. “What, you gonna leave me for her or sum’?”

“We look related, so no,” Azzi says, raising an eyebrow. “And if I remember right, I thought it was you asking her to come to your place that night.”

Shit. So the two of them really did talk about everything. That’s not great for her.

“I didn’t mean it,” Paige says, which is very much true—she doesn’t know what she would’ve done if Haven had agreed to come over that night, but she certainly wouldn’t have kissed her. “I just, we were arguing and I wanted to make you jealous so we could, like, kiss and make up.”

Azzi crosses the room to sit on her bed, and Paige hovers awkwardly, wondering if she should follow. She decides on staying put. “I was jealous,” Azzi says. “But it just pissed me off.”

“I know, and it was a stupid thing to do.”

“I just—I thought we weren’t really, like, seeing other people.”

Paige freezes. This is completely outside of argument-at-Ted’s territory and it seems a little more like serious-talk-about-us time. Which Paige is just not prepared for at all. She should’ve made notecards for this.

“I mean—we aren’t—but, like…” Paige trails off, and she knows it’s bad how uncertain she sounds when hurt flashes over Azzi’s expression.

“Have you? Been seeing other people,” she asks, and Paige can tell she’s trying to sound nonchalant, putting on a brave face, but in reality she’s terrified of the answer.

Paige rushes to reassure her. “No, Az, no. Not a—seriously, not a single person. Not since that day at the club.” Not since the day Azzi came to UConn, if she’s being a little more accurate. But Azzi doesn’t need to know that.

Again, Azzi tries to act like it doesn’t affect her. But Paige knows her far too well—far too intimately—to miss the way her features relax, her shoulders lowering just a little bit. “Me neither,” she says softly.

Paige lets out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding at that. “Okay.”

“So…what does that mean?” Azzi asks tentatively.

Now that Azzi seems a little less guarded, Paige takes her chance to sit beside her on the bed, though not too close. “I dunno,” she says lamely, but when she’s met with a heavily annoyed silence, she sighs and tries desperately to think something up. “I mean. We can’t really be casual and exclusive. That’s not really how that works.”

“Yeah,” Azzi says.

Paige waits for her to pick up the conversation at least a little, but she doesn’t, and Paige is forced to go on. “I don’t—I think it’s not even something I want anymore. The whole casual thing.”

It’s hard, getting the words out, like each syllable is a barrier being broken, and maybe it is. Paige looks down at her hands, fiddles with them, anything so she doesn’t have to watch Azzi’s reaction.

“Paige,” Azzi says quietly.

And when Paige catches the hesitancy in her tone—the fear—she is suddenly too desperate and maybe even too in love to keep quiet just because it’s hard. Because she can’t do this, not again. She can’t watch Azzi walk away without at least putting up a fight.

“I know what I did was wrong,” Paige blurts out before Azzi can say anything else. She looks up, stares at the wall ahead, before turning to Azzi. She tries to detect the look in her eyes and what it may mean, but can’t. “At Ted’s. And I’m sorry. I guess I just—these past six months have been so—I mean, they’ve been good, but they’ve also been super fucking confusing and kinda scary, too. It’s like I’m always on edge waiting for you to end things, so whenever we get too close to how we were—before, in high school—I back out, no matter how hard it is. No matter how good it feels to have you again.”

Azzi opens her mouth, the beginning of a word escaping, but Paige’s heart races and she stands, stopping her. “But I’m realizing that I don’t think I can do that with you. I don’t think I can be just friends with you, or friends with benefits, or even whatever the hell it is we’ve been doing. Every day since you ended things I’ve been a fucking wreck, Azzi.” And it’s true. Her freshmen year had been hard, spent sleeping with random caramel-skinned, dimpled girls to try and fill the Azzi-shaped void in her heart. And the summer after was hell, too, reconnecting with Azzi long-distance and trying to become friends again, acting like they were never anything more. And the past six months has been the worst of it all, because having Azzi but not really having her, keeping her at an arm’s length and teetering on this edge of will she do it again and when will it happen proving almost painful.

Azzi stands, too, stepping in front of her, tilting her chin just slightly up to make eye contact like she’s always had to do. “I didn’t want that, Paige,” she says, almost as if she’s pleading. “I wanted—I thought you’d have more fun if you were single. I thought you’d resent me for, like, tying you down.”

Paige looks at Azzi for a solid few seconds, trying to discern whether she’s fucking with her. And when Azzi doesn’t laugh or tell her this was all a stupid prank she turns around, pushes her hand through her hair, and then faces her again. “Are you fucking for real?”

“Yeah,” Azzi says sheepishly. “I thought—I don’t know. I was also sixteen and stupid and insecure, and I just wanted to make you happy. I didn’t think about what I wanted.” She looks down at her feet. “Didn’t realize how hard it’d be.”

“Yeah, you were stupid,” Paige snaps, and when Azzi flinches, she takes a step towards her. “You really thought that I’d—what, not want you? Want to fucking break up so I could hoe around?”

“Kind of!” Azzi says, throwing her hands in the air. “Things already felt off that summer before you left—“

“Because I didn’t want to leave you!” Paige practically shouts, and she wonders briefly why they never bothered to discuss this before. “I had no idea what I was gonna do when we were so far apart, but you know what? We could have handled it. We could’ve handled a year. I wanted to handle it, if it meant we could stay together.” She takes another step closer, so they’re face-to-face now. “I thought you were bored of me or sum’, you know? I was so fucking hurt.”

“I wasn’t trying to hurt you!” Azzi cries. “Obviously I wasn’t bored, Paige, or I wouldn’t have jumped your fucking bones the minute I got to school.”

“And obviously I didn’t wanna be single or I wouldn’t have let you!”

Silence washes over them, and Paige is sure she could hear a pin drop, almost as sure as she is that their teammates are thoroughly listening to this argument outside the door. But she doesn’t care. Not when she’s looking close-up at the girl she’s loved forever and seeing her for the first time in almost two years—inches apart without hidden hurt or secret regrets tucked between them.

They’re both breathing heavy, both affected by everything they’ve just said and everything that still needs to be said but it’s not a surprise that they hold each other’s gazes, both too stubborn to be the first to look away.

And when the eye contact becomes too much for Paige to bear, she decides she will not chicken out, will not let her trepidations hold her back this time. And she leans forward and kisses her.

They’ve kissed—a million times, probably. Maybe more. At this point, they’ve learned each other down to the last breath, the last hair on their heads. They know exactly where to put their hands, exactly how to tell what the other is feeling based off the way they move their lips, exactly what things to say in between kisses. But despite all that, this—this feels brand new. Gentle, and tentative, but excited, too, like they know it’s the mark of something different. Something better.

———————————-

A week later, when Paige appears at her doorstep with a nervous little smile and flowers to take her on their second-first date, Paige asks her about the ‘lame girly song’ she’d been playing on repeat. Azzi tells her the song is not, in fact, lame, and is actually really quite good. She doesn’t admit that she can’t listen to it anymore.

(And, because I know you’re all wondering—yes, the makeup sex was as good as Azzi’d hoped.)

#lilah’s works #this is so stupid #but i kinda love it #this was so fun to writeeee #can’t wait to write the smut scene 😈#hope yall like #pazzi #paige bueckers #azzi fudd #pazzi fics

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thehelltingvilleclub · 1 day ago

Text

Matt Montgomery - Closet Geek & Closet Freak

An Adult in Eltingville that actually acts like an adult???? WHAT???

Matthieu "Matt" / "Mattie" Thomas Montgomery [02/16/1978] Not Affiliated with TEC - Known Tournament winner amongst Jerry's MTG players. Cosplayer and College student in Manhattan. AOL / Online Users: [MTM_cosplay] | [GoblinHoarder] Theme Songs: Talk talk - Charli xcx | Move Along - All American Rejects | Somebody Told Me - The Killers

Favorite Shit: Trading Cards, Puzzles, Sports cards, Cosplays, X-Men, Monsters, Kaiju, Robots/Mecha, Dr. Who, Rubicks Cubes, Hard Cover books, YAPPERS, Movie Marathons, Beast, Wolverine, MTG, D&D, Cosplay Contests

I don't know how tf to describe this man other than tired and done with everybody's shit and he hasn't been awake more than an hour. He's three years into his bachelor's degree, essentially has 3 full time jobs between cosplay, tournaments, and all of his school work PLUS TUTORING, homie barely has enough time to breathe let alone deal with the TEC. However, that doesn't mean he won't find a way to weasel himself in-- even if its.... by unconventional or rather... *unexpected* means.

