#yet another psychic vision

[oxventurequotes]

IS YOUR CHILD TEXTING ABOUT THE OXVENTURERS GUILD???

OMFG On My Flat Geth

SMH Seal Man Happy

TLDR Tasty Long Dog Roll

LMAO Liliana, My Awesome Overlord

IMHO Incredibly Messy Historic Order

IDC I Dig Cthulhu

STFU Spikes! That Fun Undertaking!

WTF Wet Treasure Fiend

BRB Beeples Recording Bangers

GL Grease Lover

[steakbones]

would u guys still love me if i became a kpop fan

[sirenmoontarot]

ℐ𝓉 𝒾𝓈 ℋ𝒶𝓁𝓁𝑜𝓌𝑒𝑒𝓃… 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝓌𝒾𝓉𝒸𝒽𝑒𝓈 𝒶𝓇𝑒 𝑔𝒶𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓇𝒾𝓃𝑔, 𝓁𝑒𝓉'𝓈 𝓈𝑒𝑒 𝓌𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝓅𝑜𝓌𝑒𝓇𝓈 𝓁𝒾𝑒 𝒹𝑜𝓇𝓂𝒶𝓃𝓉 𝓌𝒾𝓉𝒽𝒾𝓃 𝓎𝑜𝓊, 𝒹𝑒𝒶𝓇 𝑜𝓃𝑒

Group 1

For the people in this group, your hidden power is actually creating bounty, abundance, happiness, and prosperity easily and out of anything, you have the power within your energy to shift anything into a lighter mood, into high vibration, you actually have the power of leading yourself towards your dreams and accomplishments in an easy way… as I said, it is your hidden power, you might not be aware of it. the cards highlight that your power resides in doing so without so much struggle, or none at all, it is like your playful energies even, will manifest and create your desires in life. These playful energies are a core part of your soul and your soul’s journey. Your soul imprint is that of lightheartedness, and fun, some of you might be Mintakan Starseeds, you also have a deep connection to firstly water and some people here fire as well. You can choose the way of ‘’easy’’ to create what you want in your life and to attract it. Sitting down and letting things come to you! while you just enjoy yourself and have fun. Others can even do anything happily for you. Some of you in this group, have a very strong inner call, inner truth that you have to follow. I keep getting strong Starseed vibes, you guys have come with a mission here and you know it. Your vibration is kinda different from the rest. Some of you can't live in an ‘’illusion’’ or in a shallow life. You have to, yes or yes, follow that truth or inner calling, You are transparent, what you show is what you feel. I keep getting pure vibes as well. You also love to travel and you are encouraged to. A change of cultures benefit you… it would freshen you up.

Thank you for reading dear group number 1 🖤 Lots of Halloween blessings 🎃🕯

Support me on Ko-fi 𓇬 Psychic Readings

Group 2

Okay group number 2, your hidden power is intelligence, you can turn anything into success, you have the power to find the shortcuts, the best ways, the most witty and intelligent forms to move ahead and get exactly what you want. You have a clear vision, you are able to see the details, what others might not be aware of and turn the beginning of something (you are also capable of starting things well) into success. Your mind is sharp, and witty, now don't tell me you are not capable of this! the cards are showing 8 of swords energy, you might get clouded into your own fears or shit that makes you blind. You should own your energy! You are so encouraged to use your vision, your actual vision, see things as they are, not fogged in negativity, fears or you know everything that makes you stuck. Your power lies in your vision, but use it well, when your mind gets out of control bring it down back to the earth, to the tangible. Things might not be yet 100% but they are growing, don't get desperate! And with perseverance and constancy, you will go towards that sun, 10 of pentacles energy that you are getting on the cards! but confidence and inner power is needed, otherwise, you are wasting it on blinding yourself! Use well your power!

Thank you for reading dear group number 2 🖤 Lots of Halloween blessings 🎃🕯

Support me on Ko-fi 𓇬 Psychic Readings

Group 3

For the people in this group, your hidden power is to turn anything negative that happened to you into gems, valuable lessons, and taking what is useful to build a new person in which you will become. Your hidden power is to become detached from all that happened to you in the past, and literally turn yourself into another person, and get out of situations and not repeat them again. Some of us get repeating lessons all the time no matter if we try to learn the lesson for the 5th time, but your hidden power you are not aware of is that you can put yourself in another reality in which the repeatitions don't happen. Burning the old pages of everything that was lost, that went wrong, and have another life. Some of you might have gone through really bad and painful stuff but the message here is that things will change for you. I see this image, of a nice beautiful house, a big one, and the deep green color, like a forest around, an aura of calmness. This energy indicates the changes that are to come in your life in the future of the things you want to attain and the mental state you can have. It is a message of hope you are getting and also to not give up or get discouraged at the state of things now or in the past. Changes can take time but they can happen, that is better than nothing at all. Let yourself grow, give commitment to yourself, and get out of the toxicity to end up in another world, another life literally.

Thank you for reading dear group number 3 🖤 Lots of Halloween blessings 🎃🕯

Support me on Ko-fi 𓇬 Psychic Readings

[ashdreams2023]

hello dear! I don't know if you are accepting requests, but I would like to request a five hargreeves x fem!reader

where the reader is a psychic, and she works in the more "chic" part of the commission and she is interested in Five because of some visions she has of him and nananananana

Anyway, I hope you understood :))

a big kiss from Brazil MWAH!

I reached Brazil?! Y’all I’m worldwide now 😩💕

Five hargreeves x fem reader

Watching

There’s many characters in the commission to say the least, everyone got their story and how they got there, much how you ended up there.

But you weren’t that special, you don’t think so at least, not with your coworker having the head of a cow and speaking fluent Spanish and French.

You didn’t usually interact with other employees there that weren’t in your department, it wasn’t because you thought yourself better than them but everyone other than you moved too fast, worried at lot, but you suppose the calmness comes from knowing what your future is and how very little it takes to change your fate.

It was also noted that your department tended to stay to focus on appearances and self expression, you’ll be mostly found in different outfits and fun makeup, it clashed with the usual uniform but it was fine because in your case, it mattered what you said rather than what you looked.

In your years there you’ve predicted deaths, wars, fallouts and whatever you can think about.

It was your job anyways and no one knew your face to point fingers at who is telling on their little failed schemes.

Although….there has been a change of atmosphere since you began seeing some interesting visions about a certain agent.

Five Hargreaves.

An oldie he was, yet surprisingly this was the first time you’ve seen him do something so….unexpected.

End of the world? His family? A new threat from within? Interesting.

You find yourself watching him, from your department, from the windows, he always walked with a purpose and heading somewhere.

Your coworker likes to tease you about this…sudden interest of yours calling him a call for help and that you need to get laid or something along those lines.

"There’s a thin line between sliver box and a grumpy git sweetie"

"Oh come on, aren’t you even a little curious? He’s so…mysterious"

Your staring had led to some rumors spreading around but nothing crazy, you weren’t the first to show any interest in five but it did become slightly embarrassing when you caught him staring at you during a New Year’s party.

Then you were surprised to find him up in your department looking for you.

"I thought I’ll drop by instead of our regular routine of you staring down at home like a hawk and me pretending I don’t see you"

"Oh…sorry?"

"I’ll accept good coffee and a conversation as a form of apology, meet at six outside."

Did he just ask you out? You weren’t so sure about it but it did happen and there were cameras, and to say the least, you became everyone’s business within a few hours.

"Care to tell me why a woman like you was staring at old me? I know your job here and what you’re capable of" He was so calm it made you shiver but you still kept your professional face on.

"You know as much as me that if I let something out both of us would be counting our days here"

"I see the rumors are true" He smirked

"Which ones?" Your curiosity peaked.

He took a sip from his cup "that’s a subject for another day with a much filling meal"

You bit your lip and chuckled "Are you asking me to dinner?"

The older gentleman eyed you so intensely you could almost feel the blush creeping at the back of your neck "I know a good restaurant in 1987 France"

"Hmm, it’s a date then"

"Only if you keep wearing that red lipstick of yours"

So he was watching you too "don’t tempt me I might rebel off and put something else, mess with you a little"

"I thought your department was too much of a bunch of goody two shoes"

You smiled at him then moved your under the table and kicked foot making him wince in pain.

"Pick me up at 7:30pm and a word of advice, watch out for chainsaw at your next mission" You stops leaving him stunned and clearly interested.

"Will do, will do."

[sundrop-writes]

Precious Time Alone

Gar Logan x Fem!Powered!Reader

aka the fic where Gar has a knot

Summary:

Even with the ability to see the future, you never would have guessed that your life would lead you to falling in love with the perfect man - someone sweet, caring, funny, cute. Someone with the passion and fire to protect the ones that he loves no matter what. A precious guy with green hair who had the ability to transform into a tiger at will. And when you finally made love to him for the first time, you never could have guessed how that unique ability affected his sex life.

You weren't exactly complaining, but you wished you had seen this coming. At the end of the day, it was just another thing about him to love.

Or - Neither you nor Gar knew that he has the ability to knot, and you both find out for the first time when you have sex together.

Gar Logan x Fem!Powered!Reader. Established Relationship. Smut/PWP. Set during Season 2, Episode 9.

Word Count: 11,800

DC Titans Masterlist | AO3 Link

THIS IS A RE-POST. This is a fic from my old blog (a blog that was shadowbanned, forcing me to move). This fic is not stolen, it is completely mine, and I am just re-posting it to help people find my new blog, to make my masterlist for this fandom more complete, and to help new people discover my old fics.

Detailed warnings and author’s notes below the cut.

Important Note: for reference, this is not an A/B/O fic - I have nothing against A/B/O fics and I love them very much (it's one of my favourite genres, and I really need to write more A/B/O fics and post them) - the reader character is 100% human and does not have any traits that fall into the A/B/O category. This fic is based off the concept that Gar has a knot due to his animal traits/animal DNA, and it is something that happens to his body because of his ability to transform into an animal. This could be considered a hybrid fic, but Gar's knot is the only animal trait he possesses during sex. If this is your thing, I hope you enjoy. If not, come back later, and I might have something more your style. Or you can check out my masterlist in the meantime.

Warnings: the reader character has a vagina and uses she/her pronouns; this is an established relationship - Gar and the reader have been dating for a while now; mentions of canon events from S1 and S2 (so there is some spoilers from the show - if you haven't seen the show yet and you want to watch it unspoiled, be warned); mentions of canon level violence, including Gar being tortured at the asylum; this is set during 2x09 when Gar is 'home alone' (and the reader is there with him); the reader character suffers from insomnia; the reader character does have powers but they don't really have major involvement in the plot of this fic (idk if I should have even labelled this as 'powered!reader') - the reader character has psychic visions; mentions of clothes sharing - the reader is implied to be bigger/plus sized because Gar wears her clothing and it's 'oversized'; the reader is attracted to Gar's more 'animal' side - she admits to being attracted to him because he protected her with his powers; this fic does use Y/N (I am a proud Y/N truther); Gar and the reader have engaged in sexual acts before (handjobs, fingering, oral) but this fic features their first time having penis in vagina sex; Gar's knot is a surprise to both of them due to it being their first time having penetrative sex (his dick only swells up once it gets inside of her body); though this is both of their 'first times' with each other, I didn't put any big emphasis on virginity in this fic, especially because they have done other sexual acts before; this could be considered Crack Treated Seriously - but like I said, my brain just took the concept and ran with it; there is something in this fic that could be considered consensual somnophilia - the reader character starts performing oral sex on Gar in order to wake him up, but she's not specifically turned on by the fact that he's sleeping, and there is an unspoken consent due to them being in a relationship; this whole thing fluctuates from making love/passionate sex to rough, animalistic sex; slight praise kink - Gar verbally praises the reader and compliments her a lot; there isn't really defined roles here, but Gar is more dominant and the reader is more submissive; as mentioned before - penis in vagina sex; unprotected sex - they don't use a condom (the lore of knots and condoms bothers me anyway, like how would a condom not break under those circumstances??); possessive!Gar; biting kink/marking kink (Gar bites the reader - a lot); Gar cums inside the reader - a lot, because of his supernatural dick (though this doesn't quite make it to cum inflation levels); Gar knots the reader (if you don't know what that is, just stay away); creampie kink - NOT breeding kink; there is mentions of pregnancy in a discussion after the sex is over, but not in the breeding kink sense (Gar and the reader both want kids and there is no mentions of alternate forms of birth control, so if that gives you the ick then don't read this one); slight warning for VERY BRIEF painful sex/pain after sex - Gar tries to pull out not knowing what the knot is and accidentally hurts the reader's vagina because of it (the pain only lasts for a few seconds, and he stops trying to pull out once he is unsuccessful); scent kink - Gar loves the way you smell after being fucked by him; (I was not planning on adding a bonus scene when editing this fic, but it's Gar and I got carried away) more consensual somnophilia toward the end - Gar fingers the reader a bit while she is sleeping, and then he masturbates on top of her and cums over her thighs before cleaning her up (again, this is operating off the pre-existing consent in a relationship, or you can imagine that they had a consent conversation about this before the fic, idc); the ending of this fic is just pure fluff.

A/N: This is one that I wrote in 2022 and I had kind of forgotten about it? But I was going through my older fics on AO3 and I was like 'omg I love that fic, I forgot how much I love that fic'. And because I am trying to post some easy stuff before my move (which will be exhausting and it will mean that I will post pretty much nothing for a few months) - I realized that this fic was an easy re-post because it didn't need a lot of work before being re-posted. So - here ya go! If you haven't read this fic before and you don't know what a knot is (in terms of fanfiction/smut): run away. Run away now. I don't need to be the one to corrupt you lmao. But yeah - this fic was inspired by someone on Tumblr (I wish I could remember who it was and link the post) posing the theory that if Gar is 'part animal', then he might have a knot. And my brain felt the need to exorcise that idea once it entered my mind and literally possessed me, and thus, this fic was created. I think it is one of my better Gar fics - with a very straightforward concept. And if this is your thing, I hope you enjoy it!

...

It was entirely strange to wake up to the Tower actually being quiet. 

Well, quiet aside from the sound of Gar’s snores rumbling beside your head. But there was a lot less noise than usual. 

There was no distant beeping of the coffee machine where Dick had it pre-set to go off at an ungodly hour. No grunting of Jason training because he couldn’t sleep. No rumbling bass tones of Rachel’s music where she played it aloud, thinking no one else could hear. 

No arguing voices. 

Strangely, that was something you missed most of all. You had come to love the chaos of so many people living in your new home. And you had secretly hoped that Dawn, Hank, and Donna would stick around for a while, even if they insisted that they were just going to take care of the Dr. Light problem and leave once again. With them cooking meals and hogging the TV, it had started to feel like a real family. 

You had definitely not expected all of the Titans to barrel out faster than cockroaches fled from light when Dick told them of his past transgressions. But boy - they fucking ran. And naturally, when Gar volunteered to stay at the Tower with Conner in order to hold down the fort, you stayed with him. 

What else would a good girlfriend do? 

You had stuck by him through everything else, so of course you would stick by him through this. 

And even though you missed everyone dearly, and you worried about the long-term impact that Dick’s confession would have, you did see the appeal of The Tower now being completely empty. You would be lying if you said that it didn’t bring some salacious thoughts to your mind. 

Maybe it was that morning silence, truly reminding you of the lack of occupants in the house - or the burning hum between your thighs that had you awake at this hour in the first place. But you couldn’t sleep, and now your mind was brimming with better, hornier things that you could be doing with your time. (Things that you likely already would have started if Gar had been awake along with you.) 

You were sometimes jealous of his ability to sleep so well. Typically, sleep was an area that you did very poorly in. 

Usually, having Gar’s intense warmth curled up next to you did help. And you thanked that perfect human furnace for what little sleep you had gotten the night before. Especially after all the anxiety and the fighting, and the unexpected charge of everyone leaving so suddenly. 

You lifted your head from Gar’s rumbling chest as he snored and snorted away and you looked at the clock on his nightstand - 4:15am. You sighed deeply to yourself and decided to get out of bed. You knew from your experience with insomnia that it was no use trying to fall back asleep again. 

You untangled yourself from Gar’s grasp, careful not to wake him - and then you grabbed a piece of clothing off the floor to shield yourself from the morning chill. 

It was an oversized hoodie that you and Gar often shared. It had originally started off as yours, but now your things had migrated into Gar’s room and it seemed like your lives were easily blending into one. He found himself wearing one of your socks mix-matched with his own, and he often slept under a fuzzy throw blanket you had brought when you moved into The Tower. You used his body wash in the shower, and had some of his nerdy pins on your backpack. 

It always just felt right. 

The hoodie smelled delightfully like your boyfriend - and you couldn’t help but to press the fabric to your nose with a small contented sigh while you walked down the hallway to check on Conner. 

The young man was still deeply unconscious - not making a single movement or a flicker of acknowledgment toward you when you walked into the room. His vitals were stable, with his puppy asleep on his knees. The dog looked at you with curious eyes as you checked on the machines and even used a stethoscope to listen to Conner’s heart just to make sure that he was doing alright. Krypto made no moves to get off the bed, entirely protective of his half-human companion. You shut off the light and partially closed the door as you left (leaving enough room for Krypto to get out if he wanted to). 

Then, without much else to do, and feeling a slight grumble in your stomach, you went to the kitchen. You ate a bowl of cereal as you scrolled your phone, listened to music, and checked for messages from any of the other Titans. There were none. 

After you had eaten, you were still bored and the sun wasn’t even up yet - so you decided to take a shower. 

As the hot water poured over your body, you couldn’t help but think of Gar. 

The two of you had been together since your psychic powers led you to Scooter’s Roller Palace. 

Before that, you had lived a somewhat normal life, even with your visions. You had the very typical ‘loving family, suburban home, thriving at school’ type of life. 

You had been trying to achieve your goals while completely ignoring your visions. 

Visions that you had previously denied had even been able to predict the future - until a horrifying dream of your parents’ double murder came true. You were unaware at the time that the same doomsday cult that was attempting to track down Rachel was also looking for you. A group that had been watching your abilities carefully and wanted to use you to track Rachel and to perceive better outcomes for ‘their work’. 

So with the realization that you could see the future, you knew that you had to act. Especially with visions of the dark, crumbling end of the world plaguing you. You let your powers guide you to that roller rink in search of a purple haired girl who could save everyone and a green haired boy who could transform into a tiger. And since then, you hadn’t let him go. 

It was only when you had been captured at the asylum that you and Gar became truly close. The day that he had first come to your rescue. 

The ‘scientists’ there hadn’t been unable to taunt or shock him into his transformation like they had been planning to. But the moment he had heard your screams of torture and torment from down the hall, he had transformed into the tiger and ripped the cage’s door off its steel welded hinges with his teeth just to get to you. 

When he witnessed them torturing you in an attempt to demand predictions of the future out of you - Gar had snapped. And then, a bizarre vision that you’d had years ago came to life before your very eyes. A vision of a giant green tiger ripping apart a group of men in white lab coats, making them bloody in order to save you. 

He later told you, as you were traveling on the train, that he had never harmed another person before that. He had never used his powers to harm someone before that. But he also told you that he absolutely didn’t regret it. He had told you that if it meant that he got to save you, then he would do it a thousand times over. And that was something that warmed your heart and drew you to him like a moth to flame. 

If you had a schoolgirl crush on him before that, then in those moments, it grew into a heated, womanly lust. You started falling in love with him on that day. 

That animalistic strength, that passion, that courage was what had drawn you to Gar immediately. He claimed it was ‘hero syndrome’ - the thing that made you pull him close and kiss him on the train. The thing that made you call him your boyfriend. He claimed it was only because he was the one that saved you, and if it had been someone else, then you wouldn’t have ended up with him at all. 

But no - nobody else had the primal drive that he did. Nobody else had the same protective instincts that he had. Nobody else looked as good with blood dripping from their teeth. 

It was a dangerous thought to have. But it was one that got your clit throbbing every single time. 

Of course, you loved Gar for all of his soft parts. You loved him for his dorky smile, his smooth laugh, his shy gaze. He was a soft place to land when you were hurt, upset - when you needed comfort the most. But you also loved him for his sharpened edges - his undeniable passion, the way he wouldn’t hesitate to harm an enemy when it came to protecting the ones he loved. The way he bit down on your lip whenever you gripped his cock just the right way. 

You sighed hard through your nose as the water went cold around you. Had you really been in the shower for that long?

Disappointingly, you and Gar had never actually had sex before. 

You had done plenty of sexual things - but it always felt rushed, and it never quite scratched that itch in the way you needed it to. 

The fact that the two of you were pretty much never alone together meant you never had the time to indulge in each other, to properly touch each other the way that you really wanted to. Everything you did together was always quick and haste. Grabbing and groping each other through clothes, shoving your hands into each other’s pants, panting breaths down each other’s throats, desperate to cum as quickly and quietly as possible. 

You wanted nothing more than to feel every single inch of his naked skin against yours. You wanted to be able to spend hours worshiping his body, getting your tongue onto every perfect muscle you had seen when he trained shirtless. You spent far too long fantasizing about him laying you down in the middle of his bed and pounding into you, roughly and savagely - showing off that animal side you loved so much. 

As you wrapped a towel around yourself and wiped the steam off the mirror, you realized something absolutely wicked. The house was empty. This was the perfect opportunity to get exactly what you wanted - what you needed from Gar. 

You dried off your body, abandoning the fresh clothes you had brought into the bathroom with you and simply walking down the hallway naked. It was a strange feeling, to say the least. You were aware of the fact that there were cameras in literally every common area of the Tower (as Gar had pointed out to Rose a few days prior) but you took for granted that nobody would have to review this footage for any reason. 

You slipped into Gar’s room, where he was still fast asleep - splayed out on his back, his jaw wide open as he puffed out air and snorted loud snores. 

He was adorable, almost innocently so. He was so peaceful when he slept. He was wearing a tee shirt with a cartoon of Link from The Legend of Zelda on it - something you only knew about because he had explained it to you in great detail. His green hair was messy in a beautiful way that suited him, his limbs sticking out from the covers at odd angles. Even though you did have some idea of the not-so-innocent things he thought about you on a regular basis, you did feel slightly guilty for disrupting his sleep with your lustful corrupting force. 

(Just not guilty enough to stop what you were about to do.) 

With the morning sun rising at your back, just slightly orange through the curtains, you pulled up the covers and crawled in on top of Gar. Instantly, you were warmed by the natural heat radiating off his body. Apparently something about his ‘condition’ - that thing that made him half-animal, also made him incredibly warm. At any given time, his skin was near-burning, almost like a fever to the touch. It made him so pleasant to sleep beside, so nice to hug and cuddle up against. It was just one of the many, many things that made him the perfect boyfriend. 

With that heat gathered under his blanket like a sauna, it almost made you want to lay down on top of him and fall asleep again. But the prominent hum between your thighs was a bit more persistent - and you knew that there would be plenty of time to fall asleep with Gar later. His clothes did slightly irritate your sensitive, bare skin - you knew that you wouldn’t have to tolerate the feeling for long. 

Gar liked being naked more than you did. So he certainly wouldn’t mind you undressing him. You knew the only reason he even bothered to sleep with clothes on was because of the general pretense of others being around. 

You pressed yourself on top of Gar, not worried about your weight disturbing him - not after the many times he had told you how much he enjoyed the feeling of being cuddled with you laying fully on top of him. You pulled the covers up over your body as the chill of the room bit at your still somewhat damp skin, and you leaned in to kiss across Gar’s neck. He moaned quietly in his sleep and began to stir. 

You smiled to yourself, loving the feeling of his muscles so relaxed underneath you. It was something that had been too rare as of late - with all the intense training sessions, and the stress of Rose being brought into your home, Jason being kidnapped, and then Conner being shot. For the past few weeks, whenever you had hugged Gar or cuddled against him in bed, he had been nothing but a tense ball of stress. 

You certainly understood that stress. He was worried for his friends and wondering what would happen next. Even though you had the ability to see the future, you couldn’t simply predict what would happen on a dime. You had helped to secure Jason’s safety, but you had been nervous that the others wouldn’t be able to get to him in time. Even though everything had worked out in the end (debatable, seeing the emotional scars Jason had come away with), the stress had taken a toll on you and Gar. 

Life as a Titan was stressful. And you knew that you and Gar were both well deserving of a break. Even though Gar marked this as a tense fracturing of the group, something else to stress about, you knew that everyone simply needed a break. 

And you knew exactly what kind of relaxation Gar deserved now that you had the time on your hands. It was something you hadn’t been able to give him since a late night in the bathroom many weeks ago, when he had to muffle his moans into a hand towel for fear of being caught. You laid a few more gentle kisses against the skin of his neck, and then began to descend downward. 

