#your tag is just your name but in capital letters

[azullumi]

“affection weaves into the letters on your screen” ; aventurine and ratio

premise — messages and calls between you and him.

content tags — w/ gender-neutral reader, established relationship, fluff, texts and messages, not proofread, 0.8k ; headcanons

note — i needed something easy and nice because everything has been too stressful

If there’s one constant thing about AVENTURINE is that he is an avid fan of messaging, texting, or whatever the proper term for that is. No matter where he is and what he’s doing, he’ll always find the time to type in a message for you and press send—it could be about anything, from the random thing he’ll see while he’s walking which he thinks you’ll be interested in to how his day is going and possibly, ranting about it. The only time he’ll be inactive is when he’s in the middle of something, like completely and utterly busy that he couldn’t pick up his phone to check up on you or update you on what he’s doing.

Would use the most out of everything; calls, voice messages, attachments, everything. He’ll use stickers whenever he can and would use those silly emoticons because why not? He’s very expressive overall; it’s like you can hear his voice, see his expression, and the gestures he’ll do over the screen. 

PHOTOS !! There are new ones added to the shared gallery of your conversations with him every single day. He sees something cool? He takes a photo. He’s currently having a meal? No questions asked, he’ll take a photo. The critters are in this silly position? The camera is pointed at them already and the image of them in a circle while seemingly discussing something is sent. He’ll send selfies of himself throughout the day and he’s the type to pose with random things; there was a time he sent you a photo of himself holding a potted plant (he said it was an addition to his office and he thought you should know). It’s ridiculous, you may say, but he can’t contain the smile on his face when you send a photo back.

Occasionally, it’s videos that he sends.

It’s the late night calls and messages. Aventurine has sleeping problems, struggling to fall or stay asleep no matter how much he physically exhausts himself, so when worse comes to worst and it’s already midnight yet there’s no ounce of anything that makes his eyes heavy, he’ll message you—asking if you’re still awake and if you’re doing anything. It’s your voice that guides him to his dreams, gentle and delicate as a lullaby; by then, you’ll receive no response from him as you call for his name and you’ll have to whisper to him goodnight as he sleeps.

BONUS : on the topic of calls, he likes spending time with you in silence as you do your own thing while he also does his own. Your presence is enough to comfort him and keep him grounded.

VERITAS RATIO is not much of a texter and if he does send you a message, it’s mostly about engineering designs for a machine, requesting that you give him a set of questions if he needs something to simulate his weary brain, sending you links to a sign-up form for a debate that is occuring, or proposals for a certain project as he asks for your input. There are times you’ll find yourself debating with him—all just casual and he won’t throw a chalk at you. However, the line of your conversation between you and him is short and is separated by intervals; he just prefers talking in person or over calls. 

He’s probably the fastest typer you know but he rarely ever makes typos, like ever. He types strictly and formally with proper capitalization and punctuations with the mixture of the words that would require you to bring out a dictionary to understand, always starting his sentence with an uppercase and ending it with a period. It feels like you’re having a corporate or business meeting whenever you’re talking to him due to how formal he is over text (you can probably hear his voice whenever you read his messages too).

“DRYEST TEXTER IN THE UNIVERSE EVER” some would say and maybe you too, however, there are traces of sweetness and affection in your (short) conversations with him. He’s the one to greet you first in the morning, so expect that the moment the sun has risen, there’s a message notification from him displayed on the screen on your phone—the time you’ll rise from your bed, your sleeping and wake-up patterns are embedded in his mind and he ensures that you always wake up with a good morning. 

In note with that, sometimes, you’ll find yourself wondering if he even thinks of you, if you occasionally appear inside his mind and distract him from his work—doubt begins to muddle your thoughts. However, you must remember that he’ll always send you reminders throughout the day, telling you of the agenda you have planned for the afternoon which you told him once or twice the day before, reminding you to finish this task you’ve been procrastinating on, or just simply telling you to take a break or to eat something (especially when he knows that you don’t take care of yourself).

Be kind to yourself, will you? He looks out for you and cares for you a lot even if you may think otherwise.

EXTRA : doesn’t call and is not exactly a fan of it, however, if his phone were to ring and he sees it’s you calling for him, he wouldn’t hesitate to answer it.

tagging the one and only amazing and lovely @toorurs 🗣️ first of all, i’m sorry that i haven’t replied to your tiktoks when i told you i will (plsdonthateme) and second, i actually dont have a second thing to say. anywaysss!! i think we’ve both been busy these days or maybe it’s just me (sorry finals are approaching) but do know that no matter what happens i still treasure and love you as a friend ‼️ i saw this one plant in our trip yesterday and i remembered you i dont know why i think it’s because it was pretty and the color reminded me of you 🫶🏼 but yeah, keep on doing amazing things and amazing works (DONT DIE FELI THE WORLD WILL LOSE AN ANGEL) !! you’ve become one of my most favorite people ever and remember that i will always be here for youu mwa

© azullumi — do not plagiarize, copy, repost, nor translate any of my works.

[arecaceae175]

Hello! I noticed that some of your fics on Ao3 are tagged "Screen Reader Friendly," and I wondered what makes a fic screen reader friendly. Is it just about formatting, or does content matter too?

Hi, thank you so much for asking this question!!! Disclaimer I am not visually impaired so all of this information I have learned by seeing blind or visually impaired people talk about this issue.

It’s primarily formatting! I’ll list everything I do to try to make my fics accessible here.

Line breaks!!! Use the ao3 line break code instead of adding a bunch of symbols. This is the biggest thing I had to change once I realized my fics were not screen reader friendly.

HOWEVER some screen readers won’t pick up on the horizontal line, either. Another good option is to use a short series of symbols, for example: “~~” or “- - -“

Basically, just don’t use more than three symbols in a row. I used to use “~~~/\~~~” with a delta symbol in the middle to look like the triforce, but a screen reader would see that and say “asterisk asterisk asterisk delta asterisk asterisk asterisk” which is pretty annoying lol

Most screen readers don’t differentiate between regular text and bold/italics. It’s fine to have those in your story, but if the bold/italics significantly changes the plot or the implications of a sentence then it is not screen reader friendly

Screen readers can’t describe a line break that is just an empty space. For example, in one of my fics I have a character reading a note, and I have an extra ‘return button’ space before and after the note to make the note distinct from the rest of the text. To make that fic more screen reader friendly, instead of just an empty space, I wrote “[Line Break]”. That way, a screen reader can say “line break”, and readers still recognize it as a line break

If you have any sort of chat fic (AND this goes for hashtags on tumblr too!) with screen names, be sure to distinguish the separate words in the screen name. You can do this with by capitalizing the first letter of each word like this “ScreenNameHere” or with dashes in between each word “screen-name-here”. That helps screen readers and also people with things like dyslexia who have trouble distinguishing words if they aren’t capitalized or separated in some way.

Screen readers can read image emojis like this smiley face 😁 because they have embedded alt text, but they can’t read text emojis as an emoji, like this one “:D”. If you use any of those in your fic, add a description like this: “ :D [Image description: text emoji of a smiley face with a big, open mouthed smile. End description].”

Also, this one doesn’t have to do with a screen reader, but if you have an image embedded in your story, keep these things in mind:

Be sure to describe the image so anyone who is blind or visually impaired can still experience the image. I don’t think it’s possible to add alt text to the actual image, so I usually put this below the image: “[Image ID: description of the image. Note the important details, but be as concise as you can. /End ID]”. Including the image description instead of some sort of alt text is good for DeafBlind people who can’t see the image well enough but don’t use a screen reader.

Some blind or visually impaired people don’t use a screen reader and instead zoom in on the text. If an image is embedded in the story, be sure it is sized correctly. If it isn’t, it can make scrolling sideways to read zoomed in text more difficult because it makes the webpage much wider than the text itself.

Not all my fics have the screen reader friendly tag because 1. There might be a few I haven’t updated yet, and 2. I didn’t include the tag on fics that have weird formatting or are accent heavy. For example, in Kinship I wrote Twilight’s dialogue to represent his strong accent, and those kinds of things with apostrophes and half-words don’t come through well with a screen reader.

I personally don’t think it’s good practice to include a ton of apostrophes or shortened words to distinguish an accent. Even for people not using screen readers, it’s hard to read. For me, if I see a fic with things like that, I won’t read it. Maybe try having a few words that the character’s accent comes through on, or write something about their heavy accent outside of the dialogue.

The “Screen Reader Friendly” tag isn’t an officially recognized AO3 tag yet, but the more people who use it, the sooner it will be!

Those are all the things I can think of right now. If anyone has any other tips to add, please do so!!

[doromoni]

Clash of Champions | LH44 , MV1

Act 1. Part 1 : Glorious Past

Ships : Lewis Hamilton x Engineer! Reader , Max Verstappen x Engineer! Reader (future)

Genre : Drama , Angst , Romance

Warnings : Morally grey! Reader

Summary : The rivalry between the titans of Formula 1 goes off track and only one will reign victorious.

<Prelude Next>

Mercedes Amg Petronas F1 team: Race Engineer, a title that you will forever embellish in your CV proudly. How many can say that their name will forever be attached to the glory and dominance of silver, black, and blue? The name Y/N L/N will forever be remembered in and out of the paddock as the voice that led a Mercedes driver to his heroic reign of victory.

But the journey to the top was not rainbows and sunshine, No. Moral compasses and integrities were bent more than once. No one understood how much you’ve bled to reach the top. Each cut deeper than the rest. Not one person knew except for one, He understood because he bled much worse. Lewis Hamilton.

Lewis was your life. In and off track , you cannot deny it and you prefer it that way. You were attracted to him, how can you not? His passion for greatness, his drive toward power, and the way he always gets what he wants.

However, no matter how much you wanted Lewis. You were bound to Mercedes’ regulations — with the no driver relationships clause in Red Bold Capital Letters, staring back at you. That and that he was already in a long-term relationship. And with that, you buried your feelings where no one would know. At least that was the plan.

But Lewis being Lewis, never made it easy for anyone and you were on the top of his list. It was all innocent at first but it quickly evolved as your time together lengthened.

Complicated was shy of describing what your relationship with the English driver was. It started with light teasing on onboard radio calls for all of the worlds to hear ,lingering touches in the garage when toto was not looking and the incredulously expensive gifts given without reason — tagged and penned in Lewis’ penmanship that wrote “ for MY race engineer for being a good girl and doing a good job”

But all hell broke loose on the night Lewis won his first Championship with Mercedes.

The chequered flag was waved and Lewis had been the first to cross the line and deafening cheers erupted all over the Mercedes Garage. The smile on you was gigantic and a breath of relief left your lungs, while your co-engineers shook your shoulders back and forth as they shouted at each other.

“Lewis Hamilton, You are the World Champion!!” You exclaimed in your mic to congratulate your driver.

Lewis’ melodic laugh filled your ears and the next words you heard stopped your earth from spinning

“Y/N L/N, I fucking love you! I can't…” Lewis was not done talking, but you cannot process anything else. He said he loved you. Did he mean it? Or was it just a figure of speech?

Lewis didn’t mean it that way, right? You were mistaken. Yeah… you were. I mean, he was in a relationship, he had Nicole.

Clearing your throat, acting as if nothing happened. You once again radioed

“Congrats, Champ! Get in there” And with that, you removed your headphones and started to proceed toward the nearest restroom to compose yourself. But the world had other plans.

Still dazed you were almost near the exit when the voice of your boss stopped you in your tracks.

“Y/N? Where are you going? You need to be at the podium and get the constructor’s cup” Toto said as he went near you. Not allowing you to oppose as he gently held your shoulders and maneuvered you toward the podium.

And just like that you were led towards where Lewis, Felipe and Valterri were behind the podium as they waited to be called out. As you neared, your eye naturally drifted towards Lewis and a smile uncontrollably spread on your face.

Not until Lewis charged towards you lifting you off your feet and twirling you around. Your initial shock turned to giggles as you patted Lewis’s shoulders signaling him to stop and to put you down.

He heads your plea and finally puts you down but not long after pulling you in a tight hug that brought butterflies to your stomach. His hand placement was a little too much for friends and way too much for colleagues. Lewis pulls back a little and gazes at your face with a soft smile.

“My little engineer, I’m so glad you’re mine” He muttered as He once again hugged you, placing his head on the crook of your neck. Another wave of confusion and questions filled your head. You were about to question Lewis on what he meant by that, but you were cut by the announcer calling Lewis towards the podium.

You were left alone to your thoughts, but once again you were not granted peace when you felt a soft nudge and an instruction for you to go to the podium and claim the constructor’s trophy.

the playing of the British and German anthems ensued to commemorate your Team as the winners of the race, but honestly, your mind was still muddled however you tried not to show it on your face. And at the last note of the German national anthem, like clockwork chaos filled the podium as non-alcoholic champagne was spraying everywhere. Joining in on the tradition, you took your bottle and sprayed everything and everyone in sight.

Thankfully it was nonalcoholic, it being Abu Dhabi, because if it were true alcohol you were sure that you were drunk. Because, a grinning Lewis Hamilton went near you once more but this time he nears his lips towards you, pecking your cheek on live television, where his girlfriend was just below the podium watching.

A small gasp leaves your mouth and your eyes widen. However realizing that literally thousands of people are watching, you try to play it cool as if it were an action between normal friends — by nudging Lewis aside and rolling your eyes, you then lift the bottle towards yourself and drink from the spout. Oh, how you wished it were alcoholic.

After the podium fiasco and saying goodbye to the team, you immediately went back to your hotel room. Pushing yourself towards the bathroom with your Pjs; a set of shorts and a tank top at hand — you washed off today’s sweat and thoughts. And led yourself to bed.

A celebratory party is sure to happen in Lewis’ honor, which means drinks, loud music, people, and Lewis … Lewis's girlfriend. You will not let yourself experience that, no, not today.

Groaning into your pillow, The series of questionable actions Lewis’ had done today had all come to your mind. Why must you cling to them? They for sure meant nothing to the British Champion. Right? You dug yourself deeper into the rabbit hole of your mind and without knowing you passed out from exhaustion.

And finally, you’ve found peace in slumber. But luck was never on your side, as your sleep was disrupted by unrelenting knocks on your door. Groggy, you slowly stood up and went towards the door, not even bothering to look at the peephole — you opened the door.

“Lewis?” You didn’t believe your eyes, so you rubbed them and lo and behold, it was the Lewis Hamilton in front of you.

“You weren’t at the celebration. you’re my engineer, why weren’t you there“ His voice held coldness and authority. Lewis wasn’t asking for answers, he was demanding them.

Your mouth opened and closed as you struggled to form sentences. So you just looked up at him.

Lewis’ jaw clenched at your lack of answers.

“Well? Aren’t you going to answer little engineer?”

“I wasn’t up for it? “ You tried to excuse. But you wish you didn’t as you saw the change in his expression. Fuck, Lewis was now angry.

He then grabbed your wrist and pulled you and himself into your room. As he closed the door, he pressed your back against it and caged you in between his arms.

“you weren’t up for it?” Lewis reiterated your words menacingly bringing shivers up your spine.

“Tell me, Y/N L/N. Why was my little engineer not celebrating my championship with me huh?” As Lewis spoke, his eyes lingered on your lips then came back up to look at you in the eye.

Not being able to answer or handle his glare, you tried to move your face to the side — only to be stopped by Lewis's finger on your chin. Leading your eyes back to him

“Nu-uh, Y/N. Eyes on me and answer my question. “

“I- i. Uhm” you stuttered as another chill went up your spine as Lewis’ hand now caressed your jaw.

“Speak Y/N” Lewis pressed, now a smirk presented itself on his lips. Your eyes naturally fell towards it At the sight of the smirk that haunted your dreams , you couldn’t help but bite your lip.

Being so concentrated on looking at Lewis’ lips you didn’t see that he too was looking at yours. His eyes darkened at the sight of you chewing at your lips, the habit you’ve done when you wanted something.

Letting go of all pretenses, Lewis drops down and kisses you with his pent-up emotions and tension that brewed between the two of you.

You gasped in surprise, and Lewis took advantage of this and pushed his tongue into yours. He then took your lower lip into his and softly bit it and soothed it by sucking, earning a whimper from you. Your hands slithered up his muscular chest towards his hair. A groan left his lips when you gently pulled at his nape.

At the sound of Lewis’ moans. It was as if you were drenched in ice-cold water. You were kissing Lewis Hamilton. IN A RELATIONSHIP, Lewis Hamilton.

No this was not right. No matter how good and right it felt. He was not yours.

You started to pull away, but Lewis only strengthened his grip on you. Trying once again to connect his lips to yours.

“Lew- I. We can't do this” You tried to push Him away. Yet, Lewis only caught your hand which was trying to create distance between the two of you.

“What, why?”

“Our contract says that we can't have a real-“ you tried to reason

“I don’t care about the contract! I’ll make them change it , I promise.” Lewis tried to calm you

“No, but Lewis we still can’t do this . This is not fair”

“Y/N, If it’s not already obvious, I like you. Fucking hell, I might even lo-“ As Lewis started to explain. You’ve had enough— you will not be a third party.

“ LEWIS YOU HAVE A GIRLFRIEND! “ at your outburst, Lewis was stunned

“I will not be the other woman, Lewis. I will not let myself be degraded to that level… I will not exchange my dignity for you— no matter how much I love you. “ You couldn’t handle it anymore, your tears started rolling down your cheeks.

“Baby Shh. Y/N Listen to me. Nicole and I broke up. I ended it earlier. “ Lewis tried to explain.

You just ruined a long-term relationship. The horror suddenly seeped into your brain.

“Fuck, no, it was not your fault Y/N. We’ve been having problems for a while and it was time to let go. You understand? “

You absently nodded, but you knew that you were a major part of their split … and you knew one day that this would come back at you one way or another.

But for now, you will enjoy your success in getting to call Lewis Hamilton yours. You were on the top of the world. Nothing can dampen your high, or so you thought.

2015

“Hey Y/N, did you hear? Red Bull is putting a kid on the track” Bonno, Lewis’ other engineer said. You were at Silverstone, testing several changes done with the car.

“Really? What’s his name?” You asked back

“Max Verstappen”

taglist : @vicurious28

Anyone interested to be added to the taglist? Drop a comment or DM me!

[pleaktale]

Please please- write a modern reader (spiderperson or not) explaining things like email, memes, and the internet. It is such a fun concept to me that Hobie is clueless on things like ai.

Personally, I see that as an oppurtunity to mess with him.

Anything you want! Drabble, headcannons. Just have fun if this tickles your fancy 🫶

I cackled with this one so much because I thought about all his reactions and that would be PRICELESS. Didn't enter much on the AI thing because we don't fw AI 🙅 Thank you for the request, lovie! Did a bit of both <3

Warnigs: none I guess?

Tags: Hobie x modern!gn!reader, headcanons

Enjoy ٩(ˊᗜˋ*)و

Hobie is a guy of techs, that is set in stone. But what does he know about memes? Spotify? What about watching videos in tiny screens?

He went to your world once. Guy was LOST in all the screened outdoors, cars moving by sustainable energy and without tires, the lack of humans in things such as supermarkets and pharmacies a little worrying to him;

Once you taught him how to open the door to your apartment, he asked you to dismantle that thing;

"What do ya mean this.. opens with your DNA!?" he asked with slumping shoulders, watching as you entered the apartment like it was just a normal occurrence. And it was.