Guys I have like no art of him SORRY

Mattie generally only gets introduced very sparingly during 1999-2005, essentially in passing by Jerry or Josh, but he's still present and alive during this time, obviously. Him being friends with Jerry is what gets him to recognize Josh later.

Matt is studying for a Bachelors in English Comp, specializing in Journalism.

Speaking of, Josh and Matt work together at the editors office for the Comic Book News site in the epilogue. It's how they find each other again after Matt graduates and moves back home.

Matt is from northern Vermont, around the Canadian border, and has a bit of a Canadian accent because of it.

Everyone picks on him about it except for May and Jerry, (yes, even Josh, but it eventually becomes endearing to Matt.)

MATT. LIKES. YAPPERS. He doesn't talk much, he doesn't have much to talk about. Books and papers and trying to explain gymnastics routines isn't exactly the most interesting thing in the world, y'know.

He also doesn't have the time to really subject himself to the extreme absorption that Josh and Bill can get with their comics and shows, so.. Tell him about them!

He didn't get access to a lot of the more nerdy, pop culture side of things because of his parents. They had a significantly stronger iron grip on what he and his sister were exposed to, so he never really...

well, he didn't get to express his love for the more geek-y side of life until he moved to NY for college.

He became a professional cosplayer via his roommate forcing him to post, invited to events and photoshoots for his live floor routines he'll do in character, though he almost always wears a full-face mask or enough make up that you can barely tell who he is.

he can't have his sister finding out he dresses up as a blue demon freak in his spare time, yknow? (god she'd bully the shit out of him if she did--)

He's been in gymnastics since he was in middle school, and he's actually quite good; he's on a scholarship at his university, for pete's sake.

unfortunately a bad fall broke his clavicle and made it so he can't do vault anymore, but he enjoys his time doing floor routines and fucking around on the pommel horse from time to time.

Matt also.. is weirdly envious of TEC's... closeness? The fact they barely get along and yet they're all still together, they all still try and see each other or keep in touch..

He's never had that, and it makes him horrifically jealous, but he keeps it to himself-- smile and wave, swallow it down like normal, hm?

please subject him to a movie marathon. Infodump on him everything about whatever you're fixated on. He likes listening to people's voices, so please, just do it. It doesn't bother him at all.

This man has a TEMPER. His mother and his sister have this too, and it is BAD. Matt, however, learned ways to keep his temper at bay and calm down. to an extent. Bill, however, always manages to get his blood to boil by just the mention of him, so maybe... don't

Also, Matt and Pete absolutely bicker. A lot. Matt is constantly showing off that even though he's only an inch taller, he's able to do soOOSOooo much more! and Pete is convinced that Matt isn't actually gay and is trying to steal May away (guys Pete is such a fucking jealous goober I hate him)

Meanwhile literally the only person Matt wants is Josh. Pete should open his eyes maybe but like it's fine.

HOLY SHIT GYUSY

Okay UHM Hi Matt probably won't be talked about much but if you see me Vermont Honey posting it's because I need my comfort ship back okay THanks Also the NSFW cut is coming guys It's gonna have em all And I'll draw Jane and Matt's little sister soon, as they go to school together (Jane absolutely hates her guts OOPS unfortunately she's a bitchy cheerleader so you bet Jane has a voodoo doll of her somewhere in her room).

#the eltingville club #the helltingville club #eltingville fanart #welcome to eltingville #eltingville oc #eltingville club #matt montgomery #the eltingville club oc #my oc stuff #oc x canon #my headcanons #my art #GUH Thanks guys for being patient with me #sorry this one is less than the rest of them #he's not official so like... no funny titles for him #Though if he were to get one #y'all are amazing #hell I guess it's time to keep coloring dicks

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klunkcat · 1 day ago

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Hi hello I just found your writing and I LOVE IT. May I please request number 48 with the pbj duo?

‘Don’t touch me!’

(@psychologicalwarclaire - There was a more simple route I could have gone with this, I saw it and then took a hard left turn instead. Also thank you so much!!)

TW: vague medical setting, mention of needles, kidnapping

It takes two days for their brothers to find them. Normally, in these situations (or at least in the Jupiter Jim films they’d spent so long obsessing over), he would say that it felt like so much longer.

It doesn’t, it feels like two days. Two days is a lot of time when you stretch it all out.

Nothing had really happened that was unrecoverable— there'd been a lot of threats. Promises of some unbeknownst evil if they ceased to cooperate at first, and then later, more unsettlingly, the insistence that they were subjects. Not to be spoken to.

He thinks that's the part that might stay: being referred to by a species type, being reduced to a clip board and data sets. All of Mikey's little brother splendor being reduced to a column beside his.

Raph had burst down the door with dad hot on his heels to spin kick everyone in the room right into all of Leo’s conveniently placed portals before anyone had even really delved into the gruesome threats. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to matter to Don’s brain much.

Two days was plenty of time to think.

They’d strung him and Mikey up on flat tables, shone an over bright light directly at them, and asked a lot of questions mostly. Talked a lot of big talk. Pulled out medical equipment and taken blood samples here and there. A slice or two. Not worth mentioning in the grand scheme of things, they'd all had worse more recently.

There was something... writhing in the back pocket of his mind though. The moment where Bishop had bent over Mikey, back to him so Donnie couldn't see, and whispered just to him.

Don didn't know what was said to counter argue it. To point out flaws in science or loopholes, or insinuate anything about the lack of foresight. He didn't hear it. When he leaned back, Mikey looked scared.

"Enough blood samples," Bishop had said to the glass wall beside them, that barest hint of a smirk he carried every moment. "We have our findings. Perhaps, bone would be best as a next step. Speed up the research."

He hadn’t been able to stop any part of it, was the thing. Hadn’t gotten a single second of a break from the noise and the lights, and the press of metal against his wrists. And the constant threat that they could grab or stab or worse. And Mikey had been scared.

Nothing even happened, he reminds himself. His brain flashes back to Mikey trying to duck into his shell, the cattle prod the man had waved around almost playfully.

He hadn’t been able to move his arms the whole time, pinned up by his ears like a butterfly under a pane of glass. April unclicks the button with a loud shout of ‘got it!’ and he hears the hiss right as a spike of pain slams into every limb. It doesn’t matter that it hurts, it matters that it feels like a thousand tiny stabs of a thousand needles everywhere across his skin. He hates it, he hates it so much.

There’s grates under his knees and he hates that feeling too. Separated metal maws punching up in bumps and ridges — it’s all disgusting. It’s awful, he can break it all down into chemical compounds in his mind and the imaginary neutrons feel like exploding fireworks. He needs it to all stop, for a minute or. An hour.

Stop.

“Dee, are you—” That’s Raph, he knows it’s Raph. But there’s noise and touching and he can’t breathe with all of it in his face, and Mikey is scared.

“Don’t touch me!” He snaps back, pulling further into himself on instinct. He can sense Raph’s hand hovering, just by his shoulder. Hears his steady apologizing.

Noise, noise, noise.

Leo whistles across the room, “Raph, they got a lot of stuff in here. We should probably make sure they can’t use it.” Giving him an out, a breather. Thank god for twins.

He doesn’t want to think about what they’d gathered. He’d seen the vials. Just because he hadn’t felt whatever they’d done at all doesn’t mean it wasn’t his DNA. He barely represses a shudder.