You wiggled yourself completely under the blanket, loving the warm cave that it created around you - a pleasant fog of Gar’s body heat that easily made your cheeks scorch. It raised your body temperature more already, and made your cunt clench in anticipation. 

Of course, you were going to focus on him first. You pushed his shirt up his stomach, gathering the fabric lazily around his midsection, not really making an effort to take it off. You appreciated the skin that was revealed to you, especially seeing as every single part of him was beautiful. 

You had seen him naked before.

Gar was a smart person - but he wasn’t always clever. So he had unintentionally shown off his ‘goodies’ on more than one occasion when transforming into that mighty tiger that you loved so much. He didn’t always rush to cover himself if he thought that nobody was looking. It was a strange juxtaposition - the fact that you had made him cum before, but you had only seen him completely naked when he used his powers publicly. 

During the times when you had been intimate, you had both been forced to keep most of your clothes on - your trysts entirely secretive, shoving your hands down each other’s pants or dropping to your knees and taking his cock out, keeping everything haste and ready to easily redress in case someone came upon you. 

Now, you were more than ready to make love to him. You were fed him with never having enough time - never having enough of him. You so badly wanted to have your naked body pressed against him completely; to have him naked in bed for hours where there would be absolutely no disruptions. Your pussy throbbed with excitement at the very thought. 

(Perhaps Dick coming clean of his transgressions and pissing off all the Titans had been the best thing that had ever happened to you. Not that you would ever admit that out loud.) 

You kissed along the now exposed skin of Gar’s stomach, loving the little moans he let out as you did so. Clearly, he was still floating somewhere in sleep, his sounds still dull and adorably sleepy. Perhaps on his way to waking up as your wet mouth worked a trail down to the edge of his sweatpants. 

His stomach muscles flexed under your touch as your tongue darted out and traced the light trail of hair leading down from his belly button and dipping into his pants - definitely one of your favorite things about him. You laid a few more light kisses near his hip, causing more cute little jolts, before you lovingly eyed the outline you saw forming inside his pants. Even though the fabric, his cock looked perfect. 

You knew that Gar pretty much never wore underwear. 

It was something he had given up on because it was just another article of clothing to rip off, previously impeding his transformations. And then he simply never wore them in his off-time because once he had stopped, he found them too uncomfortable to wear casually. It was a dirty little secret of yours - but you absolutely loved his commando lifestyle. 

It always made the outline of his dick so obvious through his clothes (even when it was soft). You had never admitted that you ogled him on a regular basis. Especially when he trained - his movements when sparing causing his cock to bob around and move in a devilishly delicious way. 

Maybe you were a bit of a pervert. At least, that’s what some people might call the way your mind worked. But you couldn’t really help it. It probably had a lot to do with the fact that you had found the most gorgeous man ever and he had a sex drive that seemed just as potent as yours. (Though - as previously mentioned - you had been horrendously impeded by a barrage of housemates and multiple crises interrupting your alone time. Until now.) 

You were quick to undo the tie on his sweats, and from there, all it took was a firm tug to get his pants down. The fabric became slightly trapped between the plushness of his ass and the bed - thankfully he was still limp and pliant with sleep, and you didn’t have to put too much effort into getting the clothing down. You took the edge of his pants down to just past his hips, letting his cock free. 

This gave you a perfect view of his long, thick cock - freshly awakened from its slumber and easily half-way to hardness. It was as remarkable as always - pretty pink cockhead (just like the sweet pink of his lips), pale and seven inches long - about nine inches long when he was fully hard. Tugging the fabric of his pants down a bit more, you gently pet your fingers over his round, full balls - one of your favorite parts of him, even if you felt shy admitting it aloud. 

You also loved his so beautifully Gar, bright green pubes. The first time you had seen that his green hair was so entirely all natural (well, natural since the injection of Dr. Caulder’s serum) - you had been shocked and absolutely amused. 

You loved every inch of him, and you definitely loved how this was a solid reminder of exactly who your boyfriend was, even when you were making steady eye contact with his dick. 

You placed your hands on the tops of his thighs and leaned in, taking the head of his semi-hard cock into your mouth. You couldn’t help but to be pleased with yourself, knowing that this was how he was going to wake up. His skin was delightfully smooth under your tongue and he tasted slightly of a musk that was so uniquely Gar. 

You wrapped your hand around the base of his cock, thumbing down over his balls as you bobbed your head down - with your tongue loose and your mouth wide open, you gave a few good, greedy slurps on his cock, simply enjoying the feeling of him hot and thickening up in your mouth as he became harder. You couldn’t help but to moan around him, and he let out a startled snort, and then a deep groan. 

You felt movement above you as his tired arms grappled with the covers - he was definitely awake now. 

His dick throbbed under your tongue as he swelled to full hardness - and you held back laughter as he momentarily pushed on your head through the covers. Clearly, still not quite awake enough to know what was going on - just enjoying the feeling of a warm mouth on his cock. You squeezed your grip tighter around the base and prodded your tongue into the slit, gentle and exploring, lapping up the first bit of precum that he leaked out. 

He let out a perfect shuddering gasp. 

“Wha-? Hmm? Y/N?” He mumbled out, confused in that tired, dumbly adorable way. 

A moment later, the covers were ripped off your head, ruining that lovely cave of warmth you had going, causing a rush of cool air to prick at your skin. With your lips wrapped around his cock, bobbing down over the first few inches of the mighty, thick beast while gently pumping at the rest with a casual grip, you looked up at Gar through your eyelashes. You attempted to look sweet, knowing how sinful you looked with your lips stretched around the girth of his cock. 

You suppressed a moan of your own when you taste more salty precum and his jaw dropped open with a broken moan. 

“G-good morn-ning.” He said, voice tight and raspy, partially from the haze of sleepiness and partially from the lust coating his throat. 

He propped himself up on one elbow and stared down the length of his body at you. He moved to wipe the sleep from his eyes, clearly stunned and awed to be woken up this way. His gaze was hazy with that half-awake look and his chest moved in thick beats as he began to struggle for breath, partially holding back his moans in a practiced way due to your living situation. 

You simply continued your actions, widening your lips to suck more of him down. You bobbed your head slowly as you took the first half of his impressive length like a popsicle, swirling your tongue around it and using your hand on the base. Gar’s chest became tight with trapped sounds, and his hip muscles seized tight as the urge to fuck your mouth overtook his body - but he held back with intense self-discipline. 

“You - oh - you-you’re naked.” He quickly observed, struggling to speak through the pleasure of your tongue on his cock. 

His eyes scanned over your naked body with intense hunger, and he rushed to move the blanket back more, wanting to reveal your bare ass and thighs. When he managed to do this, you quickly felt the coolness of the room against your bare pussy and realized just how wet you were. 

Gar’s eyes went wide in an almost cartoonish way as he drank you in. 

He had only been able to get glances at your naked body before - when you were coming out of the shower and flashed him in an attempt to rile him up, or during your trysts when he had been able to pull off pieces of your clothing, but not everything all at once. Now, seeing you entirely bared to him, in the warm light of the early morning, something that made your skin glow - it caused his heart to speed up inside his chest, and made his dick throb. It was something you felt under your tongue that brought you another thrill. 

You popped off his perfect cock with a wet sound, much to Gar’s disappointment, so that your mouth would be free to speak. 

“I had a shower.” You told him, giving him a little smirk. “I didn’t feel like bothering with clothes afterwards.” 

You leaned back in and licked a broad stripe across Gar’s dick as you waited for his reply, causing a sharp breath to shake his chest before he could speak. 

“But what if someone-?” He glanced toward his bedroom door, thinking of the other Titans. Thinking about the possibility of being disrupted yet again. 

Perhaps he had forgotten of the debacle that happened the day previous. You were quick to remind him. 

“No one else is home. Remember?” You said, your breath fanning out over his cock before you gave a few kitten licks to the leaking, pretty pink cockhead. 

Gar shuddered with delight, gripping the sheets with tight fists. He hadn’t really forgotten, but he had been hoping that someone else would have come home by now. That they all would have gotten over the argument and just wanted to be Titans again. But he couldn’t find himself too upset about those hopes being dashed with your hand pumping his cock and your tongue swirling around him like that. 

“Fuck.” Gar breathed out, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment, desperate to compose himself. “What about - what about Conner?” 

“He’s still asleep.” You told Gar. “That lady - his Mom, guess? She said that he would be out for at least a few days.” 

You paused for a moment, and then, you gently confirmed:

“It’s just the two of us. We’re all alone.”  

You stopped your actions, simply holding his dick in your hand and looking up at him with a small grin, giving the words a moment to sink in. Gar stared down at you, letting it truly work through his brain.

The two of you were alone. You were naked. You were naked in his bed. You were holding his hard cock and you both wanted it to happen - very badly. 

There was nothing stopping the two of you. 

“This is so awesome!” Gar’s voice was pure enthusiasm as he grinned widely at you, his hands quickly moving to rip off his shirt. 

You sat back on your heels, giving Gar room to fully shed his clothing, knowing that he was likely just as excited to be fully naked and uninterrupted as you were. He was slightly clumsy in kicking off his pants - something that made you giggle as he got caught up in the fabric. After a moment of struggle, you reached out and helped him untangle the pant legs from around his ankles and toss the unwanted item to the floor. You were now both fully free and absolutely ready for each other. 

“C’mere,” You let out a joyous laugh, quick to pounce on Gar. 

The second that you were close enough, you got your mouth on his, engaging in hot, open-mouthed kisses while he wrapped his arms around you. He was quick to roll you onto your back, leaving you lying slightly awkwardly, diagonally on the bed with your ankles tangled in the sheets. Not that you cared about any of that for a moment - not with his whole body shadowing over yours, bringing more of that amazing warmth to cover you. 

Then, for the first time, you felt that ultimately satisfying press of pure skin on skin. The feeling made you both moan loudly into the other’s mouth as he leaned all of his weight onto you and pressed your bodies almost completely together, from knees to chests. You felt every single inch of him: his warm, muscled thighs pressing against your own, his hard cock up against your pelvis, creating a deep hunger that caused your pussy to throb hard between your legs, his smooth stomach and chiseled chest pressing against you - the beating of his heart racing in tandem with your own. It was topped off by the breath-taking sight of his big, brown eyes staring into yours as he looked down at you with utter adoration. 

It was so utterly perfect.

He leaned in for another long, hot kiss, and you moaned heavily into his mouth.  After a moment, he pulled away from the kiss with a nip on your bottom lip - something that made you whimper from the back of your throat. A hard, hot pain throbbed between your thighs as your pussy cried out for him, desperately needing him inside of you. 

You had waited far too long for this. His fingers had always felt good, but you knew that his cock would feel so much better. 

“So fucking perfect.” Gar told you, his voice taking on a deep, lustful rumble that had you clenching around nothing, yearning for the fullness of his cock inside of you. “You are a goddess, I swear.” 

As he said this, his eyes raked over your naked body with an intense heat that had you squirming. 

His voice caused even more heat across your skin - an intense tingling raking over you like goosebumps. You felt his words with the genuine intense passion that he intended them with, all the affection that boiled inside of him breaching out and spilling over you. It was something that made you feel more beautiful than any expensive dress or makeup ever could have. 

“You’re perfect too, Gar.” You echoed back, feeling lame and uncreative with the compliment, but absolutely believing it to be true. Every inch of him was something to love. Inside and out. 

Gar drowned any further words - perhaps afraid he would get too emotional - by shoving his tongue past your lips. He ran his hands up and down the sides of your body while yours settled on his gorgeous, plump ass. Your legs naturally fell open for him, your knees coming up to sit on either side of his thighs. 

You let out a moan as his tongue mingled with yours, his hips grinding into you, moving his cock against your mound and partially bumping against your swollen clit. It was a beautiful sharp shock that made you gasp and pull him closer into you. You wrapped your ankles around the backs of his knees, setting yourself in the perfect position to take his cock. 

You were dripping and needy, and you weren’t prepared to wait much longer. 

“Gar, please,” You moaned, pulling away from the kiss to puff the words out against his now wet lips. 

You angled your hips up in a way that directly dragged the wet folds of your pussy along his hardness, beginning to hump yourself against him, showing him the true depth of your desperation. This caused him to groan and buck into you. He echoed the movements right back, humping his cock along your pussy, rubbing across your clit again and sending sharp jolts through your whole body. 

This made you even needier. 

“Gar!” You gasped out in response. “Please!” 

Your voice was a lilting whine that you barely even recognized. Of course, only he could do that to you. 

“Yeah, yeah.” He mumbled back. 

His brow furrowed as he stared down between your bodies, clearly captivated by the sight of your pussy drooling wetness all over his cock. He was now very purposefully jutting his hips to slick that glossy wetness across his dick, to feel the essence of you covering him for the first time. 

“You want me to just-? You-? Are you ready?” He choked on his own words, his mind hazy with lust. 

“Yes.” You were becoming absolutely short on patience, your tone demanding. “Just get inside me. Please.” 

Gar simply grunted in affirmation, reaching down to use a hand on his dick to guide himself inside of you. You hitched a leg up over his hip, opening yourself up more to give him better access. It was only a single moment of staring at his concentrated face - something that was entirely arousing in the situation - before you felt it. 

The thick head of his cock breaching your slicked, needy hole. Your body was so prepared to take him, having taken his fingers (and your own thinking about this very moment) so many times before - you practically sucked him in. He let out a breathy, desperate sound as he let go of his cock and gently rolled his hips into yours, sinking home for the first time. 

It was something that made you dizzy. You were so fucking full. 

You knew how large his cock was - you had seen it, felt it in your hand - but having him fully inside of you for the first time - it knocked the air out of your lungs in the best possible way. The press of his pelvis fully against you, the slight coarseness of his pubic hairs up against your most sensitive skin, his heavy balls brushing your ass - all of it sent jolts across your skin and had your mind so beautifully blank. 

All you could do was grip onto him tightly, and let out a breathy moan of his name. 

“Gar.” 

“Y/N.” He moaned back, his voice absolutely thick with pleasure, lost in a deep haze as the feeling of your pussy clenching him for the first time. You were so perfect - so tight and hot around him, leaking wetness around the base of his dick. The feeling easily sent hot waves rolling over his body. “Fuck, so perfect.” 

He was absolutely smothered - the feeling of you gripping his cock like a vice driving him insane in the best way. His thighs quivered and he struggled for breath as he resisted the urge to pound into you - resisted the urge to selfishly chase his own pleasure inside the irresistible, velvety feeling of you. 

He didn’t want to hurt you. 

The last thing he ever wanted was to hurt you. 

There were the tiniest echoes of logic still chanting in his brain, screaming at him that he absolutely couldn’t risk hurting you. That he had to use self control. 

Even as he looked down at your gorgeous naked body, your tits heaving with your breaths, the slight gleam of sweat across your skin, your kiss-bitten lips, the gloss of lust that had come over your eyes. You were a sexy goddess; you were so perfect, and you made his cock ache, and he wanted to pound into you until you were screaming, and filled with his cum and dripping white around his cock. 

But he could never hurt you. 

“Move, please.” You begged. “Need you, Gar. Please make me cum.” 

With that perfect plea, how could he resist you? 

Any semblance of Gar’s scared self control flew out the window. 

And you became all too thankful for that. 

In seconds, it went from a feeling of perfect fullness to a blur of flesh, his hips pulling back and slamming into yours. His animalistic instincts kicked in, and absolutely took over. That thing in the back of his head chanting at him, telling him to fuck his cock into the perfect hot body beneath him without stopping. 

Don’t ever stop. 

That thing told him that he needed your pussy to live now - and he couldn’t find a lie anywhere in that feeling. 

He let out a growl that shook your chest - a sound that turned you on far more than you expected it to - causing you to let out a whimper in response. He gripped at your inner thigh, holding you open as he dug his knees into the mattress and pounded into you with impressive might. The thickness of his mighty cock splitting you opened caused sharp pleasure-pain shocks from your pussy that quickly stole your breath. You didn’t think that you would enjoy the slightly venomous bite of the pain so much, but mixing with the pleasure, it made you even more beautifully delirious. 

You knew that you would likely have difficulty walking after this, but you really couldn’t bring yourself to care. 

The pure force of Gar’s hips easily shook the whole bed. 

You were mildly aware of the headboard hitting the wall behind you - a sound that seemed so distant in your sex-hazy mind. It was easily drowned out by the wet, sloppy sounds of your pussy drowning his cock; the wicked slaps of flesh to flesh, and the whiny whimpers you let out. Followed by his near feral groans and deep growls that were absolutely programming a response into you that would likely get you untimely turned on the next time he transformed into the tiger. 

(But that was something you would have to mentally unpack later.) 

It was all so perfect. 

The hot, shocking tingles flowing from your pussy in waves, the perfect pain of his pelvis bruising you every time he slammed into you, splitting you open with his cock. But you needed one more thing. You reached a hand down, needing some form of touch on your throbbing clit. 

When your hand found its destination, Gar was quick to smack it away - something that surprised you. He had never been so rough with you during a sexual encounter before. You absolutely didn’t hate it, though. This new side of Gar sent dizzying waves through you. You fucking loved it. 

“No.” He said, his voice edging on a growl. 

He went so far as to grab your wrist and pin your hand down to the bed - and you let out another loud moan at the feeling. 

Before you could question him, he went on to answer the silent query - why didn’t he want you touching yourself? 

“Mine.” He grunted, his voice almost unrecognizable, coated hazy with lust. 

He moved his touch away from pinning your wrist down, and in a second, he had a thick thumb on your needy, swollen clit in place of your own touch. 

He was possessive - claiming your pussy entirely as his own. The action sent your spine into a sharp curve against the bed as you felt even more waves of white-hot pleasure shooting through you from the touch. He made quick, demanding circles against your clit in time with his hard thrusts, leaning down to dig his teeth into your neck as you desperately gripped at his upper arms for something to hold onto. 

“Mine.” He grunted again, the word solid and demanding against your neck. 

“Mine.” The second time, it became lost, a slur against his teeth as he bit down into your skin again. 

“Gar!” You gasped out. 

You already felt your orgasm coming to fruition, tight and hot in your belly. His touch was so perfect against you - he was so perfect. 

“All yours.” You murmured back, your throat tight and almost too weak to form words. You hoped he even heard and understood what you were saying. “Yours.” 

He sunk his teeth harder into your neck, a sharpness that stung in a delightful way, and then pulled back to lav his tongue over the blooming bite mark. 

“Mine.” He growled into your neck once more - a powerful, possessive statement that made you quiver. 

He pressed his thumb harder into your clit as he felt your pussy fluttering around his cock, as he felt your thighs jumping from pleasure, heard your needy whines. He knew you were tumbling over the edge. He gave a few good, hard slams of his hips - almost as if he was attempting to break your pelvic bone - but it was a roughness that had you gasping with delight, chugging air past your moans. It was a wonderful, harsh fullness that sent a perfect ache through your pussy. Gar played your body as well as played his favorite video games. 

He had you cumming around his cock with a strangled sound, digging your nails into his biceps so hard that you likely drew blood. 

“Fuck, Gar! Oh, oh!” 

It was a dizzying orgasm. Blood pumped through your ears, your whole body tingled - your pussy clenched down on his cock hard, as if determined to keep him inside of you. You felt like you were floating - the only feeling you had left being the hard throbbing where you were connected to him and the dryness of your mouth. Your tongue turned to sandpaper from being exposed to the open air by your slack-jawed moaning.  

You were beyond words. You couldn’t even get out the single syllable of his name, left gargling your own spit and gasping for breath as he fucked you through it and groaned into your neck at the wonderfully wet feeling of you cumming around him. 

He slowed his hips after a moment, still hard and throbbing inside of you, and moved his head up to lay gentle kisses across your hot cheeks and jaw as he finally moved his touch away from your almost numb clit.

“So perfect,” He murmured into your skin, clearly delirious with pleasure himself, his eyes closed as he leaned into your skin. “So beautiful. So good, Y/N. So good. I love you so much, baby. So much.” 

“I love you.” You breathed back. 

You were barely capable of speech, but you knew that you had to return it. Especially after something that spectacular. As you came down from your orgasm, you found yourself still hungry for him at the feeling of his thickness perfectly motionless and full inside of you. 

“Wanna make you cum,” You told him, your voice raspy and rough. 

He laid a gentle kiss on your mouth before he took a breath, gathering his words to make a request. He pressed his forehead gently into yours as he spoke. 

“Can you -?” He paused, attempting to think of the right words or gathering his breath to say it. “Can you turn around?” 

You were slightly confused by this. Fuck-drunk from your orgasm, feeling numb and positively unsure how to move - you had no clue what he meant. 

Gar saw this on your face and drew more words from his mind. 

“I wanna - I wanna see your pretty ass.” He spoke out, hot breath fanning across your cheeks. “Wanna grab it. Wanna fuck you from behind.” 

Those words sent a hazy wave of pleasure through you, and caused you to unconsciously squeeze around his cock - which drew a whiny groan from him. 

“Yeah.” You told him. “Yeah, okay.” 

Gar hesitantly pulled out of you, drawing a small gasp of disappointment at the empty feeling. This left you absolutely gaping from the absence of his large cock. But it was only for a moment as you situated yourself and got comfortable with a pillow under your chest and one under your hips at Gar’s insistence. 

Though that pillow did little to support you, seeing as a moment later, he was using his animal strength to man-handle your hips into the air. He positioned you with your knees bent and your ass high up, your chest and face pressed into his orange tiger striped pillow case. 

He didn’t hesitate this time before plunging his cock back inside of you - something that had you absolutely alight with pleasure, showing the animal inside of him shining through. Especially as he let out another sharp growl and didn’t waste any time before he began drilling himself into your tight, wet warmth. 

“Fuckin’ love you.” Gar grunted out, his words quiet compared to the loud slapping of his hips against your ass as he fucked his cock deep inside your wanting pussy. “Love how you feel on my cock.”

His filthy words had you clenching around him, moaning out so whiny that you barely recognized your own voice. You were so pliant to Gar, so needy for him. But you loved it, because you loved him. You couldn’t help but to love everything about him. You felt like you belonged with his cock inside of you. 

“Love you too.” You gasped back, barely able to summon words at all with the powerful fury of his hips fucking into you. 

Gar groaned out, his head tilting up to the ceiling in a moan as he grabbed a handful of your ass. Just as he had promised, he took a possessive hold on the flesh, tight enough that it would likely leave marks behind. He pistoned his hips into you with a mighty fury, fluctuating between staring at the space where his cock disappeared into your dripping, wanting pussy, soaking his cock with your wetness, and closing his eyes for fear of cumming too soon at the delicious sight. 

You gripped the pillow underneath you, desperate to hold onto something. Your face was half-shoved into the fabric with some drool leaking from your open mouth onto the pillow case as you struggled for breath and involuntarily let out an increasingly loud string of moans and whorish cries for Gar. His cock was so perfect inside of you - a perfect, hot length filling you up. 

Your pussy was dancing somewhere between pain and pleasure, well used by him and tingling with shocks every time he fucked back into you with the sharp movements of his hips. So you almost thought you were mistaken when you felt that thing. That extra bit of thickness prodding to fight its way inside of you. 

“Gonna cum.” He grunted, his voice garbled down to a broken mess of consonances by now. At this point, one word syllables was all he was working with. 

He was already so big, it seemed impossible that there was more of him. But you definitely felt it. That extra bit of something at the base, that extra girth of his already impossibly long cock that he was shoving inside of you with each pass. More and more of him with each time he fucked his hips forward. 

It felt so fucking impossible. 

“Gar!” 

Your voice was a whiny, high-pitched howl that you couldn’t even recognize, a plea for him to slow down, or give it to you - you weren’t entirely sure. Your pussy ached with a hot fire that you had never felt before and you wanted more. You really couldn’t imagine him stopping at this point. If this was going to break you - then so be it. 

“Take it.” 

He growled, shoving his hips so close to yours, spreading your pussy open with the impossible thickness of his cock, and that even thicker thing blooming at the base. It felt like it was going to split you in half, but it felt too fucking good to stop. 

“Take it, fucking take it-” 

His words dissolved off into a shuddering moan as he gripped your ass even tighter, pulling you back into his pelvis, shoving his cock impossibly deep inside of you as your pussy somehow accepted his gigantic size. 

His words had you faint and hazy, the sound of his voice like that making you more drunk than any booze ever could have. You knew that those words - his voice in that ravenous tone, it would echo inside of your mind forever. It would be something that you thought about every single time that you touched yourself from now on. 

He leaned down to drape his body over yours - creating a wonderful slick of sweat and damp skin on skin that warmed you in the coolness of the room as he pressed right up against you. 