Your laugh quieted down his mind a little. "It reads my irises through the capture, I already added yours also," you show him the screen of your phone, his name written in the 'allowed' list.

"When tha' happened!!?" Hobie scratched his head, watching over as you cackled your way to the couch.

Visiting each other's dimension was a regular thing, so seeing the old ass things in his world was kinda funny to you;

Sharing wired headphones with him was like living your great great grandparents lives, and watching his curious mind of a nerd in tech trying to figure out your bluetooth earbuds was perhaps the funniest thing in the world;

The first time he went in contact with the humor of your century, it was like explaining calculus to a toddler. But he got the hang of it;

Hobie is smart, that you can't deny. But watching him get used to touch screens was... curious, to say the least;

The first time you showed something AI-made to him, Hobie was taken aback just like you thought he would;

"Ya mean this hyper realistic video of the Eifell Tower burning until it's metals were curling 'n shit.. isn't real?" Hobie had squinted eyes at you.

"Basically, yeah," you replied with a sigh, "it's a little more in control now, we have tools to see if it's AI made or not, but I honestly wanted this gone."

"Bet a bunch of wankers had taken their shared advantage of that," Hobie sighed too, shaking his head in clear disagreement.

After that he always send you videos asking if they're real or not (you got him a phone so he could use TikTok, now it's like having your grandpa sending you skibidi toilet videos asking 'what the hell's this');

He absolutely loves the MP3 you gave him, it's such a tiny thing and still has all his songs plus your favorite ones, he likes to go patrolling with them;

You showed him spotify once, he called it a "damn trap of capitalism" for making you pay for songs that weren't even physical (he's not wrong though);

The concept of being formal over email didn't clicked to him;

"Write a letter, then!" Hobie pointed at the screen after reading your email you planned on sending over to Miguel.

"But that takes weeks to get somewhere, Hobie," you raised an eyebrow, looking at him while pressing the 'send' button. "See? Gone and in his email, if he's online he'll see it now."

"Online? Yeah, a'ight, whatever." His hands up in mock surrender got another set of laugh out of you.

I could go on for longer but maybe for a pt. 2 😅 I hope you enjoyed! Until next time <3

© pleaktale

[hazyaltcare]

Typing Quirk Suggestions for a Robot kin

I hope it gives you a wonderful uptime! :3

Mod Vintage (⭐)

Letter replacements:

Replace "O" with zeroes "0"

Replace "i" or "L" with ones "1"

Replace "one" with "1", including "one" sounds like "any1", or "we 1 = we won" (the past tense of "win")

Replace "zero" with "0"

Frankly, you can just replace all sorts of letters with numbers, such as

R = 12

N = 17

B = 8

A = 4

E = 3

etc.

or maybe make all "A"s and "i"s capitalized, cause "A.I." (artificial intelligence

Prefixes and Suffixes:

Get inspired by programming languages!

Begin your text with "//" like a comment on C++

If you prefer other languages comment tags, you can use "< !--your text-- >"

Or maybe begin it with " int main () { std::cout << "your text"" and end with "return 0; }" like C++ too

Greet people with the classic "Hello world!"

Or greet people with "beep boop!" honestly, I have no idea where this comes from, but it's cute.

Or write down html stuff, like sandwiching your italicized text with "< em> "

The possibilities are endless!

Robot Lingo:

(under the cut because there's a LOT! maybe terabytes! ...just kidding >;3c)

.

some of these are from the machinesoul.net robot server! (not sponsored) (we're not in there anymore, but we saw the robot lingo shared there when we were)

Fronting = logged in, connected

Not fronting = logged out, disconnected

Conscious = activated

Dormant = deactivated

Blurry = no signal

Upset, angry = hacked

Small = bits, bytes

Bite = byte

Huge = gigabytes, terabytes, etc.

Your intake of food, medicine, etc. = input

Your artwork, cooking, handiwork, handwriting, etc. = output

Body = chassis, unit

Brain = CPU, processor

Mind = program, code

Imagination = simulation

Purpose = directive

Nerves = wires

Skin = plating

Organs = (function) units

Limbs = actuators

Eyes = ocular sensors

Glasses = HUD (head's up display)

Hair = wires

Ears = antennae, audio sensors

Nose = olfactory sensors

Heart = core

Liver = detoxification unit

Circulatory system = circuits

Voice = speaker, voice module, voice box

Mouth = face port

Name = designation

Sleep = sleep mode, low power mode, charging

Eat = fuel, batteries

Energy = batteries

Tired = low on batteries

Translate = compile

Memory = data, database

Bed = recharge pod/charger

Dreaming = simulation

Birthday = day of manufacture

Talking = communicating

Thinking = processing

Transitioning = modifying your chassis

Depression = downtime

Joy = uptime

Trash = scrap metal

Fresh/Clean = polished

Keysmashing = random 1s and 0s

Self-care = system maintenance

Going to the doctor = trip to the mechanic

Group = network

Anyone = anybot

[run2seob]

hand kisses

requested head cannons(?) — enjoy ~\(≧▽≦)/~ masterlist

SOOBIN

he would love hand kisses soo much

make him cookies? hand gets a smooch!

you beat him in a game? aggressive hand kiss!

and since you're so used to it, it may seem like the romantic part of it has faltered or left over time

but you still get the same butterflies whenever he mumbles anything against your hand

because he's big on affirming you about things too

bunny is always trying to make you smile :(

you could come into his room sulking and his automatic go to is small intimacy

the way the temperature rises in between you in every word that leaves his mouth is something he could think about for years

the second he mumbles an "i love you" into your hand

those three words brightened your day immediately, and only because they were spoken to you with the most tender voice and doe eyes looking up at you

or because you've fallen so hard that anything he says you take to heart

ahem ahem hence how you fall in love with him more everyday

YEONJUN

this man is so brave or nerdy when it comes to love

there's no inbetween for him??

he's infatuated to the max and either is

a.) dumb in love with all letters capital

b.) dumbly in love whilst trying to impress you

but i'm a nerd lover soo.. of course i'll write about dumb in love junnie

you're the only person he's loved as much as he does. the only person he views in a romantic sense.

so how could he mess this up?

deefffinitely pinned for years

and when he holds you close, your hand in his grasp

he softly pecks your hand and smiles cheekily because he thinks it's embarrassing that his cheeks are growing red

but you're dumb in love too, so you think it's the cutest thing you've ever seen

BEOMGYU

this is my option b boy

dumbly in love whilst trying to impress you?? what is that i see? the name beomgyu?

beomgyu with the best friends to lovers trope is my area so let me lose my voice advocating for this

after endless blind dates with guys who you never find to treat you right, all beomgyu can be is selfish

i mean, if someone you pinned over for years was standing in front of the mirror, adjusting their hair and looking stunning was in your line of sight...

i would be selfish too 🤷‍♀️

and what could he do?

he was set on believing you only set the title as a friend for him

if he had an imaginary red name tag, it would say "friend" in permanent marker just to set him straight

all his flirting attempts (holding eye contact while talking and miserably attempting to wink) went unnoticed or horribly wrong

between you two, there were never any talks about going anything further than just friends

you had noticed how his jacket always found it's way over your shoulders in winter, sure, but is that it?

was he going to take you out to dinner and kiss you under the low-lit lantern above your front door?

the answer: yes. but with how slow you're moving, you wouldn't find that out for a while.

your mind only thought about him as you reached the blind date

only about his touch and voice as you sat alone, waiting

waiting for.. a bit too long.

beomgyu, having turned your location on out of jealousy protection just had a hench to come to your date

what if this date went well? what if he lost his chance forever?

beomgyu probably ran all the red lights just to meet you ><

and was it worth it? yes. because you finally were with someone you loved

TAEHYUN

kang taehyun and intimacy.

i'm an advocate for beom's f2l yeah sure... but taehyun.

pink haired taehyun is forever my favorite because the stylist read my thoughts and gave me the look i wanted

old love.

i mean past marriage and past the "oh i'm so in love" stage

i mean sitting down at a couch with hung up portraits of you two on the walls

i mean scars on your hands from when you were young, hugging each other so tight that your nails dug into the other's skin

neither of you noticed though, both too happy to see each other

youthful love isn't something you two speak about in past tense

you talk a lot about your love, about the two of you and all circulating you

from your old friend's favorite drink being out of stock to a little kid complimenting your hair

it's not the same feeling as when talking with a best friend, but a feeling of caring and understanding

each word that flows off your tongue you know will reach the other's ears

sitting on the couch, fingers tied into his, you couldn't help but reminisce on the love of your teenage years.

you hadn't known taehyun too well, only falling for him from afar

it had been illegal to fall for taehyun, your friend already having an infatuation with him

but if you knew it was a plan for them to set you up with taehyun, it would've spared you oh so much trouble.

sneaking out after curfew for pecks even though you were allowed to date him now and nobody was watching

kisses peppered over each other's faces shown in bright red lipstick (none of you wore it, but who doesn't like putting on a show)

you swore to every year you've been in love with kang taehyun, to every second you grew older

that when he snuck a kiss on your hand and whispered the same words he did in your teenage years

you would never fall in love with anyone but him.

HYUKA

kai's first kisses but he's shy >__<

do you know how in some k-dramas, bullies will lead someone on and lean in for a kiss

and then take a photo?

the anticipation would rise and fall similarly

... hyuka would never bully you. don't get me wrong... i just think that he would lead you to think you're about to kiss and then panic so much that he contemplates running away

like.. seriously contemplates it.

you two have yet to make anything official, instead resorting to taking it slow with agreements from both ends

obviously you were okay with this because you didn't want to force kai into anything he wasn't prepared for

but you were over ready

this was your fifth date, and you finally got to go to the arcade you've been longing to go with

well, not quite. you're not a fan of loud and flashy places

still, you've wanted to go to this arcade with hyuka bad. you wanted to watch his smile grow and his eyes focus on a game he's never played before so he can laugh about it

(and infect you with his laugh which- psst. is what gave you the idea to come)

hands clinging onto kai's sleeve, you walked behind him. the confidence you feigned while presenting the idea was now far lost in your mind

flashing colors surrounded you, but hyuka's smile was bright enough to distract you.

"omo, y/n! look!" he called, pointing to the snorlax claw machine (that you both knew would be rigged)

when has that ever stopped anyone?

the answer should be every time.

or at least this time.

because the thirty minutes and thirty months of money you spent on one singular claw machine flew past like that

"i'll go get more points!" kai shouted over the speakers, running to do as he said.

his little jog made you blush, distracted as you realized you hit the "drop" button

oh?

when the accident makes the claw machine finally pick up a snorlax plushie, how can you be mad?

how could you be mad when kai smiled so brightly at you when you informed him?

and when with that happiness, you were led to the position with his hands on your waist

how one thing led to another, you aren't sure

you weren't sure when he would kiss you back, either

it was honestly awkward. your eyes were closed as you simply waited for a kiss.

waiting for a kiss?? waiting... again??

finally opening your eyes, you feel a peck on your hand, and your eyes widened further than intended.

even without moving your hand, you saw hyuka hiding his shy giggles behind the snorlax plush.

[dream-a-dream-for-me]

Clicker training puppy!Art has been the only thing revolving in my mind rn, so i treat you all to this

He felt so humiliated and exposed when you two first tried it. Looking up at you with those cute puppy ears, the headband covered by his hair, the puppy tail plug resting on the floor as he kneels. his wet pink tongue lolling out, beginning to drool while his arms bend at the elbow, fingers curling, wrist bent as though he were begging like the good dumb bitch he is. to top it all off, a collar is wrapped around his pale throat with a little gold tag that hangs down, reading "property of" with your name centered in capitalized bold letters under it.

"Who's a good boyyy?" You tease in an extremely condescending tone, exactly like you were talking to an actual dog. as much as he hates to admit it, his cock does kick, starting to grow half hard as he blushes in embarrassment, turning his head to break eye contact with you. Clicking your tongue, you grab his chin with two fingers, forcing him to look at you. 

"Look at me, and answer, mutt. Are you a good boy?" Your tone is soft, but he knows you're dead serious, "Speak, puppy, speak!" You encourage, grinning down at him. He moves his head forward slightly before letting out a tiny bark and his blush some how deepens.

Immediately you praise him, pushing the button on the clicker a few times, making sure he hears it before you give him his reward. "That's right, baby! You're such a good, good, dog! I think, for listening so well, you should get a treat. Don't you agree?" 

Again, he barks softly and you pet his head, scratching his scalp lightly before spreading your legs, letting him get a perfect view of your soaking cunt. He stares at your pussy, drool falling from the tip of his tongue and onto his chest, but he doesn't notice, too enthralled with your body. he rips his eyes away from your core, looking up at you expectantly, it takes a begging whine from him for you to realize what he's waiting for. Your permission. 

Grinning at how well you've trained him, you nod "Go ahead, Art, it's your treat." the second those words escape your lips he drops his hands down to the floor instead of gripping your thighs to keep himself stable, knowing he hasn't earned the right to touch you yet. then, he buries his face in between your thighs, lapping at your pretty cunt, taking your clit in his mouth and sucking on it. Anything that will give you pleasure. 

Burying his tongue deep in your cunt, his eyes hazy and unfocused, the only thing on his mind right now is making you cum. god, he lets out the sweetest whimpers when you pull his hair, his tongue working faster around your clit, needing you to use him. when you're about to cum, you click your tongue against your teeth twice, just as you'd do to get any dog's attention. His eyes flick up and catch sight of the clicker held up in your hand, immediately moaning into your pussy like an absolute slut. "Mhm, that's right sweetheart, m'gonna cum and you can lap it allll up!" he whines again, eyes wide with excitement. If he had a tail it'd be a blur with how fast it'd be wagging. 

Yanking his hair and grinding against his face as you cum, clicking the button three times again next to him, needing that noise to be ingrained in his mind. like a good boy, he doesn't waste a drop<3 

He doesn't stop until you pull him away, even then he tries to lick your cum off of his own face. "go on puppy, use your paws" he cocks his head to the side, confused for a second before he understands. wiping at his face with the back of his hand before licking it off. he looks so cute that you have to use the clicker again, only two this time but it's starting to rile him up anyways. His gorgeous cock hanging hard between his soft thighs, "oh? are you needy, baby? you need mommy to milk you?" he pushes his face into your thigh nodding slightly while blushing hard at your tone, so embarrassed that he gets off on this. 

"Up! On the bed, you're allowed," He crawls to the side, rubbing his face on your leg for a second before pulling himself onto the bed. "Roll over!" he falls back onto the bed, keeping his legs and arms up and bent at the joint. you laugh at how cute he is, running your hand up and down his thigh before moving to his soaking wet cock. 

He throws his head back, letting out high pitched moans, trying his hardest to not buck his hips up into your hands. rubbing the pad of your thumb over the slit of his cock, watching how much it leaks out all over your hand. leaning down, you flick your tongue over the slit then take the head into your mouth. his eyes screw shut, fingers clenching and unclenching the sheets, biting his lip while his cute thighs shake. he's always been extremely sensitive<3

He opens his mouth to tell you that he wants to cum, then promptly shuts it, puppies aren't meant to use human words! So he barks, louder than the times before, far more confident, "What is it, pup? Do you need to cum? Is that it?" He nods, barking again and whining, cute face scrunched up, so close to cumming. "Go ahead, cum for me. cum for me puppy, make a mess" of course, you use the clicker again and it sets him off, cum bursting from his dick, getting all over your hand and his chest. 

What a dirty pup

[just-my-latest-hyperfixation]

Hungry for you

Written for the @steddieholidaydrabbles, day 6

Prompt: Cooking together

Rated: M

CW: sexually explicit language

Tags: No UD AU; modern AU (if you squint); record shop owner!Eddie; restaurant owner!Steve; sexual tension; seriously, it's so thick you could cut it with a knife; top Steve; bottom Eddie

Notes: This is actually taken from a waaay longer AU that I've been rotating in my head for a while but haven't had time to expand on yet. So this was actually the perfect opportunity to get some of it out.

Eddie is in danger. 

Mortal peril, in fact. The cold-sweat-beading-on-skin, heart-in-your-throat, limbs-heavy-with-dread kind of danger. He's minutes away from sneaking to the bathroom and calling Gareth, ask him to bail him out under some pretense. 

Only he'd probably laugh at him, the fucker. 

Because, granted, being trapped in your hot neighbor's fancy kitchen with a glass of wine beside you and candles burning on the windowsill does not sound like a dangerous situation. 

But it is.

Oh God, it so is.

Eddie's an idiot. 

Should've known this was a Bad Idea (capital letters, TM) the second Steve said he wanted to invite him to dinner. 

"Sure," Eddie had stammered. (No, answered. He's a grown-ass adult with his own record store, he does not stammer over the sexy restaurant owner from across the street suggesting dinner.) "I'll swing by the restaurant tomorrow, or-" 

"Not at the restaurant," Steve's eyes had lit up with that fond glint, voice dropping into a low timbre. "My place. I wanna take my time with you." 

The alarm signs were all there. Wailing sirens, big fat neon letters spelling DANGER and ABORT and STOP. 

But Eddie's sense of self-preservation has always been a bit skewed. 

So here they are.

"I hope you like pasta?" Steve asked a few minutes ago. "We're making Tagliatelle al Limone with green asparagus." 

"Sounds great," Eddie said, when in all honesty, he hadn’t processed much beyond the word pasta. Too distracted by the way Steve’s shirt sleeves were rolled up, revealing trim arms dotted in flour. "I make SpaghettiOs for dinner all the time." 

Steve makes his own pasta. He's currently rolling golden dough into an even layer to cut it into stripes. Eddie forces himself to quit staring at the flexing muscles in his arms and returns to his own task. Namely, peeling the asparagus. With a potato peeler. 

He's peeling asparagus with a fucking potato peeler like a ten-year-old who can't be trusted to not cut himself. Which is a frustratingly adequate assessment, in all honesty, so he didn't complain when Steve handed him the thing. Only now he's feeling like an idiot, standing at this hardwood counter between all these pans and pots and shiny appliances. Christ, his own kitchen is two cabinets with lopsided doors, an electric hotplate, and an ancient microwave pulling double-duty as an oven.

What the fuck is he even doing here?  

The answer to that, apparently, is fucking up his one task, because his hand slips and he almost manages to cut himself on the potato peeler. The stem - or stick or whatever the fuck it is you call them - of asparagus in his hand snaps and the tip flops to the countertop. Eddie swears, which causes Steve to turn and arch an eyebrow. 

"Everything okay?" 

"Oh, I'm peachy," Eddie brandishes the mutilated asparagus at him. "Unlike this little fella here, but y’know… collateral damage or whatever." 

Steve eyes the battlefield of fallen and mangled asparagus brethren on the counter and smiles. 

"That's alright," he shrugs. "We're cutting them into pieces anyhow." 

"Oh," Eddie just says, because one, if it's okay, why didn't Steve tell him before, and two, if it's okay, then why is Steve sauntering over with that ever-so-slight, blink-and-you-miss-it sway of his hips? 

Which Eddie definitely isn't doing. Blink, that is. He thinks he may have lost the ability to.

