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tojiscrack · 2 months ago

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𝐇𝐈𝐆𝐇 𝐒𝐂𝐇𝐎𝐎𝐋: 𝐉𝐔𝐍𝐈𝐎𝐑 𝐘𝐄𝐀𝐑

summary: 13.6k words — you and your friends have returned from a vacation trip in italy! but it’s now time to go back to school and kick start your junior year of high school, but straight off the bat, megumi finds himself immersed in gossip he's usually never bothered by…

notes: welcome to the first ever main-plot-starting chapter of liar, liar! *cheers in the background* FINALLY! we’re here. isn’t it ironic how this time last year i was writing the first ever chapter of liar, liar, and now an entire year later, i’m kick starting the main plot? 😧 time flies… here's my halloween gift to you all! (it's easily my most favourite holiday EVER). and it's also been a week since my birthday, ty for the wishes, kind messages, dm's, asks, tips, etc!! now enjoy this chapter <3

tw: swearing, gossip, mention of violence, threats, and that’s it lmao

i do not own any of the characters of jjk, i only own the character of y/n and her mother. the other characters belong to gege akutami.

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.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・

september 2019 - junior year

"everyone open theirs at the same time, got it?"

"but mine's got tape on it!"

"shut up, yuji."

"i already opened mine."

you dived across the table to snatch the paper out of megumi's hands, throwing him a look of irritation because of how he'd spoiled the entire thing. it only irked you further when he had the audacity to fix you with a glare himself.

"you just couldn't help yourself, could you?" you snapped, placing his timetable face down on the table, refraining from looking at it before he could despite the devil on your left shoulder whispering sweet nothings in your ear.

you gave in and flipped the sheet over. he ruined the order of things anyway, what was the point of adhering to the rules he never listened to to begin with?

"megumi!" you gasped, feeling enraged as you stared down at his timetable.

out of the nine classes you had, pre-calculus was the only one you shared with megumi. to your disbelief, you didn't even share homeroom, so the only other chances to see him were during study hall, break, and lunch, which felt far too short to make up for the overwhelming imbalance.

it didn't make sense, now that you analysed it further. with all the classes available, how was it that pre-calc was the only one you had in common? you felt a nagging frustration, trying to wrap your head around the fact that your paths would now cross so little this year despite the fact that you used to be attached to the hip before. every other subject offered countless opportunities to stick together, yet here you were, navigating a maze of schedules that kept you apart.

you caught yuji and nobara in your peripheral vision, both comparing their own timetables and bickering simultaneously.

megumi was a genius, extremely academically gifted, especially in stem. when it came to any branch of math, the kid aced every exam effortlessly.

and you weren't the worst at it, some would argue..?

the more you thought about it, the more bewildered you became — how could you end up sharing the one class that exposed all your weaknesses, the same one that he excelled in?

he flinched when your voice suddenly rose once more:

"you're taking ap stats?" you demanded, only just realising that he had one extra lesson than you, yuji, and nobara. it was at the very top of the table, labelled 'period 0'.

"don't give him an opportunity to act more pompous than he already is," scoffed nobara, looking uninterested. you did not comment on how she still peeked over the sheet when she thought you weren't looking.

"wow," yuji began, looking pleasantly in awe at megumi's hefty schedule. he leaned back in his seat, careful not to pull himself too far back in the event that he might fall off. you secretly wished that he would, if only to stifle your current shock. "so you'll start the day earlier... won't you be exhausted when we get to football practice?"

that was a good question. since coach yaga had stubbornly given both megumi and yuji spots on the school's football team, it had since been announced that practice would take place every day after school unless otherwise mentioned. with megumi's mornings starting earlier than the rest of you, and his days finishing later, he was bound to be torn down with exhaustion. although he acted like a robot all the time (eat, sleep, make a rude comment about you, repeat) he was still a human who needed rest. more school meant more social interaction. more social interaction meant a drained megumi. things would only go south from there.

he shrugged at the question.

"i'll be fine," he answered, unbothered.

you disagreed. "you'll die —"

"— revive me with your mermaid abilities then —"

you hoped you pinched him hard enough to bruise.

"wait," you said, halting your attack on him with a slow frown. he took the opportunity to rip your hands off his ribs and shuffled away from you. you ignored him, sliding down to sit hip-to-hip with him. "if you do ap stats in the morning, we can't walk to school together."

for the nth time that day, megumi snatched back his timetable from you.

"good luck," he said, eyes half-lidded with that ever-present air of indifference. "you cross the road like you have nine lives."

"you basically just told her that you wouldn't care if she died," yuji intervened, quick to jump to your defence despite the many times you would argue with him, too.

you glanced at him, eyes naturally drifting down to the obvious tan line on his neck from the vacation the four of you had attended with your family in the summer.

nobara scoffed, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear before pointing, accusatory, at megumi. "this is what happens when you hype him up," said nobara, her finger jabbed at him with enough aggression, any outsider would probably assume that he'd committed blasphemy — you liked to think he had.

"i'm surrounded by idiots," you thought you heard him mutter, his voice low enough to almost go unheard, though the faint tightening of his jaw gave him away.

waving his timetable at him, you unknowingly creased the smooth sheet. "speak up, porcupine."

"do you hate it when he mumbles, mother gothel?" said yuji, randomly turning on you instead.

your head might have had a fifty-fifty chance of snapping right off your neck with how fast you'd turned it to face yuji with a glare. of all the things he could have thrown at you, why did he pick a tangled reference, one that barely bit at your core?

"first of all, what the hell?" you responded, visibly and audibly startled. "secondly, you were supposed to be on my side —"

"yeah i know," he replied, breaking out of his character to speak to you in that usual, gentle and low voice of his, the one you were much familiar with, "but i just remembered that megumi might leave me behind after football practice, so i can't take any chances."

"you're a traitor!"

"it's every man for himself!"

to no one's surprise (except for yuji's), nobara, seizing the moment you had created, sent his head crashing forwards against the table. she'd apparently been waiting for the perfect opportunity for it, and you had handed it to her on a silver platter.

"y/n, swap," she said, sliding her timetable down and waiting for you to make the exchange, barely registering the groan of pain and annoyance yuji had followed her demand with.

you shrugged and complied, exchanging yours for hers with pursed lips.

as you scanned nobara's timetable, you found yourself pouting less, pleased. half of your classes aligned perfectly with hers, from pre-calc to english — even p.e and homeroom, matched. the thought of surviving junior year alongside nobara was a hopeful silver lining. leaving megumi behind wouldn't be too bad, you noted in your had, glancing at his unnecessary scowl.

maybe this was done for a reason. if you spent too much time with him, the grumpy attitude would probably become contagious and you'd be the unfortunate one to catch it.

you watched him glare at nothing.

yeah, you definitely didn't want to become that.

"but we all have gojo at some point, right?" said nobara, her voice drawing your mind away from the undiagnosed disease your mind had planted megumi with.

you lined each of your timetables at the centre of the white, circular table, flicking yuji's head away to create more room for it. he lifted himself back up, scowling when you flicked at his hands next.

"we're all in different classes with him," you commented idly, tilting yuji's timetable a little further to read it more accurately.

"oh, you and i have physics with him together," you informed him, content and satisfied.

"hmph," yuji grunted, rubbing his forehead and throwing dirty looks at nobara from the side. despite this, however, you could see the way his ears had straightened up at your comment, also seemingly pleased with the shared class — it reminded you off the ash-blonde puppy you had seen last year, when you were looking for totalityfor megumi's birthday.

"i wanted ieiri," said megumi, taking his timetable back and glancing down at it, then to yuji's, and back again, seemingly making a comparison in his head.

"we all have her for chem," said nobara, leaning the upper half of her body over the table to glance over his sheet. "don't you?"

"yeah," he confirmed, sounding displeased. "and satoru for every other science. ap bio first period — no one needs to hear his voice that early in the morning."

yuji beamed, taking his paper away from the line of your timetables you'd created with it and shoving it down towards megumi's side of the table.

"don't worry megumi!" he'd said, his pearly white teeth showcased as he grinned. "we have ap biology together!"

megumi's eyes slowly shifted from yuji's overly enthusiastic face to his timetable, and then back again, completely unamused. his expression didn't change, and no words were exchanged as he remained deadpanned, yuji patiently awaiting his response; the excited sparkle in his eye dimming as each second went by in silence.

megumi blinked twice, offering a dry, "great. just what i needed."

yuji took that personally.

"hey —"

"gojo might be incredibly annoying," said nobara, cutting through yuji without a care in the world; she was frowning down at her own timetable, brows furrowed, "but i've never failed a class of his. ever." she looked up at you all with a grim expression over her face. "don't tell him i said that."

"you've got a point," you added thoughtfully. "you think he pulled a couple strings to have us in his classes this year?"

"oh for sure," said nobara, her response quick and short. "we have — what — over twenty different science teachers in the whole school and somehow every year without fail we're in his classes? tell me that's a coincidence."

as your friends discussed the things that satoru must have done in order to have each and every one of you in his classes this year, you stared down at your timetable, eyes glued down as something suddenly hit you in your mind.

you were now going to be lonely in performing arts due to the fact that nobara had switched majors. her electives were now filled with fashion design courses, her dream ever since the end of sophomore year, and you were glad she had finally come to pick something she found genuine joy in, but it still stung a little.

you sighed, almost feeling silly for missing something so trivial, but the thought of no longer having those shared moments with her in drama class left a hollow ache. it wasn't as if she hadn't told you this would happen during your vacation in the summer, yet the reality was harder to digest than you had initially anticipated.

"fashion design," you stated, as yuji and megumi found themselves immersed in a pointless argument about satoru and his questionable teaching methods. "i think mai was saying something about that the other day."

"yeah," said nobara, her voice suddenly gloomy as she deflated in her seat, eyes half-lidded and lips in a pout. "there's a workshop in the first class. the seniors are helping us."

a small, amused smirk tugged at the corner of your lips as she sulked in her seat. her exaggerated pout and half-lidded eyes made it impossible not to find the whole situation a bit funny. you rested your chin on your hand, observing the way she dragged her finger absentmindedly across the table's surface, a clear sign of how unenthusiastic she was about the whole thing.

nobara's disdain for her was no secret — mai, with her sharp tongue and competitive attitude, grated on nobara's nerves like nails on a chalkboard. they'd crossed paths during seventh grade, and from that point on, nobara had made it clear she had no interest in mai's condescending remarks or constant need to outshine everyone, especially in the fashion design world. it didn't help that they were often compared to each other when shopping, fuelling the unspoken rivalry between them.

"y'know, she's not that bad," you commented thoughtfully. you had also grown to like mai a bit better throughout the years.

megumi thought it was appropriate to intervene and add his own unwanted input (during the middle of his stupid back and forth with yuji, too).

"you're only saying that 'cause she's your blackmail partner," he'd said, furrowing his brows at you with a look of obvious impatience.

you did not even turn your head to face him when you responded.

"it's not blackmail," you countered slowly, as nobara raised her brows at you expectantly. "it's... making someone do something... by using... pieces of information... as... leverage!"

"that's literally the definition of blackmail —"

"shut up," you smiled politely.

"megumi!" yuji interrupted, shoving his phone in megumi's face with such enthusiasm, you would have thought he just found out that he was the chosen one at camp rock. "look!" he shook his phone aggressively. "brazil likes tan lines! no you have to look, megumi! it says they associate it with beach culture!"

megumi grimaced at the screen, his nostrils flaring as he slapped yuji's hand away.

"yeah, 'cause nothing says 'beach culture' like looking like a poorly toasted sandwich," he retorted, scowling when someone on the other table had shot him a sharp look.

you laughed, met with the sight of yuji in a defensive stance, eyes wide and brows furrowed at the dark haired boy sitting next to you. he was pointing at himself, at the two shades of skin on his neck, his fist clenched which only emphasised the veins running up his hand.

"you keep saying that like i didn't wear sunscreen, but i did!" he snapped, drawing the attention of the people passing by your table. megumi pinched the bridge of his nose as yuji went on, uncaring of the fact that almost every eye in the cafeteria was drawn to the four of you, courtesy of yuji and his unnecessarily loud speech. "i wore the kids one, but it's still sunscreen!"

"what brand?" asked nobara.

"nivea!"

"didn't they run tests for that one and find that it's actually a leading cause for skin cancer in its consumers?" you said, watching his face comically pale as he glanced down at his own hands, a lot darker than what they used to be like before the trip to italy.

yuji's brows knitted together, and the corner of his mouth twitched as if struggling to maintain composure, but the fear creeping into his wide eyes betrayed him. you could see the panic in the way he darted glances between his hands, his arms, and even under the table where his legs were, as though expecting to see something awful already happening.

nobara had taken the opportunity to scare him a little further, making up random statistics about non-existent kids who had reached critical condition due to the sheer amount of the product they'd used, and as she continued, his expression grew more strained, the color slowly draining from his cheeks, leaving him looking almost as pale as the white cast left behind the sunscreen he'd used.

your phone vibrated on the table, the screen lighting up with a text notification. you pressed the button to read it properly.

coffee-hose victim: Check if final pay-check was received

mandy.

you'd check later. you were in no rush, you decided, as you stared at the message briefly, feeling a dull sense of finality wash over you.

both you and megumi had been made redundant after the café shut down over the summer — an abrupt closure that neither of you had seen coming. mandy, your old manager, had been sorting out the final payments for the staff, promising to get things wrapped up even after the little shop was cleared out. now that everything was nearly done, you'd finally be able to delete her number from your phone, erasing the last trace of that chaotic job, of her.

but it also meant finding new jobs, and you refused to work without megumi by your side.

"we need to apply for jobs this week," you told him, showing him your home-screen that had mandy's notification banner at the very top. his eyes followed each word smoothly before looking back up to meet your gaze. "probably not hospitality ever again."

"i'd work at miss B's if she ever let us," said megumi, as you placed your phone back down and silently nodded in agreement. "i like her."

"mind saying that again?" you grinned, lifting it back up and having it hover near his mouth that had been set in a straight line the second he saw your lip curl. "i want to make it my ringtone."

"shut up," he snapped, slapping your wrist away quite like he had done with yuji not even five minutes ago. you laughed but complied anyway. having megumi's voice as a ringtone would make it so that you would never actually pick up the calls. he frowned at you. "come over to mine and we'll apply then."

you threw him a sideways look. "no, you come over to mine."

he furrowed his brows at you.

"what difference does it make?" he asked, his eyes critiquing your every move. nothing out of the ordinary.

you sighed loudly; someone might have assumed you were in the middle of a chore.

"if i see toji, i'm going to be tempted to make fun of him. i'll get distracted," you explained, shaking your head at your friend as though it had been the most easiest thing, and he had failed to understand. "top of the class and yet you're not the exactly the brightest crayon in the box, are you?"

"shut up," he repeated for the second time in the very same minute.

nobara turned her head slowly, deliberately, her sharp eyes narrowing as they landed on megumi. there was a brief, almost theatrical pause before her lips curled slightly at the corners, (the way they did when she was about to say something cutting) as the dim light of the cafeteria above you all caught the sharp angle of her cheekbones.