He mouthed at the back of your neck and across your shoulders, leaving more sharp lines with his teeth, determined to mark you. Your pussy was almost numb with the pleasure, absolutely throbbing around him, but the feeling of him swelling even more inside of you was unmistakable. Somehow, his already large and impressive cock was growing larger. 

In your babbling haze of pleasure, you couldn’t find your voice to relay this strange feeling to Gar. So you were only able to lay there and clutch at the pillow as he dug his fingers into your hips - hard and possessive, as he shoved his cock even deeper inside of you and began spilling his cum inside of you in hot, thick waves. 

“Y/N, fuck - love you,” 

Somehow, his cock continued to expand inside of you. It was an entirely strange feeling, but not an unpleasant one. It was something your body began to take pleasure in. Something that had you letting out a strangled moan as he bit at the back of your neck and groaned into your skin, gently humping his hips into you as he rode out his orgasm. 

He was so swollen and thick inside of you that it felt as though your pussy might burst, the outer ring of your muscles almost stinging with pain, stretched to the limit where the base of his cock was lodged inside of you. He was slick with your wetness, but not a single drop of his cum had leaked out from where you were locked together - you could definitely feel that. 

Gar moved to pull back, seemingly unaware of the strangeness going on down below. When he did so, a sharp pain rocked you as he pulled at your most sensitive, stretched-out muscles. 

You loudly winced in pain and he immediately stopped his movements. 

“What’s wrong?” He asked, breath puffing out over your neck, his voice returning to its usual brightness as he was shaken from his pleasure haze by his worry for you. 

“Just stay still.” You instructed. 

Your legs were shaky, your muscles weak from the intensity of the sex. You were still high up on your knees where Gar had put you, tiredly trying to support your own body weight. Struggling with that task as your thighs quivered, so fucked out from his excellent job fucking you. You unconsciously squeezed yourself around him and he let out a groan - clearly still sensitive. 

He tried again to pull himself out, not yet understanding the situation, and you let out a sharp hiss of pain as the thickness of his cock tried to breach through you without success. He was stuck inside you. 

The realization flashed through your mind. Oddly enough, you knew exactly what was happening. One too many late nights plagued by nightmares (that had turned out to be glimpses of the future) had caused you to end up reading some… interesting fiction to fill your late night hours. So you knew what this was. At least, a fictional approximation of it. That’s what you get for dating a guy with animal DNA in his system, you guessed. 

“Gar.” You said, a warning in your voice. “Just. Stay. Still.” You gritted your teeth, praying he would listen this time. 

“What? What’s wrong?” He said, his voice quickly escalating with panic and worry. 

He raised his head up from your neck, moving to look down toward the space where you were joined, looking to inspect the problem. This was a movement that jostled things, and caused another a small jolt of pain. 

“Gar!” You gasped, voice warning him to stop once again. “Just - just lower us down so I can lay on the pillows, okay? Be gentle. Please.” 

“Why? I can just pull out, right? Did I hurt you? I didn’t mean to, I swear, Y/N-” Gar began a rambling panic, and you knew the news you had to tell him wouldn’t calm him down at all. 

“You’re stuck inside me.” You told him. 

“Stuck?!” Gar shrieked with shock, his voice sharp right next to your ear in a way that made you flinch. “Wh-what do you mean? Did I do it wrong? Fuck - I must be the only guy who messes up having sex, I am such a fa-!” 

“It’s not your fault, Gar.” You said, quickly cutting him off. Your legs shook more, and you yearned to rest against the bed. “Just lower me down to the bed, please.” 

He began to do so, easing your joint bodies down toward the bed, letting your legs untangle and stretch out - the soreness from how roughly he had fucked you was already setting in. 

“What the hell is happening, then? How did I get stuck? I’ve literally never heard of this happening to anyone ever.” Gar said, clearly exasperated. 

He settled in, laying against you. As he put his weight against your back, his cock sank somehow even deeper inside of you. This sent latent shocks through your overly sensitive, worn-out pussy, causing you to let out a quiet whimper. 

“Sorry.” Gar mumbled as he heard the quiet sound. 

You really didn’t need him to apologize. It had been the best sex of your life. 

“Just - just pass me my phone.” You said. 

The only way you could think to properly explain it to him would be to look up some diagrams and perhaps show him your AO3 history. It was strange to see, and feel some of those wild fictional concepts coming to life right between your legs, but hey - at least you weren’t as unknowing and freaked out as him. 

Gar glanced at both night stands flanking the bed and then sighed. 

“I don’t see it.” He told you. 

Right. You had left it in the kitchen before you went to shower. 

“Then… pass me your phone.” You said. 

He would end up with some very weird shit in his search history, but this was quite literally, his problem. Technically - it was both of your problem, considering it was currently between your legs. And he was your boyfriend, and you definitely weren’t going to break up with him over this. Especially with your reading history, you found it to be more of a turn-on than you were willing to admit. 

Gar reached out to the night table on the other end of the bed, something that caused more jostling and another sharp gasp of pain from you. He mumbled a chorus of ‘sorry, sorry, sorry’ as he grabbed the phone and then returned. He blanketed his body over yours once more, relaxing into his position on top of you as he passed the phone to you. 

It took you about an hour to fully explain the concept to Gar. There were a few diagrams available - ones that had been drawn by writers in the genre. But most of the explaining was done by your hand movements, showing him how it was possible to get ‘stuck’ because he had moved smoothly and pleasurably and first, and then essentially - based on biological instincts, and no purposeful intent of his own: he had knotted you. 

“So you know this from a story?” Gar asked, trying to confirm the source of the information. 

“A few stories.” You told him. 

You didn’t want to divulge just how many stories of the genre you had read and fantasized about before. You were glad that your face was half-buried in the pillow, and Gar couldn’t see the expression of partial guilt on your face as you tried in vain to hide your kinkier side from him. 

“So how do you know it’s true?” He asked. 

“Because you’re literally stuck inside me right now.” You said, voice dancing with a laugh. “And in fiction, it’s usually something that happens with characters who are half-human, half-animal. I think we know which part of you is doing this.” 

Gar sighed, leaning down to rest his head between your shoulders. Clearly he was frustrated at the lack of predictability. He was frustrated that this was just another aspect of his life that couldn’t be normal. 

“Fiction is the only good reference we have to go off.” You said. “Rachel can bring people back from the dead, Kory can literally shoot fire out of her hands, and you can turn into a giant tiger. I think we passed reality a long time ago.” 

“So… when does it stop?” Gar asked. “As much as I enjoy being this close to you, I don’t wanna hurt you.” He rubbed his hand lovingly along your bare side, a genuineness in his voice that made you absolutely thick with love. 

“In the stories I’ve read…” You were also hesitant to share this answer. “Anywhere from a few minutes to… several hours.” 

“Hours?!” Gar let out another indignant shriek, and your muscles tensed. “We’re gonna be stuck like this for hours? Wh-what if it doesn’t go down at all? What if we have to call 9-1-1 and get my dick surgically removed?” 

“It’s gonna be fine, Gar.” You told him, trying to be the soothing calm to his unnecessary panic. “It’s your body’s natural instinct. Your body knows what to do. Just relax. It’ll probably help.” 

“My body’s natural instinct?” Gar echoed back the words. “So what… the animal inside me wants to get you pregnant?” 

Your face burned at the words, and you wondered if Gar felt your pussy flutter around him. 

That did appear to be the truth. A large part of you had wondered why this had never happened to him before. His cock had reacted differently when it had just been your mouth or your hand, or when you had made him cum in his pants dry humping against each other. It was like some animal instinct inside him took over when his body felt your pussy around him - like that thing inside of him really was determined to get you pregnant. 

It was a thought that made your stomach roll with heat. The part of you that loved being Gar’s, the part of you that loved him and everything about him so dearly. Of course you wanted a family with him. Of course you wondered what your little green haired babies would look like. 

“That seems to be the case.” You said, slightly breathless in your reply. 

Gar wrapped his arms around you, tucking his strong grip between your stomach and the mattress to hold you tightly. 

“Would you wanna keep it?” He asked, voice quiet. It was something he did when he was afraid to know the answer. “If you did… end up pregnant?” 

He was leaving the choice entirely in your hands. As though he had no say in the two of you starting a family. But he was good like that - he knew that it was your body you would be sacrificing for those months, he knew it would be asking a lot from you. 

“I wouldn’t want it any other way.” You told him. “I’d wanna have your baby.” 

Gar moaned quietly at this realization. 

… 

You chatted about other things for a while - what you were gonna make for dinner, hopes of the other Titans to make-up and come home, wondering when Conner was going to wake up, wondering what Krypto would eat because you didn’t have any dog food in the house (wondering if you should go out and buy some dog food). Eventually, you dozed into sleep and Gar fell asleep on top of you. 

… 

Gar woke up before you did. 

His cock had slipped out of you while he had slept, and he felt an insane sense of relief to look down and see his usual soft member hanging out between his thighs, no longer stuck inside of you. 

Then - he became very distracted by something else. 

The sight of your pussy - fucked raw, slightly gaping, with white cum flowing out of you. So much cum. 

Gar bit his lip, suppressing a groan - he wanted to be quiet. It would be rude to wake you. 

His eyes flickered over to your sleeping face, wanting to check - and yes, you were in the middle of a deep, peaceful sleep. You had been worn out from the intense, rough fucking. You deserved to get all the sleep that your body needed now. 

Gar’s eyes went back to your pussy, and entirely against his will, his cock stirred to life between his thighs. He was still covered in the mixture of your wetness and his own cum, and god - the smell. He knew that his sense of smell was infinitely more sensitive due to that animal part of him, and fuck - this had to be his new favourite smell. 

The tang of your natural wetness mixed with his own cum. The undeniable scent of him just pouring out of you. The fact that he could smell how well he had claimed you. 

Gar itched to touch you more, and gripped a fist tightly, resisting the urge. 

It would be rude to wake you. 

But maybe - he didn’t have to. 

While sitting back on his heels, he inched his touch forward, and oh-so-gently eased two fingers into your pussy. He just needed to feel you - he needed to feel what he had done. Your pussy easily gave way to his touch, and more of his cum came gushing out around his fingers - he was met with another pungent burst of that perfect smell, and his cock ached between his thighs. 

He couldn’t help himself. 

He gently scooped through the mess, careful not to be too rough with your sensitive, fucked-out pussy as he gathered the mixture of your cum and his on his fingers - and then he brought this hand toward his hard cock, spreading the mess across himself. He choked down a loud moan, wanting to stay quiet for you. 

He wrapped a tight fist around himself, and began jerking off earnestly - he needed to cum. He needed to capture this moment in his mind forever. 

His eyes couldn’t race fast enough to take all of you in - your beautiful, peaceful sleeping face, the soft muscles of your back, the way your breasts were pressed against his pillows, showing off the gentlest peak of the side, round fat. The thickness of your spread thighs, slightly marked by his dull nails scratching you earlier, the perfect plumpness of your ass, and your perfect pussy leaking his cum - the ultimate mark of his claim on you. 

All of it had Gar fucking his own hips into his fist fast, biting down on his lip hard to conceal growls deep within his chest. 

Within a minute, he was overwhelmed - by your beauty, by the perfect smell, but the idea that he had you, perfect you, and he would get to have you forever - and all too soon, he was cumming again. Not nearly as much this time - a meager few stripes that leaked across his fist and sprayed out across your thighs and his own. 

Perfect. 

He felt much better now. 

He knew that it would be polite to clean you up, so that you wouldn’t have to wake up to the mess. The first thing he spotted was his own shirt that he had shed off in a haste earlier, and he wiped you down with that (and let out a growl when even more cum came spilling out of you the more he wiped) - before he went to the bathroom in order to get a warm cloth. 

Once you were as cleaned up as he could get you (he was partially impressed and partially embarrassed by just how much cum he had fucked into you) - he found a pair of your panties and slipped them onto you, leaving a small kiss on your ass through the fabric before he covered you up with a blanket. He could have spent all day in bed with you, but you had requested pasta for dinner. And he was nothing if not a servant of your every need. 

… 

You had dreams of a green haired little boy with your skin tone, and you wondered if it was purely fantasy, or your powers trying to tell you something. 

… 

You woke up feeling unpleasantly empty. 

You knew in a moment that Gar’s knot had gone down and he had successfully pulled out of you. It left your pussy sore, but not unpleasantly so. He had also managed to dress you while you were sleeping. Well, he had put a pair of panties on you. 

Your body must have really been exhausted from the sex for you to sleep so deeply, but it was something you were grateful for, considering how many nights you had laid awake sleepless due to your nightmare-like visions and the worry they caused you. 

With your upper half bare, you still felt a slight chill - you got up and grabbed an oversized, cotton band tee shirt that Gar often liked to steal from you and shoved it on. As you moved, you noticed that the modest cotton underwear he had put on you were slightly damp against your pussy. You didn’t think much about it. 

You continued on, shoving your feet into a pair of slippers you had left in Gar’s room to shield you against the coldness of the floors. You heard music coming from the kitchen and followed the sound, smiling widely when you saw Gar stirring a pot and swaying his hips, dancing to a Cardi B song. He was dressed in an oversized green hoodie that made him look delightfully cozy and a pair of sweatpants. The moment he saw you, he put down the spoon he was using and turned to pause the music. 

“You’re awake.” He gave you a small, lop-sided grin. “I tried to clean you up as best I could, but there was a lot… a lot of… cum.” 

His hesitance to say the words was entirely adorable - especially considering how filthy his mouth had been just hours before. His persona outside of sexual encounters shifted entirely, and it was one of those things you loved so much about him.

That would explain why your panties were damp. 

He cleared his throat, quickly shifting the tone of the conversation when you didn’t respond. 

“Look, I’m sorry about earlier, I kn-” He began to apologize, and you were quick to cut him off. 

“Don’t be sorry.” You said. 

Gar’s brows curled with confusion and you stepped closer to him, leaning your body against him, reaching up to smooth your hands over his arms and across his shoulders. You pressed your forehead into his and his hands took a natural place on your waist. His expression softened as he realized that you weren’t mad at him or upset with him in any way. 

“Don’t even think about apologizing, Gar.” You told him firmly. “You don’t have to apologize for what happened earlier, because I loved it. It was fucking amazing. That was the most amazing sex ever.” 

Of course, you had to start by assuring him of this fact. His skills were well pronounced and he had to know that he had made you feel a multitude of pleasure that you had never felt before. Something that you knew you wouldn’t be able to get with anyone else but him. 

“The ending… I know it was… weird. Neither of us really saw it coming. Which is strange, considering my powers.” You said, chuckling lightly as the joke flowed naturally from your lips. 

Gar let out a laugh at this. 

“But I love that side of you.” You declared, absolutely certain. “I love the animal part of you as much as I love that sweet, soft side of you.” 

You leaned in and gave him a gentle kiss, skimming your teeth along his bottom lip in a tentative bite as you pulled away, showing him a little roughness of your own. 

“I’ve never been afraid of the tiger, you know.” You added on, your thoughts on the matter absolutely final. 

Hearing you say that made Gar’s heart flutter. It was something you had told him before - after he had taken down your attackers at the asylum. But back then, he had been convinced that you were just trying to placate him. He had thought you were just trying to soothe his anxieties about hurting someone for the first time. Now he heard it for the genuine sentiment that it was: you saw his animal side, and rather than being afraid of it, you embraced it. 

“I love you so much.” He said, a heartfelt whisper that warmed you from the inside out. 

“I love you so, so very much.” You told him, and he kissed you again. 

“I made dinner.” He announced. “The pasta you wanted.” 

It was something you had discussed earlier, when you had still been locked together in that slightly uncomfortable position, a lovely food smell now filling your nose. He was a talented cook. Just another thing about him to love. 

Krypto wandered in, the padding of little doggy feet catching your attention. When you leaned down and began petting him, cooing at the dog with a sweet little baby-talk voice - Gar couldn’t help but imagine the two of you in your own family home, with your own pets, making dinner for your kids some day. Maybe it was a pipe dream to think a couple of super-powered freaks like the two of you could have the white picket fence dream, but Gar wanted it so badly, because he wanted it with you. 

“I also made cookies, but they turned out weirdly… flat.” Gar said, moving to the counter, and picking up a large plate that was covered in plastic wrap. 

He presented them to you, and you couldn’t help but giggle as you saw something that you easily recognized as an amateur baking mistake. He had either set the oven to too low of a temperature or neglected to refrigerate the cookie dough before baking them, causing the butter to melt before it actually started cooking. 

“I’m sure they’ll still taste good.” You assured him. And to make sure of this, he handed you one to sample. You tasted it - the mixture of sugar and butter and chocolate chips could never go wrong. “Delicious. Everything you do always turns out right.” 

It was a clear hint at what had happened earlier, and Gar grinned at you. 

“Everything I do for you always turns out right.” He corrected. “And I’m thankful for that.”

...

A/N: Please keep in mind - this fic is a oneshot, and there will not be a continuation or a 'part 2', so please do not ask for one. If you are going to comment, please comment about the body of work that has been written. Reblogs and comments are appreciated, and if you want to check out more of my Gar Logan fanfics, definitely check out my DC Titans masterlist!

[bitterie-sweetie]

This is how we fall

Pairing: Mingyu x reader Genre: fluff, light angst, fake dating au WC: 18.5k Warnings: swearing, mentions of blood, alcohol A/N: happy belated mingyu day!! this is an updated ver of my fave fic i posted for another fandom, but i think it fits mingyu the most <3

You should know better than to make a deal with a stranger, but the need for a date to Minghao’s party has you desperate. It can’t be too bad though; all you have to do is show Mingyu what you saw in your reading, and he would be your date for one night. Simple enough, right?

The fates were playing with you.

That much you can be sure of—there is absolutely no way you should be seeing yourself in one of your clients' readings, in the same way that you aren't able to see what lies in your own future. And yet, here you are, getting a glimpse at the same hairstyle, the same smooth skin and face shape that you see in the mirror every day. It isn't entirely clear when your client doesn't look at his lover's face directly, but surely those features are enough to conclude that it's you, right?

"I see myself in your future."

"Is that a terrible pickup line or are you serious?"

You vaguely notice that Mingyu is laughing. It makes you realize that neither option was a good one really; a pickup line would imply you're interested in him, while seeing yourself in his future certainly implies a lot more than that. Perhaps you silently pray to the fates that those words didn't make their way to your boss in the other room.

But as the scene progresses, there are some other details that you notice. The kitchen in the background doesn't look familiar at all, nor do you recognize the light fragrance of oranges surrounding you��not a bad scent, though it isn't one you have lying around at home. What his lover is wearing is different from anything you own too, which could only indicate that you were wrong: they have to be someone else.

"Nah," you shrug, quickly trying to brush off your mistake, "I was just kidding."

That earns you a bemused smile as Mingyu raises an eyebrow, entirely unconvinced. "You sure about that?"

With a nod, you quickly pull your hands back to break out of the visions and internally curse yourself for being stupid enough to think that the lover in the visions was you. Just how delusional are you now? Sure, you've always been a head in the clouds type of person, falling in love with the possibility that everywhere you go, the next person you meet might just be the love of your life. Eye contact with the cute dog walker at the park turns into getting lost in their eyes while walking under the stars, and a brush of hands with the hot barista at the local coffee shop turns into holding hands while reciting wedding vows.

And admittedly, Mingyu is good-looking. But this isn't the same—he's a client, and you're working. It was silly to have thought of the possibility of being in his future in the first place, but even more ridiculous to have said it out loud.

You immediately shake off the thoughts when you catch him staring.

"So?" He leans forward, looking at you like he has some big secret to share. "What did you see?"

"Um, your love life will be just fine."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." You avoid his gaze, choosing to stare at the small piece of lint on your sleeve instead. "Things will run smoothly with your partner. I could sense your love for them and how committed to them you are. And similarly, how in love with you they are." 

This is the part you've always hated the most about the job. Jeonghan may have thought that hiring a "real psychic" was a good idea, but you think otherwise—surely anyone who knows anything about palm reading would immediately be able to tell that you're a fake. A fraud. You're not here to look over the love lines and life lines on your clients' palms when the visions come to you as naturally as breathing: they let you see a few scenes from the client's future, usually scenes involving a lover from what you've gathered over the years. And while it's no surprise that Jeonghan put you on love readings because of this ability, it's not like you can tell clients about the exact scenes you see.

Hence why you resort to vague summaries of the readings that make you feel like an imposter.

"Really?" Mingyu cocks his head, still watching you carefully. "Anything else?"

There were three scenes that you witnessed: holding hands across the table at what looked like a dimly lit restaurant, with tiny scars on his lover's hands. "There might be some dark times in your life or your partner's, but the two of you will be able to support each other." A kiss in what seemed like an open-air market, with the sweet taste of apples on your lips and the warmth of sunshine against your skin. "They'll bring you warmth." Then there was the final scene where you thought you'd seen yourself—slow dancing in the kitchen at midnight with faint music playing in the background and Mingyu's soft whispers reaching his lover's ears. "And your partner will make you believe in love again."

A fairly normal set of scenes compared to some of the things you've seen from other people, although it's a bit strange that they happen to be scenes where he's not looking directly at his lover.

"Hmm, okay." Mingyu nods slowly and then purses his lips, seemingly deep in thought. Maybe it's the dimness in the room, but it's like you can see the gradual change in his demeanour as his smile falters. "That sounds great and all, but I'm single as hell right now."

It takes all your efforts to not let your shock show. "Well, it can be your future partner."

"Sure, I guess." He shrugs, but the gloomy expression never leaves his face.

You open your mouth to give a retort, to defend yourself or to convince him somehow, but nothing comes out. Plenty of skeptical people have sat in that very seat before, but you've never dealt with someone who reacted like this. It almost seems like a prank or a test that Jeonghan is giving you to gauge how well you can react in these types of situations.

"Things didn't really end well with my ex, so I don't know if I'd want to go through all of that again." He grimaces. "But I'm kind of curious as to know how you came up with that."

"Well, what did you expect?"

"I'm not sure. Maybe something more realistic? Like telling me why my past relationship failed and if I'm destined to have bad luck with them."

Destined to have bad luck with them? Now that's a first. Many clients have argued with you before that any bad readings would never come true, but you're surprised to hear that it's the other way around with Mingyu. Just what has he gone through to make him doubt a good reading? You almost want to convince him, to have this reading be what helps him out of this turmoil that he's going through.

"I can show you, if you want." The words are out of your mouth before you can process them, and it isn't until you see the stupefied expression on his face that you realize just what you said.

"What?"

"I can show you what I saw in the reading," you repeat, figuring it's too late now to back out. Show him? Are you out of your mind? At least the worst that can happen is it'd make you look stupid; there is no way he'd accept—

"Oh. Um, yeah." Mingyu's shock gradually disappears and turns into something else that you can't quite pinpoint, but you might say that it almost looks like hope. "Okay, sure. How would that work?"

"I can show you the locations that I saw and, um, the—" You pause because how are you supposed to word this? "The events that happen in them."

This should be when he says you're joking, that he's not going to fall for some scam. But against all odds, he nods, and a smile gradually appears. "Is this a part of what's included in the reading, or do I have to pay extra?"

You're about to open your mouth and tell him that it's included—to essentially own up to your own mistake of offering in the first place—but something else comes to mind.

There is the party coming up. You've been complaining to Jeonghan all day about your lack of a date for Minghao's party, since receiving the invite and figuring out just who would be there. And while normally you wouldn't care about whether you had a date or not, this would be the first time that you're reconnecting with your old college crowd since graduating and leaving certain people behind.

"It's not included, but you don't have to pay; I'd gladly accept a favour instead. There's this party that I'm going to, and I need a date—not even like a real date. You could just be my fake date and—" You force yourself to stop when he doesn't react and simply blinks at you. "Never mind, forget I ever said anything. I'll just ask Jeonghan to be my date—"

"Y/N, you know I can't go to that thing," Jeonghan voice comes floating in from the other room. "I have a business to run."

Mingyu's face brightens, eyes twinkling in amusement, and you have to resist the urge to sink into the ground. "Okay, so a party? Sure, I can go to this party with you if that's what you want."

You want to stop this thing in its tracks. Your joke of an offer coupled with the mention of the party to a complete strange surely would be a recipe for disaster, and besides, why would he would even care to know what you saw in the reading? Why would he believe you if you do show him the scenes? But you can't bring yourself to say any of that. At the prospect of being handed a solution to your dateless party problem, you decide to bite your tongue and go ahead with it. Showing him a few locations that you saw in your reading would be nothing compared to being alone with certain people from your past.

"Okay, deal. Let's do it."

A few minutes later, he's leaving the shop with a little wave, and a new contact has been saved into your phone.