Before he can recover, Steve is already slotting into place behind him - an entirely unnecessary move in the spacious kitchen - sliding his arms around his waist and covering Eddie’s hands with his own. They're large and lean and graceful, those hands, all long, skilled fingers and soft, tan skin. Eddie has a very unhelpful mental image of those hands on his naked skin. Those fingers in his mouth, that honeyed voice ordering him to suckle, get them nice and slick for-

"You know," says Steve, right by his ear. His hands have started guiding Eddie’s, holding a stem of asparagus on the countertop, slicing the outer layer away with gentle but firm strokes. Eddie can feel his body heat through their clothes, feel Steve's breath leaving a hot trail on his skin. "Asparagus is rumored to have a very special effect on the human body…" 

"Wha-?" Eddie starts. His blood can't decide whether to rush to his face or his cock. It makes him all woozy - which will forever be the excuse he tells himself for what next comes out of his mouth. "Oh, I know! It makes your piss stink." 

Steve's hands freeze. Eddie considers killing himself with the potato peeler. 

And then Steve laughs. Rumbly noises from deep in his chest that send vibrations all through Eddie’s body. 

"No, silly," he says, voice dripping with that gentle condescension that should make Eddie livid but somehow only serves to kindle the coiling heat in his abdomen. "It's an aphrodisiac."

Eddie blinks.

"So it … makes you horny?" 

Steve hums. "Allegedly." 

Eddie gulps. Stares down at the potato peeler lying limply in his hand. Steve's hands have migrated to his hips at some point during their exchange, thumbs pushing up the hem of his shirt just the tiniest bit. 

"Crazy," he hears himself say. "Haven’t even eaten any yet." 

Steve presses his lips to his neck in a not-quite-kiss, just a coy smile touching skin. 

"So it's working?" 

Eddie wants those lips and hands on his skin, wants Steve's tongue and teeth all over his body, voice and touch and warmth seeping into him until he forgets how to think, forgets his own name, until all he knows is Steve and this burning, all-consuming want, want, want-

Steve laughs, pats his ass lightly. Eddie yelps as if slapped. 

"All in due time, baby. Can't have dessert before dinner." Steve winks. "Better continue with that asparagus." 

Eddie is not going to survive.

Part 2

All of my holiday drabbles

[soobadnoonecanstopher]

Rat Bastard - Part 4

Pairing: You x Kyungsoo

Rating: M (Mature)

Word Count: 9000

Warnings: There were too many beds, Enemies to Lovers, Slow Burn, Cahoots envy, UST

PSA: this couple is called the Rat Couple and their individual names will be Rat Princess and RatSoo (or Rat Basard when we are mad at him)

Tag: @ilovemyapopbaby

Links: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

You were playing a game. It involved lots of fast moving and tricky words that this small group of people shouted out with cheers or groans depending on how good or bad they felt the words had been. You didn’t really get it. The explanations at the beginning went too quickly and you might have nodded off during the vital parts.

Obviously you were losing this game. It was a drinking game but you had nothing invested as your drinks no longer contained any alcohol. You had almost no other reason to keep playing except for boredom which, you were surprised to learn about yourself, was a pretty good motivator.

You’d been given a virgin drink to sip on by a thoroughly-scholded, Javier. He could hardly meet your eyes after being accused by his coworkers of ‘nearly killing the only girl we have.’ The marker board had come out again. There was now a ‘wall of shame’ section and Javier’s name was written in angry looking capitalized red letters.

‘A category five!’

‘I just didn’t expect an adult to have such a low alcohol tolerance.’

‘How could you tell her where the patio door was?’

‘Why were the drinks so strong?’

‘You told me to get her drunk!’

‘Just last week some guy died from falling off a stool. People have died from much less.’

‘The wall of babies conceived during the Serenity Sands Resort Singles Retreat is something to be proud of. Adding a death toll to the wall is not.’

‘Cat-Te-Go-Ry Five!’

‘We add to the population, we do not subtract.’

‘To be fair, it’s as if she has almost no sense of survival.’

Your mumbled and slurred declarations of how completely fine you were had gone unheard.

You’d long been eliminated from this game by the time your mind began to sharpen to what was actually happening. It was after Kyungsoo won a prize. You hadn’t even realized there were prizes, but the whole group of people were gathered around a table with various odds and ends, one of which was up for grabs each time a game was won. Because the seven of you were trapped here in this bunker for a week with minimal possessions, a few items had been brought over from the hotel, things that normally would not be so valuable but given the current state of things, these items suddenly had a whole new appeal.

There were a few emergency ponchos for the rain, pairs of waterproof rain boots to keep muddy flood water from seeping inside of your shoes, bug spray, lip balm, ear plugs, wet wipes, a big bag of marshmallows and lots of other snacks, a powerful flashlight and separately, a big pack of batteries for the flashlight or whatever other item needed them. The winner would need to either win both or be in cahoots with the person who won the other. Your eyes zeroed in on the high thread-count luxury blanket with real down feathers and beside it, a cheaper and lighter blanket with such a low thread count the package didn’t even advertise it. You remembered that your beds back there were made up with the bare minimum, just a fitted sheet, a sad pillow and a bed sheet that was so thin it would have been transparent if that room had any windows other than the tiny ones in the bathrooms.

Your now sharper mind began to really understand the stakes. This wasn’t only a drinking game. You’d be stuck here for a week. The small radio that Kyungsoo just won put a blinding smile on his face and you looked around the room at the stacks of items the other people had won. Sara won a neck pillow and an eye mask for sleeping. Mr. Chen, ever the diplomat, won a pack of bar soaps that he promptly ripped open and passed one around to everyone, leaving one sad little bar down at your feet with a pitiful smile. Roxy had won a jumbo pack of ramen and a camping stove and Jun had won butane fuel for the stove. It seems some cahoots were already in the works. The pair didn't even bother to separate their stacks of prizes.

Then and there you made a promise to pay attention to the rules of the next game and you actually felt a wave of relief pass through you when you realized that the next game wasn’t one that required much difficult thinking but only required you to be quick with your hands. Or more specifically the tiny stretchy sticky hand that you’d been given. Everyone got one and the smallest white button that had fallen off of Javier’s sleeve was placed on the surface, in the middle of the big table.

The object of the game was simple. First one to grab the button wins. There were a few practice throws allowed before the battle began and the table erupted in quiet chaos and giggles as everyone quickly realized that these things had very little control or aim to them. You simply threw it vaguely in the direction of the button as fast as you could and if you got lucky you might grab something other than some other player’s sticky hand.

The practice round was declared finished. Not a single hand grabbed the button on the table and clear reminders of the rules were announced before a countdown was called out and it was time.

You needed to win something. Once the go was given, you and everyone else was frantic with it. Slapping sounds echoed all around the room and there was screaming and yelping as hands came close to the button. You were moving so quickly you hadn’t realized you’d bumped up elbows with the person beside you and in the excitement you’d reached a hand out to hold him back. Kyungsoo was creeping into your space. The only thing you could do was fight him off with your free hand. You reached for his forearm and pulled him back, trying to get his tossing hand back enough so you could break through. The sound of everyone’s laughter was like a drug. The mood of the game was so fun and exciting you hadn’t even noticed that it was the sounds of Kyungsoo’s giggles that paired so well with your own. That it was a sound you’d never before heard in your life, the mixture of both of your laughter with his laughter and the two voice tones blended so beautifully together you had to force your eyes to look away from the giggling profile of his face so you could focus on the game.

Through the struggle and the giggles when you pulled your sticky hand back quickly you shot it forward again and to your absolute shock your hand landed square on top of the button in the center of the table and quickly whipped it backward, trapping it right in front of you on the table. You reached down with a shout and gripped that button and you stood up in happiness as the entire rest of the table groaned at the loss.

You’d done it. You’ve finally won something. You were jumping up and down with excitement and you couldn't help the drift of your eyes over to the man who sat beside you with a pretty smile still on his face. He lifted a hand and ran it through his hair, letting the straight black strands fall back into place slowly and his dark eyes watched you for a few moments with that breathtaking smile taking just a bit of your oxygen and making it stutter inside of your lungs. You’d been denying it to yourself, refusing to admit even inside of your head just how beautiful he was, but again and again you would lose that battle. It had been getting worse lately, the longer stretches of time you got to actually look at him and the longer stretches of time when you actually held his brown eyes with your own.

Someone steered you to the big table of prizes and handed you an enormous multipack of batteries. Batteries that would power any one of these hand held devices such as the flashlight and even that small radio that Kyungsoo had stashed underneath his chair.

The weight of this prize brought a change inside of you. You had won the power, quite literally. Everyone who won an electronic device needed you. You had what might be considered currency.

“Roxy, I’ll give you the batteries for your portable fan for one pack of ramen,” you said as you sat down and her eyes widened and she nodded her head, ripping open the multipack of noodles and tossing them over to you in exchange for two small batteries. You had so many of them and curious eyes were now offering small trades.

Once the trading had started you noticed others making small deals as well. Kyungsoo gave Roxy a can of spam for some ramen and you looked at the several cans he had left and then down at his powerless portable radio but you lost the nerve to say anything to him when he looked at you. You just looked away and avoided his eyes until the next game started. The sticky hands game was quick and popular, more prizes were handed out, and you all played it again and again until all the sticking power wore off and nobody was able to grab ahold of anything anymore.

If you were meant to be avoiding this man those plans went out the window with the announcement of the next game. This one would be played in pairs and your eyes touched upon every single person in this room except for the man sitting beside you begging to God they hadn’t already settled on their person. Of course they were all taken, the dirty rats.

“Okay so you, and Kyungsoo,” Mr. Chen clapped his hands, “excellent, that works out perfectly.”

You’d cooperated with him already. You’d both worked quite closely and very well together in the kitchen when he was cooking blindfolded, but that was before the blowup outside. Before you hurt his feelings for real this time, he called you an asshole, and you drunkenly tried to blame your cruel, hateful words on the actions of the other people in this room when you got caught by him. Even as upset as he had obviously been, he still swooped in and caught you before you could fall off the patio and hurt yourself. But he’d not said a single word to you since, and even only looked at you when absolutely necessary.

This game was more physical. There was a big bowl of flour and two spoons and the task was to hold the spoon with your mouth and use it to scoop flour. You were then to transfer the flower scoop to your partner’s spoon and they took it to another bowl which sat on a scale. The fastest team to transfer 40 grams of flour won. The prize was the pair of blankets and while you weren’t about to share your new high thread count luxury blanket with this man, you could be convinced to give him the cheap one.

“There’s a catch,” Mr. Chen explained and you groaned in annoyance as you took the spoon back out of your mouth to listen to the added condition of the game that was being explained. “You must both stand within the same square on the tile during the flour transfer. Touching each other is allowed.”

You both looked down at the floor, realizing that these floor tiles were tiny. Maybe your feet and his feet would fit if you stood exactly on one side of the tile but it would have to be very close. In fact, everything about your bodies would need to be close for this.

Sara had her hand raised and Mr. Chen quickly added that pregnant persons with big bellies could use up two tiles. Everyone else was limited to one.

When the game began, Kyungsoo was standing closest to the flour supply so you simply stood at the halfway point, placing your feet carefully within your tile. From the looks of his shoes, it was likely he could manage to fit one foot between your two, and the other on the other side while remaining within the perimeter lines. He was coming with his spoon suspended in his mouth and a mountain of flour filling the spoon. He was coming with a big white spot of flour on his chin and several white spots down his cheek and what was probably hidden all over his white shirt and when he reached you, you felt him place his first foot in between yours and carefully place the other within the tile. With his feet in place the warmth of his body quickly followed and you felt the length of him pressing up against your body from thigh to chest. Oh god.

Your eyes were wide open and he looked into them with a quiet urgency in the small grunt he gave you. His head tiled the smallest amount, not enough to spill his flour but enough to tell you that your spoon was not at the right angle to receive and that you should tilt your head.

You could feel your heart beating inside of your ears with him standing so very close to you and you had to remind yourself that this was only for the game. This was only to win the prizes, your blankets. You would sleep warm and comfortable tonight if you won those blankets.

A commotion beside you called your attention briefly and you began to turn your head. Someone had coughed a faceful of flour on their partner and someone was coughing and laughing noisily.

Kyungsoo’s hand reached up and you felt the warmth of his palm land over your cheek, pulling your face to look at him again. He’d lifted his other hand just high enough to wrap around the small of your back and you felt the gentle pull there as he pulled you in closer to where he stood inside this tile. He was just refocusing you. He was only directing your face so you could tilt your head into him to gather all of the flour he brought to you and you held your breath as his head tilted further and the white flour fell into your own spoon.

He let you go and he stepped back, inhaled a deep breath as he moved, his eyes widened with a nod of his head and you quickly turned around to take the spoon to the scale. You had more than 10 grams already. You only had to do this three more times to win. You glanced around at the other teams, one who was still transferring, and the other who had gone back to square one covered in white flour all over their faces and hair.

Your waist and your face felt all dumb and tingly, your skin was acting unreasonable to be so undeservedly affected by his touch. He wasn’t even touching you because he wanted to. This was for the game. It has just been so very long since a handsome man actually put his hands on you.

When you returned to your tile, Kyungsoo was already coming with another spoonful. He was less careful with his touch this time and you felt the strong warmth of his hand that he placed on your waist the second he reached the tile and situated his feet. Your hands lifted to lightly touch the side of his waist to keep your balance and this time as he was turning his head to dump the flour, half of the flour seemed packed on his spoon, refusing to budge. You had to touch him more, you lifted your hand and guided his face more. You could see the moment the powder dislodged and plopped neatly inside of your spoon and you were glad you were holding your breath because you nearly laughed in excitement to see it fall. You were rushing to the scale, careful to not jostle your precious cargo any more than necessary.

This had been a bigger spoonful. Your totals were 25 grams already, much more than any of the other teams.

You gave him an encouraging nod of your head and he had a smile in his eyes that sent him rushing back to the bowl before you could even make it back to the tile he was waiting with both of his arms outstretched for you, hands falling easily into place now, faces tilted in a position with him that to anyone who might be viewing this from the back may seem romantic. It was definitely close enough to kiss his pretty lips if not for these blasted spoons.

You had your flour scoop secured and his eyes widened marginally when you lifted a hand to lightly brush stray the white powder off his cheek before you turned to deposit your spoon.

You were almost there. The sense of urgency moved your body and you rushed back to where he stood waiting for you with his spoon positively loaded up with flour.

You collided with him with more force than you had before, your desire to win clouding your judgment and with the impact you felt more of his firm body pressed against you. You felt more of the hardness of his thighs that flexed when you placed your own over him, straddling his legs so you both would fit perfectly in this tiny space. When his hand pulled you harder into him he used his entire hand and forearm and you were reminded of the position he caught you in out there in the rain when the thumping of your heartbeats seemed to scream even louder than the torrential rain hitting the roof of the patio; when the heat you felt between his legs pressed into you sent an overwhelming wave of warmth and attraction radiating through your belly and brought along a damp flush to your skin.

You didn’t have time for all of this. He was tilting his head into you and his hand was on your face, cradling your cheek, your jaw, your ear, slipping down the smoothness of your neck and his eyes were closing as he lightly exhaled through his nose. The flour moved. You caught the bit of some of it falling off the spoon and you felt the tickle as some of it fell over your bare chest.

Impossibly and as if he had been possessed, you felt the smallest brushes of his soft, warm fingertips along the skin below your collarbone, brushing away the little mess he had made of you there.

When his eyes pulled up you were staring into his face and you didn’t have time to decipher any of this because you needed to be moving. You hoped it would be enough. You spun carefully on your heels and you could feel the shadow of him following your journey as you made it to the scale and poured the contents of your spoon.

“43 grams!” Mr Chen shouted and you heard groans of disappointment from the other two teams, you heard the metal clanging as discarded spoons fell to the floor or landed and echoed on a table and your body felt as if it might be on fire from just how much Kyungsoo had been touching you during the game. Every single cell that his skin had touched felt electrified and when you spun to look into his face you caught the most beautiful smile of genuine happiness there.

It pulled the smile of celebration from your own chest and you laughed and leaned into him, lightly bumping your shoulders against his bicep, not quite trusting yourself to openly celebrate so freely with this man.

You felt it then, the smallest reach of his arm that he lifted and wrapped lightly around your waist, you felt the small pull of him there as he did it and you gasped in surprise to feel the brush of his fingers that landed over your hair. He was grinning and brushing flour out of your hair. He was happy and he was so beautiful and you smiled back at him, tapping away some of the flour that had fallen from his chest and when his eyes reached into yours you caught the shift as the smile slowly flattened out and he cleared his throat, pulling his eyes quickly away from your face and pulling both of his hands back to himself.

If you hadn’t been holding them together your hands might have been trembling.

It was time to claim your prizes so you steadied your expression as quickly as you could, making excuses about how sometimes the nature of celebrating wins involved tiny touches and achingly deep eye blinks with each other and trying to ignore the longing you felt to feel the temperature of his skin pressed up against yours like that again. This was getting out of hand.

You both looked down at the two blankets, one of them clearly more superior than the other and Roxy suggested you both have a competition to see who got the good one.

Someone said arm wrestling, someone else suggested a straight up fight for it and Kyungsoo snorted with laughter and reached out to grab ahold of your wrist, wrapping his fingers easily around it he lifted your arm and shook it wildly.

“I could snap her in two,” he said and you pulled your wrist back from him forcefully, not quite having the strength to fully break free from him until you felt his grip relax and he just let you go. You knew he was right but that didn’t stop the wave of undeserved confidence that surged through you; foolishly believing deep down inside that if you fought dirty enough you could probably take him in a fight. You’d go for the weak points first, obviously the crotch shot, then the eye balls, and you’d end with a throat punch that would send him to the hospital. You’d completed two self defense courses in your life and you knew if you hit him right now, when he wasn’t expecting it, you could win. As long as you didn’t give him any advanced notice of what you were up to.

You’d always had trouble with intrusive thoughts. You reached for him quickly from behind and wrapped your arms around his shoulders, reaching your hands around for his neck and he gave the smallest grunt of genuine surprise to find you so suddenly and aggressively climbing on his back like a flying squirrel might stupidly try to attack a gorilla. His grunt of surprise changed into a small grunt of effort and you felt a sudden but definite shift inside of his back muscles.

You should have known better than to attack from behind. Not someone with such a strong back as he had. You felt his arm muscles contract and he reached his hands around to grab you, you felt him bend at the waist and you felt him spin right inside of your arms. He had the upper hand in less than a second and you could yourself fully encased and trapped well inside of his arms as he casually lifted you right off of your feet and plopped you back down, lifting you up easily just to show you that he could. He took two quick steps with you trapped completely inside of his arms and you moved like a puppet. His hands had reached down, squeezing you tighter when you struggled against him and he grabbed ahold of both of your hands, keeping you from being able to tickle him or pinch any of his skin, as you had instantly tried to do. You were completely trapped.

“See,” he whispered into your ear, the heat of his chest laid against your back and you fell back into that same familiar feeling of being pressed up against his body, “you can’t beat me, Princess.” His voice skipped over your neck traveling slowly up your earlobe until his words sunk down deep within your ear.

You turned your head toward his voice and you felt the softness of his cheek press against your own and as he spoke you could smell the strong smell of alcohol on his breath. You might have been the more sober of the two right now. You were also the most desperate. You wanted that blanket badly. You moved into the head turn and you let your lips land against his skin, just high enough on his cheek to find his ear with your message to him.