"megumi, i can not argue with idiot number one," she began, lifting her chin to gesture at a pale yuji, "when you, idiot number two, keep telling someone to shut up. how about you shut up for a change, huh?"

megumi narrowed his eyes at her. "i'm the only one out of the four of us that only speaks when spoken to."

she gawked at him. "you calling us chatterboxes?"

"i'm saying that when either of your mouths open, the stuff that comes out of it is never relevant nor necessary."

the three of you sat in silence, each watching him with different expressions on your faces.

and megumi felt the need to clarify:

"none of your statements are of any substance —"

"we get it!" snapped nobara, her gaze cutting and sharp. she took enough care to kick him beneath the table, which only began the onslaught of physical attacks, one you joined in for the sole purpose of bullying megumi. you thought he deserved it this time.

as the assault continued, something clicked, and you pulled back from the friendly fire. watching megumi's face — strained and faintly exasperated — you remembered something nobara had mentioned weeks ago about the family's international dojo business, which was the zenin's main source of income and how they were so incredibly rich.

it was easy to forget sometimes; the quiet, slightly reserved megumi you knew now didn't quite fit the image of someone being groomed to run an international dojo and martial arts empire, but as he braced himself for nobara's next jab, you couldn't shake the thought: he was taking business classes, which only further supported your idea, and for a moment, you considered the irony of seeing him here, bickering with you all instead of learning the ropes of the large business awaiting him.

"hey," you said, tapping his shoulder and flinching when he turned to look down at you so suddenly.

"what?" he snapped, but only after swiping nobara's timetable off the table and onto the floor when she kicked him on his funny-bone. he was blinking hard at you, as though trying to clear his vision of the black spots contaminating his sight.

"oh excuse me for wanting to help mr dominant-alpha-wolf out," you shot back, hands raised mockingly. when he scowled at you and patiently (yet reluctantly) waited for you to continue, you went on. "talking about applying for jobs, why don't you just get some business experience at ten shadows?"

the zenin clan's dojo, ten shadows, specialised in jujutsu — a tradition they shared with the gojo's and, of course, the kamo clan too. it was where uncle ogi spent most of his time in, and where toji spent none of his time in.

megumi didn't seem to like that idea, regarding you with furrowed brows and a scrunched nose.

"so i can spend all day with uncle ogi?" he retorted, and despite your initial idea still standing tall in your mind, you had to silently admit to yourself that he raised a good point. uncle ogi was funny when he was angry (which tended to be ninety-nine percent of the time) but you could only take so much of that in one day. knowing him, he'd probably force you to work nightshifts with no breaks. "no thanks," megumi voiced, unimpressed with the suggestion.

"why don't you just lie on your application forms and stuff?" yuji suggested, his mouth in a straight line. it seemed that he had not got over the sunscreen scare just yet. "i did."

"you lied about working at ten shadows?" you asked, brows raised and eyes wide. "that's an international dojo. they go world-wide. global. your employers will find out."

yuji shook his head, raising his hand to wave it at you dismissively. "no, not there," he scoffed, smiling widely. "what do you think i am, huh? stupid?"

no one said anything; he sat up defensively.

"hey —"

"so what place did you lie about then?" nobara cut through him, literally pulling him out of his stance by his elbow.

he shrugged her off with a scowl, but answered nonetheless.

"gojo said i could say i worked at his family's pharmacy."

everyone around the table went still, eyes widening as they processed what yuji had just casually revealed. megumi blinked, caught off guard, while you tilted your head, brows raised at his unexpected response. it was only nobara, however, who looked thoroughly impressed, her lips curling as she nudged him with a newfound admiration and yuji, oblivious to the stir he'd just caused, seemed to enjoy the brief, astonished silence hanging over the table.

"it's cool, right?" he voiced loudly, grinning. "he said i should write that i worked at one of his biotechnology firms, but if the interviewer asked me questions about it, i'd never know how to answer 'em."

megumi shot him a look.

"what do you know about pharmacies?" he demanded, watching yuji shrug confidently.

"you gotta answer some calls, make requests. er... stock up on the medicine and stuff," he mumbled, rubbing his chin thoughtfully and nodding. it looked like he was actually thinking hard about it. "deal with old ladies... and old men... er... yeah!"

"i'm putting that on my application too, then," said nobara, nodding. she made eye contact with a stoic megumi. "and you should too. only, with your family's business."

"no," the dark-haired boy responded, glowering at the three of you. "it's not genuine."

"oh here we go again," you sighed, rolling your eyes.

it had been the same situation two years ago with his easy position on the football team, when yaga offered him a vacant spot without the requirement of turning up to try-outs. megumi truly believed that if the offer was given solely to him, it was disingenuous and unfair, therefore accepting what was rightfully presented would also be disingenuous and unfair.

lying on an application form with security knowing that his family would definitely vouch for him if asked was where he drew the line.

"i'm not the serial liar here," he reminded you all, purposefully meeting your gaze to prove his point; you could have murdered him right there.

"maybe not, but you are the porcupine-hedgehog-sea-urchin breed here though —"

"you'dknow all about sea urchins, mermai—"

he left school that day with a small bump on the side of his head and a lesson still unlearned: do not mention the mermaid incident of two-thousand and eleven.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・

the hallway stretched ahead, brightly lit by fluorescent lights overhead that reflected off pale, polished floors. blue lockers lined either side, their surfaces a mix of chipped paint and stickers left from previous years, giving a lived-in look to the corridor's otherwise sterile presentation.

as you and megumi walked past several groups of people — some leaning against lockers, others conversing on the floor — you nudged him on his side.

"where do you usually sit?" you asked him, turning a corner to enter the corridor with the descending stairs. the two of you walked down them with ease, careful not to trip over that one step at the very bottom that always managed to catch your undone laces and have you stack in front of everyone.

megumi lagged a step behind, and before you could question it, you felt a slight tug on your bag, shifting it side to side. as you neared his homeroom, the faint sound of your zipper sliding into place caught your attention — he'd just fastened it for you without a word.

when he came back to your side to match your pace, you grinned up at his scowling face.

"thank you, porcupine!" you said brightly.

he adjusted the strap of his schoolbag, simple and black, and grunted, his form of acknowledgement.

you nudged him again, this time with your hip. "you didn't answer my question."

he shot you a sharp look, as though warning you not to test his patience. it wasn't like you'd ever heeded the warning in all the years you'd known him for, and yet you were still living and breathing and walking, alive and well.

"shouldn't matter to you," he responded, but only when it had become clear that you were not going to budge on it. megumi continued to face ahead, watching his steps as he spoke. "we're not in the same class and you won't be allowed in."

"ah, but if my memory serves me correctly," you beamed, sliding in between several seniors who were blocking the hallway to get to his class, and he shadowed you, right by the back of your heels, "you said the exact same thing in kindergarten and then they changed my name in the register so i was in your class permanently."

"set my fate with that dumb decision."

"hey," you frowned, looking at him from over your shoulder and furrowing your brows, lips set in a straight line. "that's rude."

megumi didn't grace you with a response to that, only following in your footsteps as you managed to squeeze past the groups of people huddled in the middle of the narrow corridor.

"besides," you began, once the two of you were walking side-by-side again, "if that decision wasn't made, you'd have a boring life, porcupine."

as the two of you neared megumi's classroom, the energy of the hallway shifted — voices grew louder, students lingered in clumps near the door, waiting to slip in just before the bell rang. it did tend to annoy you when they'd stand in a huddle and make it difficult to walk properly, but you'd gotten used to it after the first couple of weeks starting high school for the first time.

the sharp lines of megumi's face settled into something halfway between annoyance and resignation, his brows pinched, and his jaw clenched slightly as though he were biting back a retort. he shot you a sidelong glance, and for a moment, a split second in time, his expression softened — if you didn't know him that well, you might have thought you imagined it — almost as if he were mulling over what you'd said before huffing quietly, that familiar scowl reappearing on his face as he straightened his posture, ready to brush you off as he always did.

"you don't believe me?" you questioned, amused.

"it'd be stupid of me to believe someone who has a criminal history of lying," he grumbled, eyes half-lidded as though the answer had been obvious enough for a five year old to guess. arguably, you thought the five year old version of him probably would have said the exact same line, word for word. he had been too grown to actually be a kid.

"lying is part of my major," you reminded him, brows raised. "that's why i'm always the lead in the plays."

megumi averted his gaze, grumpy. "my bad. i thought you threatened everyone for the role —"

"i'm not a delinquent like you," you told him, smiling, and when he made a move to pinch you on your side, you dramatically flattened yourself against the lockers."i'll yell for help!" you hurriedly warned him, eyes cautiously wide as you followed where his pale hand was left outstretched near you.

he narrowed his own at you, contemplating. you could see the cogs turning in his head, thinking, deciding. you helped him make his decision faster by parting your lips, a silent threat. wisely, he retracted his hand, walking to his classroom which was at the end of the corridor, not looking back to see if you would catch up to him.

you did, in fact, catch up to him, if only to prove your initial point:

"if you weren't friends with me, what would you keep yourself entertained with, huh?" you asked, slapping his bag. he threw you a dirty look despite the fact that the hit wasn't enough to even make him stumble. "your non-fiction books? oh, i know a great non-fiction joke for you!"

"leave me alone," said megumi, glowering. "isn't your class down there?"

he gestured to the other end of the corridor.

you ignored him.

"why can't you trust an atom?" you asked, and when he refused to answer, instead choosing to duck under miss zaid's oustretched arm to go inside his class, you answered anyway, halting by the door because she stepped in front of you. "because they make up everythi— oh hey miss zaid!"

the teacher in question took back her arm and folded it over her chest, leaning against the door frame to block your entrance. you looked around, over your shoulder and around the corridor, before looking back up at her and smiling.

"who are you standing guard for?" you asked brightly. "can i help?"

"you can," she nodded, jutting her chin in the direction of the end of the hall, her expression half amused and half firm. "by making your way to mrs jenkins's class."

you shook your head firmly.

"but mr gojo said i could stay here instead," you said, expression grave. satoru had said no such thing, but that didn't matter, not to you at least.

"okay," said miss zaid, letting out a long exhale through her nose. "and is mr gojo part of the student advisory?"

your eyes darted left and right, momentarily speechless.

"he owns the pharmacy down the block," you tried, smiling pleasantly.

"and what does that have to do with the school?"

"erm... the first aid stuff in the school —"

the more you blabbered, the more unconvinced she became. you raised your brows at her, stern and serious.

"but my timetable's changed," you informed her, watching as the crease between her brows began to deepen as you spoke. "yeah, it says i'm in this class now."

miss zaid stepped aside to let two other students through. you took the opportunity to try and follow in right after them, only to be stopped when she rapidly stood back in that defensive position again. you frowned — what were you, a danger to the class?

"does it say my name on your timetable?" she asked you, curious.

you nodded.

she extended her hand, making a come hither motion.

"show me your timetable," she'd said, and at that, you froze.

it had been a lie after all. you were hoping to gain entry without the necessary proof. it had, after all, worked last year.

you watched her brows unknit themselves, tilting her head at you expectantly.

you paused.

"miss i really like the colour of your hijab today —"

"go," she interrupted loudly, pointing at the room you were meant to be in, all the way on the other side of the country, "to class, y/n." she looked up and nodded. "hi, yuji — come inside."

you turned and looked over your shoulder. sure enough, yuji was right there, walking alongside junpei, a tall, skinny boy who you had met during middle school in one of yuji's classes. the two were close, and when neither you, megumi nor nobara wanted to watch the weird movies yuji was always invested in, junpei had always been his go-to.

junpei was also in your homeroom class with nobara.

"what're you doing here?" yuji asked you, nodding at junpei when he walked off in the direction you were meant to be going in.

"what am i—" you repeated with a scoff, looking around as though that had been the stupidest question ever asked. "this is my class!"

miss zaid sighed. "y/n," she uttered your name sternly.

"miss, i can knock her out and then carry her to her actual class," yuji offered seriously.

you turned slowly, fixing yuji with a look that could curdle milk, disgust etched across your face, brows pinched and lip curled as though you'd just been asked to eat a pile of socks.

without missing a beat, yuji assumed a playful but overly dramatic fighting stance, feet squared and fists up like he was in some action movie. he bounced lightly, eyes narrowing in mock seriousness as he sized you up. perhaps it would've been almost intimidating if he hadn't grinned halfway through, flashing his teeth in a way that revealed he was completely unserious, and only had you staring at him with that unmoving disgusted expression.

"i appreciate your efforts yuji, but that... won't be necessary," miss zaid added, stepping aside to let him go inside.

"you have a bunch of weirdos in your class," you told her, scowling at the top of his pink head as he ducked under her arm and waved enthusiastically at megumi, who was slouching in his seat at the back of the classroom. "that's why i'm not in it."

and before she could order you to leave again, you stood on your tiptoes and waved at your grumpy friend, blowing kisses and beaming at him.

"bye megumi elizabeth fushiguro!" you yelled, smiling from ear to ear, and bouncing on your toes excitedly. "i'll miss you megumi elizabeth! bye megumi! i love you megumi! i'll miss you megu—"

"all right, i think he heard you," miss zaid nodded, looking over her shoulder to be met with the sight of the dark-haired boy facing the board with such seriousness, it appeared as though the class had already started and he was listening attentively to the non-existent teacher. his eyes would dart back to meet yours, and each time they did, his gaze would harden and his scowl would deepen.

"did i tell you how much i'll miss you, megumi?" you added loudly.

"y/n, don't make me write you up and give you a detention," said miss zaid, watching as you waved a hand at her and walked off.

"all right, all right, i'm going," you grumbled, turning on your heel and strolling down the hallway.

as you moved farther away, miss zaid's voice echoed faintly behind you, catching you off guard as she questioned whether megumi's middle name was actually elizabeth, her tone somewhere between bemusement and scepticism.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・

the boys' locker room was a space with rows of navy-blue metal lockers, their surfaces chipped and dented from years of use. megumi unlocked his and shoved his school pants inside, the overhead fluorescent lights casting a sharp, sterile glow over the room, bright enough to reflect off the scuffed tiled floor where several of his teammates were sitting, tying their shoelaces. other members of his team, including yuta, yuji, and toge, sat on the wooden benches that ran parallel to the lockers, worn and slightly uneven in places, each spot marked by countless cleats and gear bags left by players.

chad had been complaining about the faint smell of old sweat and disinfectant that clung to the air, mingling with the metallic scent of the lockers, and despite megumi not conversing with the rest, he silently agreed.

where the few hooks were attached along the walls (each draped with stray jerseys, hoodies, and extra uniforms) megumi glanced down at his own, a slight frown tugging at the corners of his lips. he would need to get a new one — he had outgrown the one he'd just got over the summer.

he didn't know whether he should be pleased or annoyed: perhaps both.

"yaga's gonna murder you if you don't have that game plan ready for today, todo," one of the guys — oliver martin, megumi realised — had said.

todo had been quick to retort:

"this was way more important!"

in the back corner where todo stood tall, a whiteboard was propped up with play diagrams still faintly visible from last practice, but the deep lining of blue marker that formed a surprisingly accurate drawing of nobuko takada (a japanese pop idol who todo had mentioned several times that he'd die for) took up the rest of the board.

he kicked a couple of duffel bags that slouched nearby, stuffed with tangled shin guards, socks, and forgotten water bottles, before speaking in that excessively loud voice of his.