"You good?" Jeonghan raises an eyebrow, stepping out of the back room as he gives you a look that says he heard everything. His glasses are halfway down his face and hair ruffled like he tugged on the strands in frustration way too many times, which isn't surprising when the shop is on the verge of needing to be shut down. "Were you serious about asking me to be your date?"

"No, you must've heard wrong." You quickly shake your head, plastering on a smile. "And I'm great. Wonderful. Amazing." You're definitely not. "Everything is fine." It definitely isn't.

The only reaction you get is a teasing grin. "Well," Jeonghan pats you on the shoulder, "let me know how it goes. Maybe you really did see yourself in his future."

Great.

It was at this moment you knew you fucked up.

"You look like you just lost your job," Soonyoung says right when you step into the apartment that night.

You shoot him a glare. "Unprovoked?"

He's slouched in yet another strange position on the couch, eyeing you with the concern that should probably be going towards fixing his posture, and his phone screen in hand is flashing with probably some show he's been bingeing despite the TV being only a few feet away.

A typical night at your residence, really.

"Should I leave?" he asks, sitting up straighter.

You kick your shoes off, too worn out to think of a smart retort tonight. Then you slump onto the couch beside him. "Is it that obvious?"

"Uh huh. You want to talk about it?"

With a sigh, you start from the beginning. Mingyu had been friendly when he walked in that evening, all charming smiles and lingering stares. There wasn't anything particularly interesting about him, though you may have thought he was good-looking and may have been a tiny bit glad that he made a last-minute decision to switch from the career reading to the love reading.

You tell Soonyoung about the readings, dragging on the details until he's waving you on impatiently. And then comes the end—the deal you made where you'd show Mingyu what you saw in the reading in exchange for having him be your date to Minghao's party.

"Why the hell would you do that?" Soonyoung narrows his eyes, stare seeming to bore into your skull. "He was hot, wasn't he?"

"Um, well..."

"I knew it." Then he put his hands on your shoulders and shakes you a little. "Y/N," he looks you dead in the eye, "you need to stop being so nice to people you find hot. Well, except for me; I'm an exception."

You scoff. "It's not that. I need a date for this party, okay? You know he's going to be there so there's no way I'm showing up alone."

"Forget the party," he gives a dismissing wave, "how are you going to show him everything? The guy seems like someone who doesn't believe in this kind of stuff."

"Yeah," you mutter, "maybe he knows I'm a fraud and is secretly filming all this for his YouTube channel. Can you imagine the title? Delusional psychic makes up romantic scenes."

If Mingyu really did think you were a fraud, he wouldn't be wrong. After all, you only learned about the different palm lines as a cover for the real abilities you used for these readings. Maybe it isn't such a bad idea to switch over to regular readings now though; if only you'd been blessed with Jeonghan's bullshitting skills instead of this ability that's starting to feel more like a curse.

"No, Y/N. Who does he think he is?" Soonyoung abruptly gets up from the couch, hands balled into fists instead of laughing at your joke like you thought he would. "No one forced him to go to you. And we all know that fortune telling is a big sham; surely he should know to take everything with a grain of salt."

You nod, but then you think back to the reading. "Well, I did think that I could be wrong. The reading was... well, it was weird. I couldn't see his lover's face, like, it either went by really fast or he wasn't looking at them at all."

"Those scenes don't necessarily have to be with the ex he mentioned, right? You have no control over what point of someone's life you see."

Soonyoung is right. You can't control the time frame of someone's life you witness, so it's plausible that the love interest is someone else entirely. Perhaps from a future relationship, or maybe Mingyu and his ex if they get back together one day.

Or maybe the visions are wrong. Just because they haven't been wrong before doesn't mean it can't happen.

"Or," Soonyoung flops back onto the couch excitedly, "do you think it's because he has bad eyesight?" He leans in until his face is mere centimeters away from yours, pretending to examine you through squinted eyes. "Maybe he never sees his lover's face that clearly anyway."

"There's a big difference between having bad eyesight and simply not looking at something, you know."

"Then do you want to use me as practice?" He holds out his hand, placing it on your knee with his palm up. "You can check if futures can change or if eyesight really does affect the readings."

You give him one last skeptical glance before going along with it. Then you press two thumbs at the edges of his palm with your eyes closed and wait for the visions to arrive.

It's been years since you've glanced into his future, but still you immediately recognize the images. There's Soonyoung laughing while on a picnic with Wonwoo in the same sunny field, Wonwoo playing the guitar in your current apartment, and a final close up of the ring on Soonyoung's slender finger. You wonder if he still remembers this last one; you're at the age where all of your friends are getting engaged left and right, and you're half expecting a wedding invitation any day now.

But just before you can pull your hands back and ask him if the first two events have already happened, the vision changes. A new scene takes shape this time and it confuses you at first because the view starts off with an unfamiliar ceiling. Then as Soonyoung glances down, Wonwoo's face comes into view and—

"What the hell?" You immediately jerk back, scrambling to break out of the vision. "Please don't get me to do your reading ever again."

Soonyoung gives you a confused glance. "Why, what did you see? Did it change?"

"Let me just say that I really don't need to see the things that you and Wonwoo do."

"You—you saw what?"

"I heard it too." You bury your face in your hands, trying to wipe the memory away. "The visions really just had to give me first person seats to a show I never wanted to see."

Soonyoung chokes on his spit.

If Mingyu forgot about this agreement entirely once he left the shop, it wouldn't surprise you. You'd just take it as one of those situations where friends tell each other to hang out but never end up making plans, so why would this be any different?

What surprises you is that he does text you a few days later.

So through your text conversation, you tell him all about the first scene you saw—the restaurant with the hand holding across the table. A dinner date, essentially. It's a good thing that this is the easiest scene to reenact; maybe after this he'd decide that he's had enough of this fake fortune telling stunt while still upholding his end of the agreement.

But despite how simple the scene is, the thought of doing this makes you all kinds of nervous. Your stomach twists at the thought of spending a whole night on the receiving end of Mingyu's intense stare, especially when this would be so different from your interactions with him while working that day. At least at work you knew what you were doing. This on the other hand, is completely out of your range of knowledge. Like, what do people talk about during these kinds of events? What if whatever you're eating gets really messy? What if—

"Wait, where are you going today? Soonyoung didn't tell me about this." Wonwoo glances over at his boyfriend in confusion before turning back to you. "And what did you agree to do?"

"Um," you say slowly, glancing between the two perched on the couch. "I made a deal to show a client what I saw in his reading."

"But why?" Wonwoo puts his hand on your knee, leaning over with concern written on his face. "You haven't done anything like this before for your other customers, have you?"

"No way. I probably wouldn't be doing this if he hadn't agreed to be my date for Minghao's party."

Maybe it was weird to have agreed to this—the look on Wonwoo's face said as much. After all, Mingyu is a stranger, and you don't know anything about him other than the flashes of his life you witnessed through the reading. But won't it simply feel like an awkward first date? All you have to do is take him to a restaurant that resembles the one you saw and hold hands across the table. It can't be too challenging when there is no need to do much talking nor get to know each other.

"Oh. Because of..." Wonwoo trails off, giving you a feeble smile. "Right."

"Well, don't mention him," Soonyoung elbows him in the ribs.

Wonwoo waves his boyfriend off. "I'm not sure how you're going to make this client believe you, but your time with him today doesn't have to be a bad thing."

"But babe, you didn't see how upset Y/N was that night after agreeing to this." The dramatic pout on Soonyoung's face has you rolling your eyes. Then he turns to you. "He might be hot, but he could still be an asshole. This guy seems like bad news. What if you get kidnapped? What if you go missing? Who's going to help pay the rent then? And—"

"Don't act like you're not waiting for me to move out so that Wonwoo can move in," you reach over to flick him on the forehead. "Thanks for your concern but I think I'll be just fine."

"At least share your location with us, okay? If you need an emergency phone call to get you out of there, I have my scream perfected."

"Unfortunately, I am very aware of that." You definitely don't want to think about the last time Soonyoung called to pull you out of a group meeting back in college and nearly damaged the hearing of your entire group. "Okay, I'm really going to go now."

"Oh and," a hand wraps around your wrist just as you stand, "don't fall for him."

"Shut up, it's literally one meeting."

One meeting won't be a big deal. It'd be a nice dinner date with some innocent hand holding, and then you probably wouldn't have to see Mingyu again until the party. Nothing can't go wrong when you'd be in public the whole time anyway.

Soonyoung shouts something that sounds like, "At least wear something nicer!" but you're already out the door.

"Oh, you actually came." Mingyu comments, face instantly lighting up when he spots you. "I almost thought you decided to back out."

"Me? Never." You try for a smile, but you know he's referring to your tardiness.

It'd be easy to blame your annoying roommate for holding you up today, but embarrassingly enough, it wasn't because of him. Your shortcut through the park's uneven grounds was the culprit, causing your massive tumble which ultimately led to being much too late for this date. It's times like this when you wish your ability would let you see more useful things than random points in other people's futures.

Upon arriving at the restaurant though, you realize that something else you wish you'd seen is how your choice of restaurant is nothing like what you expected. You picked the place after scavenging through the depths of Google Maps, digging up pictures left and right from various reviews, and the single review of this place was the only one that seemed to match the one in your visions. In the photo, the restaurant was just as dim, and looked like a casual place. But now, in front of you, is a restaurant that looks nothing like the one in the photo.

In front of you is something much fancier—small chandeliers hang above every table and elegant decorations line the walls. There is no doubt that it must've gone through a major upgrade since the local reviewer posted those pictures from five years ago. Now not only was your attempt at finding the restaurant in your visions futile, but this place also makes you wish you chose a different occupation entirely. Preferably one that pays more than the meager amount your readings are worth.

"Well, this is an interesting choice," Mingyu comments, eyeing the walls. "Seems like a nice place."

You debate pulling him right out of there. "Um, actually, it's not—"

"Hi, do you have a reservation?" the hostess asks, looking between the two of you. And before you can even answer, there are two menus in her hands and she's leading you to your table. Great. Perhaps you'd just have to take off one of your rings and fake a proposal for the sake of a free meal if it turns out to be too expensive. You heard that it worked for a friend of a friend once upon a time.

Once seated, you nearly do a double take. There is no dim lighting obscuring Mingyu's handsome face this time, and under the glow of the chandelier, you can finally see his smooth skin, plush lips, and large eyes that seem to twinkle when he glances at you for whatever reason. If you thought he was good looking before, you have to admit that he looks even better today. 

You turn to the menu instead, studying it intensely despite having immediately picked out the cheapest option. Five minutes go by. The waitress comes by to take your orders. Another five minutes. Are first dates always this awkward? It's been years since you've gone out with anyone, but if this were the reality of the dating scene, maybe third-wheeling your friends for the rest of your life wouldn't be such a bad idea.

Mingyu clears his throat. "Should we start with the basics?"

"What?"

"A story to tell people at the party if they ask about us." He swirls his drink around, eyes flickering to yours occasionally. "We need to be on the same page with our answers to make it convincing."

Right, he's going to be your fake boyfriend for the party. You haven't thought that far yet when you've had the scenes to worry about, but he's not wrong. "Oh. Um, okay. So how did we meet? It wouldn't be through mutual friends because most of them would be there. Maybe a dating app?"

"Hmm," he hums, looking over everything on the table as he thinks. "We met at your shop when I got a reading done. Then you showed me how everything happens."

"We're just going with the truth?" You're slightly doubtful of whether this story would be believable, yet the same time you're relieved you wouldn't have to be lying. Soonyoung has always said you were a terrible liar. "I guess that works. So then how did we fall for each other?"

Mingyu presses his lips together and thinks for a while. "Through reenactments of the things you saw in the reading." As if for emphasis, he moves his drink out of the way before putting his hand on the table between the two of you, and then beckons for you to do the same.

"Oh. This is what you mean by reenact it."

Of course you knew this might be what he wanted, and you came here fully prepared to reenact this with him. But because of your fall at the park earlier, now the fresh scrapes on your palms are telling you to stop in your tracks. You shouldn't be touching anything and sure as hell don't want him to see the state of your battered hands.

You opt for a shrug, feigning nonchalance. "Um, yeah it was just hand holding. You know, we don't have to actually—"

"Come on, Y/N." He puts on a pout and the longer he stares at you, the more his eyes somehow start to have the effect of puppy eyes. "Just humour me?"

So you give in, reluctantly. You reach out a hand and rest it on his with your palm up to show him exactly why you don't want to do this.

Mingyu's eyes widen at you before he's holding your hand up to examine it closely. "Oh shit. What happened? Did you fall on your way here? Is that why you were late?"

You nod a little.

"Hey, you should've said something. I'll go ask for some bandages, okay?"

"No, it's fine—" you start, but he only shoots you a smile before leaving his seat.

Looking down, you can see that your palms already appear to be much better than earlier—the red splotches are mainly dry now, and the dirt has been wiped off. Thankfully, Mingyu didn't see the worst of it, but that does little to stop the embarrassment in its tracks. You only hope that the heat at your cheeks fades when he comes back a few minutes later waving a handful of bandages around.

You think that it would end there, but it doesn't. Mingyu insists on putting these bandages on your wounds. His fingers are light where they graze your skin as he carefully places them on your scrapes, and it's such a nice gesture that you're suddenly taken aback. This is supposed to be a quick dinner, and he's supposed to hate you for the bad reading. But now you question if any of that is true when he continues to act so kind and friendly.

"This is not how it's supposed to go." You frown, trying not to stare at his face as he works on the bandages in total concentration. "Not at all."

Because your hands may be in his across the table as you wait for your food to come, but he's only holding them to bandage your wounds. And while this restaurant does seem romantic, it's nowhere near the look of the one in your visions.

Mingyu's eyes fill with amusement when he looks up. "Holding hands across the table as we wait for our food, right? Isn't this close enough?"

"You're bandaging me. This isn't remotely romantic."

"Love isn't always supposed to be romantic, Y/N," he says dramatically, rolling his eyes. "Haven't your readings shown you the small things that people do for each other?"

You wonder just what kind of readings he thinks you do. "Um. I guess."

He does have a point. Maybe this moment, no matter how embarrassing or ridiculous it seems, is better than having to sit through faking or pretending everything. It may force you to be vulnerable, but each gentle brush of Mingyu's fingers and each press of a bandage against your palms hint at a vulnerable side of him too.

You study him, wanting to figure out just what kind of person he is. Why is he being so kind when the two of you are practically strangers? When this meetup should be a quick meal at a casual food place, involving no more physical contact than two seconds of hand holding? Well, perhaps five seconds. But now, it seems like the two of you have gone beyond your original plans of fake pleasantries.

"All done." He lightly presses the last bandage onto your palm, and you're grateful for the arrival of your food as an excuse to pull your hand back.

"So, um," you rack your brain for literally anything to say, "why did you come in for a reading that day?"

"There was a career decision that I was stuck on," Mingyu picks at his food then looks up with a twinkle in his eyes. "I don't believe in this whole fortune telling thing, but I needed some advice on what to do. Figured that maybe while you were telling me to look deep inside myself and to follow my heart or whatever, I'd suddenly get an epiphany about what to do."

"And did you?"

"Yeah."

"Even without the reading? The boss would've done a good job on it." That part is true; you may be the real psychic of the two of you, but you can't deny how good Jeonghan's readings are. Heck, you'd rather choose to believe his words over what you see in your own visions.

A nod. "Just going there gave me what I needed. I decided it would be good to start fresh, to try something new." He pauses to take a sip of water, but then his eyes snap to yours. "Wait, hold on. Did you say he's your boss? You were going to ask your boss to be your date? For the party?"

"Oh, Jeonghan?" You want to laugh at the incredulous expression on his face. "Nah, he's not exactly my boss. We met in college as classmates."

Your previous thoughts about not needing to talk completely disappear as you tell him about how this little psychic shop started. It had been Jeonghan's idea, a backup plan for a backup plan essentially. He'd always joked about starting a business if nothing else worked out after graduation, and the opportunity came around sooner than expected.

"Damn, I wish my boss was chill like that. Mine really makes everyone stay back to finish the projects that he deems urgent when they aren't."

"You mean you're not in school?" You have to wipe the shock from your face. "I would've thought that you were some frat boy in college."

Mingyu stares at you blankly, blinking a couple of times. "You know, I'm not sure if that was a compliment or insult." He frowns. "Well, I guess it's good that my job hasn't aged me too much yet. But frat boy? Really?"

"Hey, maybe that should be our cover instead," you tease. "Frat boy Mingyu who I met at a party in college years ago but only recently reconnected with."

He rolls his eyes at you, suddenly starting to chew so aggressively that you have to laugh at his expression.

The rest of the night goes by similarly, allowing you to forget all your worries about awkward first dates. Mingyu is a good conversationalist and surprisingly funny to, and when he drops his fork and later bumps his head on the chandelier is so endearing that you find yourself smiling every time you look at him.

As the two of you walk back to the shop afterwards, your time together leaves you thinking about how he's not the person you thought he would be. Maybe you should know that already based on the glimpse into his future because the warmth that you'd seen from those scenes alone could've been an indicator.

"There are two more things you saw, right?" Mingyu turns to you, sparkles in his eyes from the reflection of streetlights right outside the shop. "Are you free next weekend too?"

"Wait." You're almost sure you heard wrong. "You—you want to see the rest of them? The scenes I saw?"

"Yeah, of course," he says like it's obvious, seemingly unable to understand the surprise that must be on your face.

This is a possibility that you never considered at all. You don't get why he would want to see you or spend time with you again, or how showing him what you saw in the visions would possibly convince him that they're real. "Oh, um. I didn't think you would be interested."

"Why not? We still need to figure out more of our cover story for this party too." He gives a shrug and then raises a hand up in a wave. "See you next week?"

"Yeah, okay," you manage to say. "Next week."

The rest of the way home is filled with Mingyu's words echoing through your mind.

When you open the door to your apartment, Soonyoung drops his phone mid-scroll, giving you a onceover that makes his eyes as big as saucers. Then he's running over to you.

Right, you completely forgot about your state of being until this reminder.

"What the fuck happened to you? Did the Mingyu guy do all of this?" He stops you in the middle of the hallway, hands on your shoulders to spin you around as he glances over every inch of the mess of blood and dirt on your clothing. You understand what it would look like from the outside—the result of your fall must be fueling his thoughts about Mingyu being a bad guy. Maybe it looks like you bravely jumped out of a moving car and managed to crawl back home.

"No—"

"See? I told you he was bad news," he huffs and then guides you into the kitchen where he sits you down on a chair. "What happened? Did he pull something weird? Should we be calling the police?"

You feel a laugh on the verge of escaping your throat, but you bite it back. Soonyoung's questions are so absurd that you almost want to keep quiet and make him frustrated by his overwhelming curiosity. That'd certainly be one way of annoying him the way he always annoys you.

"No, nothing like that," you say instead, shaking your head. "I tripped and fell while walking through the park." Then you hold up your palms to show him the small bandages where they're peeling at the corners. "He helped bandage me at the restaurant."

Soonyoung nods slowly, but judging by his narrowed eyes, he's entirely unconviced. "Okay, but you look like you got into a fight with him or something. And why would you go through the park?"

"You're the one who made me late, okay? I had to take the shortcut." You go to push him then instantly regret it when the contact makes your palms throb. "Anyway, Mingyu was really nice. Though the, um, reenactment didn't really go as planned."

Then you begin to update him on everything that happened during your date, starting from the restaurant and how it didn't match the visions, to your fall and the bandages. But as you go over all of the moments, you realize there are a few things you intentionally leave out, like the tiny crinkles that appeared at the corners of Mingyu's eyes whenever he smiled. His soft hands that bandaged you so tenderly. Maybe he was right that love is all about the small gestures—even though you initially thought the moment paled in comparison to the one in the reading, the more you replay the day over in your mind, the more you realize that it was indeed romantic in its own way.

"And? Is that it?" Soonyoung gestures wildly. "You won't have to see him until the party, right?"

You can feel the smile on your face fade. "Um, actually. He wants to meet again for the next scene that I saw."

"Don't tell me that's the kiss scene?"

"Yeah... the kiss."

"Well, good luck with that one." Soonyoung's smirk only grows at your reaction. He gives you a pat on the back, but it feels just as insincere as his words. "Try not to fall for him."

As your roommate leaves the room, you can only sigh. This is exactly why you left out those details about this date—Soonyoung would be making fun of you forever. Yes, that has to be the reason. It definitely wasn't because you considered those moments special.

All week, you try to come up with a plan to avoid showing Mingyu the next scene from the visions. You think about making up a more PG-rated scenario since there is no way he would know if what you're showing is real or not, but how can you lie about it when he'll experience the real thing in his future? Besides, Soonyoung tells you the scenarios you come up with are lame.  

So your choices for this scene are really limited—either you would have to share a kiss with him in public or watch as his face contorts with disgust at the thought of having to kiss you. Or perhaps you would be dealing with the awkwardness of dead silence between you once he turns down the kiss. Either way, today is not looking good for you.

On top of that, the location for this scene gives you even more trouble than the first one did. You hadn't exactly gathered much information from it; without being able to use your sense of sight, you only know there was kissing, the smell of the outdoors, and light chatter in the background. A park might seem too public, too open of a space to be doing this, and a forest trail might be too isolated and not sunny enough compared to the sun you'd felt on your skin.

In the end, you decide on the market. A cute date at the market seemed like it could be the perfect balance, and today it bustles with the afternoon crowd of couples on their date and the elderly running their errands. When you look at Mingyu, your hypothesis is confirmed—beside you, he watches the rows of vendor carts and tents with amazement in his eyes.

"You've never been here before?"

Mingyu shakes his head. "Nah. I've been meaning to, but just haven't had the chance to yet." Then he turns to you with a teasing smile. "You chose the perfect spot. It's like you actually read my mind." 

"I can assure you I'm not psychic like that," you mutter, stunned for a second. "Let's take our time exploring and see everything today."

So the two of you slowly walk through each aisle and you watch him marvel at different items from each of the stalls you stop at. It's merely an excuse, though. You're stalling. You still haven't told him about what is supposed to happen in the second scene, and you've been carefully dancing around the topic each time he asked. How are you supposed to blatantly say that the two of you are supposed to kiss? All you can do is hope that the wonders of the market would distract him enough so that he forgets why you're here at all.

"So how long have we known each other?" Mingyu turns to ask as the two of you walk to the next stall. "And what kind of party is it? Don't tell me I unknowingly signed up to go to a wedding with you."

"It's not that much better actually—it's an engagement party."

He stops dead in his tracks. You laugh.

"A year minimum," you continue like he's not giving you a deadpan stare. "Maybe two? We should be pretty serious about... each other."

"Do you think I could watch over the shop for you while you take your boss to be your date?" He pauses, looking at you with hopeful eyes that immediately dim when you shake your head. "What have I gotten myself into?" Then he's walking to the next stall with dramatically loud steps, though you manage to catch the smile he tries to hide.

The rest of your cover story slowly comes together over the course of the date—he asked you out, some of the places you frequent are last week's restaurant and today's market, and you sometimes spend the weekend at his place which is why Soonyoung and Wonwoo haven't met him yet.

After exploring the majority of the stalls a while later, Mingyu finally turns to you.

"Hey, let's head over there." He nods at the field behind the market, shooting you a grin when he takes your hand in his.

You hope he doesn't hear the startled sound that escapes from the back of your throat.

Tucked away behind the row of vendors at the very edge of the market is a field with a few empty picnic tables. And while you aren't sure if this is how the kiss happens in the vision, you get the feeling that maybe he knows. The bit of privacy behind the stalls and the way the noises of the market gradually fade into the background as you approach the table tell you as much—if you were looking for an opportunity to reenact the scene today, it would be here and now.

You climb onto the table, letting your legs dangle off the bench while Mingyu follows suit beside you.

"You haven't said anything about why we're here today." He eyes you up and down with amusement playing on his lips. "Why? Is it something bad?" The teasing tilt in his voice paired with a slight eyebrow raise is enough to have your cheeks quickly burning up.

Then the embarrassment kicks in. You know that there is no avoiding it when the two of you are already at the location of the second scene in your vision, and now it's just a matter of telling him. But no matter how you try to phrase it in his head, what could possibly be a good way of telling your client that you're supposed to kiss him? That's what Mingyu is, right? A client that wanted to see and experience the things in your reading of his future.

"Um. It's... a hug," you say hesitantly, testing the way it sounds in your mouth. Picturing the way his face would fall at the word 'kiss' is enough to scare you into changing your mind at the last second. "A hug is supposed to happen here."

As if he knows you're not telling the truth, Mingyu cocks his head. "Oh yeah? Here of all places?" Maybe it really was a bad idea to lie; you should've believed Soonyoung when he said you can't tell a lie to save your life.