“I’ll give you batteries for your radio,” you whispered against his skin, using the same low tone and sultry whisper he had used on you seconds earlier and you allowed your lips to pop the smallest bit, letting the softness of your lips play every so lightly with the softness of his earlobe. “Please let me win,” you whispered into his skin. The effect moved through him like a wave. It rippled through the muscles that held you tightly within his arms. You felt the nearly silent groan that originated somewhere deep inside of his chest that echoed throughout your back and with the groan you felt him cave in.

“Come on, that’s not a fair fight,” someone shouted from the back of the group, “he’s a man, and she’s a woman, how is that fair?”

But you could feel it, he had been ready to give in. He was relaxing his grip and you leaned against his back, pushing lightly against him as if you were really fighting this strong man off of you for show. As if you even wanted to get the heavy weight of his entire body off of you.

“Rock, paper, scissors,” someone else shouted, “ play for the blanket.”

He had let you go. You’d taken a step away from him and you turned back around to look into his face. His breathing seemed just a little bit hard for such a tiny struggle with you and you noticed his cheeks were quite pink as he looked into your eyes. You saw the smallest movement there. He blinked his eyes once as he lifted his chin the smallest degree. It felt like a gesture of agreement and you caught another motion as he lifted his hand and made a discrete fist with it, lifting his chin once more with a nod.

He accepted your terms and he was going to play rock.

The others were already shouting the commands to begin the rock, paper, scissors round and you had to quickly play your hand. You shot out a flat hand for paper and it landed squarely over his closed fist as he played the rock that he had promised you he would play.

“She’s the winner!” Javier shouted and you smiled wide and genuine — your evening was finally beginning to look up a little bit. You jumped up and down in happiness and you rushed to the table to grab your blanket and curiously you could still feel his brown eyes watching as you did it. There was an odd expression on his face for someone who had lost the round. His eyes followed you around the room as you’d celebrated your little win and you could have sworn you could see the smallest smile on his lips when he went to the table to retrieve his loser’s blanket. You couldn’t quite understand why he would have looked pleased by this. You won and he lost.

Oh right, his batteries. He must have been happy about getting batteries and a blanket out of this deal. If you were a blanket-less pauper, you might have also been happy to receive such a low quality crappy blanket.

You couldn't quite remember the last time you felt so happy to win something so dumb. You just knew this would solve all of your nighttime problems. You skipped up to him holding your prize and you quickly stuffed it under your seat next to the other goodies you’d either won or traded to obtain, feeling pretty damn good about how the rest of the week might go. If you had to, you’d just spend the whole week in bed under this blanket and catch up on all of the missed sleep you’d ever missed in your life.

When you stood up, Kyungsoo was standing right behind you with his hand outstretched toward you in a surprisingly congenial gesture of a handshake for a job well done. ‘Good job,’ his posture said, with a pleased smile on his smooth face. You reached your hand forward fully ready to make this change in your relationship with the man. Like a pair of coworkers who got along sometimes. Not friendly by any means but still able to get the job done if they were being paid to. You’d accept his congratulations. He was right, you had done a really good job of winning this and he should be thankful to you for how well you could walk with a spoonful of flour and dump it into a bowl without spilling a speck. If only that was a skill you could market. Your balance and coordination should be studied.

The second the skin of your palm touched his and you gripped your fingers around his hand to shake it, he pulled his hand back abruptly and came back hard with a swift smack of his hand against yours. Was this some sort of trendy side-five, not a high-five or a low-five, but a side-five?

“No, idiot. Batteries.” He said gruffly after swatting away your hand shake. He wasn’t here to make peace at all. He was here to claim what was his. His face didn’t look as grumpy as he usually did, but he seemed to be back to calling you names.

“I’ll give them to you in the room.” You said under your breath, a little bit of your earlier joy from having won something so precious deflated by the return of his crappy behavior.

He leaned his head closer to where you stood, “don't want the others to know that you’re a cheater?”

“I didn't cheat. I just made a deal. Something I wanted for something you wanted,” you said with a flippant dismissal and all it got from him was a doubtful scoff.

“Always playing a game, huh,” he remarked under his breath and it pulled your focus back on him for a few moments. There was something under the surface with his words. Something darker than the golden aura of winning.

Your memory flashed to the blurry drunk view you had of him and the actual hurt you saw in his eyes. The hurt you had trouble really understanding because it felt so unwarranted. There had never been any pretense to the way you felt about each other. You hated him and he hated you and people who hate each other don’t get to look that hurt when someone says something hateful, it’s a given. He said awful things to you all the time although now that you really got to thinking you were having a hard time finding an example of something truly mean he said to you. Something that wasn’t just a reaction to something you did first. Try as you might, you couldn’t bring up anything concrete. The nature of your very specific problem you had with him, that he had so callously rejected you back then kept you on edge around him so much that nearly every interaction you had with him had you on the attack. You always came out swinging first and asked questions later.

“Hey, Kyungsoo — I really, really didn’t mean all that stuff I told Sara about you —” this was difficult to get out but you really hated sitting on an unspoken apology when you had done something wrong.

If Kyungsoo’s unwavering focus was what you wanted — if his deep dark brown eyes looking into your face with every bit of his attention focused up close on every single centimeter of you from your eyes down to your lips, then you certainly had gotten what you wanted. His eyelids pulled wider when he realized what you were saying. His lips parted and his tongue darted out to moisten his bottom lip.

You inhaled to continue, “I was … drunk, yeah, but I still don’t — I didn’t —,” you couldn’t get any more details out, not with as closely as he was looking at you.

“I-It wasn't for you to hear, it was for her. I’m sorry if that was super mean of me.”

“It was,” he agreed, “mean,” he added for clarity and he inhaled to speak again, lifting his chest and shoulders with the breath and lifting his hand to run over the length of his face. You could feel the agitation in every motion of his body. The drink he still held in his hand rattled with the movement.

He half spun with it and came back, his voice teetering along the edges of anger, “it wasn’t for me to hear? That’s it? I was supposed to hear you saying all of that shit? Is that your apology attempt?”

“No, that’s not — that’s not what I mean,” he had to be the most difficult person to make your point with.

“Then what do you mean?” His lips closed as he pulled his bottom lip inside his closed mouth, his eyebrows lifting in question, “hmmm?” he prodded again. You figured you had about five seconds before another argument and another fight erupted and this time you didn’t even have a high balcony to hurl yourself off of.

“I know we don’t get along, but I don’t even really hate you. Not really. I mean, we got off to the worst start ever, not that there ever was anything to start, that’s not what I mean,” you sighed in frustration — this was so difficult to explain.

“I don’t hate you. I don’t think it’s the absolute worst thing in the world to be here with you. Actually working together on these games today, it seems like maybe we work together well, at least.”

Some of the wildness you’d seen in his eyes a few seconds ago had left with your rapid explanation. He still watched your face with rapt attention and the burdensome feeling under the scrutiny of his eyes had your face blushing and your voice cracking a little bit. You felt silly for having such a strong reaction to something as simple as a conversation with the goal of clearing the air.

You chuckled lightly to yourself, both with how silly you felt being this nervous and with the very beginnings of the thought that crept through your mind.

“This is only the first day,” you laughed lightly to yourself. Kyungsoo did not laugh or even smile. His lips were pulled into a flat line and he didn’t respond right away with any indication of what he was thinking.

“Maybe,” you closed your eyes and inhaled a breath, “maybe we could just be … f-friends?” You could feel the shape of your mouth pull into a grimace when you said it. The upward inflection put the ball squarely in his court to decide what he thought about your call for a truce and maybe even some of those cahoots you’d been dreaming about.

Kyungsoo didn’t respond right away. His eyes watched your face very closely and you caught the hard clench of his jaw and the half lidded blink as his eyes closed down. He inhaled the smallest breath and just under that tiny breath and using only the air and almost no volume of his voice you could barely make out a response from him

“‘Friends’” he whispered and you thought you might have heard a follow up response “friends is the last thing I want to be with you.”

He said it so quietly you doubted you’d even heard it the second the next inhale sounded out from his lungs. He cleared his throat at a normal volume and opened his eyes, that same pretty pinkness coloring his cheeks as he inhaled again, deeper and more committed this time and on the exhale he spoke. The words were slightly tinged with the alcohol on his tongue.

“Friends,” he said with more commitment, “umm, maybe… let’s just hold off on that for now.” His eyes formed a squint that matched the grimace you’d had on your face earlier and with his soft but decidedly sharp denial you felt the heat slip up your neck and touch along both of your cheeks. “It's just — the things you do and say always feel like a trick and I’m getting a little burned out tonight.”

His rejection of you time and time again burned against your skin but you needed him to expand on the first thing, that whispered, just under his tongue response that set off weird bubbles inside of your stomach with the strangeness of the sound of those exact words.

You had to speak. “What did you say the first time?”

He shook his head slowly back and forth as a response.

“‘Friends is the last thing I want to be with you’ — does that mean you really do hate me?”

His lips were closed and his head was pulled back. The pretty hair layed flat atop of his head after the distraction of his hand running through it had taken your attention from his dark eyes for a split second.

“I think I’m the drunk one now,” he said as a final response to your questions and you could feel the door slam shut. He downed the last of his drink and headed away from you toward Javier at the bar who was already ready with another one.

You watched him walk away from you and he didn’t turn back around.

You felt almost ready to give up. Ready to crawl into your bed, under your new blanket and block out the rest of the world for a solid week. You’d just avoid him entirely to save yourself any more humiliation. Not only did he not want to go on that date with you, but this handsome, charming, funny, and talented man didn’t even want to be friends with you. Even that was unbearable to him. How awful of a person were you?

You reached down beneath your seat and gathered your things, catching Sara’s worried eyes as you made your way toward the door to this kitchen that led back to that dark and scary hallway that would take you to your bed.

“We're calling it a night — already?” Mr. Chen’s voice broke through the laughter and giggles from the others who were still hallway through their drinks and clearly not ready to call it a night. You were fresh out of any more ability to be social and happy when you had been so obviously put in your place again and again.

“She’s feeling a little done so we are taking her things to her room — might settle in already,” Sara spoke up for you and soon was by your side linking her arm with yours as she helped you with the door, “don’t stay up too late, we might have a long stormy night ahead of us!” She called behind her toward the group in a cheerful voice. You heard an agreeing sound from Mr. Chen as he declared the same sentiment to the rest of the group.

Apparently the eye of the storm was supposed to come ashore within the next few hours and nobody knew how much sleep was possible with such a scary and loud event happening outside. Once through the doorway a click sounded out and your pathway was illuminated by a tiny flashlight she had in her hand. You knew for a fact that she hadn’t won that in the games and she gave you a knowing smile and a wink.

“Shhh, I got you one too. Nobody would dare search a pregnant woman,” she giggled and her brightness paired with the little metal cylinder she slipped into the palm of your hand brought your rotten mood up just a tiny bit.

You’d both made it all the way down the long hallway to the door of the bunks and you were thankful for the bathroom light Kyungsoo had left on before he left this room because it was empty, deserted, and quite spooky even with the lighting, you couldn’t imagine what it would be like at night when the lights were turned out. You looked all the way down to the end of this enormous room where his bed waited for him and you wondered just how many spiders stood between you and him in this big room.

“What happened? Did you two argue again?” She pleaded with her kind eyes, you could see the sincerity in her face and you sighed deeply as you unwrapped the new blanket and spread it out over the top of your bed. Something about your mood made this pretty, comfy thing feel just a little bit less than before.

“Yeah. No. Not really. I don’t know. I apologized to him for what I said. He neither accepted or denied it. I asked if he wanted to at least be friends and he doesn’t. So—” you lifted your eyebrows with a hopeless shrug.

“It’s the first day.” She said with a softening of her voice. She didn’t offer any promises or give you any more false hopes. All she had was a flimsy fact that you knew as well.

“I think I’ll shower before he gets here,” you grabbed your clothes and bath towels, also grabbing your swimsuit just in case the man happened to walk into that bathroom as you were sudsing your hair in the open layout wall of showers with no doors layout of this bunker style bathroom.

Sara said her good nights and you quietly changed into the solid black bikini you’d been toning your body and dieting for months to look amazing in and when you caught the reflection of yourself after rinsing the shampoo of your hair in the industrial mirror that was half rusted and cloudy with how old it was, you were thankful that at least you could still pull off a look this sexy even if your ego was thoroughly shattered by him.

That you could still look and feel pretty even after being rejected over and over again by the only man you’d ever agreed to be set up on a blind date with; the only man you’d ever been interested in enough to even consider deleting your dating profiles for and the man who you’d drive a solid hour facing the setting sun to reach the east side location of the swankiest restaurant in town to meet him that evening even if it meant braving rush hour traffic on the hectic and terrifying freeway to get there.

These showers worked on some sort of a timer. You pressed the button for a good amount of water pressure and flow and after several minutes the water would wind down, asking for another press of the button if you wanted more. You’d finished cleaning and rinsing and you were toweling off your legs after wringing all of the wet out of your hair. The water was still running noisily but had been winding down when you took your first steps out of the showering area and made your way toward the concrete tiled bench built into the wall where you’d left your folded clothes and the sound of the winding down trickle of the shower was replaced with a different and unexpected sound. It was the sound of a gasp, the quick intake of air made through the open mouth of an adult human being, a man. A man you knew.

The sound startled you enough to spin around and the towel you had over your head and nowhere near covering your bikini clad body slipped out of your surprised fingers and pooled down at your feet.

Burning into your skin was the deep brown of his eyes and he stood at the open space just at the foot of where his bed ended and the bathroom began with a true deer caught in the headlights look on his face.

He must have been pretty drunk. His eyes sank slowly down from your face, slipping lower and his mouth hung open, that same look of genuine surprise still spelled out all over his face.

“S-Shit, I’m,” he inhaled through his open mouth, using every last morsel of willpower left inside of him to pull his eyes up from where they’d been lazily lingering around your hips and with the single word he had left to squeak out you got the smallest, “sorry.”

You bent down to pick up the towel and spun around turning your back on the man. You weren’t in the mood to open up another hateful conversation with him right now. All you wanted was to have the strength to ignore that look you’d seen in his eyes just now so you could slip past him and go hide under your covers.

It was uncomfortable to put dry clothes over your wet bathing suit but the alternative was to strip down naked with him standing right there so you could dress yourself properly.

You felt too flustered and too much in a hurry for that and Kyungsoo was still very much frozen in place in the doorway. Drunk and slow. An immovable object.

You slipped on the silky nightshirt over the bathing suit. It would dry eventually. This nightshirt curved the shape of you and hung down to the middle of your thighs, it didn’t come with shorts and you didn’t usually mind. You hadn’t packed your bags with the idea that you’d be haunted by this bastard all night long and you might be better off sleeping in grubby sweat pants and an old t-shirt.

You needed to leave the bathroom. You’d made the requisite numbers of steps to reach the doorway and in any other situation with a normal, not inebriated, drunk or not, non-friend that he proudly proclaimed himself to be, the expectation was that he would bow his head, stop looking at you like he’d just got caught with his hand in the cookie jar and move out of the damn way.

When you reached him in this doorway; he did not move and his eyes remained fixed on you. Something must be wrong with him. The look in those eyes felt different from any looks he had shot you before and something warm and achingly slow tickled a path down the length of your spine starting somewhere in between your shoulder blades and landing softly and deeply, well inside of your belly.

Kyungsoo was not moving out of the your way, you had to touch his arm lightly to push against the warm weight of him and when you did it, his hand moved, his soft rounded fingertips reached forward and you felt the smallest brush of them over the back of your hand, you felt the smallest touch from his reaching fingers that sent the biggest jolt of electricity through your startled brain because this was not allowed. It was not expected and it was not something he would ever be caught dead doing to you.

Why? Why would he touch you here and like that when he in all other places was filled with so much disdain for you. The shockingly noisy thumping inside of your chest echoed inside the hollow of you and you felt the stickiness of the gravity that must have been holding him here in this place. That gravity grabbed ahold of your feet so tightly and the stubborn things refused to move. You could see your destination but his fingers were touching the back of your hand and there was a burning just below your eyelids pulling your lids open, demanding that you open your eyes and look into his face.

He was watching you with the slowest blinks of his eyes and his lips were parted as he breathed through his mouth. His breathing felt so light and careful you wondered if he could manage to get any oxygen from it at all the moment you were caught inside of his eyes you felt like a prisoner here.

That warmth that has spread over your spine flooded and surged inside of you, finding a home between your legs and you felt not only trapped but now helplessly compelled.

You were leaning. The breath from his lips smelled like liquor. You were leaning and the brush from his fingertips moved as he touched lightly at first over your waist and then his hot palm was resting just over your hip and he took the smallest step into you, taking what was left of your air from you when the heat from his body cascaded into your much colder skin. The silk nightshirt did nothing to insulate his temperature and you could not escape this. The moment he lifted his hand and laid a palm just over your jaw you felt too lost to keep your eyes open.

The millimeters of space that separated the two of you evaporated when the warmth of his soft mouth touched your lips and when he pulled your bottom lip into the space of his open mouth and sucked, his hands clenched hard into the flesh of your hip, slipping around to dig roughly over your ass, his hand slipped around behind your neck and his mouth devoured and demanded from you as that unimaginable heat you felt between his legs pressed into you, begging you to have mercy on him; have mercy on yourself; put both of you out of your miseries.

Your skin felt aflame. You couldn’t remember another time in your life when you’d felt so desperate and completely consumed by another person in such a short amount of time.

You wanted him. You’d give anything to have him and yet the small gasps for air from his lungs in between the kisses had the tiniest grunts of complaints under their tones.

Tiny curses came from deep within his chest. Your mind reeled and sharpened to the sounds he made and that same desperation reminded you of the very last thing he’d said to you. That he wanted nothing to do with you. That he didn’t even see the possibility of being friends with you. That you would always only be an enemy to him. Untrustworthy and unlovable. You felt it then, it broke through the rough nibbles of his teeth against the soft skin of your neck and you gasped in a breath to ask him a question — your conscience could not let you stand for this without asking.

“Kyungsoo, I thought — that you didn’t want this — what — what are we doing?”

You were an idiot. It felt like it had to be asked and yet your body clung tightly to him despite it all — just because of the possibility that he didn’t mean any of this, that it was just the alcohol driving this desperation, that this was the kind of mistake that would destroy the both of you in the morning — you simply could not let this happen if any of those were a possibility.

“Kyungsoo, is this — a mistake?”

Your questions pulled his face up and the darkness had built inside his eyes to such an extent that it took him several seconds of looking into your face for you to see the shift of understanding to break through. With the understanding came the painful and horrible when he pulled his hand up to cover over his parted mouth and mumbled the quickest “I’m sorry,” before he covered up any other terrible words he might have been about to say to you.

You felt his retreat with the temperature drop.

It had been what you feared. It was only the alcohol taking ahold of his body and making it betray his heart. For inside of his heart, there would never be a place for you. The crushing feeling you felt inside of your stomach pulled your shoulders down and you were sure the look on your face would be close to tears but he wasn’t looking at you anymore.

He had separated his body from you and your wounded feelings flared up hot, desperate for something to ease some of the pain. You found none.