Mikey had been so scared. He’d looked at Don with wide, shocked eyes. Like he’d forgotten that there were people in the world that didn’t care for sunny smiles and friendly hellos, that there were worse things than grouchy junkyard mutants and spider ladies. It felt wrong, some fundamental thing in Donnie’s mind skittering and clattering around. Science was meant to help, to study and grow from— he couldn’t pretend he hadn’t tossed a thought or two around DNA samples of his own but. They’d taken it, right from him. From his baby brother who still thought Santa was a suspiciously hairy short man who visited through TV fireplaces.

Nothing even happened.

But it could have.

The sheer fact that the phantom feeling of an itch across his skin was in his head and made up and that was a good thing. The scientists could have gotten bored. Decided they’d needed one turtle less. It could have been Mikey. But they'd circled him and stared at him, and poked and prodded, too. Why is that comparable? Why is that worth noting?

His family is here, the scientists are gone. He can hear dad's voice a few scant feet away. So why can't he---

“I’m here,” Mikey’s soft voice appears. “It’s okay, Dee. I’m okay. We’re fine.”

He’s knotted himself up in a ball so tightly, hands around his knees, shell pressed firmly against the wall. It’s dark here, for once. Don realizes he’s been repeating Mikey’s name almost mindlessly, like a white noise machine in the background.

"You with me, Don?" Their check in phrase. No touching, not too many questions.

He signs back: 'here'.

"Thanks for telling me. April's helping Dad with something. Leo and Don are in the next room. They'll come back in three minutes, I have Leo's watch."

Good. Numbers, specifics. That's good.

'Injuries?' He signs.

"No, I mean. Not big ones." He can hear Mikey's wince. "Bruised my wrist I think. Dehydrated, probably? Leo said he can check when you want him to, since nothing's bleeding."

'Okay.'

He hears rather than sees Mikey’s slide to the steel floor beside him. Hears his shaky sigh out. “Sorry I didn’t get us out.”

Donnie tenses. There’s a myriad of reasons that makes no sense, but his words have escaped somewhere in the replay.

Mikey sighs again. “I— I was thinking about using the mystic powers again, but I didn’t want it to hurt. Or leave you there. I should have been more brave.”

Don remembers the way the gold cracks had fissured up his shoulder, split all the way near to Mikey’s neck. The heat emanating even with all the bandages, and the physical therapy Leo’d tried to walk him through after. He still couldn’t close his left hand all the way on bad days.

“No,” he manages. “You were brave.”

Mikey hadn’t cried, or begged. He’d channeled some deep down snark and thrown cocky one liners back every chance he could. He was only fifteen.

Don pulls his head up, breathes out sharp through his nostrils.

"I was scared, too." He tells his knees. A quiet confessional.

He stretches his hand out. The pins and needles are awful and constant, but he needs to know—

Mikey’s hand slides instantly. It helps. It’s quieter.

He'll be braver next time, too.

#rottmnt #my fic #rottmnt donnie #rottmnt mikey #rise of the tmnt #writing prompt #like could this not have been something simple at home probably but my brain took this detour instead so here we are #psychologicalwarclaire

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mylovesstuffs · 2 days ago

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Jin version !

Request: May I pls request jealousy headcanons for BTS members? reader (she's not famous and has a normal job) thinks of them as just friends, cause she never thought they would have a crush on her but they do.Then one day they get jealous when she ignores them for her guy best friend (whom she has a crush on) so they force her to leave but can't confess because they know she only likes them as a friend? unfortunately I am not very good with handling angsty stuff 🥹 so it will be great if you could write some fluffier headcanons about my request

A/N: This is the first post of the series, I hope it's not as bad as I say 😭 it's not the best I know but I'll try my best to improve. I don't know why it didn't turn out like I hoped for.

series masterlist

This is my personal opinion and perspective. It may not accurately reflect their real-life personalities or behaviors.

Jin always tries to be the reliable friend—the one who makes you laugh, gives great advice, and checks in after a long day. But lately, he’s felt like second place to your guy best friend.

He notices how you light up when you talk about your best friend. It stings more than he’d like to admit, but Jin tries to brush it off with jokes like, “Oh, should I start taking notes from him?”

You’ve canceled plans with Jin a few times now, always saying, “I promised g/bsf I’d help him with something.” He plays it cool but spends the rest of the day eating snacks in front of the TV, sulking and grumbling under his breath.

Jin’s jealousy doesn’t make him angry—it makes him hurt. He wonders what your best friend has that he doesn’t, or why you’d never think of him as more than a friend. Am I just not boyfriend material? he mumbles to himself. (Jin, my love, you're not boyfriend material unfortunately instead... you're a husband material)

He gets extra clingy the next time you hang out—offering to cook your favorite dish, teasing you more than usual, and even pulling out his dad jokes just to get your attention lmao.

When you’re with your guy best friend in Jin’s presence, he turns into the ultimate performer. Suddenly, he’s louder, funnier, and more dramatic—ANYTHING to distract you from your best friend.

One day, he snaps when you ignore him mid-conversation to reply to your best friend’s text. Jin blurts out, “Do I have to be him to get your attention?” It catches both of you off guard, and he immediately regrets saying it. *insert skeleton emoji here TT*

Feeling cornered by his emotions, Jin suggests leaving early from your next hangout. “I just remembered I have to be at the studio,” he lies, not wanting to see you fawn over someone else anymore.

He tries to convince himself he’s being selfish. She’s happy, he tells himself. That should be enough for me. But it’s not, and the ache in his chest doesn’t go away.

Jin throws himself into his work, making himself busier than usual to avoid thinking about you and your best friend. Other BTS members notice his uncharacteristic silence and try to pry, but he just brushes it off with a laugh.

One day, you sense something’s off. Jin has been distant—short replies, fewer calls, and even declining an invite to hang out. You confront him, worried you might have done something wrong.

Jin doesn’t confess outright but hints at his feelings. “Sometimes, I feel like I’m not important to you,” he says with a sad smile. It’s the first time he’s ever let his guard down like this, and it leaves you speechless. (Obviously)

You spend the next few days reflecting on your friendship with Jin. You start noticing the little things—how he remembers your coffee order, how he texts you to make sure you got home safe, and how he always seems to know when you need cheering up.

The realization hits you like a truck: Jin isn’t just your friend. He’s the constant in your life, the person who makes you feel safe and valued in a way no one else ever has.

The next time you see him, you decide to test the waters by spending the day with just him. Jin is hesitant at first, worried you’re only there out of guilt, but your warmth and attention slowly ease his nerves.

1By the end of the day, you find yourself looking at Jin differently... like your feelings have finally been reciprocated. When he makes a lame joke, you don’t just laugh—you admire the way his eyes crinkle when he smiles. When he cooks for you, you realize how much love he’s poured into every detail.

Jin doesn’t push you to admit anything, but the shift between you two is undeniable. It’s in the lingering glances, the subtle touches, and the way he prioritize you in his noised life. Neither of you says it out loud, but for the first time, you feel like you have a chance.

Closure: It ends with hope. Jin doesn’t need grand confessions; your actions are enough to show him you’re starting to see him the way he’s always seen you. And for now, that’s all he needs...

Now that you’ve started seeing him differently, Jin becomes even more attentive. He insists on cooking you meals, saying, A love as great as mine deserves a feast. He also gets flustered when you sneak up behind him in the kitchen, wrapping your arms around him. His ears turn red, but he plays it off with a smug.

Jin loves teasing you about your newfound affection for him. He’ll smirk and you roll your eyes, but your shy smile gives you away every time, and he EATS IT UP.

He’s a natural flirt but doesn’t even realize it half the time 😭 Like when he adjust your necklace, his voice dropping to a low, teasing tone. It leaves you breathless, and he definitely notices.

He runs his fingers through your hair absentmindedly, but the way his touch lingers on your shoulder or arm feels a little more intentional these days.

Jin doesn’t try to be sexy—it just happens. Like when he’s focused while rolling up his sleeves (I'm sorry but I'm drooling) or wiping his hands on a towel, you catch yourself staring. He notices your lingering gaze, smirks, and says, “Like what you see?” (OF COURSE WE DO!!?!?!!!!!!!!!?!!)