"Yeah." You try to swallow the lump in your throat. "I'm not sure why it's here either."

If he does detect your lie though, he doesn't say anything about it. Instead, his expression morphs into something softer. "Love can be found everywhere, Y/N. Even in a hug at the market if you want it to." Then he gets up and holds his arms open, eyes twinkling with the question of whether you want this.

And do you want this? It might be too soon to be doing this when you barely know each other, but it's also too soon for your heart to be speeding up the way it does, for you to feel a small burst of butterflies in your stomach every time he so much as stares at you for a moment too long, and for this cover story and the reenactments to feel more tangible than the abstract concepts they are meant to be.

But despite all that, you find yourself getting up from the table and carefully stepping into Mingyu's arms. You slowly relax in the warmth of his embrace and let the faint scent of his cologne envelop you, and though it's a tender, loose hug, you can feel the steady beating of his heart and the rises and falls of his every breath.

"Is this how it happens?" he whispers, the rumble of his voice vibrating through his chest.

You can't respond. You don't know how to, nor do you know why he's even the slightest bit willing to act out a scene from a stupid reading that he probably deems a scam anyway. So the obvious answer would be to say yes and call it a day.

The answer is at the tip of your tongue. But as you open your mouth to respond, something stops you from continuing the lie. "No, not quite."

It's the same feeling that tells you to cup his cheek and bring him closer to you, and it makes you lean forward, just until you can see his smooth sun-kissed skin and the small mole at the tip of his nose. And then you're slowly squeezing your eyes shut and bringing your lips to his—kissing him, like how it happens in the reading.

Mingyu's surprise is evident in the way he freezes momentarily, and the rational part of your mind would think that this is it. This is your big mistake and now he's going to back away and—

He kisses you back.

He pulls you even closer and you expect it to feel like the delicate kiss in the reading, but it's completely different in that he kisses you like he wants this. Like he wants you. Those supple lips glide across yours, consuming you, making you feel like you're sinking into the depths of his touch and his body. And all you can do is hang on, grasping weakly at his collar as every essence of your being is filled with want for a person you shouldn't want.

Mingyu breaks the kiss just as you start to think this might be too intense to be done in public.

He catches his breath and then gives you a shy smile, not quite meeting your eyes. "Oh, so that's how it happens?"

Your head is still spinning, but when you look at Mingyu, it's like he's glowing. The way the sun glistens on his skin and lights up his face makes him so beautiful that you almost forget to breathe. If the kiss hadn't felt so real, you might've been thinking that this moment, and Mingyu himself, are straight out of a dream.

You can answer him easily now. "Yeah, it is."

When he takes your hand a moment later, all the thoughts about cover stories and readings and Minghao's party disappear from your mind, leaving only the warmth of him beside you and the memory of his lips on yours.

However, reality hits you very soon. There, by one of the nearby stalls, is someone who looks like Mingyu's lover in the visions. They have the same hairstyle as you, the same smooth skin, and even the same face shape. Without directly glancing at their face, you can assume that you are looking at yourself.

But even though they don't turn your way as the two of you walk by, simply seeing them has your heart sinking. It sinks at the thought that the kiss might be nothing more than a figment of your imagination or of a world where you're both pretending that you really are the lover from the visions. That Mingyu's eagerness to kiss you, to want you, wasn't actually meant for you at all, but rather for someone he hasn't met yet.

And you don't get it. You don't understand why you're disappointed by this when it isn't even real. It shouldn't ever be real. Regardless of whether it was a good kiss, of whether it felt wonderful and realistic and enticing, you should know that it wouldn't mean anything.

Because you're not the lover from the reading.

Perhaps it shouldn't come as a surprise to you at this point, but Mingyu agrees to reenact the third and final scene of the vision. You were sure that he would say no, that he definitely wouldn't appreciate having a stranger barge into his home for this one. So to have him actually agree to it has you thinking that maybe if you tell him you're going skydiving he'd agree to that too.

This time it's not as difficult to tell him what happens in the scene—it's just slow dancing, which should be easy to reenact at least compared to the kiss at the market. All you have to do is rest your hands on his shoulders and then step side to side to the beat of the music. How hard can it be?

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Soonyoung peers at you from the doorway of the bathroom. "You barely managed to escape from this guy during your first meeting, and now you're walking right into his home." He comes closer to where you're checking your outfit in front of the mirror, and says in a loud whisper, "where you'll be alone with him."

Right, that is the part you're trying not to think about.

"You sure you can handle it? After," he gestures in the air, "what happened at the market and all."

Internally, you grumble. Externally, you ignore him.

"I know you're picturing that steamy kiss." He rolls his eyes, which you can all too clearly through the mirror. "But anyway, if you're sure about going to his place tonight, just remember to be safe, yeah? Share your location just in case. Hold your head if you're about to jump out of another moving car."

"Don't you have a boyfriend you should be bothering instead?"

That earns you an enthusiastic nod. "He should be coming soon. So take your time on your date tonight."

You finally get some peace and quiet when you step out, once again leaving your roommate mid-sentence about how you picked another terrible outfit.

You're the first to arrive at the restaurant, though it isn't long before you spot Mingyu coming from a block away—he's late for your date and clearly running to make up for it by the way he dodges other people on the street, nearly knocking them over. He gives a big wave when he sees you.

"Sorry for being so late," he pants as he bends over to catch his breath. "Thank you for waiting."

"Guess that makes us even. Although I hope you didn't trip on your way here."

That puts an instant grin on his face. "Nah, I just had to clean up the apartment a little. Well, actually," he pauses, the grin fading, "a lot. Can't have it be a mess for when you come over tonight."

"Oh, right." You still don't know why he would agree to all this, especially if it takes that much work.

The dinner goes well. It's one of the few moments of peace, considering your first meal together was ruined by the remnants of your nasty fall, and the market date was interrupted by an abrupt awakening. Despite the mishaps, you don't exactly see these events as losses when your memories are brimming with Mingyu's gentle touch when he bandaged your hands, and the warmth of his lips fitting so perfectly with your own.

And tonight? You know that there will be another moment for you to commit to memory forever.

When you arrive at your destination, you finally understand why he was late for your dinner. The place is spotless; unlit candles fill the room, a bottle of wine with empty glasses are on the counter. There are flowers in a beautiful vase on the table. It's like he spent all day running around just to set up for this moment.

"It's presentable, right?" Mingyu cracks a smile, slipping off his shoes and sliding his jacket onto the rack, followed by taking your coat as well. "Not sure how it's supposed to happen, but I figured I should at least try to make it—well, as romantic as possible."

"Wow, you didn't have to do all this," you manage to get out. You're still standing right in your spot as he goes over to light the candles, in shock and confusion over why he would possibly do such a thing.

He turns back to give you a small shrug. "I wanted you to have a good time."

When he finishes lighting the candles, he puts on some music by selecting it on his phone, seemingly having put together a whole playlist for the occasion. And if you didn't know any better, it would be so easy to believe that he simply put together a romantic date night at his place for the two of you. That he did all this because you're someone special to him. That this means something.

Well, if he can pretend for a night then maybe you can too.

You shake the thoughts from your mind and replace them with a smile as a song you don't recognize starts softly in the background. Mingyu heads to the table, beckoning you to follow, and then pours two glasses of wine.

"You know, I'm really glad I went to you that day." He takes a sip of his wine and then swirls it when he puts it down. "For the reading. I'm glad I met you. And um, I should thank you for showing me all of this."

"Shut up," you scoff, rolling your eyes. "Don't lie. You still don't believe in any of this fortune telling stuff, right?"

Mingyu bursts into laughter. "Okay, you're right. I don't. I just wanted to see some acts of love after going through a breakup, to kind of feel like there could still be hope for me. Honestly though, when you offered to show me what happens, I thought you would make up random scenarios just to date me or something." He waves dismissively at the frown on your face. "But it doesn't matter to me. Real or not, I like spending time with you, and... well, maybe you've convinced me."

"I convinced you that the reading was real?"

You're met with a shrug as he takes another sip of his wine, and in that brief silence you ponder about what he's referring to. There is no way he believes in fortune telling, so what else is there to convince him of?

But then something else pops into your mind.

"Can I ask you something?" You take a deep breath, letting out a sharp exhale when Mingyu nods. "What happened with your ex?"

It's clear that he hesitates with the way he swirls his glass, pressing his lips together and avoiding your gaze.

"Never mind. We don't have to—"

"It's okay. It was a long time ago and I'm over it." His eyes meet yours before flickering away. "Actually, I think I knew it was over long before it was really over. But I kept hoping that things could be fixed. I was stupid and kept trying."

"Hey, no, that's not stupid." You reach over and take his hand. "You were willing to put in the effort to save your relationship, and that shows you care."

But he merely shrugs. "Seems like a waste when they were busy cheating on me."

"That's not your fault, and it's not a waste. The love that you show the world is never a waste." There's a flood of emotions running through you, you belatedly realize—you're clutching the glass so tightly in your free hand that you begin to fear it might crack. It's directed at Mingyu's ex, at the thought that someone would hurt him like that when he's done nothing but fight for their relationship.

"It's kind of ironic now that I think about it," he continues. "Right before I found out they were cheating, I went to a psychic and got a reading done on the relationship. Apparently the reading said everything would be fine, and I just stupidly believed it."

"Mingyu... is that why you don't believe in this stuff anymore?"

He nods.

"I wish I didn't either." You swallow the lump in your throat, letting go of the glass. It's not only the mention of his ex that's making you feel this way, but also the lover from the visions. You want to hate them, to curse at them and at your fate for ripping away what could be a beautiful relationship before it's even within your reach.

But it all makes you want to try harder to prove it to Mingyu. That he's worth more than what his ex had made it seem, and that he doesn't need to be closed off to the idea of love because someone in the future is going to walk into his life and show him exactly that.

"Why?" He squeezes your hand lightly. "What makes you say that?"

"It's also because of an ex."

It was Junhui. Or rather, what you saw in his future. Two years after the start of your relationship and four after the start of your friendship, you'd trusted him enough to tell him about this little fortune telling party trick, and he'd trusted you to take a look at his future. Maybe that's where things went wrong.

Looking back, you aren't surprised that you saw someone else in his future. They appeared so happy together, he made her laugh, and she seemed to fit in all the ways you didn't. But there was no point in waiting for fate to inevitably bring them together while pulling the two of you apart, so you ran—you didn't want to stick around to find out what would happen.

"Wow." Mingyu blinks at you, seemingly unable to speak after your story. "Do you know if they ever met or got together? Your ex and the person you saw in his future."

You shake your head. "Haven't heard anything about him since we broke up."

"And he's the one who's going to be at this party?"

"Yeah. He's one of Minghao's close friends."

"I'm sorry that happened to you," Mingyu drops his gaze as he gently traces circles into your palm with his thumb. "I see why you don't want to believe in that stuff now. Actually, it's kind of funny how it was this fortune telling thing that screwed both of us over."

"Right? I should get Jeonghan to close the shop and we could open a boba store instead or something." You roll your eyes, chuckling at the thought. "Probably makes better money than this ever will."

"That's not a bad idea." Then he sets his glass down and stands, coming to your side to pull you into a hug. "But Y/N, don't beat yourself up for what happened, okay? You didn't know what you would see, and you have no control over it."

"I guess."

"Besides, I'll be such a good date that you won't even notice him the entire night." Mingyu releases you and steps back, smile turning shy as he holds out a hand. "Shall we?"

"I have to warn you that I'm not great at dancing," you mutter, taking his hand anyway and letting him guide you towards the space in the living room. "Don't hold me accountable for any injuries you might sustain."

When you put your hands on his shoulders, you can feel yourself tense up—your body is awkward, and your arms are too stiff as if not wanting to rest your weight on him. But when you hear a bubble of laughter and see the way Mingyu looks at you so fondly, you feel the same pull as you'd felt at the market. The pull that makes you want to relax and sink into the warmth of his body.

His touch is gentle when he places his hands on your waist, all too carefully and delicately. It makes you wonder if it's even possible that those are the same hands that his ex had willingly let go of, and if those light steps that he takes when swaying to the music are the same footsteps that will walk into the life of the lover in the visions. You wonder if this Mingyu, glancing back at you so tenderly, is the same as the one that will forget about you as soon as this moment is over.

But most of all, you wonder if the you that had originally agreed to do this is the same as the you whose heart beats faster and faster when he meets your gaze now. If the you who only wanted a date, any date for the party, could possibly be the same as the you who now finds yourself wanting to lean into his touch, wanting him to want you.

"You okay?" he murmurs, pulling you out of your thoughts.

"Yeah. Perfect."

Mingyu breaks into a soft smile. "You know, I've always wondered what you keep thinking about. When you get lost in that world in your head, what do you see? What do you dream about?" 

"It's different every time." You try to ignore the way your palms feel all too hot against his shoulders. "But these days... it's you."

You don't tell him that it's also getting to know him, falling for him, and imagining how you should be the one doing all those things with him like in the reading. It's picturing a love that flourishes ever so slowly, one that silently rests between the two of you, growing steadily until a day when it becomes the only thing you notice.

And though you leave all that out, your answer seems to be enough for him.

"Me?"

"Yeah," you say softly. "Whatever happened in the past—I really hope it doesn't keep you from experiencing the kind of relationship you deserve. You're not hard to love, Mingyu." Just a brief moment of hesitation before you admit, "Not at all."

Your words feed the twinkle of hope in his eyes as well as the one that seems to have been blossoming in your own heart for a while now. Maybe you can finally admit it; this would be the last time you see him, so maybe it wouldn't matter what happens tonight.

The thoughts swarming your mind are soon forgotten though. Mingyu pulls back slightly to gaze at you with a bright grin that sends your heart back into the frenzy it never recovered from. And a moment later, when his lips are on yours, the dancing, the music, and the entire scene are long forgotten in the background.

This time you let yourself believe that it's real.

You fall deeper into the world where you're the lover from the visions, a world that contains just the two of you. And this time you aren't afraid to kiss him back like you want him because you do. You pull him close until your bodies are inseparable, and you allow yourself to be overwhelmed by the heat of his mouth and the burns of his touch. You let yourself want, as your back hits the wall and you're trapped between it and the weight of Mingyu's body pressing against you, and you let yourself take, let your hands trace over the defined lines of his muscles, the smoothness of his skin, and the softness of his hair.

You kiss until you're breathless, until your knees are weak and you're sinking once again. Until his little breaths come out in fuller moans, and hands are wandering into dangerous territory.

"Is this how it happens?" Mingyu whispers, gaze dropping as he leans in to press his forehead against yours. "Is this how we fall for each other?"

No, you immediately think, not at all. The apartment is dim with only the small lamps at the sides of the room and the candles lining the table as the only source of light. The music, despite being slow and romantic, feels much too loud for some reason. It feels forced. And the way you manage to step on his toes on all the wrong beats surely can't be the right path to falling in love.

But maybe you're not afraid to admit it anymore.

"Yeah," you say instead, "it is."

Mingyu eyes snap to yours, and what you find in them makes you want to repeat your answer again and again. You're not sure why he would be hoping for this answer or why he would be satisfied if his own creation were to match perfectly with the one that you'd seen. Even more uncertain is why he would choose that particular set of words to say. But none of it matters when his lips are back on yours, writing an answer of their own.

And for one night, you let yourself be Mingyu's lover from the visions.

One thing becomes painfully clear after that—you cannot be seeing Mingyu ever again. Not even for one last party date.

On the surface, you know that your job is done. You showed him all of the moments that are supposed to happen in his future, and you upheld your end of the deal. But the truth is that every time you were with him, it became difficult to remember that you're not the lover from the reading, and every time you talked to him, you found yourself wanting more and more to be that person.

Your plan to avoid him doesn't go as expected though, for he keeps texting you. He sounds normal, continuing to send memes and share posts like he's been doing for the past while. And when he asks you for a movie date the following weekend, he acts as if the past three meetups were exactly that—dates. It's like it never occurred to him that you were there only to show him how everything happens, and not to actually date him. Though now, you're no longer sure if that's true.

So you say you're busy, you limit your texts to once per day, and you don't pick up when he calls. You follow the textbook formula for ghosting for days to the point where Soonyoung hides your buzzing phone under the couch cushion while spewing threats about throwing it out the window, and even Jeonghan's sighing at you tiredly, telling you to call Mingyu back.

You give in eventually. You call him back and schedule a meetup, and now you find yourself sitting at a cafe with him across from you.

"Hey, thanks for agreeing to meet with me. This won't take long." There is no smile on his face this time, and you realize that it might really be the first time seeing him like this—eyes devoid of emotion, face a neutral mask. It reminds you of the first time you met him at the shop, when he was spiraling into a hopeless void, but perhaps even worse.

You nod slightly in acknowledgement, trying to hide the way your heart sinks at his words. They are something you should be relieved to hear, but you know you're still clinging onto the inkling of hope that you can go back to pretending the two of you mean something to each other.

"Have you been doing okay?"

"Just busy," you repeat the same kind of boring answers from your texts. "You?"

"Yeah," Mingyu says slowly, dragging out the word. Then he takes a deep breath. "Are you avoiding me?"

Yes. "I didn't really see any reason we should stay in touch." A partial lie. It barely makes it out of your mouth.

"Are you for real? Y/N, where is this coming from?"

"I did what I said I'd do." The mask on your face was threatening to crack, especially after seeing the flash of pain in his eyes. "I showed you all of the scenes I saw in the reading. What more is there?"

"I—well, yeah." He frowns. "That might be what we initially agreed, but you can't deny that we had something special. There is no way you didn't feel anything when we were together."

You merely shrug and try your best to harden your eyes instead of giving in to the tears that threaten to spill. Because how can you tell him the truth? How can you give him hope just to crush it with the reality of your doomed fate?

"So—so what, all of it was just pretend? The things you said—you lied, didn't you? When you said I'm not hard to love..." He looks away, biting his lip. "I should've known."

"Hey, no. Everything I said was true, but this has nothing to do with that."

"Did you want to do this at all or were you doing it out of pity? Did you hate every moment of it?"

"Mingyu, stop. Okay, you're right. Let's say I did feel something and that I do like you. But does any of it matter? You're forgetting that I'm not the one in your future. You might not believe in this stuff, but my readings have never been wrong before." You can't do it anymore; it's too hard hiding it. Everything comes tumbling out all at once when he looks so broken. "You're going to meet them someday, and you're going to love them. Whoever they are. It just won't be me."

His jaw goes slack, mouth opening but nothing coming out. It's as if he finally realizes the truth that both of you had forgotten along the way.

"Oh and also," you say, clenching your fists at this final difficult lie you have to tell. "You don't have to hold your end of the agreement. I'm not going to the party anymore."

You know that what you said today would definitely change things since people tend to be averse to anything that goes against what they believe to be their fate. So when you get up from the table and leave, you know that Mingyu won't be chasing after you.  

You're right.

Mingyu stops texting you.

It should be a good thing; now you would both return to your normal lives and pretend like this entire thing never happened. But even though you know all this, there is still something weighing you down. It weighs down each step you take, becoming a salient presence that you can't seem to wrap your mind around.

And despite knowing that your relationship with him was only temporary, that you would be no more than a filler until the person in his future arrives, you still look over at your phone in the hopes that maybe the notification would be from Mingyu. You can't help but want him to still want you.

"You're in your head again, you know," Soonyoung jabs you in the arm, dragging you away from the thoughts and back to where you're seated in your living room. "Can't you think more quietly?"

"Can't you shut up for once?"

"See? I told you he was an asshole!" He flicks a piece of popcorn over at you, hitting you perfectly on the head. "I told you that he was all kinds of bad news. Didn't I say you were too nice for your own good? I knew something like this would happen."

"You said," you roll your eyes at him, throwing the piece of popcorn back, "that he might try to kidnap me. And to stop being so nice to hot people—no, I'm not making an exception for you."

"He really said that last part?" Wonwoo asks incredulously.

You nod. Soonyoung shakes his head.

Wonwoo clicks his tongue at his boyfriend and sighs with disbelief. "So about this fate thing. I know you believe you're not the one in Mingyu's future, but do you think a relationship with him is something worth pursuing regardless?"

"Why would it be worth pursuing if I know it'll just end?"

"Well, how do you know that for sure?" Wonwoo puts a hand on your shoulder and pats you comfortingly. He shakes his head a little. "Y/N, maybe you weren't meant to see his partner's face. Look at the rest of us—we don't have your abilities and we all go through it blindly. I started dating Soonyoung because I liked him, and not because I knew that he was the one who would be appearing in my future."

"But—" you start, and then stop. It takes a few replays of his words to let their meaning sink into your head.

"Hey," he continues, "if you think this is something worth going for—and by the way you've been moping around, it sure seems that way—then you should talk to him. See what he thinks."

Maybe Wonwoo is right, and part of you really wants to believe him, but you can't help but think that you should be using the information you have to your advantage. Surely, your ability has to be a blessing at some point, right? Isn't it a good thing to have put an end to your relationship with Mingyu now so that it wouldn't hurt even more later?

"You never know what could happen in the future." It's as if Wonwoo can hear your thoughts. "Maybe the future can change, or maybe the person in the reading really is you. There may be other people who can fit what you saw but that doesn't discount the possibility that it might be you."

"Yeah, yeah. All this talk is nice but that doesn't mean that Mingyu isn't just an asshole who's playing with you," Soonyoung stuffs a handful of popcorn in his boyfriend's mouth and turns to you with a serious look. "You need to think this through, okay? Do you really like him or do you just like the attention he gives you?"

"Y/N can't possibly fall for someone that easily, right?" comes out muffled from where Wonwoo is still trying to chew through the popcorn. He raises a brow at you.

"You'd be surprised." Soonyoung rolls his eyes then turns back to you. "Do you really like him or do you just like kissing him?"

You feel the full force of their scrutiny when Wonwoo also peers closely at you, searching your face for answers. Maybe the heat on your cheeks is enough to provide one.

"Do you really like him, or do you just enjoy fixing broken people?"

"Um—"

"Do you really like him or is he just hot?"

Wonwoo snorts. "By that standard, I'm quite surprised that Y/N never had a crush on you."

"They did—" Soonyoung quickly stops himself, but it's too late. Wonwoo's judging eyes are already on you, making you slowly sink into the couch and hoping you can disappear.

Not going to the party was a lie that you told Mingyu—an excuse so that you would have no reason to ever see him again. However, the problem is that scrapping the agreement hasn't only left you with a broken heart, but it also brought you back to square one: you still do not have a plus one for Minghao's party.

Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad though, or at least that's what you tell yourself.

From the outside, Minghao's house looks massive. He has fancy lights installed at every corner, lighting up the exterior walls every couple of feet, and giant windows through which you can already see people mingling about. Wonwoo pulls into the driveway slowly and turns back to give you a worried glance just before the three of you step out.

The interior of the house is just as impressive. A chandelier hangs in the front foyer, and symmetric spiral staircases spread off to either side. Minghao stands near the front, a drink in hand, and his shy smile is plastered all over his face as he greets everyone that walks in. He greets you with a hug.

"Congrats on your engagement," you say, taking in his new look while trying not to glance around the room. His hair is a bit longer than what he had back in college, and you don't recall ever seeing him wear anything remotely formal back then.

"Y/N, how long has it been?"

"Considering the last time I saw you was when you were single?" you laugh. "Yeah, it's been a while."

"It's good to see you again," Minghao grins and then goes to peer behind you. "Oh, is your boyfriend here too?"

"Um, he wasn't feeling very well so..." A lame excuse but it's the best you could come up with at the moment. "He couldn't make it."

"That's okay," Minghao's face falls for the briefest second before it lights up again. "Oh, you even brought the Soonyoung? What a rare sight." And then he goes off to wrap Soonyoung and Wonwoo in a big hug before dragging them off into the living room. At least he wouldn't be the one questioning you about your non-existent fake boyfriend tonight, though Minghao isn't who you should be worrying about.

You follow along, sticking to the walls in the hopes you'd be just as invisible as wallpaper. Even without seeing Junhui here, this is what you fear the most—being amongst your college crowd would bring back feelings you haven't touched in years. Feelings that you're not sure you want to ever unpack. But soon it gets a little easier when Minghao pulls you with him to greet everyone around the room, and so you catch up with Vernon and Seungkwan, and then later, you say hi to Chan and Jihoon.

It isn't until you reach the kitchen when you finally spot him. Junhui has his back turned to you, helping with preparations, and beside him, Seokmin greets you silently with a nod as your eyes meet. You smile at him, thankful that he's not alerting everyone of your presence especially when you know just how loud he can be.