Kyungsoo was shaking his head back and forth and another soft apology landed with a dull thud against your hollow chest. The echo sounded like the beat of a funeral drum.

“I — I’m going to bed,” you whispered with what last bits of your voice you could find to work and paused briefly to ask something else just for the sake of your own wounded ego, “Does this make us even?” His eyes pulled up from his dazed focus down on the floor and he looked into your face when you asked the question.

“And I know it didn’t mean anything, Kyungsoo. I knew it was just the alcohol. I was just drunk then and you were just drunk now.” You pushed the corners of your mouth up as hard as you could stand and they may have even moved up a tiny bit.

You hoped to God he was too drunk to have noticed the wetness that settled heavy inside of your eyes and you were suddenly and eternally thankful that your bed was as physically far away from his bed as possible.

Links: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

[bullet-prooflove]

Old School: Richie Jerimovich x Reader

Tagging: @kmc1989 @lostinwonderland314 @fallout-girl219 @wabi-sabi1090 @Princesssunderworld

Companion piece to:

One Night Stand (NSFW) - It was never meant to be more than a one night stand.

Safe With You - Richie still has nightmares about how he found Michael.

Joy - The stabbing leads Richie to confront some of the doubts he has about himself.

All The Good Ones Are (NSFW) - Richie has never thought of himself as one of the good ones.

Gift (NSFW) - Richie has always thought of you as a gift.

The first time Richie finds one of your love notes in the pocket of his jacket, he feels the flush creep up his cheeks because it can’t be for him, it just can’t. A man like him doesn’t get this lucky, he doesn’t end up with a woman that commits her feelings to paper for the whole world to see. He checks the envelope again but it’s definitely his name on the front, written in your neat cursive writing.

You’re out of town for a couple of days, over in New York to hammer out a contract for one of the authors you work with. You try to play it off as nothing but Richie knows it’s a big deal. He’s fiercely proud of your accomplishments, of the career you’ve managed to carve out for yourself in the aftermath of your divorce.

He smiles as he reads the letter, it’s only a few lines but it makes him feel like he’s walking on air because you know Richie’s old school, that he comes from the era where you make mixed tapes for the girl you like.

An actual written form of communication shows care and attention, it means thought was put into those words, it creates a connection between the writer and the reader. You want him to have that whilst you’re away, you want him to know that you’ll be missing him just as much as he’ll be missing you, despite the fact it’s early days between the two of you.

It's when you get back from your trip that you find an envelope tucked inside your mail box. It’s written in Richie’s block capitals with your name and a heart drawn next to it. You start to laugh when you open it because there’s a CD residing inside with the words ‘Richie and Joy’s Mixed Tape’ written in Sharpie on the disk. You put it on the moment you step inside the house and the sounds of ‘Ain’t No Sunshine’ begin to filter through the speakers.

It moves you to hear that song, because in that moment  you know exactly how Richie’s feeling. You may express your emotions through words but Richie’s method is music and this song it tells you everything you need to know.

Richie Jerimovich is in love with you, and it just so happens you’re in love with him too.

Love Richie? Don’t miss any of his stories by joining the taglist here.

Like My Work? - Why Not Buy Me A Coffee

[k-atsukibakugou]

denki + a cosmopolitan pretty pleaseeeeeee

LUKE MY LOVEEEE i hope u like it, i tried to lean more into the flirtiness but im unsure if it translated well lmao but i hope u like it nonetheless <3 birthday bash intro + rules + menu | event masterlist

you weren’t exactly a regular at the local bar, you didn’t know every employee by name, but you’d been here enough to know you’d remember seeing him around. you’d have remembered the shock of yellow hair, glowing neon under black lights, the static electricity surrounding him, the flirty, cheshire smile planted on his pink lips. how hadn’t you seen him around before?

“cosmo? good choice.” he practically purrs at you, his hips like a magnet for your eyes when he twists around, reaching high on the shelves for the vodka, the twinkle in his golden eyes enough for you to know he caught you staring at the sliver of his abdomen exposed by his shirt lifting. averting your eyes from his, you look down to his hands, slender fingers topped with cracked black nail polish, a bracelet on one of his wrists.

watching him work was like foreplay, the way he cradled the shot glass, fingers curled around the bottle as he poured the shot of vodka, the confident smirk on his lips when he held the bottle higher and higher mid-pour, tipping the bottle back when your shot was perfect. if he wasn’t so attractive, you might’ve thought his flair was over the top, but watching him, you find it impossible to find every movement anything other than mesmerising.

adding ice, the measured shots, and the juice to the cocktail shaker, he leaned closer, his name tag flashing in the light, his name messily scrawled in capital letters across the plastic, denki <3.

finally, shaking the cup in one hand, he leans on his elbow, getting closer than he needs to get, his cologne overwhelming your senses, his proximity giving you no choice but to watch his lips instead of his hands, “so, you come here often?”

his voice is so, so, smooth, like a siren’s when you lean closer as well, his orbit impossible to escape, “‘cause i think i’d remember someone like you in here.”

as if testing the waters, his tongue darts from between his lips, dark golden eyes watching you track the muscle as it wet his lips. clearing your throat, you glance up at his eyes through your eyelashes, “this a new tactic for tips?”

your voice is light, flirty, bringing a grin to his lips when he steps back to finally pour your drink (you’d never known any bartender to take this long making a cosmo, maybe you’d order a more complex drink when you come up next, just so he doesn’t have to stall to keep you close), garnishing the glass with a fresh orange peel twist.

“maybe, maybe it’s just to get your number.” denki slides the drink towards you with a wink, the glass sat atop a cardboard coaster (blank, you note, free from any advertisements the others were plastered with), “on the house, gorgeous.”

you giggle at his joke, leaning nearly your entire upper body over the bar to hand him the free-drink token, closer again to drag your fingers over his shoulder, down to the pen tucked beneath his name tag. like this, you can see the lines of dark brown littered between the yellow of his eyes, the way his pupils dilate at your proximity, the affect you had on him.

scribbling your number down, you hold the coaster back out to him between two manicured fingers, holding your cosmo in your free one, biting your lip at the lovesick look in his eye, “i’ll see you around, denki.”

[butchcarmy]

ALEXITHYMIA CH 5: detergent, thrifting, and cake

Roommate AU: Carmy Berzatto x Reader

Chapter Rating: T (11k)

ao3 link, ch 1, ch 2, ch 3, ch 4

Chapter Summary: It’s his roommate’s birthday this week, and Carmy doesn’t find out until it’s a couple days away. Once he finds they’re unluckily spending their birthday alone, he makes it his mission to make their lonely day better. It’s the least he can do. Little does he know how much more he has to discover about them and about himself.

Tags: reader having trauma, carmy having trauma, toxic families, domesticity

A/N: It’s time… it’s time. I said last chapter was the longest…just kidding. THIS ONE is the longest, and it was hardest to write so far. The duo gets to have a lot of fun this chapter, though! arguably the most so far! A lot of domestic goodness and good food and shopping! Until… :)

also HUGE shoutout to @justaconsequence on tumblr for being my beta reader for this chapter! she was so kind and so helpful. this behemoth of a fic is too much for me to proofread on my own. anyway, thanks for reading and enjoy! can't wait to hear what y'all think!

Typically, by this time on Monday morning, Carmy's usually three cigarettes deep into paperwork, urgently (and poorly) calculating the sales the restaurant needs to make this week to stay afloat. Because even though it's a Sunday closing activity, he never seems to find the occasion to get around to it, and by 10 pm, he doesn't have the capacity to be crunching numbers. 

Not that 8 am is much better. At least he's not dissecting the debt this morning—he's studying detergent prices.

“Why is this one, like, almost 20 dollars?” Carmy stops reading the price tags and glances over at his roommate, who's squinting at products on upper shelves. The lights are always too bright in this place. “And for such a small bottle…”

“Pre-mixed organic sulfate-free 100% vegan bleach,” Carmy reads dully. 

“So stupid.” They shake their head. “Does grocery shopping ever depress you?”

“Usually,” he replies dryly. “Inflation is pretty depressing.”

“Don’t even get me started. Capitalism in general depresses me.”

“Hm, yeah. That too.” He sighs through his nose and tries to refocus. He's having a hard time processing all the numbers and letters today. “You see any unscented detergent? Somethin’ mild?”

“Um…” They crane their neck up and down, and then they crouch on the ground. They pick up a white bottle. “How's this? It's like, 8 dollars. It's not name-brand, but…”

“You know I don't care.” He kneels with them, huddling in close. They smell faintly of a sweet, yet musky perfume. He reminds himself to focus on the detergent, not the way they smell (even if it's far more interesting). “Yeah, this looks good. Thank you.”

“For your vintage denim, right?” They stand up to put the detergent in their shopping cart, which is barely separated with his stuff vs. theirs. He doesn't understand why his face grows warm at their comment, but it does. 

“Uh, yeah. It is.” If the blush shows on his face, they graciously don't comment. “Although I'll admit I don't get around to washing them as much as I should.”

“You're not supposed to wash jeans that often anyway, right?” They lean their elbows onto the rickety cart as they push it, and he ambles along next to them, matching the slow, relaxed pace of their walk. 

“Yeah, but I really…” The implications are clear. They fail in suppressing a laugh, and it makes him smile. “And I’m supposed to hand wash them, so.”

“Oh, so what you're saying is that you never wash them,” they tease.

“That is not at all what I'm saying.” They make an unimpressed face. “I do laundry, it's just…”

“Not often,” they supply helpfully. He tries to come up with something, but he's got nothing. “It's okay, I understand.”

“I promise I wash my clothes,” he mumbles, wilting. 

“I know.” There's that new smile he's grown to recognize more clearly. It's this mischievous one they get when they’re teasing him, and it's so cute he doesn't have any room in him to get even a little irritable. “I've seen you do laundry maybe once or twice.”

“Hey,” he says, warning, and they laugh and run ahead of him, the squeaky wheels of the cart giggling alongside them. 

After the night he almost burned down their apartment, he had felt different. It was like a switch being flipped, light abruptly filling up a dark room, and he's been squinting, struggling to adjust. But as he walks with them today, grocery shopping lit by blinding white fluorescents, he finds that he can see them rather clearly. 

The connection between the two of them is tangible, palpable. It's workable pasta dough that's been kneaded to uniformity. The dough is malleable, clean, and when he touches it, sticky, glutenous residue doesn't cover his palms. When he catches at them peeking over their shoulder to make sure he's still following them, he chases away the urge to pull them into his arms. He throws the desire into boiling water in hopes that enough pressure will change those feelings into something more palatable. He's not sure if it's working.

Something happened when he hugged them that Saturday night. He doesn't dare name what that “something” is, but it's rising from where it's sitting at the bottom of the pot, just about to hit the surface—

“Hey, I gotta get some stuff in this aisle.” Carmy snaps out of it and follows them as they veer the cart to the left. He raises his eyes to read the categories on the sign.

“You bakin’ somethin’?” They both move out of the way for an oncoming cart.

“Yeah, was thinking about it.” They halt to a stop in front of the boxed cake mix and step back to fully peruse the shelves. He stands next to them, and they glance at him out of the corner of their eye. “You’re not judging me for getting box mix, are you?”

“Not at all,” he answers honestly. “Food is always better when made from scratch, but box mix has its uses. Besides, I’m not a baker.”

“That’s true, but I’m sure you still make an insane cake.” Carmy’s aware he can’t make them unsee his flash of a smile, but he still shrugs. “Sure, stay humble.”

“I try. What’s the occasion?”

“Ah, nothing much. It’s just my birthday.”

“Oh, okay.” 

…And he's about to move on, just as casually as it came, but then the processing finishes.

“Why’re you lookin’ at me like that?” They ask confusedly. 

“Is it your birthday today?”

“No, um, it’s this Thursday.” He exhales in palpable relief. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” He hates at how worked up he sounds.

“Um…” Their face is twinged with guilt. “...There was never a good time to bring it up?”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be getting upset.” He sighs, shakes his head. “I just feel like I should’ve known, I guess.”

“No, it’s fine. It’s not your fault. I never brought it up. Um…” Their hands are fiddling with the edges of their sleeves. “I just have complicated feelings about my birthday.”

“Ah, I see. I get that.” That, he can understand. “Is it all the gifts and stuff?”

“Kinda. It’s a part of it.” They lean down to grab a box of devil’s food cake, and that makes him remember that they’re in a grocery store. Not quite the best place for a personal conversation like this. They’re being vague, but he won’t press. Not right now.

“You shouldn’t be baking for yourself on your birthday,” Carmy mutters. They smile at that, but it’s different. It’s heavy with melancholy. 

“It’s alright. I’m gonna be celebrating with my friends this weekend, just not on my actual birthday.” His conflicted expression persists. “It’s okay, really. It’s just a day. It’ll be enough of a present to not have to go into work.”

“Put that back,” he blurts out. “I’ll make you a cake.”

“Don’t you work?” Their eyebrows are arched in surprise. “You really don’t—”

“I know I don’t. But I want to. I do work, yeah, but I’ll, I’ll get someone to cover me.” He’s never said those words before in his life, and now that they’re out, he can’t take them back. As a matter of fact, he doesn’t want to take them back. “We’re friends, aren’t we?”

“Of course,” they reply quickly. 

“Then let me do this. Please.” He has no idea where this courage is coming from. “I want to. I know I'm always working, but I really…” Their eyes are wide with wonder, yet watchful. It shouldn't make him falter, but it does. His heart stutters and whatever bravado briefly gripped him fades away. “I’m…probably being too pushy right now. Tell me to fuck off?”

“I’m not gonna tell you to fuck off for wanting to bake me a cake,” they laugh, easing his worries like they always do. “C’mon, Carm.”

“So, uh, is that a yes, or…?”

“Just so we’re clear, I’m not trying to ask you to take off of work for my birthday,” they start carefully, “but I wouldn’t object to it. So, yeah. It’s a yes.”

“Okay.” He can’t help his giddy smile. There's someone saying you look stupid like this, but he’s with them, and it makes everything else silent. “Okay, good.”

“You’re…being super sweet about all this.” He doesn’t understand why—maybe it’s the way they say it—but hearing that makes his neck go hot. 

“I mean…friends do stuff like this, don’t they?” 

“Only the good ones.” They beam beautifully at him. He hasn’t done anything to warrant their affection, he thinks, but the feeling of their smile is so warm. He can’t resist soaking in it.

He's glad that lady luck blessed him just enough to stop their birthday from passing him by. He's been itching for an opportunity to repay them for all the bullshit they've had to take from him as of recent (although he knows if he brought it up, they would say it wasn't anything worth repaying). They deserve something good from him for once, not panic attacks and nightmares. 

He just wishes he could figure out why they were going to spend their birthday alone. He knows them a lot better now, but there's still so much left shrouded. He wants to know them inside and out—he wants to learn what makes them tick, what keeps them up at night, what makes them happy. He wants to know all of it in its entirety, to fill in the gaps in the puzzle he doesn't have the pieces for.

He has some of the pieces. He understands that their relationship with their family to his—distant, strained, and difficult. Unfortunately, that’s about it. He doesn’t know any of the specifics. It’s not like he’s talked to them about his family outside of the off-handed bitter remarks, just as they have, but he finds that this fact leaves him dissatisfied.

He just hopes that they'll let him in. He's not sure if they will, but…he's gonna try. He has to. He's sick of not trying.

. . . . .

“You want to take off?” Richie’s staring at Carmy like he’s grown a second head. They're taking a smoke break in the back. “I don’t know what sort of doppelganger bullshit this is, but if you’re trying to pretend to be Carmen, you’re doing a shit job.”

“Very funny, jackass,” Carmy mutters. “I’m being serious. This Thursday.”

“All day?” Carmy grimaces, but he nods. Richie shakes his head. “You’re being weird. Really fuckin’ weird.”

“I know I shouldn’t. It’s a bad idea, but—”

“Cousin, no, that’s not at all what’s goin’ on here,” Richie interrupts, and Carmy’s at a loss for words. “This is the best idea you’ve ever had.”

“What?” Carmy squints at him. “Are you being serious?”

“‘Course I’m serious. I’m always serious.” Carmy decides not to comment on that. “Do you know how many times I’ve tried to get you off this ship for just one fucking second?”

“As the owner of this place, you’ve tried way too many times,” he replies dryly. 

“Uh, as the original co-owner of this place, you don’t listen to me enough.” Again, Carmy decides not to elaborate on that one. It’s not worth it. “Take the day off. I was running it fine before, and I’ll keep running it.”

“No, no, we’re not saying that, it was not fine,” Carmy starts, but Richie’s already flipping him off. 

“Whatever, I already know, new fucking system and all that. Don’t get anxiety or whatever over it, that’s why you got Syd hustling shit your way, right?” 

“Uh.” Carmy didn’t realize that Richie had even been paying attention to the new hierarchy in the restaurant, let alone respecting it in any capacity. “Yeah, she is.”

“Then it’s fine.” Richie blows smoke in his face, and Carmy swats it away with a glare. “It was fine when you came in an hour late today, wasn’t it?” 

“You guys knew I wasn’t gonna come in until later,” Carmy argues, defensive (although he’s not sure if there’s actually anything to argue about). 

“Exactly.” Richie sighs all of a sudden, a long one that sounds like it’s bone deep. “Carm. Let me be straight with you. You need to do this. Okay? No backing out of this one.”

“Why’re you sayin’ this? What are you sayin’?” 

“It’s ‘cause of your roommate, right? This Thursday?”

“...Yeah.” Carmy pales. “How did you—?”

“Fuckin’ knew it,” Richie says, grinning. “It was obvious.”

“No way. I didn’t say shit.”

“You didn’t need to.” Richie flicks the ash off his cigarette. “They’re changin’ you, man. We can all see it.”

“...” Carmy can’t deny that. He doesn't have time to ponder on that right now. “Is it really okay?”

“Yeah, you could stand to have an attitude adjustment.”

“I wasn’t talking about that, asshole. I was talking about Thursday.”

“Yes, for fuck’s sake, it’s completely fine.” Richie claps a hand on his shoulder, solid in its grip. It makes Carmy’s eyes snap to him, mostly in confusion. “So what’s the occasion? Must be important.”

“It’s their birthday. I mean, I could just go home early that day, but—”

“Yo, if you’re gonna take off, don’t halfass it—”

“That’s not what I was gonna say. When I’m here, I can’t seem to find my way out. This place…it just has a way of trapping you in.” He doesn’t expect Richie to nod, but he does. “I know if I don’t take the whole day off, I’ll never get out of here in time. Not until it’s too late.”

For some reason, that makes Richie laugh. 

“Yeah. That's it.” Richie shakes his head as smoke trails out of his mouth. “That’s just it, man. You have to make time for the things that’re important. Even the recitals where you have to listen to five year olds play twinkle twinkle little star 20 times. You can’t miss shit like this. Because once you miss it, it’s gone.”

“Rich.” Carmy wants to say something to make that haunted expression leave Richie's face, but he doesn't come up with anything in time.

“Don’t give me that look.” Richie’s hand falls from his shoulder. “I’m just tryin’ to stop you from fucking shit up. They actually seem like a good person.”  

“Y’think so?”

“I do. You?”