Mornings with Jin are pure fluff. He’s sleepy and cuddly, pulling you back into bed if you try to get up too early. He mumbles, “Five more minutes,” but those minutes turn into hours because he’s so warm and inviting you can’t resist.

Now that he knows you like him, Jin is more physically affectionate. He’ll casually rest his hand on your lower back, tug you closer when crossing the street, or kiss your temple as he passes by. It’s subtle but so Jin coded.

Honestly, nowadays his cocky side is very attractive.

Jin in cozy sweaters is a problem. When he’s lounging at home in a soft, oversized knit, you can’t help but want to curl up next to him. He teases you for staring, but secretly, he loves how smitten you are.

He doesn’t openly flaunt it, but there’s something undeniably attractive about the way he carries himself. Whether it’s his low, rumbling laugh or the way he looks at you across the room, there’s a quiet intensity that leaves you flustered.

Kissing Expert™: Once you’re comfortable, Jin’s kisses go from sweet and soft to take-your-breath-away levels of intense. He’s got this way of cupping your face and pulling you in like he’s waited his whole life for this moment.

Jin being Jin, he’ll occasionally get dramatic about how much he loves you. “I’d battle an army of chickens for you,” he declares one day, and while you laugh at his comment, the sincerity in his eyes makes your heart skip a beat.

Even when he’s being playful or teasing, Jin’s actions always make you feel safe and cherished. Like holding your hand in a crowded place or softly humming a song while you’re together, every little thing he does says, “I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere.”

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tyrantisterror · 2 days ago

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You're welcome! Thank you for being such a willing participant in the interactive side of this story!

And yeah I'll gladly answer some more questions.

So, as I said above, I realized in the process of writing the story that, from a narrative and thematic perspective, this story could not give Sailor a clear and definitive answer to what they are. Even in the ending where they chose to go back to the normal world, we get an answer that convinces Sailor, but still clearly has some holes to the audience. I think there are ways we could have skewed certain conversations to learn more about the hypothetical answers in-story, but it would have come at the cost of key moments of character development for Sailor and Calibani. And I also think it's possible we could have skewed the story in such a direction where giving a definitive answer to the question wouldn't have necessarily hurt the theme of the story, by dint of turning the story into a different theme entirely - a South-heavy story might have focused on Sailor confronting their own inherent selfishness and short-sightedness rather than questions of their identity, for example, while a West-heavy story might have been a more dense and wacky adventure full of foolhardiness where learning who/what Sailor is could happen quickly and definitively without fanfare in order to be pushed aside for more shenanigans. 58 choices - there's a lot of potential what-ifs here.

There would be no way to contact Earth in the story as told, no, just as there wouldn't be a map till the very end. But, like, Sailor is canonically living longer than just the nine or so days the story covers, the Sea of Monsters is big, and Sailor knows a mad scientist. It's possible Sailor finds a way to get a message back to earth at some point - but I guess we'll have to save that for a hypothetical At Sea Without a Map 2: Now With Map!

I generally tried to vote either for the answer I thought would get the most votes, or the one that would get the least, in hopes of not actually affecting the result too much (unfortunately tumblr doesn't let you see the results before the poll ends unless you vote, and for the sake of keeping to a more-or-less daily schedule, I kinda needed to keep an eye on it to know what I'd need to draw during my downtime moments). I think the TT-only version of At Sea Without a Map would have been pretty similar to what we got. We might have spent a bit less time with Calibani and bit more time getting into monster hijinks and drawing exposition about the setting from characters like Dr. Neptune, but otherwise it would have been pretty similar. I had more fun with the player-choices that contradicted my own instincts, though - it was fun being given free reign to just shoot the shit with love interest while ignoring the plot. Very indulgent I do wonder if Sailor might have turned out differently, though - I was very conscious of trying not to flavor things too heavily when Sailor was in my control in the narrative, i.e. when they had to make choices without a compass to set them in a direction. I didn't really start giving Sailor personality in-text until I got a feel for what we were turning them into together, and even then I always felt nervous about it - I never wanted it to feel like I was forcing you all to play a character that wasn't authentic to what you were choosing. This wouldn't be a problem if Sailor was just written by me and me alone, so they might have become something different by dint of me not having to worry about alienating voters with their actions.

At Sea Without a Map Post-Script

After two months of so, my little writing experiment At Sea Without a Map has come to an end. And because I'm vain, I not only felt compelled to share it, but to talk about it in depth after the fact, so here we are. This is going to be long, though, so I'm not only going to break it into sections, but put it all under the cut for the sake of your dashboard. So go ahead and dive into the depths of the Sea of Monsters with me one more time!

Part 1: Never Stop Blowing Up

The writing process of Wizard School Mysteries Book 3 was really strained - not because of the book itself, mind you. When I was actually able to work on it, Book 3 came together really well - I think it required the least substantial rewrites of any my novels thus far. It's just that real life was kind of beating the shit out of me while I was trying to get it done - or maybe the better metaphor was that it was just slowly but steadily draining me of energy all the time. I'm honestly surprised I got the book out in roughly the same amount of time as the first two - by the way life had been treating me, it should have taken longer.

But when I got done with it I was accutely aware of how tired I was. I still had the creative drive, but fuck I needed something simple as a palette cleanser - something easy, and more importantly, something that was allowed to be bad. I needed something creative to do that was surplus to requirements and fully within its rights to suck ass so long as I had fun making it.

Around this time, I decided to rewatch Dimension 20's Never Stop Blowing Up. Brief explanation of what that is: Dimension 20 is an actual play show, i.e. a recording of people playing D&D and other TTRPGs. I'd say its reputation is built on the contrast of its main DM, Brennan Lee Mulligan, who makes these meticulously crafted campaign plans, and his chaotic band of improv comedian players who promptly derail those plans spectacularly. Like, a good deal of the show's humor comes from Emily Ashford or Ally Beardsly doing something so off-the-wall that it shatters whatever the scene was going to be and creates a far more absurd and zany spectacle in its place. Which is why Never Stop Blowing Up is pretty notable, because it's the one campaign where Brennan himself is the agent of chaos, fully unleashing his own brand of madness that the players struggle to keep up with. And fuck does he seem to have fun with it.

Of course, all of the analysis above is purely from the outside looking in - it's likely that a lot of the "chaos" is played up for the audience. But still... there is something to the idea of a person who's been working on meticulously structured stories letting loose and just doing something extremely stupid.

So I decided to give myself a Never Stop Blowing Up moment - a short story that would be simple by design, with no standards to live up to or goal beyond "have fun telling a silly little story." I then came up with a few key criteria:

It can't be set in the Midgaheim/ATOM universe. I don't want the burden of figuring out where this story would fit among others.

It's gotta be a romance. People who've read my books might have picked up on the fact that I like to write about people falling in love, for the same reason I like to write about fire-breathing reptiles and friendly monsters (i.e. I use writing to indulge in things I'll never experience in real life). I've only used romance as subplots in my fiction before, and tend to feel a bit guilty if I focus on it too long - like I'm being self indulgent. Well, this is all about self indulgence, so the romance should be front and center.

It's gotta be SIMPLE, episodic even. Not complex plotting required.

I almost chose my xenomorph romance for this, but I had developed its outline to the point where it would be too complex to fit. I then considered a sort of superhero story that could be pitched as "what if Bringing Up Baby but Katherine Hepburn's character is a Harley Quinn-esque supervillain and Cary Grant's character gets turned into some sort of horrifying genetic mutant in the first ten minutes." That one hit a weird roadblock when I got to the character brainstorming phase (the first phase of any writing project I do) - I was trying to figure out what the mad scientist who turns out Cary Grant-figure into a mutant would be named, came up with the name "Dr. Skullfuck," immediately realized that having a character named "Dr. Skullfuck" is a Mark Millar-ass writing move that I could not allow myself to do, but then couldn't stop thinking of the name "Dr. Skullfuck" and giggling, which just brought all thinking to a grinding halt on that project.