Just before you turn to leave and make your escape, you see her. From far away, she's another face in the crowd, though you can feel a spark of familiarity as if you've seen her somewhere before. Perhaps in one of the readings that you've done over the years for clients? You've read somewhere that the brain never forgets faces, after all.

She greets you and then heads over to the kitchen.

"Hey, Junhui, right? It's so nice to finally meet you," she says, holding out a hand. Her voice seems just as familiar as her face, and now you're sure you've seen her before. "I'm Minghao's cousin."

When Junhui takes her hand, she smiles. It's a full smile that reveals her teeth, and her eyes disappear, and—

The drink you're holding falls to the floor.

It all rushes back to you. The reason why she's so familiar is because you've seen her in the scenes of the fateful reading you did years ago. You've seen her on an amusement park ride, with one hand in the air and the other in Junhui's. On a dancefloor at a wedding—that you now assume to be Minghao's—with arms wrapped around him and later, lips against his. And then there was this very moment where their handshake was interrupted by a glass of wine hitting the floor.

This is the moment they would meet. The one that you've been running from all those years ago, the one that would start everything between them.

This is how it happens.

"Are you okay?" She comes rushing to your side without missing a beat, paper towels in her hands. "Be careful of the glass."

You're frozen on the spot, unable to feel bad about dropping the glass and unable to help clean it up. Unable to feel anything except for the one thought that flashes through your mind: you have to get out of there as fast as you can.

Everything is a blur after that. Somehow your feet get moving, slowly at first and then quickly after that, and you hear your name being called a few times as you head to the door, but you don't stop until you're outside and halfway down the steps.

Outside it's quieter and the air is cooler, and it's enough to slow down the thoughts running through your head. You end up sitting on the steps and leaning against the cold metal of the railing in the hopes that it might numb your feelings.

"Y/N? You okay?" a voice mumbles above your ear. It's familiar for a different reason this time, and you look up to see the person you least expected but wanted the most. Mingyu steps out of the house and closes the door behind him, glancing at you with an unreadable expression. You hadn't seen him inside, but he must've arrived sometime after you—too late to be your date, and too early to miss your embarrassing moment.

"Mingyu? Why are you here? I told you I wasn't going to the party."

"I hate to break it to you, but it wasn't exactly a believable lie." He gives a weak smile then sits down beside you on the steps. "I wanted to make sure you'd be okay."

"I really should've stayed home. I knew this would be a bad idea but—" You quickly turn away to get rid of the tear that slips out.

"Hey, Y/N. Talk to me. What's wrong?" Mingyu takes off his jacket and wraps it around you, and then gently moves you until you're leaning against him, buried in the crook of his shoulder. "Was she who you saw in his future?"

"Yeah, but it's—it's not just that. This was the moment that I saw in his reading. This is how they meet."

He tenses slightly. "This was in your reading? That's tough. Y/N, I don't even know what to say. I'm sorry, I should've gotten here earlier to be here with you from the start like we planned."

"It's okay, it's not your fault. But Mingyu, what have I done? I broke up with him thinking that he would leave me for her one day, so I didn't want to find out if and when they would meet." You have to swallow the sob in your throat. "I've always held onto the hope that it would be wrong. But now, I got to witness it anyway, right in front of me."

"Do you regret your decision?"

"No." You shake your head. "Well, I don't know. I'm over him but I just—I hate it so much. I hate feeling like I'm helpless and unable to do anything about fate."

A silence stretches out between the two of you with only the music from the house and the distant rumble of cars filling the night. It hasn't been long since he sat down beside you, but the warmth of his arms around you and the rising and falling of his chest are enough to slowly wipe away the worries from earlier.

"Look, I thought about what you said," Mingyu breaks the silence, pulling away to meet your eyes instead, "and I don't think it changes anything."

You immediately know what he's referring to. "How does it not?"

He takes a deep breath. "You want to know why I don't believe in fortune telling? This is exactly why. I don't like the idea that we are locked into our fates, or that certain things will or won't happen no matter what choices we make."

"What about when you really meet them one day? And inevitably fall for them?"

"I get why you would be afraid of that, Y/N, I really do. But none of that matters. When I say I want to be with you, this is my choice. It doesn't matter who it is that you saw in your reading; I want to choose you and love you on purpose. Not by accident, and not by fate."

You know he's right and Wonwoo was too. This entire time, you've been trying to run away from a fate that you can't escape, and what you saw today only proves that.

But maybe now, it's time to stop running.

"Do you really think that we can change things?"

"We can do anything we want to do." Mingyu nods firmly. Then he takes your hand, squeezing you gently. "But first, let's get out of here?"

"Yeah." You smile for the first time that night and let him lead the way.

A small diner at the corner of the street near your place is what the two of you decide on. When you enter, the first thing you notice is how much it reminds you of the "before" images of that nice restaurant. Half of the diner is dark with the overhead lights flickering once in a while in an attempt to turn on, while the other half is cast in an unpleasant fluorescent light. There are pieces of garbage on the floor that an employee sweeps up as she greets you. In short, the state of it almost makes you want to walk right out.

But instead, you order your food. You sit down at a table towards the darker half of the room as you wait.

Mingyu clears his throat. "You know," he starts, a shy smile on his face, "I can read your palm too."

"What?" That isn't remotely close to anything you might expect him to say. You give him a questioning look as you put your hand on the table, palm up. "Um, sure. Go for it."

He takes your hand and then gently runs his fingers over the lines on your palm, tracing them as he closes his eyes and pretends to envision something the way you do. Soon, your confusion fades into amusement at the effort that he's putting into this. Each of his feather-like touches causes your heart to speed up a little, and you have to try to will your palms not to start sweating because that would not be attractive at all.

"So? What do you see?"

"Shh," he whispers with his eyes firmly shut. "The spirit is still talking."

You use the chance to really glance at him. Not much has changed since the last time you'd seen him, but somehow he looks even better now—perhaps healthier or more radiant, like he's completely healed from the remnants of a broken heart plaguing him before. Maybe even happier. You wonder if what Soonyoung said about you healing broken people is true.

"I saw a lot of things," Mingyu finally says as he opens his eyes, and his lips automatically curl into a smirk when he catches you staring. "First, I saw myself in your future."

"Yeah? What were we doing?"

"We went on a picnic and ended up getting chased by bees," he chuckles. "Then we went to a bookstore but ended up making out between the shelves, but we got kicked out by a tired employee who looked like it wasn't his first time kicking people out for doing that."

You stifle a laugh. "Why does it seem like our dates are always being interrupted?"

"Hmm, there was one where we had some peace, actually. It was when we were skating, and I fell right on my butt. Then you asked if it hurt when I fell for you—well, you tried to say it as a pickup line, but you messed it up." Mingyu pauses for a second, biting his lip like he's almost hesitant. "Instead, you ended up asking me if I've fallen for you."

"And? What did you say?" Your heart speeds up tenfold.

"I said yes, Y/N. I've fallen for you. I think you already knew it by the time I said it, but you just smiled. Then you suddenly fell too, and we laughed about it."

The way he says it with all the confidence in the world tells you that maybe it's okay for you to admit it too, that there's no need to be afraid to confront your feelings like you'd always done before. Now the insecurities that had been plaguing you suddenly fade away, leaving only one thing clear in your head: there would be no more running.

You break into a smile. "Then I said I fell for you too, right?"

"Yeah, you did." It takes a moment for the initial shock on his face to disappear, and when it does, he's smiling so widely that small crinkles appear near his eyes. "And if you want, I can show you how each of these scenes are supposed to happen."

"Okay, sure. Show me."

Mingyu lets out a loud exhale. "That's a relief. For a second I thought you were going to complain about everything the way I did with your reading."

"Hey—see? I'm nicer than you are." You shoot him a glare. "Who even does that?"

"Yeah, I'll admit that wasn't the greatest impression. Maybe we can start over?"

"Well," you pretend to think about it but can't help the smile creeping onto your face. "This is kind of a shitty place for a first date."

"Maybe our first date will be that picnic I saw in my reading then. But without the bees, yeah?"

You nod.

"Oh yeah, have your wounds healed? They didn't leave any scars, did they?" He lifts your hand to examine it carefully before taking your other hand as well, turning both of them over to look for the evidence of your wounds from the fall. Then he simply holds them.

And suddenly, it clicks into place. The small scars you'd seen on the hands in the vision, the dimness of the diner, and the blurred face of the lover. Everything seems to line up so perfectly that it has your head spinning for a moment with deja vu. Had it really been you in the vision?Was the lover not someone with your hairstyle, nor Mingyu's ex, but actually you yourself? And wasn't this moment at the diner—with your hands and the tiny, healing scars on them enveloped by Mingyu's—the first scene in the vision? Maybe this is how it happens. You really hope that this is how it happens.

You don't know whether you should tell him or not, but when you look up and see the small smile dancing on his lips and the sparkle in his eyes, you get the feeling that Mingyu already knows. And whether he's purposely trying to recreate the scene or whether he merely lets it occur, the gesture ignites a sort of warmth in your heart. It fuels the seed of hope that maybe, just maybe, you won't have to say goodbye one day.

It takes a couple of weeks for life to settle down after that. Between working your regular hours at the shop and then coming home to Soonyoung and Wonwoo's invasive questions, you also have to deal with the aftermath of Minghao's party. Which, surprisingly enough, is not as scary as you once might've thought.

Junhui is actually the one who reaches out to you first. He sends a text asking if you're okay after what happened, and you nearly jump at seeing the name flashing across your screen; admittedly, you never did end up deleting his contact info. And with a bit of encouragement from Mingyu, you end up not only texting back but also meeting him for a chat about everything that's happened since college.

He's grown up since you'd last seen him, but otherwise, he's still the same Junhui: quiet, smiley, and laughs easily at the things you say. Most of all, he doesn't resent you for what you did and rather understands. You're not sure if he says this because he's finally met who he's meant to be with, or whether he remembers the scenes at all, but you don't bring it up. You want to save him from going into this new relationship with any expectations, whether that be the failure or the success of it—something you only learned recently. Regardless of what happens, you hope he can be as happy with her as he was in all the scenes of his reading.

The weekend after that, the picnic date that Mingyu jokingly mentioned in his reading finally happens. Well, it's not exactly a picnic date since he switches it up at the last minute and the two of you end up going apple picking instead.

It's a beautiful day—the sun is shining brightly with no clouds to be seen—and it gives you a sense of relief when the past while has been so hectic. Mingyu picks you up at your apartment, and you rush out while ignoring your roommate's terrible advice and continuous questions about what you'd be doing and where you'd be going. Although even after you go downstairs, you're almost sure you can see Soonyoung peering from your seventh-floor balcony; knowing him, he's probably got binoculars out too to watch your every move.

"So what happened to the picnic date that you saw?"

Mingyu shrugs without missing a beat. "The reading changed, and I just went with what I saw."

"Oh, did it?" You give him a questioning look, but he only smiles back at you and doesn't give away any more information.

The drive to the orchard is slow with the busy traffic of the city around you, and you enjoy your time relaxing in your seat and listening to Mingyu talk about his week. He tells you about his new job and moving to new place and says that Seungcheol is a much better manager than his previous. And when he asks about meeting Soonyoung, you're ready to spill all the details about all of your roommate's silly antics—from avoiding baking because he didn't know to use oven mitts when taking things out of the oven, to setting an eight-hour timer every night in place of an alarm. There was also a time when Wonwoo had unknowingly poured salt into Soonyoung's coffee instead of sugar, and being the considerate boyfriend he is, Soonyoung drank it without so much as a grimace.

They are stories that have gotten old to you, yet Mingyu laughs like they're the funniest thing. The way he turns to you at each red light to simply look at you with a smile is enough to have your heart speeding up and your palms sweating. He takes you in like he's committing each moment to memory. Well, at least until the cars behind you start to honk impatiently when the light turns green.

It turns out that Mingyu does that a lot. During your time at the orchard, you could be saying something as you reach up to grab the apples, and he would just be staring at you as he listens intently.

"What?"

A nonchalant shrug. "Just appreciating the view."

"So tell me," you say, glancing at him up and down, "what's supposed to happen here? What did you see?"

"Hmm, we picked two bushels of apples."

"That's it?"

"Yeah," he confirms enthusiastically. "And they got quite heavy to carry."

"Oh."

"Were you expecting something more? Hmm?" A small smirk rests on his lips when he leans in a little closer. He's so close that you have your lips parted and eyes nearly shut, anticipating the feel of his soft lips on yours. But instead, he pulls back with an apple in his hand. "Found a good one right behind your head over there."

You roll your eyes, turning to leave so he doesn't see the embarrassment on your cheeks.

"Hey, I'm kidding. But if you want me to kiss me, you should just say so." He stops you from leaving, and this time he traps you in place with hands on the branches on either side of you. "I'm all yours, Y/N."

Then he finally closes the distance. You expect it to be like the last time, for hands to wander and for lips to consume you, but this time his lips are barely there. It's almost achingly slow the way he kisses you so tenderly, lighter than you thought possible, like a gentle breath against yours with the taste of apples lingering between you. His hands reach up to caress your jaw as if any more pressure would break this fragile moment, and then your senses are overwhelmed by sweetness. The sweetness of apples, the sweetness of Mingyu's lips and the warmth of his mouth, and the sweetness of the sun against your skin and breeze in your hair and voices floating over from a world away.

When you pull apart and open your eyes again, something about this suddenly triggers a memory. You thought the second scene of Mingyu's reading would take place at the market because the faint taste of apples in it reminded you of the cider at the market. But maybe the answer isn't the market at all, and rather an orchard. And maybe it is this particular moment.

Your heart races a little faster at the thought that it really could be it. You really could be Mingyu's lover from the visions.

"Oh, watch out." He steps aside, pulling you with him to avoid a bee flying by.

"Hey—I thought you said no bees?"

That gets you a laugh as Mingyu takes your hand and tugs you along. "Maybe it's good that it interrupted us."

And you simply smile, brushing off your thoughts and letting yourself enjoy the moment.

"I know you said he's hot, but I didn't expect him to actually," Soonyoung gestures, "be hot."

You turn away from the rink to shoot him a glare. "I am offended."

Initially, you thought Mingyu's idea for turning your skating date into a double date would go terribly. How were you supposed to let him meet the two friends who thought he was a creep? Especially Soonyoung—you were sure he'd make some crude comments that might entirely sabotage your budding relationship. But to your surprise, a charming smile and an offer to help lace up their skates is all it took for Mingyu to have them wrapped around his finger.

Pretty privilege, that's exactly what it is.

"Hey! I wasn't sure if you were serious or if you only found him hot because he gave you attention—" The rest of Soonyoung's words get cut off as he goes to dodge your punch. "Anyway, you're treating him well, right? Are you nicer to him than you are to me? Don't hurt him, okay? Don't break his heart."

"I can't believe you," you snort. "Whose side are you on?"

"I'm saying all of this for your sake, Y/N. We can't have you moping around like you did for the past few weeks."

You turn back to the ice and pretend you didn't hear him at all. Should you be laughing or crying in this situation? While you're glad your friends are getting along with Mingyu, it's all too ironic how a pretty face is all it takes for Soonyoung to go back on his words about not being so nice to hot people.

After Mingyu and Wonwoo finish up their laps around the rink, Mingyu comes back to drag you with him this time. You go, albeit reluctantly. The feeling of falling at the park was still too fresh in your mind, and so you skate with one hand in his while the other is grasping at anything to avoid a hard collision with the ice.

"You're not going to fall." Mingyu raises an eyebrow at you, eyes brimming with amusement. "I was only joking about that."

You glance at him warily. "You said that you would."

"Maybe, but only for you."

He smiles, and despite the anxiety that courses through your veins, you find yourself smiling too. Every step you take with Mingyu squeezing your hand reassuringly, you're able to relax like you're basking in the warmth that radiates off of his happiness, and slowly but steadily, the two of you make it safely around the rink without falling.

By the time you stop to take a break, Soonyoung and Wonwoo are nowhere to be seen. You scan the rink, trying to find the familiar faces amongst the larger afternoon crowd now, but your search is unsuccessful. What you find instead, strangely enough, is that people are suddenly gathering around on the opposite side. The rink seems to quiet down with a silence now lingering in the air as if everyone is waiting with bated breath, and in your curiosity, you pull Mingyu over with you to join the crowd.

And that's when you see it: Wonwoo on one knee, Soonyoung covering his mouth in shock, and a ring resting in the box in Wonwoo's hands. The same thin, silver ring that you've familiarized yourself with from seeing it in Soonyoung's future. This must be the exactmoment you saw.  

Soonyoung smiles brightly when he gives his answer that you're a little too far to hear, though you don't doubt it's a good one judging by the looks on their faces. The crowd erupts into applause and then Wonwoo is tackled to the ice by Soonyoung enveloping him, and two of them are lost in their own world, too busy to notice anything or anyone else.

"And this is how they fall for each other," Mingyu murmurs into your ear. "Guess my reading was wrong—it wasn't us. It's them."

Once the crowd dissipates, the two of you wait for the newly engaged couple by the bench. Soonyoung flashes the ring on his finger before heading to the snack bar, and while later, Wonwoo joins you with an endearing grin on his face.

"Wow, congrats!" You pull him into a hug as soon as he steps off the ice. "But why didn't you tell us? We could've helped you prepare for it, or we could've taken pictures or something."

"That was..." He lets out a loud exhale. "It wasn't supposed to happen like this. I was going to do it over dinner—I had one of those private rooms booked out at the restaurant and all. But the ring fell out of my pocket when I fell on the ice, and well. It landed right in front of him. So," he gives a wry smile, "I didn't really have a choice."

Mingyu pats him on the back reassuringly. "Hey, it's about the simple things. Love doesn't always have to be romantic."

You remember him saying these exact words from your first date at the restaurant but hearing them again now makes you wonder if you had it wrong this entire time. Maybe you've been focusing so much on making your reenactments romantic to match the scenes in the visions that you never realized the scenes are meant to happen anywhere. They're meant to happen in between the normalness of everyday life. They're simple acts of love, just as Mingyu always says.

Later when the four of you are sufficiently warmed up with hot drinks and laughter is in the air, you think you have it figured out. Each of these moments can easily be something that you witness in a reading, but maybe the point isn't to go out searching for them or to run away from them. Maybe it's to make choices that will create a future that you want—on purpose, and not by fate.

"What do you think, Y/N?" Mingyu pulls you out of your thoughts, gently wrapping an arm around your waist.

"What?"

"You can come over tonight," he suggests. "Since Soonyoung will be out all night anyway."

"Wait, are you sure? I don't want to intrude or—"

"Yeah, it's fine. Besides, you haven't seen my new place yet."

Your heart gives a loud thud at the thought of being alone with him again, all too reminded of what happened the last time. But you swallow the nerves away, put on a smile, and agree.

The two of you leave the couple to go to their fancy dinner as fiancés, and afterwards, you find your hand in Mingyu's as you head back to his place.

Right when you step into his apartment, you get the strangest thought that you're relievedto see nothing is set up. There are no fancy candles lining the room this time, no vase of beautiful flowers on the table, and no strings of sparkling lights hanging from above. Mingyu's place looks entirely normal, albeit slightly messier than before since it's clear he hasn't fully unpacked yet.

"Don't judge," he says, quickly going to collect the few pieces of clothing left in the living room while avoiding your gaze. "I just moved in recently."

It's a smaller space than his previous apartment, but much nicer—newer looking and without any cracks at the seams like there were in his previous. As if this were a fresh start for a fully healed heart, one that was ready to love again.

Mingyu cooks a nice dinner and as you try to help out in the kitchen, you start to think that you could really get used to this. Watching him add all the different ingredients and seeing the gears turn in his head, and then when you're seated at the table, feeling the smile lingering on your mouth until the last bite of the first proper meal you've had in a while. You think that maybe this is it.

And a while later, you're settled on the couch to watch a movie though it quickly fades into the background when the warmth of his body is pressed against yours. His lips are soft, mouth sweet from the wine, and all around you is the faint smell of oranges from his bodywash and a hint of citrusy detergent from his clothes clinging to your skin.

It has to be past midnight when the movie comes to an end, with the credits slowly fading out. Mingyu gets up to refill your glass of water and you follow him into the kitchen grab a snack when suddenly a blast of music comes from the other side of the wall. It's noticeably loud at first but is soon turned down into a quiet melody in the background.

Mingyu frowns, pausing to listen to the song. "These walls sure are thin, huh. It's generally been pretty quiet around here until now."

"You could probably Shazam their entire playlist like this," you joke. Or, well, maybe it's not so much of a joke when you feel like looking it up yourself because there is something familiar about the song. You can't quite place it, but it's so familiar that it almost bothers you like an itch you can't scratch.

The corner of his lip twitches. "It's okay, maybe they also have something to celebrate."

You're still thinking about why the song sounds so familiar when Mingyu gently takes your hands and guides them to the back of his neck, and then wraps his arms around your waist to pull you in. And when you look up, everything clicks. The familiar walls and familiar music, the snacks on the counter, the light scent of oranges from the bodywash, and even the clothes that you're wearing—Mingyu's clothes. This is the final scene you saw in your vision. This is how dancing in the kitchen at midnight is supposed to turn out.

"You're not going to step on my toes again, are you?" Mingyu's eyes twinkle with amusement as he slowly starts to move with the music, dragging you with him.

The two of you step and you sway, and it's not quite to the beat of the song. You do end up stepping on him, your knees bump a few times and your foreheads nearly do too. It's every bit as awkward as the first time you did this, and even more so without the blanket of darkness or the pretense of romance.

And yet, you hear the endless bubbles of laughter coming out of your mouth. You see the sparkles in Mingyu's eyes, the bright smiles like he can't contain his happiness. You feel it in the way you dance together at a rhythm that belongs to no one else but the two of you.

You know it when he leans in, breath but a whisper at your ear as he says, "Thank you for making me believe in love again."

Now you don't have to look into his future to know that all the scenes you'd seen were about you. Now you can picture it—Mingyu looking up from your laced hands on the table and seeing your smile, face no longer out of focus. Pulling away from your kiss in the orchard has you seeing your own gaze, surprised but content. And then there is this very moment when you see yourself in Mingyu's eyes and you just know.

This is how you fall in love.

[brucewaynehater101]

Didn't know who else to send this to, so suffer my brain rot, I guess ♡

Anyway I've been on a fake powers!Tim kick and just the idea of fake psychic/medium!Tim looking unrevealed!hood-jason in the helmet and telling him he'd personally fist fight the crime lords personal demons. Jason is just "child no???? Also how would you manage that??"

Turns out that second question really should have stayed inside the head because Tim just smiled serenely, and 2 hours later, the Joker had been brutally assaulted.

Also, Tim did this as Tim, not as Robin. Jason is now reevaluating litterally everything he was told about this prissy rich kid

Fudge. I love a good fake psychic!Tim AU.

Let's see... as far as fics, obviously we've got to recommend "cards on the table" by wesslan. It's a good Tim joins batfam late au.

Shit... There's another really good one where Tim pretends to be a psychic because he can't otherwise explain how he knows who the Bats are (he's afraid of going to jail or something). They even "train" his powers, lmao. I can't find it, though :(

EDIT: "psych you out" by lukewarmbeefstew. It's locked so you'll need an AO3 account

Anyways! Two AUs inspired by this idea:

First one: Psych inspired AU - Tim, instead of becoming the third Robin, opens up his own psychic detective agency. He utilizes his stalking, hacking, and sneaking skills to gain information on people and pretends all of this "came to him in a vision." He starts this agency a little before Jason dies. Therefore, Jason uses his services to find more info about his bio mom (cause he doesn't want Bruce to find out anything and the agency promises secrecy). Tim finds out all the crimes Shelia committed, passes that info to Jason, and unknowingly prevents his death. Jason and Bruce still have a falling out, but Jason just moves in with Dick instead. The Bats are trying to prove that he's lying about his capabilities, but they can't quite catch him yet.

Second one: Tim, as the Dick Grayson fan he is, doesn't want to implicate Dick by admitting that his Robin gave away their identities to nine year old Tim Drake. Therefore, he knocks on Bruce Wayne's door and tells him that his "vibes are rancid" and Tim's there to fix em. Tim ends up becoming Robin and spends the majority of his career ensuring anyone who can give away his non-psych status (e.g. Martian Manhunter, Raven, etc.) are not in the same room with Tim and a Bat. He also has to go out of his way to procure information via stalking without the Bats somehow figuring it out.

The second one fits the ask better! Tim in that one is unhinged and has a habit of speaking in what he calls his psychic mannerisms. He has to sound all mysterious and mystic and shit to sell the act, but he also ends up being blunt as hell. This is how he ends up telling Bruce that his aura is "like a kicked puppy Bat dipped in angst glitter sauce." No, he does not elaborate.