"if any of you, except for my brother yuji, can give me your type of woman that's valid," he began, only warranting several groans and protests from every member in the room, "i'll come up with a game plan so you don't have to!"

kamo, who had been minding his own business up until now, slammed his locker door shut and stared up at the demanding team captain, eyes half-lidded.

"you did this last time and then tried to attack chad," he reminded him, and chad, who had been sitting on the bench slouched over, sat up and shook his head, disappointed.

"yeah, dude," he spoke breathily, visibly upset, "and that wasn't cool."

"YOUR TYPE ISN'T COOL —"

"relax," said kamo, which prompted everyone else to follow and agree.

todo's gaze snapped towards kamo, lingering a beat too long, his eyes narrowing in an expression that balanced somewhere between irritation and threat, his jaw clenching as he sized him up, lips pressing into a thin line, as though silently daring him to say more.

"what's your type then?" demanded todo, pointing at an unfazed kamo who simply raised a brow and turned away, seemingly uninterested in participating in this game todo enjoyed so much. "HEY! I'M TALKING TO YOU!"

kamo stared at him again, deadpanned. "sorry, didn't notice."

"every single one of us have said our type except for you, man," andre johnson added, momentarily shirtless just to speak before pulling his head through his blue jersey. "just say it."

"i actually wanna know what your type is," said yuji, interested. "i can't imagine you with anyone, kamo."

majority of the guys in the room collectively voiced their agreement. megumi silently agreed too — kamo never showed interest in anything other than his hobbies, like football. the hum of the vent overhead was steady as the low, animated chatter continued, todo waiting for an answer impatiently by the whiteboard.

"loner."

kamo placed one foot on the bench, bending down to tie his laces together. "liked you better when you were mute, toge," he said, though not unkindly.

"he likes a tall girl with a big ass, okay?" logan parker intervened, sighing audibly. "he told me, all right?"

kamo turned to logan, his expression deadpan, unimpressed by the sudden revelation. the lack of humour in his gaze spoke volumes, making it painfully obvious to megumi that kamo had never confided in logan about such a preference.

his straightforward nature, megumi had decided, left no room for such casual gossip, and it was hard to believe that he would ever engage in a conversation about his personal preferences with someone as prone to exaggeration as logan.

"is that true?" todo demanded almost immediately after logan had added his false input.

kamo tied his hair back, looking uncaring and tired. "no."

todo clenched his fists.

"your type can't be that bad," he said, looking around before his eyes landed on megumi, who was now sitting on the bench beside yuta, staring at nothing in particular. "bet it's not like fushiguro's — which is BORING,by the way!"

megumi looked up at the mention of his name and scowled.

everyone had immediately come to his defence, telling todo to 'cut it out' and to 'leave him alone', but it still didn't remove the absent sting he felt on the side of his head when todo had made an attempt to attack him (and had also been very nearly successful in doing so).

during freshman year of high school, when the football team had been formed and established, everyone was made to introduce themselves to each other, which was where the drama had begun. long story short: todo had asked for megumi's type in women, megumi answered unsatisfactorily ('i don't have a preference, so long as she's compassionate and has an unshakeable character') which resulted in a traumatic experience of attempted murder — as yuji had called it.

"todo, get over it!"

"yeah, dude, you literally pressured him for it!"

"it just wasn't cool, dude..."

"man, you a weirdo!"

"HIS TYPE IS BORING!" todo roared, throwing the marker he had in his hand somewhere behind himself. "NO IT'S STARTING TO PISS ME OFF! NO IT'S STARTING TO— I SHOULD —"

he rolled his sleeves up threateningly.

megumi furrowed his brows at him as everyone scrambled to stop the team captain from making a decision that would get him suspended from the school entirely.

"WOAH, WOAH, WOAH —"

"— TODO MAN —"

"— BRO CHILL —"

"— CALM DOWN —"

"stop, you're gonna make megumi sad!" yuji added fiercely, before extending an arm past both toge and yuta to grab his arm. todo had turned away, chest heaving and shoulders shaking as logan and chad patted his back as though trying to silence a wailing baby. "are you okay, megumi?"

the exaggerated, pouting look on yuji's face made megumi want to punch him.

"i'm fine," he grumbled, shrugging yuji's hand off of him, but yuji had remained persistent, forcefully gluing his palm on his front and deepening his look of pity. megumi glared down at his pesky hand.

"it's okay megumi," yuji sorrowfully informed him.

"i said i'm —"

"you don't have to be sad, megumi —"

megumi took his hand and twisted it; yuji yelped and snatched his hand back, frowning as he threw his grumpy friend a pained look.

"little harsh," yuta commented, rubbing the back of his neck with a sheepish smile.

megumi averted his gaze, half annoyed. "he deserved it."

when toge let out a small chuckle, megumi looked up at the scene before him, half-listening to todo's persistent questioning (he seemed to have got over megumi and his type), the chatter weaving through the room in an easy manner, almost as though megumi hadn't just been targeted for no apparent reason at all two seconds ago. his gaze drifted over to kamo, who, as usual, remained largely unfazed, his expression somewhere between calm and indifferent as todo's relentless interrogation continued.

watching them, megumi's mind wandered slightly — his teammates' voices ebbed and flowed, equal parts curiosity and exasperation filling the space. it was only towards the end of the conversation did megumi actually find something he believed he had mild interest in...

"what's it called when someone doesn't like anyone?" saidoliver, holding his helmet against his side, beneath his arm. "like, when a person just doesn't feel anything?"

"depression," megumi answered bluntly.

every head in the room turned to look at his, some were laughing and some looked unsurprised.

oliver furrowed his brows, disappointed. "dude."

"stop projecting, man."

"bro, you good?"

megumi ignored them, mentally cursing himself for participating in the stupid conversation to begin with. he silently reminded himself to never do so again. perhaps he would note it down somewhere when he got home.

"nah, i meant when like — y'know a guy or a girl — like when they've never liked someone. or had a crush," oliver continued, turning to kamo with a shrug. "maybe you're that. whatever the hell it's called."

"not good enough," todo shook his head, arms folded over his chest in another obvious attempt to look intimidating. "if all you PATHETIC excuses for men, EXCEPT MY BROTHER YUJI, won't give me a valid type right NOW —"

"i like someone," said kamo, pinching the bridge of his nose with an obvious scowl.

everyone froze, looking up at him as though the mere idea of kamo showing interest in anyone was foreign. megumi believed they all had a right to act shocked, not that it was any of their business to begin with.

because it wasn't.

and yet, even to him, it was surprising.

a few of the guys exchanged wide-eyed glances, eyebrows raised, and mouths slightly open, the disbelief clear in their expressions. even todo, typically unshakeable in his boldness, seemed momentarily thrown off balance, his stance faltering as he processed the unexpected confession. a hush seemed to settle over the group of boys, broken only by the quiet sound of kamo's gear as he slung it over his shoulder and moved towards the exit, leaving a wave of curiosity and shock in his wake.

"c'mon man, you can't just say something like that and then leave!" andre said, hurriedly collecting his own gear to follow the stoic boy out of the locker room.

"it's mai, isn't it?" said ethan miller, slamming his locker door shut and staring at the back of kamo's head.

yuji looked at megumi and then back up at ethan. "mai zenin?"

"there's only one mai in the entire school," said ethan, nodding. he called out to kamo again. "i saw you and her speaking like a week ago or somethin'."

kamo turned around, his back to the door as he furrowed his brows, seemingly offended by the accusation.

"no it's not —" he began, letting out a sigh of exhaustion before rolling his eyes. "it's not mai."

"give us SOMETHING, then, and i'll take it!" todo demanded, slamming his hand on the whiteboard with takada on it. uncoincidentally, it landed on her behind.

kamo considered the proposal for a moment, his eyes glancing over every face in the room, nearly all of whom seemed relieved at todo's statement, before he sighed again, muttering something under his breath.

"you know her pretty well," he said, glancing at yuji and then megumi. they barely had the time to register his response before he turned away, pulling open the door to leave. "and that's all you're getting out of me," he added calmly. "so don't bother trying for more."

he left without another word.

the entire room shifted their attention to megumi and yuji, eyes darting between the two as if expecting one of them to unravel kamo's cryptic hint. a few of the guys raised their eyebrows, curiosity and intrigue plastered across their faces. logan nudged chad with a knowing grin, while toge and yuta exchanged speculative glances.

megumi could feel their gazes like a weight, pressing him to acknowledge that he, along with yuji, might know the answer everyone was dying to hear.

he turned his head to face his friend: yuji simply blinked, apparently still wrapping his head around kamo's words. but megumi believed yuji had a better shot at guessing who the mystery girl was. yuji was, after all, a million times more social than him.

as the silence lingered, megumi found himself lost in thought, trying to recall any recent interaction that could hint at kamo's mystery interest. he sifted through memories, wondering if there had been any subtle clues he'd missed — any glances, moments, or lingering exchanges that might narrow it down. kamo's calm, almost detached nature made it hard to picture him in the throes of a crush, but megumi couldn't shake the curiosity that now gnawed at him.

he only knew two girls 'pretty well', and that was you and nobara, but he could not imagine either of you hanging off of kamo's arm. in fact, if anything, he imagined kamo hanging off of nobara's arm (which didn't make sense, seeing as that would be out of character of him). similarly, megumi couldn't imagine you willingly being held back by his arm, instead choosing to skip off into the distance which would surely annoy the serious, long-haired male.

but he was well aware of the fact that nobara and kamo had shared several classes together...

he could still feel everyone's gazes burning holes all over his face, and he scowled, unwilling to give anyone the satisfaction of entertaining the idea too openly.

but it seemed that the team captain did not happen to agree with this sentiment.

"right, new task!" todo called out, clapping his hands to draw everyone's attention away from an unwilling megumi and a confused yuji to himself instead. he had already rubbed out the takada drawing and had begun the game planning. megumi had not realised it until now. "FIND KAMO'S GIRL! and this time next week, we'll gather 'round and narrow it down!"

as everyone nodded and cheered, some making their way out of the room while others lingered and chatted, he called out to both yuji and megumi.

"BROTHER!" he bellowed, pointing at him with the blue marker. "i'm leaving it to you and fushiguro!"

a pause.

"mainly you because i don't trust fushiguro!"

yuji and megumi had already stood up by that point, and megumi's scowl had deepened. it wasn't as though he cared enough to be part of this operation anyway. it was something he'd most likely think about alone, where no one could put in their unintelligent claims and disrupt his wise way of thinking. what did todo know about that anyway?

he looks like a pineapple, megumi thought to himself as he watched him demand both himelf and yuji to deal with the stupid task. and he's about as smart as one too.

"UNDERSTAND?"

"yeah!"

"sure," megumi answered, but he hadn't been paying attention at all.

todo had left the changing room, followed by majority of the team. yuji was the only one left in the room with him.

"i think it's nobara," he said, placing his helmet on his head. "she's extra mean to him 'cause he acts like he knows everything. she hates guys like that."

"that... contradicts your point," said megumi, furrowing his brows.

"no, don't you know that girls act really mean to the guys they like?" yuji chuckled, shaking his head at him as if megumi had very little knowledge. it made the dark-haired boy want to attack his friend. "hey... maybe that's why all the girls on the cheer team are so mean to me! yeah!"

megumi did not remind him of the time yuji had accidentally flashed the cheer team, and that from then on, every member, including the substitutes, would be extra harsh towards him.

"yeah," he said, putting his own helmet on and following yuji out of the room. "that's the reason."

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・

exiting the theatre classroom, you caught sight of megumi waiting on one of the benches outside, still dressed in his football uniform, his untamed hair still findings ways to stand up on its own despite the fact that it must have been forced down during practice. you almost laughed out loud at the broad shoulder pads and the snug navy-blue jersey that made him look slightly out of place in the hallway, but it was the way his helmet balanced awkwardly on his lap as he stared down at it, clearly impatient, that had you grinning.

you couldn't help but laugh, your voice echoing lightly off the walls as you made your way towards him, amused by how tense he looked even off the field. he looked up at the sound, his eyes narrowing in mild annoyance as he rose to meet you, a faint crease forming between his brows.

"you look angry," you commented teasingly.

"shut up," he muttered, scowling as he lifted the helmet and carefully placed it over your head. it wobbled slightly, oversized and unsteady, making you nearly lose your balance when he gave it a firm pat on top — a solid thump, just hard enough to send a warning, though not enough to hurt.

"it's so uncomfortable," you said, as the two of you made your way to the school gates to leave. "how the hell do you football players wear this for hours on end?"

"with breaks," he answered, and you had to physically move your head upwards to actually be able to see his face, for the lines going over and under the front gap limited the scope of your vision. "you get used to it."

you hummed in response, looking over your shoulder and around the area with curiosity.

"where's yuji?" you asked casually.

"ran for his bus," said megumi, as the two of you had gone past the gates and onto the main road leading to your neighbourhood. "said he didn't wanna take the late one 'cause then he'd have to sit for most of it with todo."

"should've made him late so he'd have to take the late one," you tutted, nearly walking into a lamppost — it was megumi's quick actions that had saved you, tugging you away by your elbow.

"the hell's wrong with you?" he demanded harshly. "your vision isn't completely gone with that on. you're not blind."

"it takes a while to get used to!" you protested, rubbing the top of his helmet as though it were your own scalp. "you said so yourself!"

megumi's expression hardened, his brow furrowing as he shot you a look that seemed to question every life choice that led you to nearly walking into a lamppost. he didn't need to say a word; the look alone was enough to convey his frustration, his mouth set in a thin line as he continued to stare at you with a sort of weary patience that he seemed to reserve just for moments like this.

"stop acting drunk," he ordered, walking a step behind you now. it was as if he assumed that watching over you would prevent your free will from prevailing over his demands.

at some point during the walk home, the conversation had shifted from the limited vision with the helmet, to gossip you had heard during stage practice, to toji and the unethical ways he kept a steady income, to what his teammates were saying in the locker room earlier, something you found yourself quite fascinated with.

"i'd hate to be you, not gonna lie... but what would you have done if todo did attack you?" you asked him, drumming your fingers on the helmet which you still hadn't taken off despite how uncomfortable it felt wearing it. you turned your head (fully) to look at your own reflection in a car mirror by the crosswalk.

you thought you looked ridiculous.

you didn't care.

megumi placed a hand on the centre of his helmet and forced your head to face the front again.

"this is how you end up walking into lampposts," he lectured with a scowl, before placing his hand in the pocket of his shorts and answering your question. "i would've defended myself."

"against todo?" you gaped, stupefied. "no offence, but he'd crush you. he's — like — your dad of our generation."

"don't ever say that again," megumi had been quick to counter, and though you couldn't see it, you knew he was glaring down at you. despite the thick material of the helmet you were wearing, you felt the heat of his gaze, like lasers burning holes where they landed.

he did not like that comparison at all.

you apologised. "sorry. you're the only copy of your dad there is —"

"watch it."

"am i just not allowed to say anything then?" you snapped, your arms flailing about dramatically.