(I'll still probably do it someday, though - just, you know, without Dr. Skullfuck)

Inspiration struck again, though. I'd been getting into Epic: The Musical, a musical retelling of The Odyssey, and it put me in the mood for a sea monster story. But, more than that, it got me thinking about one particular archetype from sea monster stories - but that brings us to the next part of this Post Script...

Part 2: It Was Always About Calibani

Ok, so, one of the big changes Epic: The Musical made involved Odysseus's encounter with the sirens, and before you read more of my rambling, I'd like you to watch two animatics for the two songs in question here:

youtube

A summary: one of the sirens takes the form of Odysseus's wife to try and tempt him into getting in the water, Odysseus tricks her into giving him directions, captures her and the rest of her kind, and proceeds to have his men slaughter them horribly. In the OG story the sirens don't die - nor does their song involve imitating a man's wife, for that matter, it's just a really pretty song.

This is done for an important narrative purpose - Epic: The Musical is focused on analyzing the moral ambiguity of Odysseus, and how it is constantly challenged by the impossible choices he is forced to make in his attempt to get home. At this point in the musical, Odysseus has decided to stop trying to be a compassionate man, shirking all mercy in favor of utter ruthless pursuit of his goals. These two songs are meant to be unsettling as hell - this is the beginning of a series of heartless choices by both Odysseus and his men that will culminate in the mutiny and complete annihilation of Odysseus's crew, as well as Odysseus himself being so hopelessly stranded that nothing short of divine intervention will save him.

I bring this up because when I first heard these two songs - specifically while watching these two animatics - it, like... it devastated me. I was so horrified and sad, so shaken by it. And part of it was for the reasons outlined above, but admittedly that wasn't the gut reaction I had. No, my immediate reaction was, and I quoute my own broken brain verbatim here: "You can't kill the sirens! They're not for killing, they're for loving!"

...now, those of you who know me are probably not surprised by this very stupid sentiment coming from me. One of my more popular posts is just me talking about how down bad I would be for various folkloric monsters whose whole shtick is "looks like a pretty lady but Watch Out." But as a person filled with immense self loathing and doubt, my brain immediately looked at that very stupid sentiment I expressed and said, "Wait, no, that's fucking dumb, I'm fucking dumb. The sirens are remorseless murderers. These sirens in particular preyed upon a man's love for his wife, who he has not seen in twelve years, to convince him to let them kill him. They are, by all standards of morality, Very Fucking Evil, and if they were not women you would not feel bad about them getting killed."

And as my brain argued with itself over this topic, I got to thinking about the various monstrous/othered sea women of The Odyssey - not just the sirens, but the witch Circe, the nymph Calypso, the monsters Scylla and Charybdis. And I thought about the others of their kind in other myths and folktales - selkies, mermaids, etc.

There's an archetype of sea monster that focuses entirely on one specific anxiety sailors are prone to, namely the fact that (for a good deal of human history) being on a boat meant spending a lot of time away from women. The horror of this monster is how it uses that desire for female company to tempt people into danger - like a mirage, it leads you to expose yourself to danger in pursuit of an illusory comfort.

But, unlike real world mirages, these monstrous sea women DO exist in their stories. More than that, they're often, like, sad and lonely. Their narrative purpose is just to be a temptation, but that doesn't change the fact that they do have lives of their own in these worlds. And, softie that I am, I can't help feeling sad for them, especially the ones who actually seem to want the same companionship the sailors they tempt want. Sailors don't stay with their Circes, they don't marry their Calypsos. The sirens live on a barren rock, alone, Scylla is left to wallow in misery at her monstrous form, and the selkie always has to leave for fear of being trapped by a person who won't love her on her terms.

I realized I had my hook for this simple, easy, silly little sea monster romance story: I was going to give a sea woman the happy ending she'd never get from anyone else.

Sailor may be the protagonist, but make no mistake: At Sea Without a Map was always, always, ALWAYS about Calibani.

The goal with Calibani was simple: I was going to set up a fairly standard Monstrous Sea Woman, but where other stories would let her be in one episode of the travel narrative and move on, this one would stick around. She'd be an unambiguous predator of human beings - an open and admitted maneater - but she would have no true malice to her. She, like all predators, eats what she can get to survive, and it just so happens that she's adapted to eat humans. And the story would pose the same question to the reader that my brain posed to me during Different Beast: is there any way you could make a siren-style sea monster sympathetic? Can you make a normal person who doesn't have my particular brain rot look at a maneating siren and think, "You're not supposed to kill her, you're supposed to love her!"

One of the few unavoidable plot points of At Sea Without a Map was that Calibani and Sailor's relationship would become romantic. What kind of romance it was could have varied substantially - it could have been one-sided, it could have been toxic, it could have been far more tragic OR far more comedic. But it was always, always going to be a romance of some sort - the goal of this experiment was to make you, the reader, love Calibani. All else was icing on the cake.

I decided to base Calibani's personality on Miranda from The Tempest - i.e. a sweet girl who is both wordly and naive, who understands the strange setting of our "lost at sea" story far better than the audience viewpoint character does, but views the mundane world of the audience viewpoint character with wonder and naiveté. In fact I almost named her Miranda outright... except I already had a character in the setting I chose for this story who had that name, and as an allusion to the same Shakespearean character no less. So I settled on naming her after Miranda's adoptive sibling (of sorts), Caliban - more fitting in some ways, as Caliban is a fish-human hybrid who is arguable more native to the magic island in The Tempest than Miranda herself.

(Calibani isn't the only Tempest name homage, either - her mother, Sycorax, takes her name directly from Caliban's unseen but oft-spoken of witch mother. Dr. Antonia Warefore takes her first name from Antonio, one of the human villains in The Tempest who hopes to use being lost at sea as a way to perform a coup. And the mothman Iriel takes her name from Ariel, the wind spirit in The Tempest who aids the wizard Prospero in controlling the magic island. If Sailor has a "real" name, it's probably either Ferdinand or Miranda, the two lovers who manage to blend civilization and the wilderness together with their romance.)

Visually, I wanted Calibani to not be any common archetype of sea monster woman, but rather something that evokes the popular images while still being her own thing. She's not a mermaid or a siren or a selkie - she's basically "what if a sea serpent was also a girl." In-universe, she's chubby because she, like all marine megafauna, needs blubber to survive. Out-of-universe, she's chubby because I've found that routinely drawing cute chubby girls is good for my mental health.

Part 3: CYOA

Now, while we live in a post-Muncher society where shame and cringe are emotions only the cowardly should experience, I am nonetheless Very Catholic about expressing my own feelings of, like, liking girls and shit. I cannot help feeling guilty when publicly expressing adoration of women without, like, an excuse - it's gotta be a joke or something, you know? I can't be genuine about it, or else Jesus will beat me with a cane for disrespecting women with my lecherous gaze.

But luckily I've cultivated a loyal audience of fellow monsterfuckers, which meant I had an excuse lined up: if I made this a choose your own adventure type deal, a story with audience participation, then you all would be my accomplices. And Jesus can't cane all of us! He doesn't have enough hands! I found a loophole bigger than his stigmata!

Plus I love collaborative story-telling - there's a thrill in not having total control of where the narrative is going. As Brennan Lee Mulligan must know, there's a joy in having to deal with the chaos thrown your way by letting others grab the figurative ball, even if just for a moment.

Part 4: Offbeat Melody

Since I did not want to set this story in Midgaheim, I decided to steer myself away from a vaguely medieval setting altogether. But I also didn't want to limit myself with the need for "realism" that putting it in a normal sea would require, and making a new setting whole cloth would start pushing this project into "not easy" territory.

Luckily, I had a setting lying around that I hadn't played with in a while, which just so happened to have a location that was PERFECT for the sort of Never Stop Blowing Up style madness I was aiming for. For a few years I ran a Monster of the Week TTRPG campaign called Offbeat Melody, and one of its core setting elements was taking the goblin universe hypothesis in paranormal science (yeah it's a real hypothesis) to an illogical extreme. We had specifically seen glimpses of the Sea of Monsters in Offbeat Melody, i.e. the parallel universe where monsters like Nessie, Ogopogo, Champ, and the like all hail from. Well, why not have a whole story set there? It's literally a universe devoted solely to creating sea monsters - what better place to strand our modern Odysseus?