[zilabee]

Tony Bramwell on John

- People gravitated toward John

- John was okay, considered crazy maybe, but not violent. [...] “If you hang out with that John Lennon,” mums—including mine—would warn their sons, “you’ll get into trouble!”

- He was the rebel we longed to be.

- At a young age John saw and heard things that nobody else did. Voices in his head and faces reflected in mirrors would talk to him.

- He was a born leader, a wild, yet charismatic boy

- You never knew if he was telling the truth, and it didn’t much matter. He was simply mesmerizing.

- In later years when we grew close, John told me how he used to think he was going crazy. At home he said he would gaze into the mirror and ask when he would become rich and famous. “Soon John, soon,” the mirror would seductively reply.

- The visions were huge and all-encompassing and instilled in John the absolute conviction of his own greatness. He often said he was different from the rest of us—probably from another planet.

- I used to sometimes see him staring into the mirror in dressing rooms [...] the other lads would preen and fix their hair without thought, like we all did, but John would seem to go into a trance.

- He was like the Fonz before the Fonz existed.

- He could well have been psychic, or even the genius he was later thought to be, but to adults he was always just a pain in the arse

- He portrayed himself as a natural rebel, but I think he was quite unhappy

- In fact, you could never really get close to John. Even when he was talking to you there was always a sense of isolation

- There was something about the way John looked and stood and even walked that spelled sex and trouble

- he dressed like [the Teds], but didn’t live the life or fight the fights. He just walked the walk. They also despised the fact that he came from a middle-class home and went to a grammar school, while they were genuinely tough working-class navvys

- He was funny, as well as being irreverent and totally insecure

- Despite being a brilliant songwriter, John wasn’t as deep as people thought he was, but he was an original

- John was a notoriously lousy drinker. Two of anything was his limit, but he always demanded large Scotches and Coke.

- [John] was the first to start worrying about money. The more they had, the more he worried it would suddenly vanish

- People deferred to John because he looked the peacenik part. He was shortsighted and wore glasses, which made him look political and academic. He looked concerned. He probably was concerned. He looked deep, but he was not Socrates

[yandereunsolved]

ꨄ︎ Yandere Podcaster — Amos Emerie ꨄ︎

"Welcome to Holy Springs, darling!" I had a vision of you coming here. We must be destined to be together.

"Nice to meet you?"

"Oh, I'm Amos! I actually run a pretty successful podcast. You've probably heard of it before. It's called Yandere Unsolved."

"I listen to that every morning! How could I not recognize your voice? I'm so stupid."

"Me? You listen to me?" I think I just came.

"Yeah! I love how you delve into the unsolved murders supposedly committed by these deranged murderers."

Ow. I am not that deranged. I just love you a little too much. I wouldn't kill anyone unless I really needed to. It's against my moral code. Moral is a subjective word, after all!

"It's something I-I'm really interested in as well!"

Can they tell I'm sweating? I'm not sweating that much. It'll be fine. It'll be fine. They don't even notice. They just look so cute. They smell even better than my visions could have predicted. I wonder why type of—

"Amos! I have a question. Why does this place seem so barren?"

There are a bunch of entities, both good and evil, inhabiting this place. I'm getting to them before they get to you. I couldn't let anyone get to my precious darling. The rest better back off. I'll fuck up their bets if they don't. Steal some of their money. Yeah, totally. 

"This is just a cozy little town. It's usually not so quiet. I guess you just moved in here during a quiet day."

"That makes sense. Would you mind showing me to... one second... this location. It's where my apartment is. I normally wouldn't ask someone I just met, but my phone has been glitching since I got here, and I don't exactly have a psychical map I am able to use. I couldn't even find this town on the maps! I guess it's just because it's so tiny, haha."

Ugh, I know who that is. That demonic ass better not be trying to lay claim to you.

"I can show you there! Your apartment is actually right next to mine." It's just how I envisioned it. I just hope they aren't feeding right now. That ghoul always seems so ravenous for another meal. I couldn't let them get to you.

"What a strange coincidence!"

"Yeah—coincidence... Let's go!"

I'll protect you along the way and from the others.

You're already mine.

You just don't know it yet.

[thestrangesthell]

"Let's get married on your favourite holiday."

"Will you marry me on Halloween?"

"That's in two days!"

I re-watched Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (casually, this time) and ended up slowly descending down another theory stairwell.

Rory's pathetic proposal uncovers a previously-unknown (though unsurprising) fact about Lydia:

Halloween is her favourite holiday.

While this detail comes as a shock to absolutely no one, it triggered a brand-new headcanon to emergency land straight into my brain.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice could have been set at literally any time of year. The season has very little impact on the plot (with the exception of adding to the overall atmosphere and aesthetic). The main driving force is a few comedic gags with the Shrink Heads, Trick-or-Treaters and sets up the plot device for Astrid to fall head-first into Jeremy's trap.

Why does that matter?

Well, let's talk "psychic" connections.

Now, whether you believe Betelgeuse truly has a "psychic connection" with Lydia or not, it's fair to say the man is 100% spying on her.

Black and white motifs appear throughout the movie, insinuating a persistent presence of Betelgeuse. The first time we see this is during the Ghost House footage. A painting can be seen on the back wall and, in the night-vision camera, appears to be black and white stripes (or wiggles - if we're going to get really specific).

Again, we see black and white stripes on the man in the audience (whom Lydia "mistakes" for Betelgeuse) and later with the clown costume kid at Astrid's school.

Lydia also outrightly says:

"I feel this [his] presence."

There's not much more I can say here to convince you that Betelgeuse is an omni-present false protagonist.

The long and short of this point is that Betelgeuse is constantly checking up on Lydia. Whether it's to make her see him, sense him, miss him - it's all a part of his plan. The key thing is that he is able to do it.

Now, let's jump back to Rory's shit attempt at a proposal.

In this scene, Rory specifies Halloween is Lydia's favourite holiday. If we consider that fact that Betelgeuse is omni-present, he learns this too (although I'd place a lot of money on the fact he already knew and/or assumed this).

Now, let's jump in the line again, but this time, to the scene where Lydia summons Betelgeuse.

"I can't believe I'm doing this..."

After confirming that Lydia's daughter "is screwed," Betelgeuse bargains with Lydia for something in return in exchange for his help.

No where in this scene does Betelgeuse suggest or directly insinuate marriage. He simply asks for a way "to get away from her [Delores] permanently."

This could range from any number of things from Lydia's help putting a stop to Delores' plans to an outright exorcism.

It's Lydia who assumes that marriage is what he is after.

But look at him. He isn't going to complain. The man is delighted.

Anyway.

My point is that Betelgeuse must know that Lydia is engaged. Rather than make it awkward for her, he lets her make the call as to whether or not marriage is on the table.

Although I'm sure he also knows she's not exactly enthralled by the prospect of marrying Rory.

Now, let's cut to the wedding itself.

"If I don't do it now, I'm never gonna do it!"

I can't help but wonder, was Lydia talking about marriage in general, her marriage to Rory, or her marriage to Betelgeuse here.

(Side note: I headcanon that Lydia never got married. Not even to Richard. But that's a post for another day...)

After making make Rory make a fool of himself (say that three times fast), Betelgeuse sets the scene. He knows time isn't on their side, (yet still sings 90% of MacArthur Park like a lovesick idiot) and does some very specific things that round off my entire point:

He changes Lydia's original dress to something more of Lydia's taste. We know he was present while Lydia and Rory talked wedding plans in Charle's study, so we can assume he also saw what Rory ordered in from Soho.

He pulls out a lipsynch/floatation number à la Jump In The Line (which Lydia begs the Maitlands to do in the 1988 movie).

He gives her his literal heart.

And (most important to my point), he "crashes" Lydia and Rory's wedding to make sure it still takes place on her favourite holiday.

The wedding in Beetlejuice (1988) is as romantic as it is slow and steadily paced. That is to say, it's a complete shit show.

Betelgeuse is a manic mess of pleaseletmeoutintothelivingworldpleasepleaseplease and rushes everything in order to get his freedom. The idiot even forgets to have a ring at hand...or, ya know...finger.

Another sidenote: While I (personally) DO believe he has some type of strong feeling for Lydia in the first movie, he clearly wants his freedom more than a wife. He's been hurt by love before and literally snorts at the idea that he has to get married in order to get out "for good."

So...why is Halloween so important?

It's a day that's special and meaningful to Lydia.

And Betelgeuse is trying to make the wedding special and meaningful to her.

With a dress she would love, a song, floating in the air with her, calling her "one of the loves of my [his] life", taking it slow, throwing in a cheeky head spin to keep it strange and unusual - doing it all on Halloween.

He pulls out every single stop to make it as perfect as he possibly can.

Plus, if my headcanon that Lydia has never gotten married is true, the least Betelgeuse can do is embarrass Rory even further and make his attempt look even more pathetic.

So...yeah. Halloween was more than just a spooky setting. In my heart, anyway.

Happy Halloween 🎃

[cupidlovesastro]

𝒜𝓈𝓉𝓇𝑜𝓁𝑜𝑔𝓎 𝒜𝓈𝓉𝑒𝓇𝑜𝒾𝒹𝓈 #𝟤

⭐️general ideas, 20 asteroids mentioned in no particular order⭐️

❦ fama- being famous, where you can get famous, how you can gain fame

❦ karma- how people might’ve betrayed/ hurt you, and how it will come back to bite them

❦ kalliope / calliope- how your talented in writing, poetry, slam poetry, fictional writing, singing, the way you persuade people with words

❦ aura- seeing auras, the energy of give off, what aura you give off

❦ born- what you are born to do, specifically what you were born to do in this life

❦ nessus- trauma, abuse, negative transformations in relationships or it’s dynamic, revenge, manipulation, power, guilt

❦ orcus- broken promises, destruction, punishment, notoriety, intensity, extreme behavior

❦ icarus- mistakes, attempts at improvement and growth, falling and getting back up, risk taking, hope, liberation, taking good things too far

❦ house- places that could bring us comfort, settling down, moving in with a partner

❦ serendipity- miracles, pleasant surprises, unexpected blessing

❦ aphrodite- your beauty, your love, fertility, things you love, physical appeal

❦ castillo- security, where we feel strongest, where we may have walls up or feel defensive, parts of ourselves we protect

❦ fantasia- fantasies, things you fantasize about, how you create your fantasies into a reality, manifesting

❦ siren- your allure, what makes people attracted to you, the type of people you may often attract or be attracted to, what makes people fall blindly attracted to you

❦ link- strong connections, how we connect to them, how strong it is, what makes you connected

❦ union- marriage, how you come together with your partner, when you come together, what draws you to one another, what’s important between your relationship

❦ child- inner child, our innocent, purity, the little kid in us that we protect, tapping into our childlike spirit within us, the part of us that hasn’t grown up yet

❦ erda- psychic abilities, future vision, clairvoyance, seeing/ feeling energies

❦ lust- sexual awakening, intense desire, what you desire in someone, fetishes

❦ chaos- our evil temptations/ tendencies, our demons, the part of us that could lead to our ultimate ruin

[thewertsearch]

Ask Comp 07/09

Anonymous asked: also, thats pretty distinctly not vriskas handwriting (page 2196). the hell is terezi even talking about?

Terezi, for god's sake.

@manorinthewoods asked: I'd like to note that Pyralspite's eyes are either an eighth the brightness of Alternia's sun, or Pyralspite has the ability to psychically burn out people's eyes just by wanting to. Probably the former. ~LOSS (30/8/24)

I should have guessed that Vriska's cruel and unusual punishment for Terezi was yet another case of Mindfang Roleplay.

I think it's likely that Pyralspite does have some sort of ocular ability. After all, Terezi's lusus had a vision-based power, and she's probably Pyralspite's direct descendant.

@gogogoat495 asked: Say, what do you think of the reuse/mix of animation and music from Dave: Ascend to Seer: Ascend? Is it a simple callback or are there deeper parallels between the characters and story beats?

Well, they are both lead-ups to a climactic fight between 'siblings'. Other than that, though, I'm not really sure. Dave and Terezi have always got on very well, but I can't really see any direct parallels in their personal arcs.

@manorinthewoods asked: Mindfang's classism is ridiculous. This woman straight up said 'one of such middling 8lood' about someone literally one step below her on the ladder. If she were Tavros, she would be oppressing Aradia so hard. ~LOSS (29/8/24)

In Terezi's own words, she's 'a little too teal' to be considered a true highblood. I think there's a hard line of separation here, where anyone below Vriska's caste is considered a midblood at best.

In other words: to be a blueblood, you really need to be a blue-blood.

@manorinthewoods asked: Nepeta, whose handle is arsenicCatnip, uses arsenic's atomic number as a significant element of her quirk. This implies that arsenic has the same atomic number in Alternia as on Earth, which in turn means that, at the very least, the two universes likely share a periodic table. Odd, given how one has widespread psychic abilities and the other doesn't. ~LOSS (29/8/24)

I think it makes sense that Earth inherited some of its scientific concepts from Alternia. It wouldn't be the first thing we inherited!

@heliotropopause asked: TG: maybe if you kill her at least we can finally stop obsessing over her Hah! homestuck's been over for over for almost eight years now, and people are still doing vriscourse to this day. There is no escape, i'm afraid.

'Vriscourse' is kind of killing me. I'm kind of disappointed that this is my first time hearing the term, because I'd probably have been using it this whole time.

@probablyapineapple asked: im not completely caught up on reading this liveblog yet (currently up to s67) but i think youre on track to understanding these characters better than literally anyone

Well, thank you! I have, admittedly, posted some rather hot takes in the past, though. If I recall correctly, my Act 5 shipping chart was my most controversial post to date.

@bladekindeyewear asked: Back during these times in the comic, there were broad theoryposting camps advocating for both narrower and broader interpretations of Aspect domains/powers. I know you're avoiding as much outside influence as you can, but I'm wondering if maybe after the end of this Act, you could accept some community Theorydiving from around this time that could unlock more tools for you to understand hidden evidence for Aspect Stuff you might have missed? […]

I'm definitely considering something like that. Specifically, I'd love to take a look at some of the comic's early theories - ones that had already been disproven by this point in the comic. That'll allow me to get into the headspace of Homestuck's earliest theorists, without influencing my own as-yet-unproved theories.

@manorinthewoods asked: Perhaps an older Legislacerator's job is less actually trying to pursue justice, and more going through cargo cult-esque rhythms of justice, taking its trappings and trying to bring it about while having no understanding of what they're actually doing and what the meaning of their actions is. Maybe, like the Subjugglators, they're an entire social class/blood color based around a single cult? ~LOSS (28/8/24)

I think Dave was pretty on the mark when he described early legislacerators as bounty hunters. Maybe they assumed something marginally closer to an attorney's role in Alternia's modern age - but in Redglare's era, the ideal legislacerator was a violent thrill-seeker, more concerned with bloody combat than courtroom paperwork.

@violetsquare111 asked: I do wonder how big, exactly, is the multiverse in Homestuck. I guess that's a bit of a weird question if there are "infinite universes"… but infinite potential doesn't mean infinite already-existing universes, does it? For some reason I always thought of the amount of Sburb sessions/universes being fairly small, in the grand scheme of things. Less than a million, maybe. I really don't know where I got that from, and there's probably some throwaway line in the comic contradicting it, but if applicable then it's another possible explanation for how Perfect Jack would be one-of-a-kind.

It's not impossible. That would imply that the overwhelming majority of sessions are doomed to fail - but, honestly, they might be! After all, neither of the sessions we've seen so far have been unambiguously successful.

@iris-in-the-dark-world asked: i had a dream that you went from page 3703 to page 7053 in one day

You dreamt of Sally on Adderall.

@spiddermen asked: hihi i just caught up with your liveblog and im so happy to have a chance to reread hs along with you, the first time i read it was when i was like… twelve? so nine years ago? and pretty much all of it went over my head. but now im finally getting to appreciate this masterpiece and your observations are making a lot of stuff click for me as well. so its cool to finally get to understand how freaking good this story is and i cant wait to see you react to some of the crazy later stuff also i hope this doesnt trip the spoiler sensor but some of the answers to the questions you're asking are only answered in sequel material so i do really hope you'll read those, they're ignored by a lot of the fans but they're honestly really really good and i feel like you're the kind of person who would get the intended experience out of them. and psycholonials as well! everyone ignores it but it practically is homestuck (2) to me

Thank you! And yeah, we've talked a bit about this before. Cat and I had a discussion about the subject back in Act 3, and I'm well aware that this comic isn't going to answer all of my questions. Honestly, it would be pretty surprising if it did - I've been digging really deep into aspects of the comic that are clearly just meant to be background details.

As for whether I'll be dipping into Hussie's other projects, or Homestuck's non-canon material - I'm certainly going to check them out, but only time will tell whether they get the full liveblogging treatment. That said, if it addresses questions of mine that Homestuck itself doesn't elaborate on, consider my interests piqued.

@manorinthewoods submitted: I sorta skimmed Homestuck, and missed out on basically all of the Flashes going through, so I totally missed the fact that WQ wrote a romantic fanfic about herself, which is really funny. It does have a serious aspect, though - it implies something about her relationship with WK, no? I suspect they may be friendly with one another, but fate gives their relationship a bit of tragedy - as well as a bit of 'we are simultaneously both forced to be in a romantic relationship and also only being co-rulers'. Is WQ<3WK a thing? Doesn't have to be. I suspect it may be something like WQ<>WK […]

Plus, Carapacians are clones, so it's not like the Royals need to make any heirs. Really, they only need to be co-workers - but the idea that they might have a moirail-adjacent relationship is very cute.

Anonymous asked: Grimdark Rose: "Vengeance and rage are all I live for now, seeing my dead mother makes me feel nothing, I will-" John: Exists Rose: "OMG bestie hiiiiii" ~DJ

First Vriska, now Rose. It seems like John's the perfect calming influence for any out-of-control Light Player.

Anonymous asked: Not sure if you noticed, the tapestries about the kids' quests are all referencing the [S] pages with misattributed quotes associated with each kid (pages 82, 307, 444, and 2988). The quotes are, respectively, from Maxims by Francois de La Rochefoucauld, The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot, Drop It Like It's Hot by Snoop Dogg, and possibly an original piece by Hussie ending with a line from Hamlet. I don't think any of them mean anything.

The quotes might not be Hussie originals, but they definitely seem to evoke the kids' respective Quests. Dave's quote is a bit of an exception, though...

Anonymous asked: "They wait for he who would drop it while it's hot whilst the pimp's in the crib." I mean, you laugh NOW, but knowing Andrew and this comic, can you honestly say this won't end up having an incredibly important and literal meaning? @walkerbehindyou asked: Is there a quest more suited for Dave than to show up at his denizen’s (certainly the pimp of LOHAC) palace in the past and drop straight fire?

...but perhaps that means it's foreshadowing something we haven't seen yet. If Dave ends up making a Choice, I wouldn't put it past him to rap an answer to his Denizen.

@iris-in-the-dark-world asked: the soundtrack of the grimdark rose segment really gets to me. i'd highly recommend the first few songs of that album

Black Rose/Green Sun was a great song. It evoked a very different feeling than anything we've heard before, and really highlighted how alien Rose has become, now that she's been fully submerged in darkness.

@manorinthewoods asked: Ooh, here's an idea - when you do the Sahlee-and-Sally Let's Play, set it in an alternate Sburb that's based on all of your incorrect theories. Every Land has a God Tier Moon orbiting it, for instance. Would be really cool - your theoretical Sburb has a lot of super fun stuff in it. ~LOSS (12/8/24)

Oh, I like that idea. It means I can finally bring back the anti-Skaia, which is probably my favourite since-disproven theory.

Anonymous asked: I never realised that the pillow that Rose uses then is the one from her mum - well spotted :,(

A mother will do whatever is best for her children.

And a daughter will remember what was best about her mother.

Anonymous asked: So. Do you think that a Horrorterror-Boosted Rose has any chance against a First Guardian Prototyped Jack Noir? We've seen that if left alone Jack can destroy Entire Worlds and his teleporting is Nigh Instant, plus who knows how far he can go in a single teleport! […]

Dark Rose is arguably a God-Tier level threat, but we've just seen Jack one-shot a God Tier. I don't think she has a hope - there's only so many bullet-time stabbings she can take!

Anonymous asked: its really interesting to see you say that rose saying she felt mom was a sister and a mother at once made u feel like there must have been camraderie. for me, it reinforced the idea that moms parenting forced rose to act like a peer to mom when it came to her alcoholism? in the sense that moms alcoholism took her out of commission, and made it so that rose had to take care of herself in a lot of ways that a parent would, putting them on similar levels. So its interesting to see a different interpretation!

It's not impossible. To me, Rose's monologue reads as if she's trying to express her admiration of her mother. This is the first time she's admitted to having positive feelings for her guardian, and I think she's regretting that she never voiced these feelings to the woman herself, before it was too late.

That's just one reading of her words, though. I think her monologue here is meant to be ambiguous, just like the Lalonde mother-daughter relationship always was.

@manorinthewoods asked: Ooh, you're thinking of a Carapacian player, huh? That would be interesting - imagine if they go in with, like, complete knowledge of how Sburb works, so they prototype something super strong in order to buff the Ring that they then steal and equip. ~LOSS (12/8/24)

That would be interesting. Carapacians are the only species where the game can't fully compensate for the power of your race by buffing Underlings, since buffing the Underlings would also buff the Ring I'm abusing!

@skelekingfeddy asked: re: troll romance: i generally lean towards xenopsychology, mixed in with a secret 4th thing (humans can also feel troll romance), with a little dose of propaganda, and also an undercurrent of parody (because Hussie. everything has an undercurrent of parody (e.g. pretty much all the trolls are based on internet stereotypes). i COMPLETELY disagree with the notion that the quadrants are made up unhealthy bullshit. i think theres a genuine evolutionary biological origin for the quadrants if matespritship is all about Companionship, then kismesissitude is all about Competition, Rivalry, a drive to push yourself and make yourself better. both are generally healthy and beneficial in their own ways. the evolutionary basis for moirallegiance and auspisticism is the need for pacification, a better half, to prop up matespritships and kismesissitudes and keep them from being interfered with (as described in-comic). each quadrant is the result of a genuine primal, biological urge

I don't necessarily think the quadrants are fabricated, but I do think that the version of them that exists on Alternia are unhealthy more often than not, particularly when it comes to black romance. Monogamous auspisticism requires an overwhelming amount of emotional labor, all the kismesissitudes we've seen have been toxic at best, and there has to be a better way to do this.

Anonymous asked: My brother's been going through your liveblog recently and it's been fun getting to re-experience it through him, especially being reminded of all the theories you have that are shockingly accurate in very inaccurate ways. The two that come to mind are your theory that Jade was engineered in a lab (which, she kinda was, but that's not unique to her) and that John's version of Sburb is bugged (the meteors, it turns out, were a part of the game as it's meant to be played, but this whole 'tumour' thing sure isn't). Also, while I'm here, going to recommend checking out Temporal Shenanigans by Rachel Rose Mitchell, which is a gorgeous fansong about Aradia that shouldn't have any spoilsies at this point. I would also rec PhemieC's music with the caveat that many of their songs are spoilery - while most of the troll-specific ones should be alright, I'd definitely say to get someone else to go through them first to be certain. Hope you're doing well!! And I look forward to seeing more of your liveblog if and when you return to it! -Megido

Oh yeah, I was talking about how Jade was made in a lab! I'd totally forgotten about that theory.

You know, her Dreambot is actually interesting in retrospect. The bed that controls it looks suspiciously like a Quest Bed, which makes me wonder just how much Grandpa knew about Sburb's lore, and what exactly he was trying to do here.

Anonymous asked: I find it a bit funny (in good way) how aspects of your troll and human sona are kinda opposites, like life and death type of thing, sweet

Really, it's mostly just me hedging on my own Aspect. Plus, having two 'sonas lets me explore twice as much Sburb lore, allowing me to come up with two weapons, Lands, Title powers, and the like.

Within the hypothetical context of the fic, I've been thinking a lot about why there'd be two Sallys. Like, was one 'sona partially cloned from the other? If so, who was the original? Technically, the Alternian version would have existed 'first', but the existence of time travel ensures that that doesn't mean much.

@manorinthewoods asked: Rather appropriate that Rose's weapon is her Thorns. ~LOSS (10/8/24)

Ayyy!

@ipunchvampires asked: "You should understand [Rose has] been corrupted by various entities with some rather questionable motives," says Entity with Rather Questionable Motives corrupting her. Kind of the perfect Doc Scratch line, honestly.

Doc Scratch is an awful person, but he's still a funny fuck.