“Yeah.” Carmy doesn’t bother hiding his smile, even though he can already sense Richie’s teasing coming from a mile away. “They’re a really good friend.”

“Friend. Sure.” Richie snorts. 

“Don’t push it,” and for some reason he adds, “they were gonna spend it alone.”

“Huh. Sociable guy like them spending it alone?”

“I know. I didn't ask. Maybe I should've.”

“Maybe. I dunno, cousin. Everyone's got their secrets. Especially the ones that try to act like they don't have any.”

“You're strangely full of wisdom today.”

“Fuck right off,” Richie responds in regular Richie fashion.

“I think they're like me. Like us.” Carmy's not sure why he's saying this on a Monday afternoon at work out of all times, but the truth bursts out of him beyond his will. Richie's expression shifts into something more solemn, something recognizable. “Y'know what I mean.”

“...Yeah.” Richie claps his hand on Carmy's back again. “Shitty parents club.”

As Carmy stands there in the back, feet sore and tobacco in the air, he sees his childhood in flashes. He's five years old again and is following Mike around with scuffed sneakers and untamed hair, although he supposes that unruliness never truly changed with time. There's warm sunlight filtering through green summer leaves. He hears his mother behind him, somewhere, but maybe he doesn't. 

He thinks of home, of his bedroom, and it is cold. He has homework he’s failed to complete again. It's sitting on his desk, on top of all of the other shit he can't finish. There's screaming, and he's not listening.

He blinks. He’s 30, and he hasn’t talked to his mom since Michael died.

“Shitty parents club,” Carmy repeats hollowly. 

. . . . .

When Thursday morning arrives, Carmy ends up greeting his roommate with flour in his hair and eggs sizzling on the pan. 

“Um,” they say, just as Carmy goes “G'morning.” They both freeze, brief awkwardness circling between them before it dissipates with their breathless laugh.

“Good morning. I didn't think you'd actually take off,” they admit.

“I said I would,” he replies quietly, but it's not accusatory. How many times had he said he'd be home for dinner just for him to arrive when they're already asleep? He tries not to make empty promises anymore. Nonetheless, he understands their surprise. “Um, I'm almost done with breakfast. I didn't get to the coffee yet.”

“Am I supposed to be offended?” They laugh. “That's the least I can do, with you doing all of this.” They sluggishly shuffle behind him to reach down into some kitchen cabinets. “It's a special day, so I'll even make us pour overs.”

“That's true. It is special.” He peeks over his shoulder, pausing from basting the eggs in brown butter to see them setting up on the kitchen island. They gently place the hourglass-shaped glass onto the counter with a light clink. He silently switches the button on for the electric gooseneck kettle to his right. “Am I allowed to wish you a happy birthday, or should I not?”

“Hm, I don't mind. Just don't overdo it, which I doubt you will.” They pull out a bag of coarse ground coffee and a filter. As soon as they open the bag, he can smell the sweet scent of the light roast floating towards him. 

“Okay. Then, happy birthday,” he says as casually as he can.

“Thanks, Carmy.” He studies their expression, searching for annoyance in their content expression, but he doesn't find any. “That's not even really what I meant by today being special, though.”

“How else did you mean it?” The eggs are done. He reaches over the hot pan to cut the heat.

“Well, y'know. I dunno if we’ve ever had a full day off together.” They're carefully scooping grounds into the filter fitted on top of the glass, creating a small hill. “I think I managed to catch you coming home early on my off days sometimes, but never a full day.”

“Huh.” Carmy has to take a minute to think about that one. “Yeah, I don't know either. I think you're right.”

“Then, like I said. It's special.” They seal up the bag of coffee grounds, and then they frown. “Shit. I forgot to turn on the kettle. Can you—”

“Already did it,” he reports, pleased, and his sense of accomplishment only doubles at their sigh of relief. 

“Thank god.” There's the familiar clicking sound of the kettle reaching the perfect temperature. “Just in time, too. Can you hand it to me?”

“Yes, chef,” he says, because it always makes them laugh. Today is no exception. He slides the metallic kettle over to them. 

“So what delights did you whip up over there?” They ask. They begin pouring the almost boiling water over their coffee grounds in a slow circle, gradually inching towards the middle. “It smells amazing. I want the full break-down.”

“The full break-down, got it.” On two circular plates, he's carefully placing a fried egg, thick cut bacon, and a slice of toast with jam and butter. “Uh…it's nothin’ special, just stuff we had in the fridge. We've got a, uh, brown-butter fried egg with a little paprika, sage, pepper, salt…”

“Oh, just an egg made with liquid gold, no big deal,” they imitate.

“Cut it out,” he snips back, but he's smiling and they know it. “There's honestly not much to it. This thick-cut bacon was in the back, so I cooked the rest of it. And the toast is just brioche with salted honey butter and blueberry jam.”

“Carmy. C'mon. That's nothing special to you?”

“I mean.” It's not quite nothing, he thinks. “I can make nicer breakfasts, is all.”

“That's what you said when you made me garlic bread, and that fucking blew my mind.” They set the kettle down with a thunk. The glass is full of dark coffee. Prepped next to them is their favorite glass mug alongside Carmy's. He's not sure how they knew that it was his favorite, but he doesn't question it.

“I'm just letting you know that you should wait to be really impressed.” 

“Too fucking late, man.” He's turned around and placed the two breakfast platters on the kitchen island, and they gawk openly at it. “Holy fuck.”

“It's ready,” he says, surprisingly meek. He can't comprehend why anxiety's hitting him now of all times. He's served acclaimed food critics, top-security government officials, and celebrities more times than he can count. Before that audience, he never faltered, but in front of his roommate in their crumpled pajamas, his heart stutters. 

“Oh, wow…” They regard the food with undeserved softness. Like a punctured balloon, his anxiety immediately begins deflating. They're staring at the food like it's a painting in a museum. “You seriously didn't have to do all of this.”

“I know. I just wanted to.” He feels heat on the back of his neck. “Is…is that okay?”

“It's more than okay.” Suddenly, he notices their eyes are puffy, like they were crying. “Goddamnit, get over here.” 

He only registers what's about to happen for one second before they're hugging him. Their palms are on his back, and the top of their head tucks under his chin perfectly. He makes a small, surprised noise. 

“I, I'm glad you like it.” He links his arms around them, allows himself to rest his chin on their head. With their face turned to the side, their ear's pressed up against his chest, and he's instantly struck with the paranoia that they're gonna hear his rapid heartbeat. 

“I haven't even taken a bite yet, and I love it.” They lean back then, arms still wrapped around him and head craned upwards to look at him. It's far too intimate for what they are, and Carmy hates how his heart beats even harder. “Thank you for doing all this. Seriously. I…”

“The breakfast's just a side thing, I'm, um, still baking you a cake.”

“What? You're doing this and a cake?”

“Um,” Carmy repeats intelligently.

“Carmy. Carmy, Carmy, Carmy.” Their words ooze affection, but surely he's just imagining it. Their hands are crawling up his back. “God, I could just ki—”

“There's the timer,” Carmy blurts out, because his phone's ringing and so are his ears. At the sound, they let him go, and he grabs two towels to retrieve the two circular cake pans from the oven. A toothpick poked through the middle comes out clean, so he sets them on a wire rack to cool. 

He needs to focus on the cakes. That's the most important thing.

“Oh my god.” They lean in close to the cake and take a deep breath. “Is this—”

“Devil's food cake, yeah.” The heat searing his face is surely from opening the oven. 

“You—how did you—” Their smile is luminous with joy. “You really pay attention to every little thing, don't you?”

“Sometimes. When it counts.” He fidgets awkwardly, nails picking at the sides of his fingers. “Wanna eat by the window, or…?”

“Fuck yeah I do. Can you bring the plates over? I'll have the coffee over in just a second.”

Carmy sets up at their little table first, placing the plates just right across from one another. The morning sun casts a cozy glow through their speckled window, streaking planes of light across the floor. He patiently waits and watches them pace from the fridge to the counter, splashing cream into their mugs. Through the transparent glass, he watches the white fizzle into the dark coffee, blending into a warm brown.

“Just a tiny spoon of sugar for you, right?” They peek over their shoulder, catching his stare, and he nods. He's also not quite sure how they know that, either. They've had coffee in the morning maybe a handful of times before.

He supposes they also pay attention sometimes, when it counts.

“Alright, here we go.” They bring a mug in each hand and set them delicately down on the table. He notes that his coffee is the perfect color. “Oh, thanks for waiting. You didn't have to.”

“I, I guess so, yeah. It's just, uh, you always wait for me, so…”

“That's—that's true.” An odd tension sets in their face, but they laugh it off, and it disappears. “I guess I’m not used to it anymore.”

A part of him wants to ask further by what they meant by that, but they're already taking pictures of his food so dutifully. He doesn't want to ruin it, so he eats. 

It's nice to have a solid breakfast for once. He had taken their advice from the other night and had been drinking milk with protein powder. It was nice not to feel like he was teetering the edge by lunch time, but truthfully, it was a bit unsavory. This breakfast platter is much more palatable. It also helps that his stomach pains aren't active today. 

Time rolls by slowly this quiet morning, and Carmy recognizes the oddity of it immediately. It's clear to see when by this time, he's usually already done at least ten laps through the restaurant. An irritating signal in his brain is telling him that he needs to get up and do something, not sit around and eat, but for once, he doesn't want to listen. 

A memory from roughly two weeks ago (or was it one week?) unearths all of sudden. He was up early, drinking shitty coffee and sinking into dissociation. Mornings were lonely, as he was usually the only one up, but not that day. His roommate came stumbling into the kitchen, awake from a restless night. They chatted before he had to head out, and he remembers wishing he had more time in the morning to spend with them. 

He imagined a morning just like this one, with pajamas, food, and messy hair. He daydreamed about having all the time in the world, and he thought about getting to spend it all with them. Now he’s sitting in that moment he imagined, except that it’s real. They're across from him in their wrinkled pajamas and bedhead, contentedly mowing through their food. There's a smear of jam on the corner of their mouth. He takes a sip of his coffee, and it's perfect, just as they made it for him. 

This amount of good should scare him, needs to scare him, but he just can't bring himself to care anymore. He wants more than nightmares, cigarettes, and floating just above the budget. He wants this.

He tastes his coffee and reminds himself that he’s still here. The moment hasn’t passed him by. 

“Is it good?” He asks quietly. It’s a rhetorical question, it always is, but he can’t help himself. He wants to hear it from them. 

“So. Fucking. Good.” They have to finish chewing before they answer. “You always knock it out of the park. If this is the prelude, I don’t know if I can handle what’s next,” they say, gesturing towards the cooling cake.

“It won’t be ready for a while yet. You have time to prepare yourself.” That makes them smile. All according to plan. “Got anything in mind for today?”

“Nothing glamorous. I was just gonna go out for a little. Go thrifting, maybe watch a movie later. Smoke a joint.” They shrug. “Just my usual sort of thing.”

“Mm.” He dusts off crumbs from the toast off his fingers on his pants. “Sounds like a good time. You still wanna go?”

“I do, yeah.” They stare at him for a moment, as if processing his words. Or just him. “Do you…wanna tag along, or…?”

Whenever they ask him if he wants to spend time together (whether it’s grocery shopping, smoking, or watching a show), they usually offer it with an air of nonchalance. Carmy’s assumed it’s been out of politeness, restraining their expression as to not put any pressure onto him. That’s the person he’s used to, not this uneasy anxiety, someone afraid to ask him to spend time with them.

It reminds him of himself in every way. 

“I’d love to tag along,” he answers easily, just as they’ve always done for him. “I’ve got the whole day off, after all.”

“Right. ‘Course.” He watches their little smile double in size. “I promise to not make you watch me try on clothes for too long.”

“I wouldn’t mind. I like thrifting, y’know.” And you, he thinks to himself. 

“You do? Oh, of course—” They make a contemplative noise to themself. “Vintage denim. I always wondered how you managed to have so many pairs.”

“Once you know where to look, they’re pretty easy to find. I can help you find some, if you want.”

“I’d love that. I realized the other day that I don’t have any dark wash jeans, so—actually, the truth is that I do have a pair, but they’re so fucked up and old that I never wear them anymore. Anyway, I need new jeans. Think you could find some dark wash blue jeans for me?”

“If you’re willing to hit up more than one store, then definitely,” he replies, just a smidge cocky.

“I’m willing to hit up even two more stores.” He pretends to gasp, to which they nod confidently. “Yeah. That’s right. Maybe even three.”

“We won’t need three,” Carmy promises. “I’m better than that. Probably won’t even need two, but…” He shrugs. “We’ll see what they’ve got.”

“Okay, Mr. Confident over here,” they tease. “Let’s see what you’ve got!”

They head out after they both clean the kitchen and freshen up. Carmy gets the flour out of his hair and rewets his hair to revive some of his curls. He silently thanks his past self for showering the night before. With the passage of the morning cold and the rising sun, the afternoon weather’s become brisk and pleasant. However, the weather’s barely a factor in how he’s dressing. 

Is this too much? Is this not enough? He’s switching shirts and pants in the mirror like he’s about to go on a date. He knows he’s not, swears to himself that he’s not, but he’s put product in his hair and cologne on his wrists and temples. It’s not a date, but he can’t fucking decide what to wear. 

He sucks it up and settles on a gray sweater, light wash blue jeans, and white sneakers. From under his collar and at the bottom of his sweater peeks out a brown button up. It’s probably too much, but this is his sixth outfit change. He’s fed up with it and himself.

After adjusting the gold chain that got hidden under his collar, he steps out. 

He finds them already waiting by the door in this thick knit cardigan and fitted plaid pants that makes his heart stutter. When they hear him approaching, their head snaps up from their phone, and their skin sparkles with touches of makeup. 

“You look really nice.” He has no idea how he let that slip, but he’s more shocked that he didn’t stutter once. 

“Ah, th—thank you,” they stammer, fingers fidgeting with the edge of their sleeve. He’s not sure if it's their makeup or their skin that’s doing the blushing. It’s nice to see them being the one tripping over their words for once. “You look pretty handsome yourself.”

“Oh. Um.” Handsome? It echoes in his head. He instantly feels self conscious. So much for being the more suave one for once. “Thanks, uh…I just didn’t wanna wear my work clothes,” he lies in an attempt to ease his embarrassment.

“I gotcha.” He’s glad they don’t challenge him on it. “Shall we head out?”

“Yeah. Where we headed first?”

They take the metro to their personal favorite shop a little up north. The metro’s surprisingly busy for a Thursday afternoon, but the crowd forces the two of them to be huddled next to each other. They’re both standing close to a pole by the window, each with one hand wrapped around the metal. 

As passengers come and go, they step closer to him to move out of the way. Eventually it just gets to a point where they’re standing nearly pressed up against his chest. He tries not to dwell on how that makes him feel, but he can smell the fragrance they put on, and it’s very distracting. 

Luckily, the ride is short. Any longer on the train, he might’ve put an arm around their shoulder, god forbid. 

“If we can’t find what I’m looking for here, maybe you can show me one of your favorite spots to go thrifting,” they say as they enter the thrift store. The interior is decorated, clean, and lovely, and unlike the metro, it’s not packed to the brim with people. It smells faintly of incense, and there’s local art framed all over the walls for sale. It oozes warmth and excitement, much like them. 

“There’s a ton of shit here, so maybe we won’t need to after all.” He finds himself intaking everything at once, eyes flickering from sign to sign. “I’ve never been here before. This is really cool.”

“It’s my favorite place to find new clothes.” They trail down the racks, finger flitting between clothes. “I hope you can find something you like here, too.”

“I’m sure I will.” He’s already walking to their denim section and immediately spots some contenders. “I think I already have.”

He’s not sure if they mean to spend hours in there, but he certainly does. There’s more than just clothes to look at, although that’s what takes up most of his time. There’s dishes, furniture, cds, vinyls, books, even electronics. He goes back and forth with them, clothing articles piling up in his arms as they sit on battered couches together and peruse scratched cds. Everywhere he looks, there’s just more, more, and more. 

“Okay, I’ve gotta cut myself off,” they say as they leave the furniture section. They’ve sat on nearly every chair in that place. “I already have so many clothes to try on, and that’s not even including the jeans you’ve picked out for me.”

“If it helps, some of these are mine.” Carmy flips through the layers of hanging jeans that have built up on his forearm. “If you can believe it, I even found some stuff that isn’t denim.”

“I’m not sure if I can, but seeing is believing.” They thumb through some long-sleeves he’s carrying that are seeping out from under the jeans. “I’m just glad you were able to find some stuff for yourself, too. Not that I was that worried.”

He hands them the jeans he’s found for them, all dark wash and in their size. To his surprise, they also hand him an article of clothing for him to try on. 

“I thought you’d look good in this. You’ll have to show me when you try it on,” they say, and it’s innocent, completely meaningless, but as soon as Carmy agrees and rushes to hide in the changing room, he views in the mirror and sees his flushed face. 

Doesn’t mean anything, he repeats to himself, over and over and over. Stop getting in over your head.

He tries on his items of choice first. The first is a dark green henley that looked better on the rack than it did him, so he puts it in the reject pile. The second is a dark blue long sleeve that fits just right. It’s cheap, too, so it’s an automatic purchase. He presumes the way to word it is that it hugs him in all the right places, but he’s not sure. The rest are jeans, of which only one he decides to buy. A bit pricey, but for the brand and year, it’s worth it (although he basically always uses this reasoning with himself). 

Now, for the piece of clothing they picked out for him. It’s a dark brown t-shirt that seems like it’s just the right length. It’s a muted, yet warm brown, a bit rosey in hue. He doesn’t realize it’s a v-neck until he gets it over his head and down his shoulders. 

“I’ve never worn a v-neck before,” he calls out to the room next to him. 

“Oh, are you trying it on? Do you like it?” Their slightly muffled voice calls back to him. 

“Um…I’m not sure,” he admits with a shaky laugh. The collar is lower than he’s used to. It dips below his collarbones, and between them dangles his chain. “Should I show you?”

“Yes! Hold on, lemme get some pants on. …Okay, I’m stepping out!”

He hears their door open alongside his. When they see him, their expression snaps into what he believes is surprise and delight. He’s sure he looks somewhat the same. 

They’re wearing one of the vintage jeans he picked out for them—dark blue Levi’s. Although they’re rolled up a couple times at the bottom, it seems to fit them just right. As he stares, he’s reminded of his many pairs of Levi’s, and it’s more or less like seeing them in his clothes, which is. Which is. Uh. Yeah.

“I knew that would suit you,” they say with a grin, to which he realizes he can’t hide his blush. 

“It’s not weird?”

“Not at all. It looks good.” They tilt their head to the side as they openly look him over, hip cocked. Something in their gaze is making him hot. “No pressure to buy it, of course.”

“It’s different from what I’m used to, but…” He looks down, smooths the fabric with his palm. “It’s kinda nice, something like this. Um, and what do you think about the jeans?” He needs to direct the attention off him quickly. 

“Oh, I love them. The others ended up fitting not quite right on me, but that’s how it goes.” They move from side to side, almost twirling. It’s cute. “I love these, though. Just a little long, but I’m used to it.”

“That’s how it always is. I can hem them for you, if you want. I usually hem mine.”