"it's a preference," megumi began, the tone of his voice sly in a way you were very much familiar with and did not like at all, "but i know you won't do it."

you raised a pointer finger defensively. "megumi, if i could see you right now —"

"— it's not that hard —"

"— and if i was as tall as you," you continued as though he hadn't interrupted, "i would head-butt you so bad, you'd wish todo was the one dealing with you."

as the two of you stepped up to the crosswalk, megumi reached out and firmly took hold of your hand, steering you with a purposeful grip so you'd follow his lead across the road. his hold was steady, guiding, yet the pointed glare he cast downwards made it clear he wasn't thrilled with the direction the conversation had taken. even as he glanced from you to the road ahead, his gaze lingered, sharp with irritation, and each time he looked back, it was as if he had been silently reminding you of the absurdity of comparing him to todo — or worse, his dad.

his hand stayed firmly around yours until you were safely on the other side of the street. he let go, only to hit you on the helmet again.

"ow!"

"shut up, that didn't hurt."

you ignored him.

"what happened next?" you queried as you tugged on his jersey and pointed at buttercup brew where miss B was waving at the two of you from behind the glass, entry doors.

you waved back, making sure megumi had too — he was much less enthusiastic, but it was still enough to please miss B, who went back to working, leaving the two of you to continue the short walk home.

megumi answered idly. "kamo said he likes someone."

your eyes widened, and if it hadn't been for his outstretched arm once again, you would have tripped over your own foot.

"WHAT?"

"for fu— be careful —"

"noritoshi kamo?" you gasped, walking alongside megumi in visible and audible shock.

the best way to describe noritoshi kamo, you decided, was a guy who had no care in the world for anything: he lost a shoe? he'd buy a new one. you lost his homework sheet you'd been copying from? he'd quickly make a new one. he lost a football game? the next one would be better.

noritoshi kamo was no optimist, but he was definitely not someone capable of romantic feelings for anyone.

or so you had thought...

"everyone just started guessing who," megumi added, frowning.

"and did they guess right?" you pressed, intrigued. "who is it?"

your dark-haired friend shrugged, which resulted in your shoulders deflating, immediately disappointed before he'd even said anything.

"that's the thing," megumi said, unbothered. "he didn't say anything about it."

"well that was anti-climactic," you mumbled, turning a corner and seeing both your houses in the distance.

the walk was nearly over, so you lifted the helmet off your head, shook your hair away from your face, and held it beneath your arm. you appreciated just how large your field of vision was now. the helmet had been pesky, hot, and annoying.

"and i'm out of gossip," you sighed, allowing the summer breeze to flow past your face, the air feeling nice against your skin. "wish nobara was here. she always has something to talk about."

"he said something in the end though. when todo forced him."

you were surprised your head hadn't popped right off your neck with how fast you'd turned it to look up and lock eyes with him. megumi needed to work on how he told and relayed stories — this was by far the worst one he'd ever done.

"well?" you prompted, stressed that the walk was shortening the closer you got to your houses.

"yuji and i know her pretty well," said megumi at last, brows furrowed as you handed him his helmet. when you raised a brow at him, visibly confused, he scowled. "his words, not mine."

the thought lingered, growing heavier as you replayed kamo's words in your mind: someone yuji and megumi know pretty well...

your brows knitted together as you tried to piece it together, replaying moments you'd seen kamo interact with people you that were close with both yuji and megumi. the issue here was that megumi's anti-social nature narrowed it down to two people:

you or nobara.

you knew with certainty it couldn't be you. you had had a fair few conversations with the male, but nothing that you could pick apart and decide that he had any interest in you. it was mostly just random, fun situations, like the time you had accidentally triggered malakai and requested kamo to support your statement that it hadn't been you, only to blame it on him (kamo) in the end.

that should make him dislike you, if anything. at the time, however, he didn't seem to care.

could nobara be the girl he liked?

that was something you'd have to ask her, though you highly doubted it. you knew her quite well, and no guy had caught her interest. at least, not at jujutsu high, where she mainly criticised the male gender and grew new icks every day that went by.

for the fun of it, you still asked megumi whether it could be possible that someone could have a crush on you.

his reaction, however, had you visibly startled.

he averted his gaze, his shoulders stiffening as though unsure of how to respond. you waited, but his silence lingered, and his eyes seemed to dart briefly to the ground, almost as if he'd been caught off guard by your question.

your brows raised as you bit back a smile. it was rare to see him hesitate like this — normally, he'd offer some blunt response or scowl and move on, but now, an uncharacteristic awkwardness settled over him, and it looked almost as if he was bracing himself, unable to fully meet your gaze.

"no," he finally settled on saying, walking you to your door as he always would when going home together.

"you hesitated," you informed him knowingly.

"i was thinking of how long it'd take for you to scare them off," megumi shot back, ringing the doorbell for you.

you watched him walk off the porch, hearing footsteps echo from behind the front door as you hummed, nodding.

"nice save," you told him, relishing in his scowl, the last thing you saw on his face before your mom had opened the door and allowed you in, closing it behind you after telling megumi to come inside — he had refused like the delinquent porcupine he was.

and as megumi made his way over to his own porch, he realised that for the first time ever, he couldn't help the feeling of relief after ending a conversation with you.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・

bonus scene:

the helicopter incident of 2016...

"what the fuck?"

megumi staggered away from the three of you —yourself, yuji, and nobara — craning his neck in a desperate attempt to peer over his shoulder at his own backside. bewildered, he muttered to himself, trying to comprehend why his so-called friends had just collectively ambushed him, each having touched his bottom once before guffawing loudly. what had you all done to him?

he made his way to the back door (but not before throwing the three of you a menacing glare) using the reflection of the glass as a mirror.

he was left horrified at the sight of three different handprints made out of neon paint colours (bright yellow, vibrant pink, and an intense lime) on the most compromising part of his pants:

his ass.

"shit — look at his face," you gasped, chest heaving at his expression. "take a picture with — catch it! — my phone."

you tossed your phone to nobara, who, unlike you and yuji, had the least amount of paint coating her delicate hands. meanwhile megumi's had shot to cover his behind as he whipped around, fixing the three of you with a glare so fierce, it might have turned a lesser person to stone.

flash! flash! flash!

nobara had captured his expressions, postures, and stances before he had a chance to compose himself into something less revealing.

as you took your phone out of nobara's hands, your attention had been drawn to a growing commotion behind you, distant shouts and laughter cutting through the playful chaos around megumi. you tossed a quick, amused glance back at nobara and yuji, both of whom were doubled over in laughter, still entirely focused on your collective attack on megumi, before aiming the lens on your phone not at your porcupine's flustered face, but at the source of the noise in the distance, recording just in time to capture a particularly raucous burst of laughter that had echoed around the backyard.

toji, towering and muscular, stood with his arms flat against his sides, looking both impatient and exasperated as satoru (in front of him) and suguru (behind him) launched paint-filled balloons at him. each balloon splattered bright colours across his chest, only to be rebuffed by his broad, muscular torso in what seemed like a defiant bounce.

splashes of paint exploded across his 'man-tits,' as satoru had so eloquently called them, left bright patches on his shirt as he glared at the two childish men surrounding him, chest heaving and fists clenched.

"shit!"satoru took several steps back, looking down at his own chest where the balloon he'd thrown at toji had bounced back at himself instead, splattering his white shirt with bright blue. he looked up at suguru, eyes wide behind his glasses. "that one came from his right titty —"

suguru laughed, throwing a paint balloon up in the air, catching it, and then launching it at the oddly-silent toji.

only for it to bounce back, just as expected. he had stepped aside just in time. "and that one came from his left breast —"

the veins running up toji's hands and arms grew more prominent as the two continued.

"HA!" satoru pointed at his chest. "toji? more like titty —"

suguru shook his head with a sigh. "satoru, don't be childish," he said, and his best friend actually paused, brows raised in surprise. that was before suguru had clarified: "he's big titty toji —"

SPLAT!

when satoru swung his arm around in a dramatic manner while laughing, he had accidentally released another paint ballon straight at the ticking time bomb that was toji fushiguro.

he only laughed harder at that.

"look guys!" he called out to the rest of you. you zoomed in on the scene — satoru's arms were outstretched, presenting toji as if he was some special, endangered animal, rare and one-of-a-kind. "it's toji titty-guro—"

without warning, toji's arms shot out, his hands seizing both satoru and suguru by the collars of their shirts with effortless strength. you couldn't see his face, so you were unsure of whether he had been grinning, or neutral, or angry, etc, but you watched in both horror and amusement as he began to spin, dragging them with him in a rapid, dizzying circle.

every other commotion around the backyard had stopped, everyone turning to look at the odd scene, equal parts confused and terrified.

toji's feet dug into the ground, kicking up small clouds of dust, while satoru and suguru both flailed helplessly at his sides, their limbs whipping outwards as if they were rag dolls caught in a whirlwind.

a whirlwind...

"it's a tornado!" you yelled, looking around and trying hard to keep your phone steady, but the scene was so funny, your hands were shaking with the effort.

toji's powerful grip and force turned their attempts to wriggle free into nothing more than frantic gestures, their faces a mix of shock and a hint of terror as they were spun around faster and faster...

you zoomed out to capture mamaguro at the back, watching the scene with narrowed eyes and furrowed brows.

"are you gonna stop your... husband...?" you heard your mom question, sounding completely weirded out. and honestly — who could blame her?

what the hell was happening in the fushiguros' backyard?

"i... would," mamaguro muttered, carefully watching the scene continue to unfold before her, getting worse as time went on, "but... how?"

there was no opening for her to enter, you noticed. if she tried, she'd get caught up in the spinning andget severely injured too...

you couldn't believe what was happening before your eyes. you didn't know what was happening before your eyes. you didn't think you'd ever know what was happening before your eyes.

from your peripheral vision, you could see a stick of yellow just lingering awkwardly, and when you turned your head to glance at it, you nearly face palmed when you realised it was your father in his banana body-suit outfit. the only thing visible about him was the gap where his face rested. everything else, from his head, to his figure, to his shoulders, to his thighs, and to the majority of his legs, were all concealed by the thick material.

"that looks fun!" he commented brightly, a dopy smile over his face. he made an attempt to waddle over to the unnatural disaster. "i'm gonna join —"

"no, no," your mom was quick to hold him back by his banana-shaped body. she ushered him to the side, shaking her head violently. "no, honey, no. just... you're not going over there."

surprisingly, despite several minutes having gone by, the disaster was still going. in fact, everyone had believed it to be finished when toji had stopped (revealing the other dishevelled men stumbling over their own footsteps) only for the man to spin himself around only and charge at the duo again.

violently.

"round two!" you called out, startled. "round two or — or — er — round one point five since it never... it never finished, technically — oh my god —"

you focused your camera around the backyard, spotting mai climbing over the fence. her eyes met your phone, and she disappeared behind the wall without a second thought.

wise, you thought to yourself, wondering if mimiko and nanako had done the same, for despite several pans of the large area, your camera could not seem to find them.

a bellow erupted across the scene, stopping everything and everyone cold in their tracks. you turned, a jolt running down your spine at the sight of ogi and the sound of his voice thundering through the air — you fumbled to stop your recording in a panic, heart pounding.

a wave of silence blanketed the chaos.

toji froze mid-spin, his arms still outstretched, while satoru and suguru, dishevelled and breathless, stared up from the ground, shock and trauma wiping away their usual confidence. megumi, still clutching his rear, went pale, his expression stiffening as he shrank further into his hiding place. your dad, in his ridiculous banana costume, managed a sheepish, guilty smile, while mamaguro blinked, bewildered, glancing between her husband and the mess of people sprawled about. tsumiki giggled softly in the corner, the only one unfazed, her amusement uncontained. in the abrupt stillness, ogi's glare was sharp enough to cut through steel, as if daring anyone to make the next move.

"WHAT," he demanded, voice booming, "IS GOING ON HERE?"

there was only silence that followed his question as he slowly entered the backyard, paint and balloons all over the grass and fences, a mess.

"AN EVENT ORGANISED TO ENCOURAGE NORMALCY, AND THIS FAMILY CAN'T EVEN DO THAT!"

his eyes, cold and sharp, darted to megumi, whose back was flat against the fence.

"THE VERY PROGENY OF THE ZENIN CLAN — WITH RAINBOW HANDPRINTS ON HIS GODDAMN ASS!"

megumi's cheeks burned as he scowled. it didn't help that yuji and nobara were still holding back their laughter too.

"AND YOU!" ogi turned to a normal (now?) toji, looking him up and down with such disgust, you'd think he were staring at a homicide scene. it might have actually been one, to be fair. "I CANT EVEN SAY THAT YOU'RE PART OF MY BLOODLINE! WHAT WAS THIS, A RE-ENACTMENT OF KAMIKAZE?"

toji scoffed, throwing satoru a glare. "he was the pilot —"

satoru stood up almost immediately. "you were the helicopter —"

"SIT DOWN."

despite his obvious reluctance, satoru silently complied.

ogi took this as a sign to continue, glowering menacingly at the white-haired, dark-haired duo. now, literal partners in crime.

"WE GOT SPONGEBOB AND PATRICK OVER HERE, DOING GOD-KNOWS-WHAT. WHY IS YOUR HAIR A MESS AND WHY ARE YOUR GLASSES BROKEN?"

satoru reached up to take his glasses off, hanging in an odd, desperate position over the bridge of his nose, a pout on his face at the sight of the irreparable damage.

he glared at toji from over his shoulder. "HEY —"

"OI LEAVE HIM ALONE!" ogi was quick to add, irate. "IF YOU HADN'T BOTHERED HIM, MAYBE HE WOULDN'T HAVE MADE AN ATTEMPT TO ELIMINATE THE TWO OF YOU FROM EXISTENCE!"

he rubbed his hands over his wrinkled face, before starting at the two men again.

"NO, I'LL TELL YOU WHY THE BOTH OF YOU LOOK LIKE THIS, IT'S BECAUSE YOU'RE BEHAVING LIKE MONKEYS — I DON'T WANNA HEAR IT GETO!" he added harshly, for suguru had an oddly deep hatred for the animal and whichever family it comes from, and had seemed particularly offended with ogi's comment. "I MEAN LOOK AT THE STATE OF YOU! YOU LOOK LIKE MAI'S FIRST GRADE ART PROJECT THAT I THREW IN THE TRASH —"

maki, who had been lingering at the back with your mom stepped forward despite your mom's silent actions not to.

"you threw that away?" she questioned, eyes narrowed behind her round, clear glasses. "she spent years attacking me for it —"

ogi's hardened expression had faltered slightly, a look of pain crossing his features. you were certain it was more about getting caught than the actual issue at hand.

"yeah, yeah, it was you that threw it," he mindlessly replied, before his jaw had clenched harder than before. "SPEAKING OF, WHERE THE HELL IS YOUR SISTER?"

maki sniffed, irritated. "i don't —"

"this has that luke kid written all over it," ogi interrupted, uncaring of maki. "GREAT! SO I'VE GOT A RUNAWAY BRIDE, AND TWEEDLE DEE AND TWEEDLE DUM ARE MISSING. PROBABLY AT THE ZOO ACTING LIKE THEIR FATHER — SHUT IT GETO."

he swivelled on the spot, his long hair whipping behind himself as his eyes zeroed in on your father, still in that banana costume of his.