Offbeat Melody was always sort of a Never Stop Blowing Up project, or at least NSBU adjacent. Some of my most unhinged story-telling moments are in that campaign - you could make a supercut of just the "commercial breaks" in the various sessions and it'd basically be an I Think You Should Leave episode. Taking one obscure corner of its multiversal world and exploring it in detail was perfect for this project.

Part 5: Monster by Monster

With our main romance as sorted out as could be for a CYOA story, it was time to figure out the "episodes" of this sea voyage. I settled on there being ten to roughly align with The Odyssey - just in terms of number, mind you, not in a one-to-one comparison. The first was, obviously, Calibani herself, which left nine more slots for me to fill with monsters. Let's go through them together in brief:

Tree Storks - any lost at sea story eventually has to get its protagonist into an island at some point, but this immediately begs the question, "Why don't they just stay on the island where it's safe?" The answer to that question has to be, "it's not safe there, actually." The Odyssey does this quickly and cleverly with a one two punch: the first island seems safe until you realize the food on it brainwashes you into forgetting everything except your desire to eat it, and the second island is full of delicious sheep but also giants who will eat you just as easily as they eat the sheep. When other islands show up in the story later, you immediately regard them with suspicion, because you don't know HOW they're going to be fucked up, but they definitely will be. My goal with the second episode was to establish the same sort of danger - that land is NOT safe, that islands WILL be fucked up and dangerous in ways you might not expect.

I also wanted to establish that this is not just a sea of monsters, but a very WEIRD sea of WEIRD monsters. It couldn't be any old monster on this island - it had to be one that was unique, unexpected, and maybe just a bit silly while still being menacing.

I've always felt that there's a lot of un-mined horror potential in storks, cranes, and herons - any bird with a long neck and spear-like beak it uses to stab smaller creatures from above. Just imagine yourself in a frog's place in the world - tiny, going about your business, when suddenly something shoots down at you from above and impales you before you even feel the shadow fall over your face. Or perhaps you did see the shadow - some of these birds spread their wings to create shade specifically to attract fish, and then spear the poor little bastards.

Well, what do people often look to islands for when out at sea? Shade - the shade of a palm tree. And palm fronds kinda resemble feathers, don't they? Wouldn't it be both ludicrous and terrifying is there was a stork big enough to mimic a palm tree - and wouldn't that be a DEVIOUS trap for a sun-drenched sailor to fall for? So the Tree Storks were born.

The Globster - I made a list of sea monster archetypes in the early planning for this project, and one I wanted to include was a kraken, i.e. some sort of tentacled sea beast. But I didn't want to do JUST a big squid or octopus, or even a riff on them. I wanted to take the idea of "big sea monster with lots of tentacles" into a stranger direction.

Since the Sea of Monsters is explicitly the home universe of lake and sea monster cryptids, I thought it might be fun if ASWaM's kraken equivalent was a globster - just a big ball of rotten meat. I love drawing monstrous faces, so I decided it'd just be, like, MADE of hideous rotten faces, all melting and congealing together, with its tentacles doubling as the tongues of its many mouths. A perfectly wretched image that, like the Tree Storks, would do well to establish how Fucked things could get in this setting. Plus similar monsters had appeared in Offbeat Melody, which would make for a fun sense of familiarity for the, like, five or so readers of mine who had listened to that campaign before.

Captain Peter & the Dolphin - Another thing I did in the early planning stages of this project was make a list of the different sea voyage stories I know and love, the most contentious of which is The Life of Pi. That's a story that I love on a literal level but kind of hate on a figurative level - its whole theme/message is that doubt is the worst thing you can have, that if you don't commit to believing something with zealous conviction you are a coward. As a person who thinks doubt is valid, that "I don't know" is sometimes the ONLY truly valid answer to a question, I have issues with that message.

But I can't help loving the beautifully ludicrous idea of a non-anthropomorphic tiger sailing the ocean on a big Odyssey of its own. Like, if that story didn't actively hate me for being agnostic, it would be one of my favorites.

So I decided to, you know, just steal the idea of a tiger Odysseus. The tiger in The Life of Pi is named Richard Parker. Richard Parker also happens to be the name of Peter Parker's dad. Hence we get Captain Peter - the figurative son of Richard Parker, if you will. And to ratchet up the absurdity of a tiger Odysseus, I made him a pirate and the sole sailor of his voyage. Somehow, this tiger has manned a boat on his own.

Captain Peter was intended to be the hero of another story - a sign for the readers that it IS possible for a stranded person (or, in this case, tiger) to survive out here. To that end, he had to rescue our heroes from another threat, but not one that would be interesting enough to take the focus off of the tiger pirate. Originally I planned for that threat to just be a big shark, but I ended up liking my shark design too much to put it in a role that small, so I quickly designed a nasty dolphin for the role instead. I think that worked out well, honestly.

Dr. Neptune - Episodes 5 and 6 were the mid-point of this journey, so I wanted the two monsters of those to escalate things significantly. I figured episode 5 was probably a good place to FINALLY give some meaningful exposition on what was going on, and there are a lot of stories about mad scientists doing weird shit on islands in my big list of sea voyage stories I love. So we get Dr. Neptune, a classical brain-in-a-jar mad scientist who's affable enough to give more-or-less accurate exposition but loony enough to be a problem. This also felt like a good spot to remind the reader that Calibani is not just a girl with a tail but rather a Sea Monster herself, and one that we'd been making stronger by allying with.

With his human-but-not-quite nature and cyclops eye, Dr. Neptune could sort of be seen as the Polyphemus of this story, couldn't he?

The Crocodisle - One of the sea monster archetypes on my list was "the island that's actually a sleeping monster," of which there are many in mythology and folklore. My favorite is the Jasconius from the voyage of St. Brendan, mainly because it's more or less benign and actually comes back to help St. Brendan and his crew at the end of the story. I always love when I can find an old story with a friendly monster in it.

When thinking of my own spin on the island monster concept, I remembered the only Magic the Gathering card I had as a kid, which I still have and love to this day: The Sandbar Crocodile. This card already inspired Crocogon's color scheme in The Atomic time of Monsters, but I felt I could go to that well again one more time, and so made a crocodile that wasn't just a sandbar, but a whole damn island to itself. And, like Jasconius, it turns out he's pretty chill.

I did not think of the pun name "Crocodisle" until I was actually writing the chapter in question.

The Femdom Mermaids - These three were a late addition to the roster. When I had Calibani bring up mermaids early in the story, I realized as soon as I wrote her rant about them that we'd HAVE to meet some later on in the story.

The readers had significantly shaped Calibani and Sailor's romance by this point, and I decided that it could be useful to have a chapter that was devoted to showing definitively how these two were good for each other. I thought the mermaids could provide a good contrast: have them act out a seemingly more benign take on the monstrous sea women trope (they abduct our hero to protect and care for them!) only for it to quickly feel MORE deranged than Calibani's comparatively simple desire just to eat him.

The spirit of Calibani's rant about mermaids was taken from weird* girls I knew in high school complaining about cheerleaders, so I wanted the mermaids to look like the sea monster equivalent of popular kids to Calibani's chubby weird girl. Two of them got the names of famous beauties - Helyne = Helen of Troy, Clio = Cleopatra.

(*when I say "weird" I mean it in a complimentary and affectionate sense)

Bob, meanwhile, kinda... rebelled, I guess? Before I had names for them, I listed "bob" by her as just, like, a descriptor for her hair cut, but then I liked it as her name, and once she was named Bob she became more than just a mean popular girl. She was a weirdo too, the little punching bag of the two mean popular girls who did their dirty work and smiled through their abuse because hey, at least they included her. It gave the trio an easily defined dynamic, helped make two of the three more visibly nasty, and gave us comic relief in an arc that could very well have gotten too uncomfortable otherwise.