“And he sews,” they say, seemingly to themself, but they’re looking right at him. Embarrassing. “If you don’t mind, that’d be amazing. Either way, I’m probably getting them.”

“Good. You should. They fit well.” 

“Yeah?” They glance back into their fitting room, likely examining themself in the mirror, and then back at him. “Okay, then. Definitely getting them.” With that and a cheeky grin, they go back into their dressing room to try on the rest of their clothes. Carmy follows suit, grateful to hide his embarrassed face. 

Carmy heads to check out with the dark blue long sleeve, a pair of jeans, and the brown v-neck. They’ve decided on the pair of jeans they showed him earlier and a little purple tank-top he wishes he got to see on them. 

“Will that be all for you today?” The cashier asks him as he checks out first. Even the cashiers here are pretty nice, he finds. 

“Oh, their stuff, too.” He nods to them, who’s standing right next to him. 

“Carmy.” They glare at him. 

“What?” He feels himself smiling. 

“You can’t do this to me.”

“C’mon.” He nudges them gently with his elbow. “It’s my present to you.”

“Oh, so the present wasn’t the breakfast? Or the cake? Or helping me pick these out?”

“Why can’t it be all of them?” He decides to stop this in its tracks and takes the clothes out of their hands, sliding it onto the counter. “Just these two, and that’ll be it.”

“Just you wait until your birthday hits,” they mutter darkly, shaking their head. “Just you wait.”

“I haven’t told you my birthday.” He pauses. “Right?”

“I’ll ask Richie.”

“No, you won’t.”

“You’re giving me no choice.”

“You could also just, I don't know, not ask—”

“I wouldn't have to if you didn't force my hand—”

“You guys are cute together,” the cashier comments with a smile, surely a harmless, meaningless thing, but it shuts the both of them up. Carmy can already feel the impact of it on his psyche, and he decides to tuck away the surging emotions to unpack later. At least, he'll try. 

“You really didn't have to get those for me,” they tell him when they're exiting the store. “But I guess I should just be saying thank you. So…thank you.”

“Sure. I mean, it would've been better if it was wrapped and stuff, but…” He shrugs. “Had to get you a real present, not just food.”

“Not just food, my ass.” That makes him laugh. “It'll be nice to have something to remind me of this day, though. That's one of the nice parts of getting gifts. Everytime I wear these clothes, I'll think of you.”

“Good. Yeah, that's…good,�� he finishes lamely. He nods like their words haven't flustered him, but he's sure they can tell. They laugh, and he can tell it's because of his reaction. 

“I'm sorry that the cashier said that,” they say out of nowhere.

“Why're you apologizing? It's not your fault.” Any embarrassment he was feeling before is immediately replaced with a new, more potent sort of embarrassment. He was hoping they wouldn't mention it. 

“I guess that's true. I don't know, I just…” They trail off. “Just hope it didn't upset you.”

“Not at all,” he lies, and he prays they believe it.

. . . . .

The metro is less crowded on the way home. They sit comfortably next to each other and watch the city pass them by. A part of Carmy mourns the closeness they had on the way there, but the other part tells him to get it together and keep his distance. 

“I'mma take a nap,” they say with a yawn. Their cardigan and bag have been tossed onto the couch. The new clothes have been thrown into the laundry machine, and there's the muffled sound of running water. “Maybe we could smoke and watch a movie later, though.”

“Yeah, that sounds nice.” He peers into the fridge to check on the cake rounds. Just as he left them. “Have a good nap.”

“Thanks, Carm,” they reply sleepily. “Wouldn't be a good day if I didn't get to have a nice nap, after all.” With that, they shuffle into their room and shut the door behind them.

Carmy spends the next two hours flying around the apartment, baking, cooking, cleaning. The sun slowly sets as he goes. He keeps his body and hands moving in hopes that his head doesn't have a chance to catch up, but it manages to keep the pace. It always does.

The crumb coat's fucked up on the left, his first train of thought says. He inspects the surface, eyes following the circumference of the cake. There's a little loose crumb. With the edge of his spatula, he tucks the crumb away. 

The faint smell of chocolate wafts up from the cold cake rounds. He's hunched over the kitchen island, hands reaching between dark chocolate frosting and cake. The afternoon sun casts harsh lights onto the cake, and it glistens. He genuinely can't remember the last time he's made a layered cake. He's never been much of a baker, anyhow. 

You're going to disappoint them, his second train of thought interrupts, running parallel to the other one at full speed. Who do you think you are? You don't make cakes. 

He leans back, inspects his work. The crumb coats are perfect. 

Fuck off, he thinks back, triumphant. Look at that shit. He runs his finger along the spatula, picking up congealed crumbs and frosting. He licks it off, and it's delicious. And it tastes good, asshole. So shut the fuck up.

You're being a nuisance, the thoughts continue. Carmy's pops the crumb coats in the freezer for a quick set. They don't actually like any of this. They're just being nice to make you feel better.

They seemed happy to me, he thinks, but he's faltering. He's washing the dishes, and the sensation of the warm water feels distant. They loved the food I made.

Couldn't you tell they were lying? He doesn't understand why these thoughts are rampaging through his head now of all times. It's not unfamiliar, but it's inconvenient. Keep this up, and you'll actually be surprised when they drop you.

Without warning, a memory hits him . As his hands drip with soap, he's reminded of playing with Michael and Sugar in the summer when he was five. Or six, or seven, he's never quite sure. They were outdoors at a local park, and the heat made the metal of the playground searing hot to the touch.

He was blowing bubbles, and the sticky mixture from the bottle was getting all over his hands. In his memory, Carmy watches the way the iridescent bubbles floated away and left little circles on the surface of the plastic slide. He can't remember why he wasn't playing with the others. He can remember the sound of their laughing voices in the distance, gleeful and delighted without him. He thinks he tried to join in, but it didn't work. It often just didn't work, and it was all his fault. 

The memory ends, and Carmy's finished washing the dishes. 

This is working, he thinks to himself. His hands are dried out from the hot water and soap. I swear to you, it's working. So just stop. Okay?

There's no response. Good enough. 

He hears the door opening as soon as he's putting the finishing touches on the cake. With a damp paper towel, he carefully swipes away stray drops of frosting that fell onto the cake stand. He thinks it's best described as if a tiramisu was turned into a devil's food cake. It's not the best cake he's ever made, but it's definitely up there in terms of looks. All the components of the cake tasted good separately, so he hopes it makes sense in his mouth as much as it did in his head. 

“Have a nice nap?” He asks before he turns his head. They're standing in the hallway, bed hair hastily tied back.

“Sorta. It was okay.” Their eyes are glued onto the cake as they walk up to the island. “Is this…?”

“This is for you, yeah,” he finishes for them. They take a seat on one of the chairs at the island. “It's a, uh, devil's food cake with vanilla mascarpone cream on the inside. The outside's this coffee buttercream…” He trails off, not knowing what else to say. He could mention the dutch processed cocoa powder, the expensive vanilla bean pods, or the endless sifting, but it feels too gratuitous. 

“Wow…” They're still staring, as if it's not quite real to them. “I can't believe this is for me. It almost looks too pretty to eat, but you know I can't wait to tear into this.”

“We could, uh, have it now, if you, if you want,” he says hesitantly. 

“I don't know if I could wait.” Their smile grows wider. “You even put candles on it?”

“We don't have to light them or anything if you don't want to,” he adds quickly. 

“The candles are the fun part. I don't mind that. The song is…okay I guess, but…” They give him an expectant, excited look. “Were you gonna sing for me?”

“...Only if you wanted to,” he mumbles, suddenly stricken with embarrassment. 

“Would that be okay? If I wanted that?”

“I wouldn't mind.” Not if it's you.

“Okay. Then, yeah.” They pull out a lighter from their pocket. “I’d really like that.”

Carmy cuts the overhead lights before taking out his own lighter to help them light the rest of the candles. One by one, the dark room gradually illuminates until it's filled with a warm, orange glow. The flickering flames cast shifting shadows onto their smiling face and reflect into their glossy eyes. 

“Ready?” He asks quietly. 

“I'm ready,” they whisper. 

Carmy doesn't really need to clear his throat, but he does so anyway. He can't recall the last time he sang happy birthday to anyone, let alone by himself. This is the first time he's ever sung in front of an audience, too. 

I can do this, he thinks to himself. I can do this.

His voice is awkward and scratchy. He never uses it like this, has never sang for anyone in his life. His ears burn, and he hates the sound of his voice, but he reminds himself to focus on their delighted little smile and warm gaze. The room is far too quiet for his voice, making the words painfully clear. 

“Happy birthday to you,” he finishes singing, voice trailing off awkwardly. He's more than ready to finish singing now. “Uh, make a wish…?”

“Right.” The two of them sit in the flickering candle light for a moment longer, the silence thick. Carmy watches their face, their eyes boring into the candles with an expression he can only describe as longing. Then, they blow out the candles with a decisive blow, and the room goes dark. 

He moves to switch on the lights. When he turns back to look at them, tears are streaming down their face. 

“Hey,” he says softly. He props his elbows on the counter, standing across from them and tilting his head to the side. They're not meeting his gaze, glazed eyes boring into the dripping candles. “What's wrong?”

“I'm sorry,” they whisper with a sniffle, and it sounds like a reflex. Something about them suddenly seems so much smaller. “I shouldn't be crying.”

“It's okay. I don't mind.” That makes them smile, even if it's shaky. “Was the singing too much?”

“No, it wasn't your singing,” they say with a laugh. “Your singing was lovely. It's just—I'm so happy. You made today so special.”

“Yeah?” He fights the urge to reach over and wipe their tears. “I'm glad. I wanted to make it good. I…” He hesitates. “...I didn't like the idea of you spending it alone.”

“I didn't either. And I thought I was going to have to be alone…but then you—then you took off work, and you made me breakfast, you went shopping with me—even got me clothes—and now this—” Another rush of tears gushes from their eyes, and they hastily wipe at it with their shirt. 

“You've done way more for me. This is the least I could do.” Before he can stop himself, his hand is brushing hair out of their eyes. They freeze for a split second, eyes finally flickering up towards him. “Sorry,” he mumbles.

“It's okay,” they whisper back. “Um…” They let out a shaky sigh, the sort of trembling sound that happens after crying too much. “I feel like I should explain.”

“You don't have to if you don't want to,” he assures them quickly, “but I…I'd like to know. If that's okay.”

“I want you to know. I, I do.” They open their mouth to keep talking, but shaky breaths continue to stifle them. It's hard to watch.

“Breathe,” he reminds them, quietly. He visibly takes in a deep breath, silently encouraging them to breathe with him. They follow suit, closing their eyes and taking a slow breath. Tears slip silently from their eyes. Gradually, their breathing becomes less of a staccato, evening out into something much more manageable. 

“Thank you,” they murmur. He nods. They already sound a lot calmer. “I'm not sure where to start. I…I suppose I'll start with today.” Another deep breath. “I didn’t get a call from my parents today.”

“Ah…” The first missing piece.

“I knew they weren’t going to. But a part of me still hoped…” They stop and shake their head. “It's the first year that it's been like this.”

“What happened?”

“Uh…I went no contact with my family about a year ago.” Another pained, hollow laugh. The second piece. “I didn't even really want to—it was a complicated, shitty situation. My parents were being their usual shitty selves, and I just wanted them to apologize. It was over such a small thing, and, and I just…I don't know. I thought maybe I could fix things.” He's never seen them with such a heavy expression, etched with such weariness. “I just wanted them to apologize to me, Carm. That's all I wanted. And then they cut me off cold.”

Their voice is trembling again, and the tears are falling faster. The collar of their shirt is dark with moisture. Carmy hates that he doesn't know what to say. He hates just staring at them, silent as he tries to find the words. 

Suddenly, he thinks of Michael. 

“Michael never let me work in the restaurant,” he tells them. “That's why I went to culinary school. A big part of it, anyway. He just cut me off, didn't let me in no matter what I did, and it was…” He makes a vague hand gesture. “I felt insane. I was so fucking angry. I couldn't understand him. And I'm not saying that's anything like what you've been through, but…” He looks into their watchful eyes. “I'm sorry. I think I'm trying to say that I, that I understand. A little.”

“I…I appreciate that.” They give him a small, wobbly smile. He adores their smile, but seeing it through their tears twists something painfully in his chest. “He would've been lucky to have you. You're an excellent chef.”

“I am now, anyway.” He sighs. “Your family's missing out on you, too. You're…” Say it. Just say it. “You're a really wonderful person. I can't imagine…”

I can't imagine anyone looking at you and not loving what they see, he thinks suddenly, and he instantly realizes he can't say it. He can barely even comprehend that he just thought it. 

He can't process this right now. This isn't the time. 

“I keep trying to wrap my head around it all, wondering what I did wrong, what I could've done better… Sometimes, the conclusion I arrive at is that I must have done something to deserve this. That I just, I don't know, that maybe I'm just this permanent fuck-up, and…” They run a tired hand over their wet face, through their hair. “My parents fucked me up real good, man.”

There's something familiar about their words, and Carmy realizes it's because it sounds like him. He would've never guessed that under their easy-going smiles was a reflection of himself. He recognizes himself in their self-deprecation, the bone-deep pain. There was always a sense of sympathetic connection between the two of them, but he had no idea. He had no idea how far deep the mutual experiences went. 

A part of him still can't believe that this is the truth, that this is what lies at their core, but then he remembers. He thinks about the night they were throwing up into the toilet. They were sobbing, crying into his shoulder about how much they hate themself. 

“You know you didn't deserve it. Right?” Carmy's not sure when they started leaning in so close to each other. He's looking at their wet eyelashes with startling clarity. “You did all you could.”

“You don't know that.” Their words are so soft-spoken, but it still catches him off guard. “You don't know what happened.”

“You—” Irritation prickles inside him, his instincts itching to snap back, but he doesn't. He sees himself in them, and he holds back. “You're right. I don't know what happened. But I know you.” The shock is on their face as clear as day. “At least, I think I do.”

“I want to think you do, too,” they whisper. “But this—this messy bullshit is also me. I wish it wasn't. I wish you didn't have to see all this. I…don't want you to…think any less of me.”

“I don't think there's anything you could do to make me think less of you.” He doesn't resist dragging his thumb across a stray tear on their cheek. To his surprise, they lean into his touch. “Y'know when I almost burned down the apartment?”

“Oh my god.” They smile, and he feels their grinning cheek against his palm. “Yeah. Is it crazy to say I remember it fondly?”

“A little bit.” They laugh. It's quiet, but it's real. “Remember that talk we had after?”

“I do. Why?”

“You're allowed to mess up on onions,” he says softly. “It won't push me away.”

They stare at him for what feels like a long time. Their eyes refill with tears, but they don't spill. With a clammy hand, they shakily place their hand on top of his hand that's still cradling their wet cheek.

“Fucking onions,” they say finally with a wet laugh. Fresh tears drip onto his thumb, and he wipes them away again. As many times as it takes. “God damnit, Carmy.”

“No one deserves to have shitty parents, let alone ones that walk out on them.” He thumbs away more tears. “You being an imperfect person like everyone else doesn't justify that.”

“There must be something more I could've done,” they whisper. “Something I did wrong.”

“Maybe. But they're your parents, not the other way around. It's not your fault.”

“I know. I know that. I do. There just has to be a reason, because—fuck—the truth would just be too fucked up.”

“...And that is?”

It takes a long, still minute before they can get their words out.

“...It’s—it's that—” Their cries are verging on sobs, increasingly more staggered and uncontrollable. “It's that s-some kids—are just—some kids have parents that will never—never love—”

They can't finish. Their sobs have overtaken their whole body. Their body's hunched over the counter, curled into themself. Carmy can't think of a time where he's ever seen them crying so hard.

Without another word, Carmy pulls them into a hug. 

They cry for a long time. Through it all, fleeting condolences pass Carmy by in his head, but they all feel too cheap, too meaningless. So all he does is hold them tight, letting them grab onto his shirt and soak the fabric on his shoulder. It's all he feels he can really do. 

After a while, the tide subsides. He feels them wilting in his arms, exhausted from sobbing so violently. He doesn't actually want to let them go, but their sniffling nose sounds like it's completely stopped up. 

“I'm gonna get you some tissues, ok?” He says quietly. They make a quiet noise of acknowledgement, and they pull back. He snatches up a box of tissues from the coffee table. He places it in front of them before grabbing them a glass of water. 

“Thank you,” they mumble, voice scratchy. Carmy stands and watches as they blow through several tissues. The water gets downed instantaneously. 

“Better?”

“Yeah. A lot better.”

“Good.”

“...I think, deep down, I know I didn't deserve what happened. Or just having shitty parents in general.” They sigh. “It's just easier to think that I do. That I deserve it.”

“...Yeah.” That resonates with a part of him he's not quite ready to acknowledge. “You're one of the kindest people I've ever met,” he admits quietly. “If someone like you deserves a shitty hand in life, I'm fucked.”

“Carmy…” Their smile is small, but genuine. “Thank you. I want to be able to genuinely believe that, one day. I'm going to try.”

“I know. I get it.”

“I know you do.” 

That makes both of them smile, even if it's bitter. 

“Thanks for telling me. About everything.”

“No, thank you for listening. For just being there for me.” They prop their chin in their hands, their elbows resting on the counter. “Y'know, this past year, I've been trying to find a sense of joy in all this mess. Sometimes it just feels so far away, like…like any happiness is just impossible. But I think I've found it. Rather, I've already found it.”

“Yeah?” Carmy looks at them expectantly, but he never expected this—

“I found you,” they tell him. 

“...” He immediately fixes his shocked expression. He's at a loss for words. 

Me?

“I never found a chance to mention it, but…my parents are the reason I decided to live with you. That's why I wanted to be your roommate, even though we were strangers.” They shrug shyly. “My lease was up on my last place. I was gonna go home, but then all that stuff happened at the last minute, and…yeah. I needed to find a place to live.”

“Seriously?” They just nod. “Damn. Uh…Yeah, that's fucking crazy. I had no idea.”

“At the time, I was miserable. I kept thinking to myself, ‘I can't believe how shitty this situation is!’ Don't get me wrong, it was fucking awful, but…it led me to you, so…it wasn't really all that bad, in the end. I got lucky.”

Fucking hell, he thinks to himself. Fuck.

“If you hadn't roomed with me, I wouldn't have been able to come back home for my brother's restaurant,” he says, mostly because he's so embarrassed that he swears his whole body's red at this point. Don't think about it. Don't think about it. “I think I'm the lucky one.”

“Can't we both be lucky?”

“I guess we can. Just doesn't seem very realistic.”

“Little too late to say that. It's already real.”

“...There's no other shoe?”

“Not that I know of. I think the other shoe's already dropped for us a while ago. Surely there's no other shoes left?”

“I hope not. I don't know if I could take another one.”

“Me neither.”

“...”

“...”

“Do you…want to eat your cake now?”

“Fuck, oh my god—I completely forgot! Yes!”

Just as Carmy planned, the flavors go perfectly together. Even though he knew it was going to be delicious, when he takes the first bite of the cake, relief washes over him. They seem to be overjoyed, inhaling the cake at dangerous speeds. 

“You're gonna hurt yourself if you eat that fast,” he observes, both amused and concerned. 