"AND YOU — GET RID OF THAT RIDICULOUS COSTUME! THEY MIGHT WANNA EAT YOU NEXT — TRYNA JOIN THE HELICOPTER WITH HIS IDIOCY!"

your father frowned, but still made an attempt at trying to unzip himself. his arms, however, were much too short to go around the costume and reach the zipper.

"well it's kinda..." he murmured, bending his knees for a better angle, "stuck... i need some... help... here... honey?"

your mom turned away, drinking her lemonade with raised brows. "who's honey?"

uncle ogi had had enough. "G-GET BACK HERE AND TAKE HIS STUPID COSTUME OFF OF HIM!"

your mom turned back around, but her eyes were darting over the place as though ogi was speaking to anyone but her.

"IT'S YOUR CARELESS BEHAVIOUR THAT'S MADE HIM BELIEVE IT'S OKAY TO WEAR STUFF LIKE THAT. I'M GETTING A HEATSTROKE JUST LOOKING AT HIM!"

she glanced at her husband, watching him fall backwards due to his failed attempt at bending his knees to reach his own zipper.

she muttered under her breath: "you'd think that men would have a mind of their own..."

"YOU'RE NOT OFF THE HOOK EITHER TSUMIKI, I EXPECTED MORE FROM YOU. LAUGHING — ENCOURAGING THIS BEHAVIOUR?" he started, typically unusual, for tsumiki was never the one in trouble. today was full of surprises. he raised an accusatory pointer finger at her. "YOU WANNA BE A MOTHER SOMEDAY? YOU BETTER HOPE THEY DON'T TURN OUT LIKE THESE IDIOTS."

his eyes darted over you all in one massive circle, his mouth in a straight line.

"THIS FAMILY'S A DISGRACE TO THE ZENIN NAME —"

"not even a zenin," satoru grumbled to himself.

"yeah, neither am i," suguru agreed, blowing his bangs away from his face.

"i'm literally a l/n," you mumbled to yourself.

toji dusted himself off. "my son's not a zenin."

"THE POINT IS... YOU'VE SUMMONED THE WHOLE OF BIKINI BOTTOM TO RECORD US!" uncle ogi roared, pointing at the neighbours peeking over the fences with their phones at hand. you couldn't bring it in yourself to blame them. if you had seen the same scene happen elsewhere, you would have recorded it too.

you had recorded it, not that uncle ogi needed to know that...

"WHY ARE WE LETTING PEASANTS MAKE A LAUGHING STOCK OUT OF US?" he demanded loudly. he aggressively turned to mr smith, a white, bald man from just down the block. "OI YOU, GET RID OF THAT CAMERA BEFORE I GIVE YOU A REASON TO TAKE ME TO COURT!"

he turned to mamaguro, eyes widening at the sight of her.

"i nearly forgot about you..." he began, before taking everyone by surprise by the sheer volume of his voice, as though he hadn't been speaking that way for the past five minutes. "YOU WERE THE BRAINS BEHIND THIS ALL. WHAT MADE YOU THINK THAT THIS FAMILY COULD DO ANY EVENT WITHIN THE REALM OF HOW NORMAL OR MESSY IT SHOULD BE? THAT THEY WOULDN'T PUT THEIR STUPID TOES OUT OF LINE? THAT THEY'D BE SENSIBLE —"

"now hang on a minute," said mamaguro, her kind voice shaky, "this is not my fault! my colleague recommended a —"

"WHAT DOES YOUR COLLEAGUE KNOW ABOUT THIS FAMILY?" ogi snapped harshly. "NO BETTER THAN YOU, CLEARLY!"

he let out a deep exhale, but the tension in his temple and shoulders remained as he slowly turned around to face you. you were stunned in place, unmoving, unsmiling, unsure of what to do with yourself, in fact.

you only carefully made sure the camera was out of his sight, hidden in your back pocket where he'd have no clue that you had been recording earlier.

"AND FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE-TIME, THIS ONE WASN'T INVOLVED IN ANY OF IT!"

you nodded proudly, mimicking his words silently behind him, pointing at satoru, pointing at suguru, even pointing at your mom.

"DIDNT EVEN START IT!" he continued loudly.

for this one, you specifically made sure to mouth the words to megumi, who you could tell, just from his cruel facial expressions, wanted nothing more than to out you right then and there, but for the first time ever, it was your word against his, and with the way things were going, you were bound to win, no difficulty.

"THIS WILL GO DOWN IN THE HISTORY BOOKS, I TELL YOU! how SHE became the role-model for you dimwits."

"role model," you mouthed, pointing at everyone. "for you, for you, and especially," you made sure to swivel your finger in a circle this time, "you."

toji gritted his teeth at you, but said nothing. you grinned confidently.

uncle ogi turned away again, eyes closed shut as he sighed audibly, a vein on his forehead threatening to burst. it only popped up again when he found yuji and nobara staring back at him.

"AND WHO THE HELL ARE YOU TWO?"

"damn... you'd think he'd know our names by now," yuji commented, rubbing his neck with shame.

"right," nodded nobara, shaking her head. "so rude."

"friends of yours?" uncle ogi turned to you, speaking in that gruff tone he usually had. but it was significantly different to the way he had been speaking to the rest of the family today. you mentally giggled to yourself as you nodded. "fine."

he glared down at satoru and suguru, eyes twitching at the mess of pain all over their white shirts, brows furrowing at the mess maid of their hairs, and lips pursing at the broken glasses satoru was still clinging onto.

"you two..." he began, voice rough and firm. "go to shoko, just go."

satoru sat up defiantly. "i don't need —"

"NOW."

satoru and suguru did their walk of shame out of the backyard.

everyone had done theirs at some point.

everyone, you noted with a pleasant smile, except for you.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. .・。.・゜✭・.・

notes: the scariest event for halloween imo, is the helicopter incident. the zenin-fushiguro-gojo-l/n-geto family would agree. wbu guys???

previous chapter :)

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i do not own any of the characters of jjk, i only own the character of y/n and her mother. the other characters belong to gege akutami.

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tainbocuailnge · 1 year ago

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just really sucks that fgo is not a good game. there's never anything to do in fgo. there's a pretty hard plateau on how far player power scales within the gameplay system even accounting for blatant powercreep in servants so there's a pretty hard limit on what they can do to keep fights interesting too. new chapters don't actually pose any significant new challenges or goals outside just getting to read the story because your power plateaus so hard so they need to lock events behind story completion to get people to bother at all. the only thing to do outside events is farm and the only thing to do during events is farm because there's almost no content that actually employs your full roster and even less of it is permanently available to replay.

if you put granblue down for a few months you can pick back up where you left off and there will be new goals to work towards and anything you missed will come back around sooner or later. if you put fgo down for a few months there won't really be anything new to do save perhaps a new main story chapter to do your one-time completion of but you'll have missed several event stories that you'll never get another chance to read ingame. if arknights is having downtime and you don't feel like just dumping ap to farm you can go fuck around in its multiple alternate gamemodes or you can cook funny challenge clears of various bossfights or whatever because almost every single map in the game is permanently available to replay whenever. if fgo is having downtime and you're caught up on the story all there is to do is farm. and because it's been this way for years every endgame player has piles and piles of resources already so they keep having to invent new ludicrous resource sinks to keep those players busy.

in several ways it feels like fgo is just running into the limits of its own approaching 10 years old system and that's why they're struggling to figure out how to keep a sense of progression in the game. stuff like lv120 grail cap or the OC class networks being these huge resource sinks for minimal stat gains feel like they're scared to expand player powerlevel too much because at a base level there's just so much rng involved in the combat that any stat increase has the potential to spiral immensely. but they also just keep making absolutely baffling decisions especially regarding content availability. in fgo if you start playing the game because you were enticed by the bodacious bikini babes on the summer banners you won't ever actually get to play the event they feature in because it's locked behind catching up with the entire main story and will never be available again past its initial runtime. this cannot be a good business model. fgo fans can't read but at this point you can hardly even blame them when the game won't let them read.

#anyway i love cuchulainn

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sprintingowl · 2 years ago

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TTRPGs As Terrariums For Blorbos

One thing that I think isn't covered enough in TTRPG recommendations is styles of play.

There's a lot of "this game has this tone," or "this game is this amount of crunchy," but less "what are you playing towards?"

In games like Microscope and I'm Sorry Did You Say Street Magic? and The Quiet Year, you're playing to see what happens to the setting.

In games like Mork Borg and Into The Odd and Mothership, you're playing to see how far your character can get.

And in a lot of games, you're playing to create a blorbo, an OC, just a little guy, and the soul of the gameplay is the story of who your guy is and who your guy becomes.

This is blorbo style play.

And the thing about styles of play is that you can apply them to any game, even games that aren't really built to enable them. So I wanted to take a moment to shine a spotlight onto some games that do specifically enable you to fully blorb out. (I'll try to cover a mix of genres and tones, but the rpg scene is vast so if you have a favorite that I missed please feel free to shout it out in the replies.)

-Golden Sky Stories. This is the English translation of the Japanese TTRPG Yuuyake Koyake. You play as shapeshifter kids and spirits in a small town and, instead of tracking EXP, the thing that you carry from session to session is your relationships with other characters. The tone of the game is heartwarming, and if combat happens, both sides lose. There can be emotional turmoil, but this isn't a game where you have to worry about bad things happening to your blorbo.

-New World Of Darkness. On the other hand, let's say you *want* bad things to happen to your blorbo. You want to play a guy that's really going through it. If you also like modern supernatural stories, New World Of Darkness was built for you. Characters in NWoD can be entirely non-combat, or a literal werewolf, or a noncombat werewolf. The game places a lot of emphasis on navigating through the setting socially, as its supernatural creatures tend to run in factions and starting a fight usually means making a bunch of enemies.

-Pasion De Las Pasiones. Of course, not everyone wants a fantastical setting. Sometimes good old melodrama is hearty and comforting. Pasion De Las Pasiones is a playable telenovela, and it encourages you to play your characters bold and recklessly. Every class even has a built-in Meltdown, where if you're pushed to the edge they become extra reckless, ensuring a broad fallout of messy drama when they do manage to calm down.

-Cortex System / Unisystem. Perhaps you want to drop your blorbo into an existing fictional universe? But you also want stats and meaty character creation instead of just freeform roleplay? There are easily a dozen games on the Cortex engine, including Supernatural, Firefly, Smallville, Battlestar Galactica, Marvel, and Leverage. And on Unisystem, there's Buffy, Army Of Darkness, as well as a somewhat rare I Can't Believe It's Not Planet Of The Apes.

-Lancer / Gubat Banwa. If you like blorb-y play but still want a heavy side of combat, both of these games have you covered. Lancer has a sprawling scifi universe focused on mech pilots, and Gubat Banwa has a violent and lavish mythological Philippines setting. Both of these games also have stunningly beautiful artwork, so if you like seeing a setting visually come to life, these are for you.

-Fabula Ultima. My final recommendation is also an extremely gorgeous looking game. Fabula Ultima is built on the bones of Ryuutama (itself an excellent travel-fantasy game) to enable meaty, blorby Final Fantasy style campaign play. Combat is a rich and deep option in Fabula Ultima, but so is everything from spellcasting to crafting, and players have built-in resources they can spend to affect the story. If a scene isn't quite going the way you want it to, you can spend a point to nudge it in the right direction. Fabula Ultima also feels extremely complete without being too complicated.

So there you go. Eight options, and that's barely scratching the surface of the sea of blorb-y games (Seventh Sea, Exalted, Blue Rose, Legend Of The Five Rings, Coyote And Crow, Timewatch, Nahual, and more!)

It's also not wrong to play non-blorb-y games in a blorb-y way. Do whatever you're comfortable with! But you might enjoy dipping into these titles.

Finally, if you've read this far and you're somehow still looking for MORE recommendations, I wrote this game about runaway changelings trying to find their place in the world, and it's probably the blorbiest in my catalog.

#ttrpg design #indie ttrpg #rpg #tabletop #indie ttrpgs #dnd #ttrpgs #ttrpg homebrew #ttrpg #rpgs

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would-this-pokemon-be-a-friend · 1 year ago

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Would Pansage or Simisage be a good pet?

[As per usual, I flipped a coin! Pansage it is!]

Pansages would make great pets!

They’re around the same size as real-world monkeys, which means that they’re not going to be too much of a problem for any home. It’s important to point out, however, that pansages cannot be said to be “pretty much just a monkey”: in the real-world, there are many contexts in which apes are not the best pets. Unlike real-world apes, however, pansages are significantly less dangerous to have in the home. Real-world monkeys can be quite dangerous due to their formidable nails and sharp teeth, whereas pansages seem to have neither. Monkeys living as pets tend to develop mental issues as well, since they require socialization with other monkeys and often become antisocial towards humans who try to domesticate them. While pansages may indeed benefit from spending time with other pansages, there is no indication in the pokédex that implies that living with humans would be detrimental to their mental health.

Pansages are exceptionally friendly and generous. The leaves that grow on their heads are actually edible, and pansages have been observed as having no problem sharing them with other species, especially those who look weary (White). The leaves on their heads have a peculiar medicinal effect, relieving stress and boosting the energy of anyone who eats them (Black, White). Pansages aren’t greedy with their food either: these berry eating pokémon share their gathered food with friends all the time (Black2/White2). Don’t be surprised if your Pansage tries to share the berries you feed them with you, or any other goodies they’re able to get their hands on.

As for your home, you’re going to want to be aware that pansages are active climbers. In the wild, this pokémon makes its home in the forest (Black), so their bodies are well equipped for an arboreal lifestyle. It would be a good idea to keep this in mind when finding places to store food where they can’t easy access it, and it wouldn’t be a bad idea to provide them with safe climbing spaces to play on, like indoor cat trees or a children’s playground. If you let your Pansage play in an actual tree, just make sure they aren’t able to escape and get lost on accident!

As far as their moves go, there isn’t too much to worry about. Pansages don’t have any move with a power stat higher than 80, which, given their size, means they can’t hurt you too terribly bad. Unlike a lot of grass-type pokémon, pansages don’t produce harmful spores, which is a definite plus. Considering their gentle, friendly, demeanor, you won’t need to worry too much about your Pansage attacking anyone, but even if they do it would be unlikely to result in anything lethal.

Overall, unlike many real-world apes, pansages would make great pets! If you are someone who struggles with low energy or high stress, a pansage may be a particularly good choice for you. In fact, I’d wager that pansages would make great support pets for people with mood disorders and other disabilities like myself. I don’t mean to over-editorialize, but I’d love a pansage for this very reason!

#pokémon #pokemon #pansage #pkmn irl #PR-A

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doll-lashes · 1 year ago

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Inside look at small business manufacturing in Japan

Written by Connie from the Atelier Pierrot team

(transcript available later in the post)

I wanted to document and share this informative post that was shared by Connie who works at Atelier Pierrot, containing an inside look into small businesses' manufacturing in Japan, which is a category that covers almost all Japanese lolita fashion brands. The post is focused on releasing plus sizing, which is not very common for a lot of Japanese brands. Below are the charts which were included in the post.