And I guess it worked - readers REALLY loved Bob, and were very vocal about it, and I realized mid-arc that I had accidentally made her too likable to just leave in this arc. So Bob got to be rescued from her awful friend group thanks to readers like YOU.

Lord Ironteeth - yeah, this was the shark that was too cool to be a minor threat. When I drew his noggin, I realized he would need a chapter of his own, one with gravitas. I decided he'd specifically be the threshold guardian -once we beat him, we'd know for sure how to get home, even if there were a few more threats in store.

Spindle Inc and Sycorax - when I was a kid I used to have this recurring nightmare about being on some sort of underwater sea station that had this huge sea serpent trapped inside it. I'd look at the sea serpent from a window within the station and see it coiling in its tank, only for it to look at me with fury. In that glance I would suddenly realize two things with absolute clarity: first, it was going to break free and kill everyone, and second, we deserved that destruction for what we had done to it. The terror of the dream was less that the sea serpent was going to break free, and more the guilt of knowing that all the mayhem that was about to unfold was our fault to begin with.

I thought that would be fun to homage with the penultimate chapter of this story. OBVIOUSLY the sea serpent was Calibani's mom, obviously the trauma of its capture was why Calibani grew into a predator that specializes in hunting humans, obviously we would have to free the sea serpent despite that running counter to Sailor's goal of getting home. Easy, easy, easy plot point to include.

Spindle, Inc. is the primary antagonistic force in Offbeat Melody, so they easily slotted into the role of the arrogant humans who captured this monster for nefarious and selfish motives. They could tie a lot of other plot threads together too - Dr. Neptune was a scientist who worked for them as a contractor only to get screwed over (i.e. they stranded him in the Sea of Monsters, expecting him to die, and then used his research to make their own base of operations in it), we'd learn of him through a spindle briefcase left behind by some unfortunate rogue agent who got eaten by the Globster while he was trying to escape, hell they could even be one of the possible origins of Sailor themself (more on that later). Very useful villains, Spindle.

The Abyssal Mother - I knew the last sea monster would need a lot of punch to it. I briefly considered just a big whale - the Moby Dick to Spindle's corporate Ahab - but it felt underwhelming after all that came before. So I went for arguably the most dramatic possible sea monster, a full on Cthulhu-style elder god. If you're a frequent follower of this blog, you might know I have particularly high standards for Eldritch Abominations, so I realized this was going to be a pretty big challenge for me to live up to, and decided to keep the cthulhu in question reserved to the last few entries as a result - the less it appears, the less it has to live up to.

I realized I had a good angle when my experiments with the Cthulhu "squid for a head" concept ended up having a face framed in shadow - you know, the same visual that our protagonist has in most appearances. That provided some very juicy parallels between the two that made this final monster feel particularly noteworthy to me, ones that I'll leave you to ponder, since they tie into...

Part 6: Themes

I did not set out to have a theme in this story. I just wanted to make a sailor and a sea monster kiss. That was my only goal.

But I really don't begin with theme in ANY of my writing. I figure out topics I want to address, but for all my novels I feel like the themes didn't start coming together until about halfway through the first draft, when enough of the elements of the story had been set down and interacted with each other enough for me to realize what I was saying with them. A huge part of my second and third drafts for my novels have focused on making the themes of my stories more concrete and unified.

Well, ASWaM is very much a first draft of a story, but it's a simple enough story that I think the theme found itself pretty well despite lacking subsequent drafts to refine it.

ASWaM is about doubt and direction. It's about being adrift in a world that is in many ways hostile by nature, about not feeling like you're where you're supposed to be or even WHO you're supposed to be, and about setting off aimlessly in the hope that maybe you'll find your way to that mythical land of "what my life is supposed to be."

When I began the story, Sailor had amnesia and wore clothes that obscured their identity as a way to make it easier for anyone to step into Sailor's role. Sailor had to feel like You, the Reader, and so we don't know their name, their gender, their eye color, their hair color, even their skin color (note that their hands are always wearing gloves, and their face is always in shadow).

But it also meant Sailor is, well, undefined, at least at the start of the story. Sailor doesn't know who they are, what they are, how they came to be. Sailor feels distinctly that they should be Something Else, should be Somewhere Else, should be Someone Else, should not be who/what/where they are. Sailor is plagued by doubt, by a need to go in a different direction, by a need to be other than they are.

This initially contrasts with Calibani, who begins the story very confident that she is doing exactly what she was designed to be doing and acting exactly like she should be. As they interact, they begin to shift each other in opposite directions - Calibani questions her existence and nature, sometimes to a self destructive degree, and Sailor begins to find something about who and where they are that they like. They find a healthy middle ground together - doubtful enough to want to be better people, but with love for themselves that allows them to not feel the need to up-heave their lives entirely.

I knew at the start that I would build an expectation for there to be some answer to the question of who Sailor is and where they came from, because those are the questions that begin the whole narrative. I brainstormed a number of answers to those questions, but once I got a few chapters into writing the story and saw this theme of doubt developing, I realized I couldn't answer them. From a thematic standpoint, the doubt HAD to remain. So I gave hints to possible answers, bits of evidence to support the possibility of them being true, but never planted a smoking gun that answered it for sure.

Sailor can't know the answer because NONE of us know the answer. Outside of blind Life of Pi style faith, you cannot know for sure that you are living the life you're supposed to live. All you can do is figure out whether you're happy with the life you've got, or if you need a change. Sailor will never know who they are supposed to be, but they did learn who they are, and they love that person now.

For those curious, the possible Sailor origins are:

Occam's Razor: they're exactly what Dr. Neptune theorized, i.e. a human who got stranded in the Bermuda Triangle (or the Devil's Triangle or any other number of paranormal triangles) and fell into the Sea of Monsters. The trauma of that experience gave them amnesia. It's just brain damage and bad luck.

A Spindle Experiment: Dr. Warefore mentions that Spindle has been trying to find a way to make a human who can evolve like the denizens of the Sea of Monsters. Sailor may well be an attempt to do just that, perhaps one they wrote off as a failure and abandoned (they do that a lot)

A Deep One: Sailor is the offspring of one of the denizens of the Sea of Monsters (most likely the Abyssal Mother herself) who has somehow been tricked into believing they are human, to the point where they seem to be human to everyone else, even other monsters. Maybe a human summoned a sea monster to breed with on earth, and Sailor ended up being subconsciously drawn back to the Sea by their blood. Maybe Sailor never actually lived on earth at all, but was only made to THINK they had as part of the transformation into a human.

The Platonic Ideal of a Sailor: the Sea of Monsters is full of archetypal concepts, and arguably a sailor trying to find their way home is just as archetypal as any sea serpent, mermaid, or kraken. Our only proof that humans aren't native to the Sea of Monsters is Dr. Neptune, and he's not as reliable an expert as he claims to be.

This theme of doubt and direction also made the compass more important to the narrative than a simply mechanic for audience participation - a compass, after all, gives direction, and the feeling that Sailor is not where they're supposed to be, that they need to head in a different direction, is ultimately the catalyst of the plot. The compass is, in many ways, the antagonist of the story - the force that keeps Sailor from accepting themself. I realized this a little after I started making the different directions have personalities - initially they just represented broad concepts (North = follow conventional wisdom ala the North Star, South = preserve your short-term self interest at all costs, East = act with curiosity and be willing to take calculated risks, and West = throw caution to the wind and do anything that seems novel and exciting), but over time they became little characters themselves.

Since it was our thematic antagonist, I decided to pepper in some ideas about what the compass might be in-universe - and, in a move that would no doubt frustrate the compass, we also don't know for sure which of those is "correct." Is the compass a poltergeist, some amalgamation of dead sailors who try to steer other lost souls home? Is it a malign entity that leeches off of those desperate enough to seek its aid, living through them while pretending to aid them? Is it a device Spindle made to lure sailors to their clutches, OR to guide their experiments in human/monster hybrids? Was it a cursed item that forced a sea monster to assume a human shape? Who can say - the compass sure can't, it can only tell you a direction to go in.