“Can't talk. Need to eat this.” That makes him laugh so abruptly he nearly gets cake up his nose. “This is the best birthday cake I've ever had, both visually and taste-wise.”

“I'm glad. Like I said, I'm not really a baker, but…I make an alright cake.”

“You make a fantastic cake.” They’ve got a bit of frosting on the corner of their mouth. “It doesn't get much better than this—eating a cake made by you.”

“Because I'm a chef, you mean?”

“No, not that. Not just that, anyway,” they amend with a cheeky grin. “Because you're my best friend.”

You're my best friend.

…

I'm their best friend, he repeats to himself. I'm their best friend.

He thinks about crying. He won't cry, but he thinks about it.

“Oh,” he replies intelligently. “...Really?”

“Y-Yeah. Unless, uh, you don't—”

“You're my best friend too,” he blurts out, and the anxiety on their face fades away into a relieved, beautiful smile. 

“Thank god. That would've been pretty awkward if you didn't…” They shake their head. 

“I've never been anyone's best friend before,” he confesses. 

“Seriously?” They recover from the shock quickly. “Lucky me, then.”

“I thought you established we were both the lucky ones.” 

“Oh, right.” They chuckle. “Lucky both of us, then.”

Carmy thought that life would always be the same. He thought that he was fated to a routine of nausea and nightmares, never quite close enough to reach a rest point. He thought that he was okay with it being his fate, because he never knew anything else. 

He thought that loneliness, cigarettes, and memories would be enough, because it always stays the same. Nothing ever changes. 

Until them. 

He thought he had outgrown happiness, that his body had grown accustomed to living without it. That there was no longer space in his heart to withstand the weight of joy. But as he sits here with his roommate, chatting and laughing over a cake he made for them, he finds that's not true.

His capacity for happiness had never left. It had been there all along. 

And with that, something in him lets go.

Carmy sees it all at once. It starts from the beginning—he sees the first day he met them, an initially hesitant meeting gone surprisingly well. He sees the first time the two of them smoked together, deliriously laughing through shared smoke. He sees them in the mornings, messy hair and wrinkled t-shirts. He sees them in nothing but an apron. He sees them in tight black clothes that leave little to the imagination. He sees them laughing at a joke that he didn’t think was all that funny. 

He sees them in his dreams, red tomato puree bleeding from their gums. He sees them holding his trembling hands in theirs, soothing him back down from the storm in his hand. He sees them comforting him through his tears. He sees them sobbing, hot tears on their cheek and his hand. He sees them heaving into the toilet, whispering that they want to know him. He sees himself, embracing them tightly in his arms. 

He sees it all. He knows that he can't avoid it anymore. 

Carmy is completely, undeniably in love with them, and there is absolutely nothing that he can do to make that realization disappear.

…Some things, he understands, refuse to stay the same.

~

@zorrasucia @carmenberzattosgf @carmenbrzatto @thehouseofevangelista

[topsyturvy-turtely]

scarred from within

a/n: turtely is hurting so obviously one of my bois needs to hurt too.

a/n2.0: i am sorry.

✗✘✗✘✗✘✗✗✘✗✘✗✘✗✘✗✘✗✘✗✘✗✘✗✘✗✘✗✘✗

laying in bed. tears streaming down his cheekbones, into his ears. he hated that feeling of salt drops coming out of him and finding their way back into his body. as if they wanted to crawl back inside. as if his feelings wanted to bury themselves somewhere deep inside, where they couldn't be accessed anymore.

he hated that feeling, but he let it happen. he couldn't bring himself to care enough about his stupid tears in his poor ears to wipe them away.

feeling another tear breaking its way outside, just to hide in his hair again, sherlock thought of him. of all the sweet niceties. of appreciating words, of soft touches. the words never saying enough, the touches never lasting long enough.

his chest hurt and he thought it was ridiculous. heartache? because of an emotion? what a not-at-all-sociopathic thing to have.

and yet. here he was. aching with heartbreak.

hating mary for marrying the love of his life. hating the love of his life for having a different love of his life. love of your life - what does that even mean? sherlock sighed. he knew exactly what it meant to him: that he wanted to do everything with john. he wanted to solve crimes, and run through half of london, knowing he was right behind him. he wanted to talk with john - he always managed to bring the too many, too big, too fast thoughts into some kind of order with his simplicity. but it meant so much more to him than that. it meant that the thought of john was the only thing that kept him alive during his time in serbia. one whiplash - his imaginary john running towards him. second whiplash - john yelling his name. a third whiplash - a hand on his cheek. a fourth - imaginary john telling him to hold on. a fifth - telling him to be strong. a sixth - so he can come home to him. a seventh whiplash - so he can fix him. john would fix him, when he got home. he'd mend his wounded skin, his broken ego, his weakened mind.

that is what he believed in.

he never thought john would hit him too. he never realised his life scrambled the second he stepped over that rooftop. into the nothingness. and fell. he never realised that the mat underneath would not actually save him.

his heart had cracked back then. when he was laying on the concrete - blood all over his face, stinging his eyes, sticking in his hair - but it was john's voice, so weak, so hurt that cracked that thing in his chest. back then he thought "it is for the best. i am doing this for you. i'll come back for you and we'll be okay."

but it wasn't for the best. he had come back for john. and they were not okay.

and for the first time in his life sherlock realised what people meant when they said their heart was broken. there was no way it could ever heal from this.

sherlock felt this with such devastating certainty, it pricked new tears from his eyes. and it felt like those tears were sandpaper, scraping traces of sorrow into his face.

he almost laughed- it sounded and felt like a sob. ironic: he once thought his back was scarred, broken his skin apart, but he was still whole inside, because of john. now he felt broken from within... and his face... was scarred by tears. because of john.

✗✘✗✘✗✘✗✗✘✗✘✗✘✗✘✗✘✗✘✗✘✗✘✗✘✗✘✗✘✗

a/n: i'll write this with capital letters some time and upload it on ao3. rn this felt like it needed to be written without them.

tag list! (tell me if you wanna be added or removed please 💚) @justanobsessedpan @helloliriels @catlock-holmes @fluffbyday-smutbynight @inevitably-johnlocked @hisfavouritejumper @rhasima @forfucksakejohn @ohlooktheresabee @turbulenttrouble @so-youre-unattached-like-me @totallysilvergirl @peanitbear @train-mossman @loki-lock @smulderscobie @timberva @grace-in-the-wilderness @chinike @jawnn-watson @whatnext2020 @escapingthereality @missdeliadili @kettykika78 @musingsofmyown @7-percent @speedymoviesbyscience @astudyin221b @francj15 @ladylindaaa @we-r-loonies @mxster-jocale @sherlockcorner @noahspector @our-stars-graveside @jobooksncoffee @baker-street-blog @macgyvershe @myladylyssa @battledress @a-victorian-girl @dreamerofthemeadow @oetkb12 @ohnoesnotagain @mutedsilence @jawnscoffee @raenchaosandcozyadashofmurder @lisbeth-kk @quickslvxrr @compact-and-beautiful

[thatsthewrongwallcraig]

Ctrl + Shift + L

Summary: Eli's way too shy to ever talk to you in person, so he helps himself to a late night stroll through your Cloud files to get to know you.

Pairing: CyberStalker!Elijah Kamski x afab!Reader

Word Count: -1,8k (This was supposed to be a drabble…)

Content Warnings: Smut 18+!, Stalking, Hacking, Female And Male Masturbation, Heavy Violations Of Privacy, Obsessive Behavior, Strong BDSM Themes

A/N: This has been eating away at my ability to think for the past few days…

Tagging: @blueberrypancakesworld @herprivateisland

I'm inside of your system,

I'm inside of your lair

To haunt you is my destiny

I'm a virus, impossible to find

I'm lurking in the shadows of your mind

- Virus By Priest

You wouldn't even have recognised him as he'd passed you on your way into the supermarket, automatic front doors swishing open as you squeezed yourself right past him as he was walking out, his hands clasping around filled grocery bags. Elijah knew that you'd be on your way now for your weekly shopping run and he just couldn't hold back a nervous smile as the light scent of your perfume crept up into his nose. Flowery, fresh and persistent enough to stay with him until he arrived back at home.

This, alongside plenty of others, was one of Elijah's little weekly rituals to keep up with you. He went shopping with you, not just groceries but sometimes also clothing or a bouquet of flowers from the florist right next to the little café you frequented nearly every morning for a tall coffee latte with exactly one pump of vanilla syrup. It always made him think of how your lips would taste like sugary sweet vanilla when you strolled into your workplace with the cardboard cup still in your hands. On the rare occasions when you fell sick, Eli had sat across from you in the waiting room, avid to keep his ears perked to make sure you were healthy and well again soon. None of that you'd ever noticed. Why would you? He was just one face of hundreds of thousand in this city and whilst Eli went unnoticed, he knew everything about you.

Really everything? That's at least what he'd been thinking until he decided to treat himself one Saturday night. After months of “looking after you” it had gotten a bit stale to be close to you by getting himself off to the few rare bikini pics he'd found by digging through your Instagram page. There was something about you, something he couldn't quite pinpoint but it told him that there was more to you, that he just had to venture far enough to find the thing you were hiding away and to him, a Cloud storage provider was nothing else than a server. A server that could be hacked just like every other and that he did in a heartbeat. He couldn't even really describe it as hacking because you weren't really careful with your almost very much the same passwords you used online. In general, it was a mixture of your dogs birthday and the name of your first real crush from middle school… Tyler. Ugh, Tyler, by now a divorced loser with a receding hairline and a latent porn addiction. Maybe a few changed in regards of capital letters but it took no more than two tries to get into your Cloud data storage account.

“Let's see what you got in here, sweety.” Elijah murmured to himself, excitement making his pulse pick up a beat whilst the pale light from the desktop reflected from his black- framed glasses. For a moment, nothing really caught his eye: files filled with family vacation pictures, an occasional photo dump of a night out in town from two years ago… nothing really new to Elijah until he spotted a folder titled “Teacher” that made his eyebrows arch up.

“The fuck's that?” He asked into his bedroom that was only illuminated by the shine emitting from his laptop that sat in his lap. You'd never worked as a teacher, not once and nothing even remotely close to that. After high school you went to college whilst working in retail hell to support yourself and afterwards you went on to write for a history magazine with your freshly accomplished degree. You'd never been a tutor or a teacher as far as Eli knew and even if…why would that be any data worthwhile to keep around? With slightly knit together brows, he clicked on the folder just to land in a subfolder with files dated in almost sterile accuracy. One folder for every week reaching back as far as nearly two years ago. As Elijah's stomach bubbled with the need to find out what this was all about, he double-clicked on the folder titled with the date from 3 weeks ago just for his eyes to widen and his for his jaw to nearly drop.

Trying to comprehend what was loading up on the screen right in front of his, Eli's mouth stood slightly agape as the only other physical reaction came from further down. Before his critical thinking had caught up to what he was looking at, his body surely had and he felt his cock unapologetically twitching against the soft fabric of his sweatpants. Picture upon picture of your bare skin practically jumped at him and a heavy groan erupted from his chest as he clicked on the first image to start investigating somewhere. He nearly choked on his own spit as his eyes roamed over the photograph. Your face wasn't in frame, perhaps a safety measure stemming from the nature of the contents, but it didn't even need for Eli to know that it was your naked body that he saw. You'd been flipped on your stomach, wrists held together by cable ties as the dainty rings on your fingers gave away that it was without a doubt you. There was hardly any fabric covering your behind, just a pair a ripped fishnet-stockings stretching across your ass and thighs. A lack of panties practically presenting your thoroughly soaked and glistening cunt to the viewer.

“Uh…oh…OH…” It trickled from Elijah's lips as he moved the cursor to click for the next picture. Your posture was nearly the same but instead of smooth skin underneath the skimpy stockings, it showed your ass all bruised up in colors ranging from a bright red to deep purples, almost like a sadomasochistic nebula painted to your skin by brute force and he didn't know how to feel about that. The sight right in front of him turned him on beyond measure but at the same time…how have you been with someone he didn't know of? How had you been able to keep that side of yours from his ever watching eyes? Eli felt like scolding himself, a surge of white-hot rage jolting through the pit of his stomach for being so utterly incompetent and not seeing what had been right in front of him the entire time! Your loose sweaters, your liking for mainly long-sleeve tops and just softly form-fitting pants…it all came together now but on top of all of that it should be him, always should've been and not some strange rando you hid away somewhere in your Cloud files…

The potent mixture made out of rage and arousal ebbed through Elijah as he continued clicking his way through the files, pictures of your naked body in deliciously compromising poses causing his jaw to clench and teeth to grind with the same fervor his cock pressed against his slacks. He was so agonizingly hard that it almost hurt just for his fingers to brush around the outlines of his hard on. In a vain attempt to soothe himself, Eli gently cupped himself with the full width of his palm, the careful pressure aimed to ease the constant throbbing as his fingers fondled with his tightening balls.

“Fucking hell, babe, what's all of this, hm? You're gonna drive me insane…” The words came as a hardly choked back moan as Eli moved his hand above the fabric of his sweatpants. Up and down in slow, careful motions to not just explode and gush into his shorts like a pent-up virgin on the first date but the first eager drops of pre-cum soaked through already.

Elijah kept it together, softly stroking and pleasuring himself whilst clicking through your pictures like they were his personal peep show. He tried so hard to not just run with his desires, to drag it out and to savor every moment in which he body shivered with arousal but after a few minutes and several naughty pictures, he came across a full on video file and in that instant, he could've sworn that Christmas came early this year.

With his heart raging inside the ribcage, he hit the spacebar for the video to start playing and as soon as a pitch-black screen lightened up to reveal a shameless close-up recording of you fingering your flushed and swollen pussy with not two but three fingers that pushed inside again and again whilst your needy moans echoed through the speakers of Eli's laptop, he felt his throat render dry. Every word seemed stuck in his throat like a lump he just couldn't swallow no matter how hard he tried. With reddened cheeks, he watched you fuck yourself in high resolution right on his damned laptop screen and couldn't hold back any longer. Exhaling a shallow, trembling breath, he led his hand to slide past the waistband of his slacks, helping him to slide both the pants and his shorts just down enough to free his aching cock that he started fisting the very second he had the fabric off of him.

“You make me so fucking hard and so fucking desperate. It's so damn pathetic. Should be me who does that to you.” Elijah’s thoughts now just ran free as the rapidly rising arousal intoxicated his mind. It didn't take long for his balls to tighten up again, his cock in his hands growing rigid with every next stroke before his entire load spurted out onto the keyboard and up to his navel in thick white ropes. His orgasm rippled through him in a brutal outburst, making him feel lightheaded for seconds after the gushes of sticky cum flowed all over his hand too.

“Fuck!” Eli whined out before taking a deep breath, half-lidded eyes still trained on the screen that depicted you shoving your fingers knuckle-deep inside your wet cunt anew. With a slim grin on his face, he contemplated how long it would take before he could again.

[tf2heritageposts]

hey just saying it would be poggers and awesome to learn about your system btw :)

i’ll use this for the pinned post lol

me aka cheavy aka tfc heavy(don’t call me that though)

i’m 62, use he/it, and i’m somewhere on the mosrly gay to strictly gay spectrum

i’m the main host which means i’ll be the one mainly answering stuff and making tf2 posts lol

painis has also been making an appearance lately

he's like? 30? 40? and uses he/it and meat based pronouns

obviously he's a painis cupcake fictive, and he loves making ascii art and is a major scene kid. he loves fnaf and shit like that, and also primarly only eats meat. he also loves chewing on my arm

he has a typing quirk where he speaks in all caps and puts a helmet on his smiley like this [|:] but that's moreso because he loves emoticons

he tends to not speak in the tags a lot and doesn't get jokes infrequently. he's also prone to making very violent jokes/threats

i'm also in an insys relationship with him lol

sniper also made an appearence recently lol

he's 27 and uses he/him solely i think

he tends to type with the first letter capitalized and I's capitalized but nothing else like names

he's, to be frank, a dick and swears like crazy a lot. he also has a low tolerance for bullshit and whatnot and will probably delete your ask if you annoy him

he also knows you are making a joke and will take it literally anyways because he wants to

he is also prone to making violent jokes and threats

someone who's posted here before but has yet to actually sign off is monty

monty's a fusion of two of our old tf2 ocs and is a pyro/soldier

he's 38 and uses he/they/it i think?

he gets angry really easily but he's pretty jokey lol

he doesn't have a typing quirk but you might be able to tell us apart? who knows lol

also having posted here before is medic aka robin

he's 40, uses he/it/blood based pronouns, and probably also isn't a fan of you

He tends to speak like this. in formal talk and big fancy ass words but do not get me wrong he is probably saying something kind of mean to you

i'm also in an in sys relationship but I DO NOT SHIP MEDIC X CHEAVY, PLEASE UNDERSTAND THIS

ALSO WE ARENT FUCKING ABUSIVE I AM BARELY LIKE MY SOURCE MAN PLEASE KNOW THIS

everyone's okay with being asked specifically in an ask but please do not be surprised if they do not respond or say something a little bit mean because i am the nicest of all of us LOL

[idmakeitbehave]

Must Love Books

Summary: Spencer loves books. You love Spencer. And then Spencer starts giving you books. You try not to read too much into it—you really do—but it turns out that it’s just about impossible to quash that hope.

Pairings: Spencer Reid x gn!Reader

Word Count: 3k

A/N: as always this is just straight up marshmallow fluff :) thanks everyone for being here!!

There were quite a few things in this world that Spencer Reid loved, but if there was one thing he loved most of all, it was books–and if there was one thing you loved, it was Spencer Reid.

Those simple facts alone were why when Spencer had started giving you books, it just about knocked you off your feet.

It had started out casually enough, and you knew he was doing it just to be nice because, well–he was the kindest person you knew, wasn’t he? Despite that knowledge, you couldn’t help but wish it meant something more, that there was something deeper there beneath these simple, kind gestures. Still, you’d take what you could get.

That first time, that first book, was etched into your memory. The two of you had been chatting quietly on the jet home the night before about some of your favorite novels, and you had mentioned not having read one of his. “Oh, you’d love it!” he had exclaimed, almost waking up your slumbering teammates with his enthusiasm.

“You think so?”

He nodded so vigorously that you knew you’d have to go to the library and grab a copy immediately. You had written it down in your planner and everything, in big capital letters.

But then Spencer beat you to it. The next morning, he walked up to you and set his well-loved, dogeared copy right on your desk. When you thanked him, he just nodded back with a shy smile.

After he had gone to the breakroom in search of morning coffee, you leafed through the book and amongst the well-worn pages, you noticed post-it notes littered throughout. At first you thought they were just some scribbles from the last time he had read it, but then you noticed your name on a few. You looked more closely at the notes. They were all little comments and questions–one just said I love this line–what do you think? They were written to you.

He had gotten home late after a long day’s worth of traveling, and he had gone through his favorite book and written notes for you.

And that, you were certain, was precisely the moment when you fell in love with him.

Continue on AO3

Tags:

@sapphic-prentiss @cynbx @blameitonthenight21 @gublersbooblers @anthony-sharma @averyhotchner @raythefaye @multifandomegan @behindyourbarrette @spenxerslut @spacedikut @parahmur @calm-and-doctor @shadyladyperfection @spencerreid9 @reidscanehand @malindacath @justreadingficsdontmindme