It was noted that for the Bustle Corset JSK, the sizing between Size 1 and 2 had more overlap, in the hopes of finding the best proportions. This was due to experimenting with sizing proportions and ranges, the goal of this was to potentially increase the range of sizing, while producing fewer sizes.

Below the "Keep reading" section is a plain text transcript, for anybody using a screen reader. I have made use of formatted headings in order to make it easier to move between sections, as the text is quite long.

Inside look at small business manufacturing in Japan

Japanese brands' manufacturing processes are usually quite mysterious, and I think there are lots of misconceptions overseas, especially when it comes to plus size releases.

Although there's some points I can't go into too much detail for, as the person leading the plus size releases for a Japanese brand I have done a lot of research and have a lot of stats to facilitate the development of these releases.

This will be quite long, and with a lot of interacting factors but I've tried to break it up into sections to make it more manageable for people with no executive function (like me).

General Release Size

The first thing to understand is - Japanese brands are all small businesses. They are not huge companies making 1000 of each dress. Typically, even the "big" brands are making 200-300 of each release, across all colourways. Popular releases will sometimes be larger scale. (AP is an exception, but their manufacturing process is very different and they're generally an anomaly in lolita - but still a small business that is at risk if just one of their releases is enough of a flop. They've also said that they have no interest in doing plus size releases, and they have a sufficiently large market in China currently that they don't need to take the financial risk of starting plus size).

Plus Size Market Size

Within this general market, the plus size market is actually incredibly small, and most overseas lolitas completely overestimate the size.

(For reference, in Japan Bust 100cm, Waist 80cm would be considered L/XL. Anything above this is definitely plus size. Remember that when a Japanese brand uses the term "plus size", they are likely to be referring to Japanese plus size which makes up the majority of their market).

For releases that have a plus size version, the plus size sales make up about 15-30% of all sales. Typically, it's 22-25%. This is the same for both Meta and AtePie (with overall sales numbers being comparative).

Say there's 300 items across colourways for a release (Meta's "regular" size and AtePie's Size 1), proportionally, it might have 75-100 items for all plus size pieces, across all sizes.

I've tried to show these ratios with the graph shared on this main post, but have not said the exact sales numbers. It's worth noting that the Douceur Cutsew had a particularly good sales ratio for plus size, and the Bustle Corset JSK is currently in progress, ending 7/21. The number of plus size sales will increase a little until then, but so will the Size 1.

Doing small-size runs (less than 50 pieces per size) is incredibly costly, which I'll go into more detail for later.

Differences in Japanese Vs overseas buying practices

Although of course they still buy some items secondhand, Japanese lolitas are FAR more likely to buy new and support the brands they love. However, most overseas lolitas tend to buy secondhand, or very rarely new direct from Japanese brands (even for accessories).

This obviously doesn't mesh well with the plus size manufacturing system, which has to be MTO due to the small market and risks of production.

Generally, when Japanese customers request an item be rereleased/made in a new colour etc, typically 80% of people requesting will actually purchase. When overseas lolitas make item requests, typically 30% will purchase. This obviously has a huge impact on each market's buying power, and is something that has to be considered when releasing items.

The influence of overseas customers is much less strong/reliable. However, the plus size market is largely overseas, making up about 80-95% of plus size purchases (regardless of brand). As you can imagine, this combined with the lower amount of overseas customers buying new means that the actual demand for plus size releases is very small.

(Actual demand = people who actually buy the items, not just a desire to have them made)

Plus size actual demand

As you might have noticed, Meta has stopped doing their Plus Plus size releases due to insufficient demand. Atelier Pierrot plus size releases (especially size 3 and 4) are currently under review, based on previous plus size sales.

I am really pushing to find solutions to continue plus size releases, but short of putting the manufacturer or brand at risk, there's very little extra that me or AtePie can do.

Japanese brands absolutely should not put themselves at financial risk for any release just for the sake of it being made, especially if there's insufficient support.

In general, the solution is - customers who want to see more of certain releases should support these releases by purchasing new, especially for plus size where the Japanese market cannot be relied on to bolster the sales. This is actually how I've been able to propose more purple releases with AtePie recently! Purple is relatively popular in Japan, but people really love it overseas!

If people don't order plus size items new, they simply will not be manufactured.

It's very unlikely to find the size that you'd need secondhand, especially in the colourway you like best, if only a small amount were ordered in the first place.

Manufacturing process and costs (general)

During the manufacturing process, the item is first designed (and print, if applicable), fabric, trim and colourways are chosen, measurements/pattern is modelled and decided. A sample is made (in the real fabric, to determine how it drapes etc). Adjustments are made to the sample and if necessary another sample is made. Brands will typically try to avoid making the second sample wherever possible because it's very expensive, but sometimes it's unavoidable. Then, the pricing is determined and if it's a general release the number of each item to be released is decided. Colourways are released in different numbers based on demand. As a gothic brand, Atelier Pierrot produces more of the black colourway of each item.

The price is determined by the overhead manufacturing costs, material/trim costs, pattern making, shipping of materials/products, among other things.

The sample commission and pattern cutting are the most costly parts of item development. Designers really don't make much at all and work long hours - for many of the "big" brands it still works out as approximately minimum wage, which is about 1000 yen per hour in Japan.

If the main designer is also the brand owner (e.g AtePie, Sheglit), of course they make more money but they still aren't millionaires by any stretch of the imagination.

Lolita is a passion project for many of the people involved, which is why brands may just stop if people get burnt out/lose that passion (Boz).

Manufacturing process and costs (plus size)

Plus size releases follow this same general process. However, multiple sizing means that multiple samples must be made. Samples must be made in all colours and all sizes to make sure that they come out as expected. For reference, the current AtePie Bustle Corset JSK samples were:

Size 2 - black x white, purple

Size 3 - navy, bordeaux

Size 4 - purple, black

These additional samples add a huge amount of cost (usually it's 200-300k yen for main piece samples in each size, but this varies). If an item is rereleased in the same fabric, another sample wouldn't be necessary. Items released in another fabric would need another sample.

Having small runs of less than 50 of each Plus Size sizing increases the cost per item.

Another additional cost is adjusting the patterns to fit plus size bodies. AtePie adjusts all measurements, not just bust and waist (shoulder width, arm circumference, arm scye, bodice length, skirt circumference etc). Most Japanese brands and manufactures aren't familiar with how to adjust patterns for plus sizing (especially Western plus size), so this stage often has to be outsourced, which is more costly. As time goes on, the measurement range would become more familiar and require less work/lower costs each time (which could be passed on to the customers). However, this could only happen with long term plus size production.

However, plus size dresses are always going to cost more than the size 1 to manufacture. I'm sure a lot of people are aware that the material cost is significantly higher. If a waist circumference is 20cm larger, to have proportional gathering it usually requires ~60cm extra fabric. Adding gathered chiffon on top means an additional 180cm of fabric. These material costs quickly add up.

A cost that many people aren't aware of is the "pattern cutting cost". Most Size 1 lolita releases fit on a single pattern sheet, to be cut out onto fabric by the manufacturer. However, plus size releases have larger measurements and usually require two or more pattern sheets (for main pieces). This is paid by sheet, meaning that this stage of the manufacturing process costs 2-3x as much as Size 1 for every single item made.

To avoid these additional costs raising the price of plus size pieces too much, AtePie absorbs a lot of these extra costs. However, this of course means that the profit margin is much lower despite all the extra difficulties/hard work involved, which is a strain for a small business (which all lolita brands are).

AtePie Size 1 and Plus Size Blooming Rose Corsets were the same price because we just absorbed all extra costs. The Douceur Cutsew had less than 1000 yen price difference (due to much higher manufacture costs), but most was still absorbed. The Bustle Corset JSK has a larger price difference because it's an incredibly expensive piece to produce (difference in volume of fabric due to all the ruffles, requires 2-3 pattern sheets to be cut, more QC costs etc), but AtePie is still trying to absorb as much of the costs as possible.

We absolutely will not force the plus size manufacturer to absorb these extra costs because we do not want to put them at risk of closing.

If Japanese brands were to spread these extra plus size costs to the Size 1/"Regular" size, it would alienate the Japanese market and greatly affect sales, which is really not possible when Japanese customers still make up the vast majority of customers

Quality control issues

It can be hard to find manufacturers that are capable of making lolita pieces. Lolita is much harder to make than regular fashion pieces, with lots of unique details and construction techniques. Brands really try to hold onto long term partnerships with specific manufacturers to minimise mistakes, but they still sometimes happen.

A common mistake is the skirt circumference, especially the lining - often the manufacturer can't believe that there'd be so much VOLUME to the skirt and make a mistake with the measurement. This is often at the initial sampling stage, but sometimes it's the occasional stock item and caught during the Quality Control stage.

Whenever possible, these are returned and corrected to minimise waste. If it's not possible to correct something, they may be sold as B Grade items.

AtePie works with a few different manufacturers for different types of items. For the one of the main manufacturers, we've been working with them for more than 30 years and they have a very good understanding of our designs, but mistakes are occasionally made still.

Manufacture in China usually has a much higher number of mistakes/QC issues, so although it's cheaper than Japanese manufacture it involves a lot more QC, and sometimes expensive/time consuming shipping back to be fixed.

These problems are all exacerbated by adding plus size releases. Manufacturers are unfamiliar with the larger measurements and more likely to get confused/make mistakes. It's more common to have mixed measurements (e.g. the bust is Size 3 but the hem circumference is Size 2). This adds a much longer QC period to make sure defective items aren't sent to customers, which is also costly in terms of labour.

This is why it's so vital that AtePie works to support the manufacturer capable of doing plus size releases without adding additional financial strain to them. We really really want the manufacturer to be able to continue making plus size pieces.

Risk for brands and manufacturers

Meta almost became bankrupt when they started doing plus size releases, and their current manufacturing system is not really sustainable or ideal for the future of plus size releases. Often doing plus size releases is a huge financial risk both for manufacturers and the brand involved.

As mentioned before, manufacturers that can do plus size are very rare in Japan. If one of the very few places that can do plus size closes down, it is highly unlikely it reopen. The current manufacturer in Japan that can do plus size pieces is currently in a very weak financial position due to a former contract with a (non lolita) brand doing plus size. If it is forced to close, it'll be a HUGE blow to plus size availablity in Japan (again, not just lolita).

Summary

As you can see, the plus size market is really not big at all, and on top of that it's financially risky for lolita brands to get involved with.

AtePie (and mostly me as the person in charge) are working really hard to try to make releases more accessible, but it is done out of passion for lolita and not because it's a lucrative market. If there is sufficient support, over time it may become easier to release plus size items more often, and with very little/no price difference (this is my goal!)

However, this is a goal that is entirely dependent on overseas customer support.

Buying new from lolita brands is the best way to show the brand where the market might exist and encourage more of the items you want to see. Supporting AtePie plus size releases will also allow us to in turn support the plus size manufacturer and hopefully allow them to continue making plus size pieces (not only lolita) into the future.

Even though this is a hugely long explanation, I've still barely covered the basics. I hope it was still informative for people!

#egl #gothic lolita #elegant gothic lolita #lolita #atelier pierrot #metamorphose temps de fille #metamorphose #lolita fashion #jfashion #japanese fashion #harajuku fashion #lolita plus size #classic lolita

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the-knights-of-rohan · 1 year ago

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14/100 days of productivity.

Today was a pretty chill day in terms of homework, but pretty hectic in terms of schoolwork. I did my spoken word presentation for AP Lit today, felt pretty good about it, seeing the rest of the class. Also finished preparation for the fundraiser my club is hosting tomorrow.

(We must bid farewell to the glass o' juice, as it has returned from whence it came. Also, I need to take care of my teeth.)

Today’s productivity:

Did some extensions on AP Computer Science .vtt file parsing, extended it to an entire directory and better organized the input and output.

Integrated Chapter 14 Japanese 4 vocab into my phone study flashcards after looking over them, there's nothing too crazy there.

Did AP Stats notes on Matched Pair experimental design

Self Care:

You know the drill at this point. The Vim be vimming.

Didn't have much stuff to do at home today, so I continued preparation for the college interview I have in a week. (AAAAAAA)

Future Goals:

Find out more information for US Government final project

Do US Government test corrections when the breakdowns are released

Song of the day:

Name: Amsterdam

Album: Pink Is Better

Artists: Token ft. Benny the Butcher

#100 days of productivity #studyblr #student #study motivation #studying #coding #literature #us government #statistics

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xenodile · 7 months ago

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@stasisarbiter This is definitely worth a full ask, because it's a bit of a mixed response. Nikke does a lot of things really good, and a lot of things really bad.

So. The gameplay IS fun. Like really fun. The PVE gameplay is like Time Crisis shooting, you have your team of up to 5 characters where you're directly controlling one at a time while the others are on auto target and tap/click to shoot, and automatically take cover and reload when not shooting. Enemies flash red before they attack and put markers on characters that are being targeted by particularly powerful attacks. Characters have different styles of guns, Assault Rifles, Machine Guns, SMGs, Shotguns, Rocket Launchers, and Sniper Rifles, that all handle differently, and some characters have uniquely functioning versions of those 6 archetypes. You can also order all characters to take cover and stop shooting until you give the order to attack again, and switch between which character you're controlling while doing so.

You also generate meter whenever your characters hit something, and when the meter fills you can use their Burst Skills. You can use up to 3 Burst Skills in sequence, as each character's skill is Phase 1, 2, or 3, and building a team involves getting characters whose skills compliment and chain together. When you do a full chain of 3 skills, you activate a Full Burst for 10 seconds, during which time you directly control all of your characters at once.

When your characters are strong enough, any stage becomes a cakewalk, but when you're playing at a power deficit is when things get really interesting, because the amount of precise manual control you have over each of your characters means you can overcome very high stat differences by prioritizing targets, using the right skills, and taking cover efficiently.

The boss fights are also really, really cool. Bosses have multiple parts that can be individually targeted and broken to alter their behavior and deal extra damage, they have special attacks where you have to do precision target shooting to interrupt them, and long multi phase fights. It's really fun stuff.

But as I said, Nikke does some really bad stuff too. For one, it has PVP, and there is no justice in a gacha based PVP game. PVP is an auto battler where certain teams are just invincible without an equally specific counter pick, all of which are locked behind SSR gacha rates, so that blows.

Leveling and upgrading characters is weird because there's a system that makes it so you only have to level up 5 characters and then every other character you have will be automatically synced to those 5, which is really nice. But that system has a hard cap that is not high enough to get through every part of the main story, and is only unlocked if you get FIVE SSR characters to max limit break, so depending on luck and spending habits, could be a very significant wall to progression for a lot of people.

Dailies are easy to complete and only take like 30 minutes tops, and there's no stamina or AP system so you can play as much as you want, but all experience and money games are time based. You CAN'T grind for experience or money or upgrade materials, you get them at a fixed rate per day. So it respects your time per day, but it WILL take months of playing to upgrade your characters, and even that is locked behind whether you get lucky on the gacha.