Part 7: Q&A

Since this was an interactive story, I felt it was only fitting to add one last interactive element to this post-script write up, and some of your happily obliged me by sending in questions.

When I noticed how fast readers were falling for Calibani, I figured there was a good chance we'd end up staying in the Sea of Monsters. By chapter 7, I figured it was more or less a given, and by the end of the Lord Ironteeth encounter I was almost 100% sure Sailor would remain at sea. There was always a chance, though - while a look at the polls shows that the audience got more and more on the same page towards the end, there were always dissenting voices, and the desire to get an answer to the question of Who Sailor Was remained strong, as a number of people kept trying to find angles where they could get that AND stay with Calibani.

I was surprised early on by how easily the audience fell in love with Calibani, to the point where I made a few posts commenting on it. I mean, I shouldn't have been - as I said earlier, I have cultivated an audience of fellow monsterfuckers on here, and I know at least a few of them saw my bait and knew they could get me to be freaky in a way we found mutually agreeable (thank you all again for helping me escape being caned by Jesus for being horny).

Like, we REPEATEDLY ignored developing the plot in the Tree Storks chapter for several days just to spend more time with Calibani - something that I enjoyed immensely (this whole thing was an excuse for me to write and draw a cute chubby sea monster girl as much as possible aftter all) but also knew as a storyteller was not what most would consider a good story call. I like how it turned out, but it defied conventional narrative wisdom, you know? I was surprised.

On the other side of the coin, I was also surprised by how the audience NEVER chose an option that was humorously disastrous. I gave plenty of them, and, like, generally in collaborative storytelling there will be at least one moment where your collaborators decide to do the really, REALLY stupid thing that makes everything spiral out of control really quickly. I figured at least once the audience would choose the troll response, but no, you guys worked hard to keep Sailor and Calibani alive. You refused to let them hurt each other, refused to let them throw themselves into danger, refused to imperil them for your own chuckles. It was very sweet and unexpected.

I say "you refused" but to be fair it's not like NO ONE voted for the troll options - they generally got a handful of votes, just one that was beaten by a landslide of more reasonable options. Hopefully those of you who voted for the troll options enjoyed Bob throwing you a bone by disintegrating Dr. Warefore - that was my consolation prize to you.

Yes. I knew at the beginning that there would be two endings for this story: either Sailor leaves the Sea and goes home, or Sailor stays there forever. Or, you know, Sailor dies as a result of you guys choosing several stupid options in a row, but as stated above you guys avoided those scenarios pretty decisively.

Had Sailor gone home, the following would have occurred: first, they would forget everything that happened in the Sea of Monsters. Second, they would wake up in a hospital, having been found in the Atlantic Ocean by a human-recovery charity run by... oh, isn't that funny, some tech company named Spindle Inc! Spindle would foot the medical bills and even offer Sailor a job, but Sailor would decline because even now they're still not sure what Spindle even does. Sailor would go back to their life and find it familiar and utterly mundane, but not particularly happy. Their father died when they were 18, their mother was never in the picture, they have no siblings. They worked an office job and were sort of a nonentity - that position has long since been filled, but Sailor gets a new job and lives out much the same life: simple, mundane, dreary. Every now and then they get a pang of desire to leave, to go to sea, but they push it out of mind. They never even see the ocean again as long as they live.

Sailor would have gotten the normal life they thought they were supposed to have, the normal memories and name and identity, the mundane life of a normal person. And they just had to trade everything they found in the Sea of Monsters to get it. A question is answered, a direction is followed, but is it the right answer, the right direction?

Well, I think doubt would have remained.

I had a very vague idea for there to be some sort of man-eating giant in, like, a crystal castle. He got cut to make way for the mermaids.

I wanted to fit in a big whale and a giant crustacean, but there wasn't room or an interesting angle for me to want to make room for them. Saved for a possible sequel, I suppose.

I also wanted to have a scene with, like, DOZENS of sea monsters, including some of the ones from Offbeat Melody, but the goal of "this should be EASY you dumbass" made me kill that idea pretty quick.

Thank you!

The primary inspirations were:

The Odyssey and Epic: the Musical

The voyage of St. Brendan

The many "weird shit happens on an island" movies in Toho's filmography, i.e. Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster, Son of Godzilla, Yog Monster of the Deep, Matango, etc.

The Island of Dr. Moreau

The Boy and the Heron

Ponyo (specifically Ponyo's parents - I wanted Sailor to have the same desperate energy as that wizard who fucks the giant sea goddess)

The Life of Pi

Slay the Princess (perhaps most obvious in the use of second person narration, multiple voices in the protagonist's head, and falling in love with a creature that has tried to kill you at least once)

I'm going to use this to springboard to a related point in a second, but first a genuine yet humorous answer: Yes, absolutely yes, I am enough of a big romantic sap that I would give everything about my life away to be with a person who loves me and explore a world of monsters in a heartbeat. Hell, I would have jumped in the water the minute Calibani asked and died with her fangs in my neck and a smile on my face. I am dumb this way. Do not follow my example.

On that related point, though... Most stories like this, I daresay ALL stories like this that I know of, end with the hero abandoning the fantasy world in favor of reality, never to return. And that seems like the proper choice and lesson on the surface - we don't want to tell audiences to give up their real life in favor of a fantasy, after all. That's encouraging escapism, and that's not healthy!

But, like... textually speaking, the fantastical world IS real to the characters in these stories. And it's often not really an escape - was Sailor's life devoid of conflict and suffering in the Sea of Monsters? Fuck no! It's just that they figured out how to deal with that conflict and suffering - they built skills and a support system, they adapted, they learned how to overcome what was there.

I think it can be argued that sometimes the return to a "normal" world is, in itself, an escape - the idea that your life can spiral into chaos but that's ok, you can just reset everything and go back to The Way It Was and Should Be is just as unrealistic and unhealthy an idea as You Should Escape to A Better World. Sometimes your plans for your life fall apart, sometimes you're thrown into a place you never intended to go, sometimes you have to learn skills you never anticipated needing and ally with people you never thought you'd befriend to deal with problems you never dreamed you'd have to overcome. And sometimes it's ok to look at your derailed life, your Not Where You Should Be life, and say, "Well, I've learned how to live here... maybe I can stay."

Especially if there's a cute chubby sea monster girl who loves you.

Bob was never supposed to appear past chapter 7, but about halfway through that chapter I realized the audience and I myself would be heartbroken if we didn't rescue her. Definitely for the best - she provided some well-needed comic relief in the final chapters.

This is gonna sound snarky, but, yeah - there were 58 choices with four options a piece, and we only chose one of the four. While some of the options would have similar results, almost none would have had identical outcomes. And some would have been VERY different.

Like, to go back to the beginning: when Calibani attacked, we could either throw a net on her, harpoon her, try to drive around her, or hide below deck. We picked the net, but for the other three options:

Harpooning would result in us hitting her in the thigh, causing her enough pain that she collapses on our deck and we, horrified at the violence we committed, just sort of push on. Calibani would be wounded for at least the next chapter, perhaps longer, and significantly weaker (and probably harboring a great deal of hidden resentment while also being genuinely scared of Sailor). She would be vulnerable during the stork attack, forcing Sailor to take a more active role in that chapter.

Trying to steer around her would result in us essentially fighting her with our boat, resulting in the boat capsizing and Calibani getting tangled up in it. We'd wake up alone on Stork Island and have to travel in search of our boat, alone and vulnerable among man-eating trees. We'd run into Calibani again, also beached and in trouble, end up recruiting her to help us get our boat out of the sand.

Hiding below deck would end in a sea storm that leaves us inside our boat as it's beached on Stork Island. We'd fend off the storks alone, and run into Calibani once we get our boat out to sea, as she got away more or less unscathed.

All of these would have majorly changed the trajectory of our relationship with Calibani and our identity as Sailor, despite seeming to have the same component parts on the surface. Now account for how similarly slight changes in the other options could have gone, and we could have had a very different story indeed.

Part 8: Our Girl

I just think she's neat!

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