@heliotropopause asked: wait. is that *Guybrush Threepwood* in the boat there??? @elkian asked: At the risk of being the 88th person to say something, the troll in the dinghy is a Guybrush Threepwood cameo (using the more cartoony style from Curse Of Monkey Island etc.). Man's truly unfortunate, or maybe he's lucky for not being a focal character? XD Anonymous asked: that 'one random motherfucker on a little dinghy' is in fact, guybrush threepwood from the monkey island series, thrown in as an easter egg by one of the artists who made assets for the flash @sanctferum asked: the troll on the dinghy is Troll Gybrush Threepwood. the guest artist for that scene confirmed this on the now-defunct MSPA forums IIRC

Ahahaha. Mystery solved, I guess!

I've been wanting to play Monkey Island for some time - and now I need to, so that I can understand the true backstory of of GY'BRSH TRPWUD.

Anonymous asked: I love this section, because I think it really shows something about Dave (and Rose). Because Dave just says whatever pops into his head, when he's getting command prompts, he just repeats them uncritically. (That also supports that when he said he didn't love his Bro, it was his honest reaction) @ben-guy asked: David "Zero Filter" Strider was absolutely not ready to have thoughts beamed directly into his head by an exile lmao @krixwell asked: It's so funny to me how when thoughts are incepted into Dave's subconscious mind, they just come falling right back out his mouth at the first opportunity. Filter, what filter? Those sunglasses don't hide shit.

Reminds me of his stress-rambles from early on in the comic. The reason he wears those shades is, I think, because he is a naturally expressive person - he just doesn't want to be.

[secretress]

❝𝐏𝐀𝐂: 𝐁𝐚𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐢𝐜𝐬, 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐮𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐢𝐬 𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐝 𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞. 𝐈 𝐧𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐲 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐦𝐲 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐮𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐦𝐲 𝐛𝐚𝐜𝐤. 𝐌𝐲 𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐩. 𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐦𝐲 𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐠𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐬 𝐦𝐞 𝐬𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬. 𝐈’𝐦 𝐬𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐤𝐟𝐮𝐥 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦.❞

Are you balanced with your emotions and intuition? (Detailed)

YouTube | Masterlist

Tips | Paid Readings

Not a tarot card reading, only based on my intuition. I added advice and solutions.

18+ readings @enchantressiren

Pictures | divider

Pile 1

No.

I see you questioning if you have intuition or not; you question many things, and you’re a skeptical person. You don’t believe intuition is even a thing, and yet you read intuitive and tarot card readings for fun or to see if they are legit and work with your current life. I see that you are starting to believe it because you’re getting some signs and it is freaking you out. Some supernatural situations are happening to you, and some people mention things you said to others who do not know the person or that you thought about. You are having visions in your dreams as well, and if not, your dreams have signs you see in your waking life. I also see you having great intuition, but you brush it off, and when your intuition is right, it truly freaks you out.

Everyone has intuition or a gut feeling, but it’s our choice if we want to be in tune with it or brush it off. I believe intuition can be a scary thing because we are forced to believe certain things when they're not true. For example, we are taught to believe that psychics or mediums are crazy people; they lie, they’re frauds, and/or they’re out for money. And though some people may be doing it, not all of them. Because society has shaped us into something different, Intuition and gut feelings are unfamiliar and can feel frightening. You don’t need to brush it off, but you should learn to be in tune with it because it can also help you understand your emotions.

I can see that you aren’t inclined with your emotions either; you brush them off as well. I see you focusing on your logical mind the most because that’s how you survived as a child growing up. I see toxic relationships and environments in which you grew up. I see some of you are actually orphans or have grandparents or uncles as guardians. Bad relationships with your parents if you weren’t an orphan. I see most of you struggle with your father figure, and some of you deal/dealt with an alcoholic guardian, but father is what I see the most. Some of you don’t even have a father figure. I also see abusive and sexual abuse.

So with all of these types of traumas, trusting yourself is already hard enough, and now you’re trying to understand whether or not you have psychic abilities or not. I see some of you are actually getting visions of the future, even if it’s those small ones—where you take another path in a hallway and you brush it off as if it’s a daydream or nothing. But an hour later, you actually do it and change the routine.

What my intuition tells me is.. “you must follow your intuition, your gut feelings, and your psychic abilities. The more aligned you are with them, the more powerful you will become and get out of the hellhole or environmental space you are in. We don’t need to be stuck in one place, questioning who we are or if we are good enough. We can rise above it and realize how strong our potential is as people. I’m aware of how strong your psychic abilities are, but are you?”

So to summarize my intuition message, you have a lot of potential to get where you want. That dream life you crave so dearly but don’t know where to start. Sometimes you start, but then you automatically give up, like it’s too challenging. You cannot have the life you want if you aren’t aligned with your emotions, especially your intuition. Our intuition leads us to answers we didn’t think were possible. Of course, second-guessing yourself is bound to happen, but you shouldn't. Trust yourself. I know it is easier said than done, but that’s what I’m hearing. You should trust your intuition, and your emotions. Instead of relying on your logic, when you do that, you will go far in life.

Pile 2

Rocky middle.

I see you’re in tune with your emotions but not your intuition. It’s not that you don’t trust it, per se, it’s more like you mistake your emotions for your intuition and vice versa. Sometimes you have anxiety for no reason; you cannot figure out the reason why. Sometimes you will bite your nail, rip the skin off your nails, pluck your eyelashes, remove a scab, etc. because you cannot tell the difference. Random anxiety without reason, even when you cannot figure it out, is intuition. Your intuition is telling you something, but because you aren’t in tune with it, you don’t understand what’s going on, thus the anxiety.

Anxiety is a silly emotion, not because it's irrelevant, but because it blocks out your intuition perfectly. It is a very sneaky disorder, and sometimes people will get diagnosed with it, but they actually have intuition. And intuition can hide in the form of anxiety. Understood? Anxiety can be intuition, what you think intuition is can be anxiety.

The only way to figure out if it is your emotions or intuition is based on how you perceive things. For example, I am channeling your message for you; all of this is written based on my intuition. But at times, I want to write more channeled messages but cannot because it’s not meant to be and I’m just bored. I can’t work it out, because I base it on my feelings. In that moment, I want to do that because I feel bored. But when I'm bored, the messages are short and miss a lot of details. Whereas, I do it based on my intuition, you get a lot of things in your messages and a detailed one at it to get you on the path you desire.

This example is like your situation right now. You need to figure out how to balance your emotions for certain things and your gut feelings or intuition for others. Intuition for me is, I just know and I go along with it. Emotion, for me, has some doubts about it. You can try it like that or use inspiration from the way I do, but, I do have a message from my intuition. It should help.

“When you talk to the people you like, you start to feel anxious sometimes and zone out from the conversation. Of course, this is unintentional, but they don’t know that. You get lost in your own world when it’s really your anxiety or emotions eating you alive. Remove those thoughts and tell yourself you can control them because you can. You are the creator of your reality. Your intuition is your friend, even though you don’t want to hear things, it is there to help you. Don’t ridicule it and keep it in touch like a friend. You like to socialize at times, so why not do it with yourself? Are you not close to yourself, or do you prefer to surround yourself with others to block out all those messy feelings and emotions eating you alive? Why don’t you try to journal about your feelings, daydream, throw it out of a window, burn it in your daydream, or meditate? It surely should align you with your future goals and make you successful!”

Summary and explanation of my intuition thoughts, sometimes you zone out and you think you’re daydreaming, perhaps it’s to bury your feelings into a bottle, ignore them, or such, but by doing that, you're making it harder to understand your intuition and align yourself with your higher self or future self. Sometimes people get annoyed that you zone out and that they want your attention on them, and sometimes you tell them, but they don’t understand it, so you get frustrated and brush it off to keep the peace of the friendship. Either you feel bad, guilty, or act like you don’t care, but you do. Intuition tells me, “tell them you don’t like it and explain it to them in the way they do understand. If it fails, set a boundary and take social breaks with them. If they do not accept, they are not meant to be in your life.”

When it comes to anxiety eating you alive, change your thoughts into the way you want to be. For example, if you desire to have a positive mindset, change it to that. When a negative thought pops up, instead of ignoring it, suck it up with a vacuum in your mind and change it to “this won’t happen because they truly care about me, and i know it’s true because they always show it.”

Sometimes you hear negative things from your intuition, and you don’t like them, so you brush them off. Don’t. It’s a warning, and you must accustom yourself to it. It is there for your benefit and your benefit only.

I see some of you want to have your own business or be successful, but how can you be if you aren’t aligned with that part of you that wants YOU to succeed? How can you brush it off just because it doesn’t make sense to you per se or because it gives you information you don’t like when you know it’s true? How else did you find this pile and know it was right for you?

You can find techniques that help you learn to balance your spirituality and emotions; you can even talk to yourself if you don’t want to do the things my intuition suggests. All of this is up to you, but take my guidance the way you see fit.

Pile 3

Yes :).

You guys are fully connected to your emotions and your intuition. You guys see your emotions as something to be taken care of, like a fragile antique doll, whereas most people would just push them away and distract themselves, but when you see that happen with other people, you feel bothered. You feel bothered because you take care of your emotions, and you wonder why they don’t. I feel that the majority of you guys had a somewhat great childhood, and the rest of you guys had to pick yourself up, so then you also question why other people aren’t like you. But you must remember that human minds are complicated, and those people are not you; therefore, they don’t have the same luxury as you. It is the same with your intuition. You have come to terms with the fact that intuition is real and that every human being has it, but they must practice for it like you have. I am proud of you guys for coming to terms with intuition because I know that a lot of you struggled to believe in it or that you now trust yourself more than you have before. I’m getting a lot of competitive energy from you guys, but it’s not from other people. It’s with your past self. You want to prove to your past self that you were able to come to terms with both your emotions and your intuition, and you have done that now. So instead of competing with your past self, start to show gratitude to them, because without them, you wouldn’t have been here today with this. I know you guys are very in tune with your emotions, but I do want to point out that you must forgive yourself for your past and show more appreciation to them. I’m just getting this pain in my chest and stomach; it’s a pit feeling, like something is missing. There is something that you have been meaning to do, but you have not done it out of frustration, anger, blame, and fear. And because of this, you are starting to doubt your intuition and emotions because you cannot figure out what this thing is. But the thing is right in front of your face, but you guys have been distracted by wanting to go into the past and fix the situation. Don’t go into the past. Keep moving forward. We do things in our lives because, in that moment, we think it’s the right thing to do, and maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t, but what is done is done. And now you have to come to terms with the fact that it has been done because, let’s say you were to do the other thing you had in mind. How do you know that was the best choice for you? How do you know that it is going to give you what you desire as of now? You don’t know. Now, all you can do is strive forward and enjoy life as it is.

I’m getting some doubts right now about this pile. Some of you guys are wondering why I put yes, as in, you have balanced your intuition and your emotions. Well, my intuition told me you had mastered it to a high degree, but human emotions came into play. If I were to say yes, somewhat, you have mastered your emotions and intuition. I would be lying to you. People have doubts; I have doubts, and I do readings for you guys, but that does not mean I have not mastered my intuition; it just means it takes time to find out the solution to something. And that’s okay. And that’s also okay if you have doubts; it’s normal, and that does not mean you guys have not mastered it. It just means you need to take some time to think about what you were missing or what is a fact about you and to deal with it.

How can I deal with this? Well, my intuition tells me, “the thing you want to deal with is within you. You already know the answer to the outcome, but you push it away out of fear and anger. Anger is there to protect you. It is showing your inner child is hurting. Your fear is there to show you what it is that triggers you. You have guilt in your heart when it’s not necessary. It’s okay to show boundaries; you must accept that. You cannot be everyone’s best friend and make sure that they’re always secure with themselves when you cannot feel that way as of right now. Move along with them. They are not worth your time. If you believe that they will leave your life because you do not speak to them, you must fix your thoughts. You have mastered both your intuition and your emotions. Masters of different forms of art or science doubt their abilities. No one truly knows what the answer is until we get feedback, so why the heck are you doubting yourself? You cannot improve yourself as a person and grow even further, if you doubt yourself. I know the situation right now is very confusing, and you do not know what happened. But listen to it—listen to your intuition and your emotions. You already know the answer. You already figured out the answer, you have it with you, so why are you procrastinating?”

So what my intuition is saying is that fear is what is keeping you away from the solution. Fear can be hard to deal with, but sometimes it is important for us to go after that fear, and let it get away from our hearts. Fear comes in different forms, and right now, for you guys, it’s with your friends or connections that you are becoming attached to. It’s okay to be attached to things; it's human nature. I’m getting the feeling that you guys are feeling embarrassed to be attached to some people in your life because it has never happened for you or because you’re trying to heal from your last relationships. But intuition tells me that these are good people. These people are there to help you grow as a person, and you finally found your people who except you for you. Even when you make mistakes in your life or something embarrassing happens, they genuinely care for you, and that is hard to come by. If the feeling is still there, speak to them about it and explain how you feel, and they will help you with that fear. You know, it truly is okay to realize these people mean a lot to you, and you don’t want to ruin their friendship with your worries, but you’re not going to ruin anything. You’re actually going to make the friendship stronger. I know that sometimes when people have communicated with their friends about their feelings, their relationship has gone sour. But these people are like sweet candy; they look sweet on the outside and are sweet on the inside. You guys are so blessed to have good people in your life, and I am very glad to see so.

[baldurs-writers-3]

Rare Pairs 1: A Baldur's Gate 3 Fanfiction Rec List

This week, we have our first iteration of another recurring theme, Rare Pairs!

Rare Pairs are any romantic ships with less than 1000 fics to their name. This recurring theme is to help highlight ships that are often overlooked or buried beneath more popular ships.

Check under the cut for twelve excellent fics/series highlighting some wonderful yet overlooked ships, as well as a handful of unexpected yet intriguing ones! And as always, comment and kudos if you like them!

The cursed ships of Baldur's Gate by Amarilis_ancunin (100702, Explicit) Content Notes: Each fic has its own warnings, but some common ones include smut, dubious consent, canon-typical violence, and more. Pairings: Various, inclusive of Wulbren Bongle/Cazador Szarr, Barcus Wroot/Kar'niss, Lorroakan/Enver Gortash, Raphael/Vlaakith

This isn't just one fic: it's a whole series of wild, off the wall pairings that do not naturally come to mind but are absolutely delightful when they make it to the page.

Reccer says: Every single one of these pairings can fit the Kombucha Girl meme. At first oh-my-god, and at second look, oh-my-god-maybe? with the added joy of the writing being lovely to read and actual plot behind the smut.

Surround Sound by Irken (68,140 , Mature) Content Notes: hurt/comfort Pairings: The Emperor/Illithid Tav

This is a post-game series of vignettes about Tav learning how to be a proper illithid and the Emperor learning that he doesn't need to be such a guarded, self-sufficient loner. It's fluffy slice-of-life with a loose power-of-friendship-&-love plot about the pair rebuilding the city while helping their companions get their happy endings, too.

Reccer says: I wrote this! :'3 It's my baby. It's largely fluff, and I've been told that it 'brings joy' and 'feels like a warm hug.' So, if you like squids and want something to cheer you up, maybe give it a look~

Eat your eyes, your visions, your goals, your hunger. (Drink your blood, your breadth, your mettle.) by martyrologics (4,651, Mature) Content Notes: None Pairings: The Absolute/The Dark Urge

Trippy, mindmelding, Absolute/The Dark Urge smut, in like, the best kind of way.

Reccer says: The author's prose is gorgeous--you'll want to eat it. The descriptions of the brain becoming the Absolute becoming the Netherbrain, and its obsession with the Dark Urge are as purple as they come and it is a psychic maelstrom of awesomeness.

Learning to be Free by CobaltCactus (103,256, Explicit) Content Notes: None Pairings: Lae'zel/Shadowheart

Lae'zel and Shadowheart have been through HELL together and come out the other side way more than friends. Read along as they come to terms with losing large parts of their self-identities, gaining each other, and their experience in building a healthy relationship. The story also explores the consequences of their adventures together!

Reccer says: I love the balance between the various painful elements of their post game life and the tooth-rotting fluff of them getting to love each other! It's all just very well done!

Where Beauty Moves and Wit Delights by rainbowBarnacle (5776, Mature) Content Notes: None Pairings: Astarion/Karlach

An alternative take on what Karlach and Astarion could have gotten up to at the Tiefling party... who needs to touch to be naughty?

Reccer says: It seems like such an easy solution!! Good Karlach POV too, seeing how she starts wondering about this weird little fancy-vamp.

Before The First Light (Some Bright Morning Comes) by tinybabydeer (11191, Explicit) Content Notes: None Pairings: Halsin/Wyll

A nice, slow build exploration of how badly Wyll needs someone like Halsin to help him improve his self worth, even if he didn't expect it

Reccer says: The character voices are spot on and the prose is excellent. I didn't expect to enjoy this ship but this fic 100% changed my mind

On the Properties of Tea and Its Effects Upon Various Beings, Humanoid and Otherwise by Neila_Nuruodo (8619, Mature) Content Notes: None Pairings: Blurg/Omeluum

Blurg has finally found a place for himself in the world. While a hobgoblin running an apothecary might sound like a mere curiosity, he prides himself on the efficacy of his remedies. When the shop next to his, long vacant, is finally rented, he is naturally curious who might have rented it and what plans they have for the space. He certainly didn't expect it to be an illithid.

Reccer says: Its such a cute and fun little AU. Omeluum opens a tea shop and Blurg operates a shop next door and they get to meet and slowly fall in love and I just love it

Petals of Blood by DarkLordJordan (5855, Teen) Content Notes: Hanahaki Disease, Body Horror, Suicidal Thoughts Pairings: Astarion/Halsin

Astarion falls prey to Hanahaki disease, and obviously refuses to tell anyone, least of all Halsin, about it. But hey, don't worry. He can't suffocate on the flowers anyway so its fine!

Reccer says: Excellent hurt/comfort and a fun exploration of the trope

when flames die by fingonsradharp (5502, Teen) Content Notes: Temporary Character Death Pairings: Karlach/Wyll

Karlach falls in battle, Wyll does not feel very good about that at all, and the party meets Withers

Reccer says: I love the early party characterizations and the drama of everyone trying to fathom Withers as a concept

Pale Elf Needs Food, Badly! by Gally (12,434, Mature) Content Notes: Canon-Typical Violence Pairings: Astarion/Karlach

What if Balthazar could to zap away Astarion’s energy reserves and thus he instantly felt as if he had not eaten for months? What then? How do you quickly feed a vampire who is so ravenous that even the vampire is saying it's not safe to let him bite? Well, Astarion instantly pretty much assumes he's about to be staked as he has to be more trouble than he's worth now, right? Don't worry, Mama K is here! and these other guys too. Time to figure it out!

Reccer says: Love the characterizations and the whump is absolutely delectable

Meeting the parents is stressful, isn't it by SpiffyVaxildan (1740, Teen) Content Notes: None Pairings: The Dark Urge/Shadowheart

Set about a year after the defeat of the Netherbrain above Baldur's Gate, Hope has been slowly regaining her memories of childhood from before her Bhaal blood took over. She remembers her foster parents and wants to visit their grave. Shadowheart comes along for moral support.

Reccer says: A short and sweet fic set post game. I don't see a lot of durge/shadowheart so this was a treat. The author has a fun writing style and I'm always a sucker for funny love confessions.

Liar's Embrace by MoisopolonOikia (3671, Explicit) Content Notes: None Pairings: Florrick/Mizora

In which Lady Mizora goes to visit her favorite counsellor to apologize for the political fuss she may have caused.

Reccer says: A rare pair indeed! Come get your toxic lesbians (affectionate)! This fic was so fun and so well written, the pair I didn't know I needed until I read this.

The above fanfic recommendations were pulled from our community for this weekly event. Have any questions about what this is? Check out the FAQ!

Next week, we’ll be back with a very timely theme, Horror!

[heckcareoxytwit]

The flashback shows angry mob storming over to the castle. Destiny sends Mystique to flee into the forest with the baby. Mystique leaves baby Kurt at the tree and rushes back to the castle as she worries over Destiny's safety. However, by the time she got there, Destiny is gone in the bedroom along with baby Kurt in the forest. (Though little did Mystique know that baby Kurt may have been taken away by Margali Szardos the sorceress who acted as a psychic of the carnival.) The disappearance of baby Kurt left Mystique screaming in agony. Back to the present, Kurt Wagner tries to comfort Mystique but she dismisses him as she had not finished her story yet. Mystique recounts that since the disappearance of the baby, she blamed Destiny for the misfortune. Destiny persuades her that even though their baby is lost, they could try to adopt another child to make up for their loss. Thus, Mystique and Destiny had adopted little Anna Marie (a.k.a Rogue). Destiny also told Mystique about her vision that Azazel might become a powerful enemy but only their son might be destined to defeat him. Mystique doesn't believe her wife and tries to strangle her for bringing up the topic of their missing son.

Then, Mystique and Destiny consulted with Professor Charles Xavier about their problems. In order to prevent Mystique from hurting/killing her wife, Charles Xavier alters the minds of Mystique and Destiny with their permission so that Mystique could forget about the missing child. Back to the present, Mystique is horrified when she realizes her mind compensated for the holes in her memories after Xavier altered them by leaving her to believe she abandoned Kurt as a baby to save her own skin, which led to her spending years resenting him when the truth is she loved him dearly and didn't want to give him up. Upon learning the truth, Kurt Wagner realizes that his mother still loved him despite all the misgivings so he comforts her with a hug.

X-Men Blue: Origins #1, 2023

[ancientgoddessofegypt]

8th House Placements : Astro Observations

The passion, the secrets, the occult, and the dire need to be with one another can be strong in this house. The 8th house is a special house where all things dark can be brought to the light on a regular day to day basis. With just yourself, it can be powerful yet vulnerable. Dark yet sexy, chaotic but somehow controllable. Its a pretty interesting house.

HOUSE PLACEMENTS:

Neptune in the 8th house can go through loads of spiritual transformations with their vision/third eye. Like the veil is super thin with them already, however with time they go through a process where it becomes the norm to see pretty strange things. Dreams are always on 10, and theres always a message about secrets/occult knowledge in them from time to time. They could learn things they shouldn't know about people in this house through the process of astral travel & dreams. psychic abilities are usually being an oracle, a seer or medium.

Uranus 8th house can get loads of insight in the most craziest circumstances. Near death experiences can happen but isn't always likely. If this does happen however, they can have extreme eureka moments. Life flashing before their guys and seeing their future. They could suddenly see different ways on how to shift realities. These people may have dreams of quantum leaping, seeing themselves in different dimensions and having experiences where it may feel like 'it didnt happen' to others so they'll keep quiet about it.

Moon in the 8th house individuals can have extreme psychological warfare if they do not come to terms with their shadow. It is a lot harder for these individuals at times however it will become their biggest strength if they look deeper into the subconscious/unconscious for any traumas that need healing.

Sun In the 8th house is truly secretive like no other. With this placement it allows them to be mysterious even when they are opening up to people because their aura is normally shielded from other peoples. This is a natural thing that they do and its not something id say they can really turn off. Their personal power comes from shedding light on the dark things in their reality and this truly scares others with the things they know.

Sun in the 8th house are the children of the underworld, so whatever is chaotic and 'scary' to some its what makes them unique. Truly some interesting people when you meet them.

They dont care to show off as much but still have huge fan bases, lovers, crushes, etc that want to know everything about them. May show you just a DROP of whats going on in their life however it can seem like you know them from that small little detail. ;)

Moon in the 8th house have powerful personas, can sense information from just being in the room. If they're too open to this gift they may start to go crazy a little, because it can be too much information at once. Like an empath (which most are) it can start to be overwhelming to them. This is another way the psychological warfare can happen, taking in too many energies at once from other people while always dealing with the things their currently going through.

Venus and Mars in the 8th House can have loads of jealous people around them, so they'll be pretty closed off from time to time. Once they let someone in its like the person gets crazy obsessed with them. Eventually they start to realize people want to be around them so they can figure them out and see whats so mysterious about them. So another reason why they'll end up being secretive because no one truly wants to know them, just want to experience them to get more information.

Venus in the 8th house can have mimickers trying to play their persona and it truly doesnt work the way they think it does. Can sense when someone is off right away, Mars in the 8th might question for a little but eventually they'll figure out something was off about them'.

Venus in the 8th house individuals can be enticing to be around, their sensual energy exudes to high levels and can make people obsessed with them for a while. They could have a whole fan base just off their personalities alone. Materialistic pleasures can come easily to them if they let go of the need to do everything on their own, its easy to succumb to doing things yourself since people have tried to use you and take power over you from just giving you things. So it makes sense why they would rather be independent than to let others give them things especially money. Could have older partners who can help them achieve a certain lifestyle.