So like, the gameplay IS fun, but your ability to actually access that fun is locked behind really scummy monetization. It's a weird case where I've really been liking Nikke and having a ton of fun with it, but I would not ever recommend it to someone because the ability to make meaningful progress is luck based. It's why I started doing my story write ups because I think there's legitimately good stuff in Nikke that people should see and be able to enjoy without getting roped into its bad gacha shit.

Short answer, yes it's fun but it's not worth getting into, so enjoy it vicariously.

#stasisarbiter

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poisons-productivity-palace · 8 months ago

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Guys…. Predicted exam scores time </333so I’m doing this before and then after the exams and gov is tmm….

AP us gov- ok so I took this class over the summer and into the start of the year so I don’t remember too much on the writing so I’m kinda cooked? But also I hear it’s REALLY easy and I’ve done so much review and heimler so maybe I’ll be ok. Idk the amendments that well 😭 but ik the cases so I’m thinking a 4. If I REALLY lock in maybe a 5🤞🤞🤞 but I hate saying that 😭

AP Micro economics- ok so this class is so hard to me bc I just hate paying attention 😭 also I finished it like January so I don’t remember much writing wise, but all my friends were still in it and I helped them a lot so I kinda know it. The graphs I think I can do, so?? 4??? But like give or take a score point, like maybe a 3 or 5 😭 that’s such a margin tho

AP stats- this class…… I did not pay attention all year….. kinda cooked but I did a really good review, so maybe a 4? If they ask me how to find outliers I’m good 😎

AP lit- ok I think a 4 MAYBE a 5 but only if the multiple choice questions are easy and so is the poem question. I love writing but I HATE analyzing poems bc I never get it 🥲

AP computer sci A- … 3 but if the stars align and the MCQ is easy 4… the FRQs are so easy at least

AP calc BC- ok so I love this class and if I don’t get a 5 I will be devastated BUT I HATE POLAR CURVES AND UNIT 10😭😭 so maybe a 4 🥲 if the unit 9 FRQ is parametric or only one polar I can do it I think

AP research honorary- 4! I liked my paper but I just hope they do too. My teacher LOVED my presentation so I’m not worried on that

#justt talking #school #ap classes #ap exams #ap courses #ap gov #ap us gov #ap micro #ap stats #ap literature #ap lit #ap calc #ap calc bc #ap research

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divineerdrick · 21 days ago

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Warhammer 40,000 Balance Changes for December 11, 2024: Adeptus Custodes

Custodes is one of those armies that looks fine until you dig into the data. Then the picture sours really quickly. They just don't seem to have what it takes to hang with the best players most of the time. And yes, I'm aware that the winner of WCW used Custodes, but very few players are seeing results like that.

Their detachments aren't doing well either. Talons of the Emperor is pretty much the only one that seems to be doing anything. Most players seem to prefer Shield Host, but it's just not getting the results. Meanwhile no one is is using Auric Champions or Null Maiden Vigil. Their Datasheets are in a similar state. Successful lists seem to be very reliant on Blade Champions and Wardens, and often take the expensive Forge World Caladius tank.

But you know what's a cool looking model? The Dawn Eagle Jetbike. Do you know what really hasn't been playable for all of 10th Edition? The Dawn Eagle Jetbike. Well GW likes them too, and wants to make them playable.

It's time for some all new stats! Bam! +1 Toughness! Bam! +1 Wound! Bam! How does a S10 AP-3 Dmg D6+1 Salvo Launcher sound? Bam! How about Hurricaine Bolters at AP-1 and Dmg 2?

But we're not done yet! That Quicksilver Execution rule I thought was so cool on launch that turned out to be a dud? It now works on Normal moves too. No more choosing between mortals and shooting or charging. You just get to do it all, like the Imperium's greatest heroes should!

However, theses buffs aren't free. Shield Captains on Dawn Eagles are going up 20 pts, while Praetors went up 5 pts per model. Still, these are meaningful buffs. I think the extra Wound alone more than justifies this. And with the added damage they can deal now, they're going to be pretty good. Add in their gift from the Red Gobbo and it's a good day to be in the 10,000.

#live blogging #liveblogging #live blog #liveblog #warhammer 40000 #warhammer 40k #warhammer #wh40k #games workshop #warhammercommunity #warhammer40k #wh40000 #wh 40k #40k balance dataslate #competitive 40k #40k #balance dataslate #not so live blog #adeptus custodes

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skoolnites · 2 years ago

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𝘾𝙝𝙖𝙥𝙩𝙚𝙧 𝙊𝙣𝙚: Living Up to the Stereotype

previous chapter | Masterlist | next chapter

-> 𝙒𝘾: 1.3k

->𝙎𝙪𝙢𝙢𝙖𝙧𝙮: Y/n is really on her psychology grind and also subsequently in her soccer mom era

->𝙒𝙖𝙧𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜𝙨: Swearing and suggestive content is mentioned (ie sex jokes)

->𝙉𝙤𝙩𝙚: Y'all I'm sorry I had some last minute school stuff then I wrote most of this after my wisdom teeth surgery and let me tell you my writing sucked. I'm back and wisdom teethless and annoying as ever. Also I'm so sorry if I got some psych stuff wrong I'm a comms major just loved AP Psych in HS. Also with these text messages the first VB GC the blue is hinata but then I realized I'm dumb so in the next images Atsumu is blue.

“When thinking of tests to perform and other theories that have been connected to attraction the first one I consistently found myself researching was the stereotype content model (2002). As a healthy baseline I believe that by trying to match Subject A’s ideal admiration stereotype they will hopefully stereotype me as such. On days Zero to Three (0-3) my main focus will be to start stereotyping as well as create a plan to spend more time with Subject A.”

How hard was it to set up an admiration stereotype, high warmth and high competence, easy.

Warmth could be achieved by some simple support for not only Atsumu but also the rest of the team. Not enough to feel maternal but enough to show she was capable of providing. Reliability was the best way to build up trust. Competence was trickier, Y/n knew she was smart but how to get Atsumu to see that she was smart.

“Hey boys,” Y/n greeting carrying a case of Gatorade for the volleyball team walking over to the bench to set down the case.

“Y/n, you are a godsend,” Suna chuckled, grabbing an orange bottle from the case and passing it to their captain then grabbing one of his own.

The other boys were quick to follow, thanking Y/n then chatting amongst themselves. When Yachi bent down to grab a red bottle she slid into the spot next to Y/n.

“Rumor has it Coach Foster is looking for good tutors for one of his athletes. A little birdie might have put your name down, might want to announce you are available.” The blonde suggested as she held out her hand for a low five which Y/n was quick to comply

“Holy shit Yachi you are the best,” Y/n praised. She could feel the excitement racing up her spine

“Yachi!” Shugo yelled, “Can you help me fill up these bottles?”

“Yeah I’ll be right over,” She shouted back getting up to help not before sending a little wink towards Y/n

“Oh and Tsumu go to coaches office for a sec please!” The captain called out again. Yachi turned to face Y/n shooting her a quick wink and mouthing “all you babe”. Y/n grabbed her phone and quickly typed out a tweet

./././././././././.

Coach’s office was cool due to the many fans normally making it a great place to congregate but at this moment no amount of cold air would calm down Atsumu’s nerves. He knew he was struggling in a few classes, namely statistics, but it was only because volleyball was his life. UTokyo was his gateway to the Japan National team, a stupid degree in communications wasn’t going to do anything for him once he made the big leagues.

“I’ve done everything I can do, kid” Coach Foster said, not looking up from his monitor. “Your Stats grade is too low, the Dean informed me that you won’t be able to play in nationals with a failing grade, I have to bench you until you get about a C,” Atsumu’s heart sank

“Coach please, I need this. Volleyball is my life. There are going to be so many scouts at that game. My career depends on that game,” Atsumu begged and Coach Foster turned to hand him a clipboard. The page clipped down was labeled in bold letters, “Tutor Recommendations”. “You want me to get tutored?” Atsumu asked, glancing at the list he saw three names jumping out at him: Kei Tsukishima, Osamu Miya, and Y/n L/n. Tsuki and him got along fine but working with his teammate was a blow to his ego. Samu, easy answer; absolutely not. Yes he is the obvious choice but they’d fight and Atsumu did not want to be patronized by his brother, they left that in high school. Now L/n was not a bad choice, she was smart and he knew a bit about her. Of course those were just the names he recognized from the list; there were a few more names. After a quick twitter and instagram search Atsumu decided against strangers, they all were pre med or like chemical engineering majors and quite frankly those super smart types terrified him, especially the women. He wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed but he knew the smart girls were the hottest and there was no chance he could learn about variables and distribution with steamy tutoring fantasies running through his mind. Y/n was pretty but Atsumu knew her, she wouldn’t go for him and he was pretty sure her and Tsukishima were together. He could handle her. So after practice he grabbed his phone and checked Y/n’s twitter for any tutoring information

It was four am when there was a knock on Atsumu’s door. The disheveled faux blond did not expect to find Y/n, his new tutor, at his door, donned in black tank top and sweatpants, messy hair and glasses slipping down her nose. It was like all of his steamy tutor fantasies had come to fruition. The only thing tying him back to reality was the cold air hitting his bare chest. Y/n fiddled with that paper in her hands while her eyes traveled down his body before landing on his feet. The silence was deafening. Atsumu grew smug as Y/n’s face grew red. She knew he was toned, she knew how hard he trained, she didn’t know she’d be seeing him shirtless this early on into this experiment.

“Um,” The girl fumbled, “So um as we discussed early, these tutoring sessions will be used heavily in my psychology final. I need your written consent for our conversations, online or face to face, to be recorded or documented in some form. I also need to inform you that I am purposefully not telling you about my experiment so as to not skew the results. I will be using deception tactics and need you to sign this form stating that you understand that you are a test subject. The tutoring will be completely real and I will not disregard the fact that you need tutoring. My reactions and actions might be faked in order to shift your emotions. There might be a lasting effect on your emotions and help can be provided for free if you contact me afterwards...” Atsumu was shocked, in a situation straight out of his dirtiest thoughts, Y/n was just spewing information. The girl was still rambling when he took the paper from her hands.

“Just here?” Atsumu asked, pointing at the line for his signature. Y/n nodded, reaching into her sweatpant pocket grabbing a pen. He took the pen and scribbled out a signature.

“Better keep that darlin’” Tsumu winked handing her the paper, “My signatures gonna be worth something someday,” He promptly shut the door leaving the girl stunned but her mission was successful.

“When the tutoring opportunity arose it happened to be the ideal way to build up admiration. If I could prove that I was competent in a domain that Subject A was not, I could stereotype myself as someone above him. Later on I will have to backtrack and set myself up as an equal but for now having Subject A hold me at a higher standard is ideal. An important factor I lacked to acknowledge was that we are both college students. I had not been acting as such, and for this experiment to be successful I need to be my authentic self instead of someone dead set on data. When choosing my next effect to showcase I realized I needed to be active during our tutoring sessions in order to truly get authentic results. I also acknowledge that I have used the SCM unconsciously to stereotype Subject A on my own. A sense of pity has fallen upon my views of Subject A which will also have to be cleared up through other tests as to not create domestic feelings instead of romantic feelings.”

tags: @milkteeboba, @90s-belladonna, @rosieyama, @buggy-cj

#atsumu fluff #haikyu fluff #haikyu x reader #haikyuu fluff #haikyuu smau #haikyuu x reader #atsumu miya fluff #atsumu miya x reader #atsumu smau #atsumu x reader

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styrmwb · 3 months ago

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I beat Final Fantasy Tactics Advance

This might be the longest game from start to finish I've ever played

Not in the sense that this is a long game but in the fact that this is the first real game I ever played (I'm sorry, I'm not considering pc learning programs for baby), and it took me approximately 18-19 years to get around to Finally beating it. It's very funny to say that my first experience into gaming was a strategy game. I also think that somewhere, deep down in my heart, this planted the seed for what games I ended up loving in my present. Experiencing this game with an adult mind was ALMOST a fresh experience, yet I uncovered a lot of old memories and experiences during it.

This game is goddamn addicting. I Genuinely had so much trouble putting it down at times because I just Kept Wanting To Play. Let me explain to you my thoughts :)

Gameplay

I love RPGs to the bottom of my heart; HOWEVER. I have Always Always Always HATED gear management. I don't think I ever truly appreciated it in a game until Final Fantasy IX, where equipping gear and holding onto it taught you abilities permanently. It made me care about my gear and when to equip it more than just stat buffs and "yeah I guess I'll get fire immunity whatever". I LOVE that system so much. Another system that I love to the bottom of my heart (also an FF Classic but Dragon Quest gave me this too) is the job/class system. The freedom of changing my characters to be whatever I want and to mix and match their abilities is so fun and leads to a lot of flavor and mechanics. Final Fantasy V does it the best imo. So what do I get here? I get 2 of my favorite RPG mechanics of all time put into one!!! The reason this game is so addicting is it's basically to me character building simulator. I am constantly thinking about job paths, what I want each of my guys to be, how much time am I putting them in battles and spreading across their usage and swapping gear to maximize AP gains and make a small army of broken warriors. It's an absolute joy. The base gameplay is super solid too which helps. I mean, I love strategy RPGs (I am, unfortunately, a Fire Emblem bitch), so you literally can't go wrong with it.

I loved the jobs in this game. In fact, I'm gonna be a big nerd and tell you about my whole clan because this is MY post and I make the rules

Marche - Paladin/Fighter: World's Strongest Child. Fighter's damage output is insane, and has a wide range of abilities that helped out with its accuracy or distance, as well as just some meaty hits to annihilate. I went into Paladin just for some extra defense, and was also blessed with some good support skills and a stupid strong nuke in Holy Blade.

Montblanc - Mog Knight/Juggler: To be real here, I fucked up with this dude. I Did Not know what I wanted to do with him, and messed his stats up a little as a result. But Juggler is such a good support unit, especially with Dagger's disable + damage and Smile's instant turn ratio. Mog Knight did not perform how I wanted it to, but it has funny ability names.

Nikolai - Hunter/Archer: As I mentioned before, I'm a Fire Emblem bitch; and what that means is that I'm used to archers sucking shit (fuck you Python hit your damned shots). I was NOT expecting the bowman here to be as goated as he was. The utility of the aim abilities from damage boosting to disabling the enemy, as well as hunt's huge monster damage, this dude was a prime stay throughout the entire playthrough.

Chelney - Dragoon/Gladiator: This guy took a bit to load up, but once he did, holy shit. Absolute damage demon. Dragoon's wide range of AOE abilities + spear usage given some extra strength and smaller focus when needed from Gladiator, on top of the insane movement I gave him meant I had a Bangaa missile land wherever I wanted it to.

Eugene - Sage/White Mage/Beastmaster (when needed): Another unit I didn't really do optimally. White Mage is obviously a great support as it always is, but I genuinely thought Sage was gonna be a support type. Instead I got some damage skills (which to be fair were nice to have) that were super rare to find and didn't feel really BEEFY. Beastmaster was mostly there to support the Blue Mage.

Gertrude - Red Mage/Summoner: The early playthrough goat and 1/2 of the reason why I think Viera units are the best units in the game. Red Mage's wide variety of abilities came in clutch, as well as the bit of Fencer I gave her at first to cover both magic and physical. Then came Summoner, which was just "haha drop a big explosion". THEN I got Doublecast. "HAHA DROP TWO BIG EXPLOSIONS". Very very very fun unit, I just wish she actually managed to hit more. I blame myself for not giving her more movement to get behind the enemy.

Skimble - Time Mage/Black Mage: The epitome of a glass cannon, Poor Skimble could nuke anyone he saw but kept constantly getting targeted and killed. I actually did really like this mix of jobs because he could pull off support and damage well whenever I needed.

Gotwald - Bishop/White Monk: Not the most used unit, but a VERY fun combination of jobs. Bishop is like, Good Sage, with its healing and damage magic, and then the White Monk abilities balanced it out with some physical attacks as needed and Revive. Thematically it all balances out very well, I loved this.

Gallahad - Ninja: Another unit I didn't really know what to do with. He started out as a thief but I never really liked stealing in games (mainly cause it just never seemed worth the trouble). It was worth it to get to Ninja, though. His damage output, especially once I unlocked Double Sword was insane. The utility of Ninja Skills are also awesome, I just wish he could land them.

Agatha - Assassin/Sniper: I lied when I said Gertrude was 1/2 of what convinced me Vieras were the best. Agatha is 5/6ths of what convinced me of this fact. Having her in Sniper was already really solid with Doubleshot, Death Scythe, Aim:Weapon, etc (a really funny combo was dooming someone then using Montblanc to speed up their turns and thus their demise.) But then Assassin? Holy shit. Literally just instantly killing anything across the field, dashing around at mach speed, everything in her range. Once I mastered Ultima Buster and gave her back a greatbow, everyone was just "am I going to Last Breath or Ultima Buster you? You get one shot either way". Insane unit.

Karl - Gunner/Animist: This is such a fun long range hide in the back of the map combo. Gunner has surprisingly crazy damage, and it can keep up that damage AND cause statuses. Animist rounds it out nicely with the self heal and AOE attacks (oh I can't shoot you? Get Chocobo'd, idiot.)

Nobel - Blue Mage/Fighter: This is a Blue Mage that is 1000% worth the investment. You don't even need all the spells. Matra Magic is one of the funniest spells in a strategy game I've ever used, and even beyond that I had Twister and Dragon Force. Fighter was there to give them extra meat for their attack based spells, as well as no MP options because Damage > MP is a thing and is good.

That was my clan, and I feel like most everyone got their time to shine (even if certain bunnies and lizards got a little more than others). There are some jobs I wish I got to experience a little more but I just couldn't put the investment into it. Illusionist and Alchemist are a couple that I think I could have cooked with in an alternate timeline; Templar as well. Gadgeteer scares me, but a luck based affect everyone class is really funny conceptually. I also really appreciated how throughout the game, the base jobs weren't always invalidated, and they had their place when needed.

I think building characters, while it is the part I enjoyed the most through the game, is very much sunk cost. You gotta just invest in your guys from the get go cause nobody you recruit later is going to even out just due to amount of abilities.

Other gameplay things I liked: customizable map is really cool. I ended up going with an optimized guide just cause I wanted treasure and I know I don't play games more than once often so I was going for full 100%, but as a replayability feature it's SO cool. I also actually quite enjoyed the little bit of time management that was there; it reminded me of Persona. Hold off to accept this mission cause I can't make it in time to do these other couple, plan out my optimal route to hit as many or as little battles as I could in this period. Map navigation was an actual part of the game which was cool.

The Law system gives me feelings so complicated. Thematically, it's very cool and fits in perfectly in the world (or I should say the world is built around it very well.) And theoretically, it really gives you incentive to switch around your units and plan out their growth. But in my experience, 80% of the time it was just annoying? (which again, flavor wise, VERY accurate). Like there were times where I got hit with "do not hit animals go to jail" on a mission I did not know was exclusively full of animals. I also don't think they were the clearest things at times, and you really do just have to get punished to find out the limits of stuff. It's not The Worst, but I don't think I had a lot of fun with it. Except when it prevented the enemies from doing something that was hilarious. Stupid Illusionist can't do anything when target all is illegal lmfao

To tie in two previous points, I think Jagds were a very cool area. The trade off of no laws but for permadeath is neat, and those zones actually gave me fear and made me try to plan and prepare when I went around them. I also have a memory of my childhood playthrough losing my favorite guy so I didn't want a repeat of that hahaha. But I think the permadeath eventually becomes WAY more of a punishment than it should be due to how hard raising a character is. One wrong move, and the guy you put dozens of hours and AP into is gone. I will say, this game absolutely made me anal about saving constantly, so that might be good? Maybe?

Two things I can strictly say I disliked, were the randomness and dispatch missions/mission items. When it comes to randomness, I feel like I was really blocked out of certain things just because I couldn't get the units or items I wanted. I didn't get the chance to recruit a second Viera for so long, which sucks when jobs are race based. (I read somewhere that it was based off month but I found that out way too late). Items as well; when abilities are locked to gear, you Need gear to reach potentials. But I barely got any Sage weapons, I was losing out on a lot of ice magic cause I just couldn't get the items, and I literally never got to figure out how to steal said weapons cause I didn't get the weapon to do that. It bothered me. Mission items are the absolute bane of my existence. I HATED them. You need them for so many missions, but those missions will appear WAY before you can even get the items, and some items are one time get only meaning you can screw yourself out of everything, which I hated. Yes, I know that if I was playing this back in the day (and if I had friends when I was playing this back in the day), you could trade and link for items, but as a solo player, it just doesn't work. The mystery difficulty of dispatch missions sucked too. I had to look up the formula just to figure out how to make something guaranteed to win.

I think this wins the award for Game With Gameplay I Actually Really Cared For And Had Opinions About 2024

Story + Characters

As a kid, I really didn't think about the story at all even though I could read it just fine. I was just a small one who named his character ABCDabcdef and had fun moving my guys around (also god damn I was a lot smarter than I thought considering how far I got) My adult brain though, was actually able to appreciate what this game was. I think it offers a really interesting inversion on the Isekai genre, before the Isekai genre even blew up. What if the main character wanted to go home? For a GBA game in 2003, I feel like this was surprisingly... profound? is that the word? I'm not saying it was the greatest piece of media ever written, in fact I think there were a couple areas where I would have liked a little more clarification/details, but like, for what it is. It's really cool.

Marche I think is an interesting character. He felt very... responsible. Like "haha ok guys we had our fun but we Need to go back." He was able to call the bullshit on the world, and try to pull everything back to reality. I felt this even further reading about his backstory and relationship to his family. Sure, he had freedom, but he dedicated his effort To his brother, and his mother, to make them happy, even at the cost of his own. He's a character that I very much appreciated and related to. Although, I think I would have liked more to his motivation. A stronger reason behind his intense want to go home.

Ritz and Doned were fine. I like them, but there isn't much To them. Ritz was a cool, strong character who I liked how she never backed down from her wants, and Doned hit close to my heart, being a very accurate younger brother; and I felt for him, "gaining" the health he always wanted. I really liked the scene between him and Marche fighting about what the other has. But they didn't get to show up much, which stinks, and in Ritz's case especially I wish her motivation was a little stronger.

Mewt I think was the perfect character to cause this story and this world. I completely understood his struggles between the bullying and the loss of his mother, seeing the struggles of his father, and wanting that all to go away, dealing with, or more aptly NOT dealing with the pain by running away from it. His mental state literally shaped the world, from the laws of the land to creating an overpowered coping mechanism in the form of him but backwards (fuck you Llednar you're too damn strong).

This game has a good Cid. I expected him to be a shithead, but in the real world he was just depressed and in Ivalice he was actually really honorable.

Montblanc and Shara were both good friends to their respective child, but I do wish they both had a little more background/depth. (I also wish that Shara hit literally any of her shots come on I wasted a unit slot on you)

Both the Nu Mou surprised me; Babus actually made me feel for the dude, clearly caring about his prince and fighting for him; his behavior and appearance made me think he was Mewt's stuffed animal given life. Ezel's fucking hilarious, this dude said FUCK the government, laws are no fun at all. I love that dude so much.

I don't have much to say about Remedi, as she's literally an extension of Mewt. She serves her role as being that physical incarnation of a metaphysical concept to plunge your sword into that every FF game needs.

To kinda summarize my point, I did like everything, and I thought there were a lot of cool concepts. The game made me feel feelings, it plucked at my heart a little. But it's not as deep as I would have liked, I don't think. Granted, this is a GBA game. I'm not expecting Shakespeare or anything, but if we ever got a remake or something? I'd love some expansion.

Apart from the main story, I actually quite enjoyed the background story of Clan Borzoi. These guys are being menaces, you defeat them, and through reading the rumors and dispatch missions, you find out their leader runs away in a boat you helped him with, only for him to come back 4x as evil, bringing fiends and becoming a fucking vampire. It was honestly a joy and a side plot that Did Not need to be there but I loved.

The post game 100% completion judge storyline was fun too. We get more Cid screentime AND we get to fight against the law being shitty and corrupt which you always love to see.

Art

I love this game's art style and direction. The portraits, the way everyone looks, is so fun, it's cartoony and unique. The monster designs are so special yet still recognizably classic. The game itself is really colorful and vibrant which makes it a joy to look at, especially as I can't tear myself away from playing it.

Even the animations just make me really happy to look at, although I recognize part of that is nostalgia. The spells are fun, like the demi squishy circle, or the Illusionist full screen hellfests (Stardust is the best one). Even the summon animations, for being on a GBA game, had that classic FF sense of grandness, power, and being over the top. I love looking at this game.

Music

It's amazing how even through the GBA sounds, this is very recognizably a Sakimoto soundtrack. I can feel that grand feeling that the XII OST gives me in the form of beeps and boops. I don't care what some people say, I love the way the GBA sounds, and I think this game has a very good soundtrack. The title theme lives in my head rent free, as well as the bar theme. Marche's theme is also probably one of my favorites, being a slower piece compared to most of the game.

Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin

See it's funny cause Marche is a stranger in paradise and I'm about to talk about the origins of Final Fantasy

Go play the silly Jack game dammit

I never truly appreciated how FF this game is. I will preface this by saying I Have Not played the original Tactics yet (I should have done it before Advance but childhood experiences win the matchup low diff), so my experiences are mainly second hand, that might affect some of my outlook. But as I was saying, this game feels INCREDIBLY classic Final Fantasy. Between the monsters, the jobs, the colorful nature of the game, the references to previous characters (I saw the four fiends! And Gilgame[sh]!) the fantastical aspects over the more serious political drama, I get the same vibes as the first few FF games, which makes me happy. I honestly feel like this game feels more FF than XII does (I am not saying XII is not an FF game it obviously is).

Speaking of XII, it is INSANE how much Tactics Advance brought to that game, and how little credit I feel the general public attributes to it. Like, This Game Came First. This game created Viera, Bangaa, Nu Mou. This game had Montblanc and Nono. This game had the Giza Plains. This game had monsters like Carrot. This game created Judges! So much of XII's identity is Tactics, and playing through this made me realize that even more of it is still Tactics. We wouldn't have Fran, we wouldn't have Gabranth, without Tactics Advance, and I wish this game got the respect it was due.

Shoutouts to XIV being the only game to acknowledge it in the form of Clan Nutsy. (I'm retroactively mad at Theatrhythm for not doing ANYTHING)

Post Too Long! Red Card: Go To Prison!

I'm so glad I finally got to finish this game, and complete a mission that I've had since I was a kid. I specifically remember giving up on the Llednar -> Mateus combo, and now here I am, 100% completion.

I can absolutely see why I put so much time into this game; it's addicting, and it has so many features and aspects of games that I love put into one package, even if there are bits I could do without.

The game as a whole feels ahead of its time, and even beyond the console it was on, and I hope one day it can get the recognition it deserves, rather than only getting a rerelease on the Wii U. I do recommend any FF fan to play this game. To finish off the post, I would say;

8/10. An absolutely addicting fun time and a key point in the history of my favorite franchise, as well as my own life. It's got some frustrations and imperfections, but it's such a solid experience.

#final fantasy #final fantasy tactics advance #tactics advance #textpost #games i beat in 2024 #jared's game ramblings

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zmediaoutlet · 2 years ago

Text

fic: all we want is more

Been working on this Sam/Deanna fic and figured I'd post the first half. I'm a sex scene and denouement away from finishing but -- hey, it's wincest wednesday and let's get some writing out there.

title: all we want is more pairing: Sam/always-a-girl Deanna rating: explicit length: 16k (chapter 1; full fic will likely be ~35k)

summary: Sam and Deanna have never been good at boundaries.

(read on AO3)

When Sam slams his way back in, muscling through the cheap Kwikset that sits sloppy in the hollow-core and then making sure the screen door bangs satisfyingly behind him, it's a disappointment to find the house empty. He heels the door closed, turns the slack lock. It smells musty inside, the way it always does—this is a particularly skanky rental—but the nose-wrinkling shock after he gets back from school is worse than usual. Dad's gone, of course, but the bathroom's also all shadow and the bedroom's dark and, when he drops his backpack by their pile of clothes and clicks the light on, it's… okay, yeah. He deflates a little. He'd been pissed off all day, even through third period English where he was working on his project with Noelle Cooper, who was in the running for nicest girls he'd ever met, and he'd been short with Mr. Trainor in AP Stats even though he actually loved stats, and he'd gritted his teeth through a crappy lunch and ignored his group in World History, all because he was marshalling his arguments and drawing down battle lines. If this school had a forensics club he'd be the star. All that righteous anger that'd foamed its way up to a thundercloud kind of dissipates, standing in an empty house with nowhere for it to go, and he's just left in the slow turn of the ceiling fan, the bare bulb shining too bright, and as he looks around the bedroom all the piss and vinegar just kinda tastes like the shit it is, because… okay, maybe—maybe—he's not completely in the right, here, and maybe his sister had a point. He chews his lip. He hates it when Deanna's right.

The argument was stupid. They always are. Dad's been gone for three weeks of a planned four, and Deanna actually got a job this time, which wasn't the usual but had become more common as Dad started leaving them alone for longer and longer stretches. At twenty she'd developed an impressive resume of an eleventh grade education, three waitressing gigs, a stint at a garage that ended quickly when she'd had to feed the manager his balls for what he'd said into her ear on her second shift, and as many cash-under-the-table quicky jobs as she could get with a winning smile and her wits. Sam got to hear most of the details because the defense of needing to do homework wasn't enough to stop Dee talking his ear off while she vented a day working some crap job and bitching that she wasn't out doing some real work with Dad—and Sam gets, he isn't actually an idiot, that she's worried about Dad and that she's guilty for staying behind and that she doesn't know what to do with herself when both those things are true. He reads books, he watches movies; he gets more than Deanna thinks. Doesn't stop it from being incredibly annoying when she spills all that bitching over onto him, and then because bitching doesn't do anything she starts nagging, like she's not just his sister but his mom—she's working, can't he clean up after himself; she's cooking, can't he do the dishes; she's the only one earning money around here, can't he help?

The bedroom's really—a disaster. They've each got their twin mattresses, shoved against the walls on either side of the room, and it's not like Deanna's side is pristine but Sam's is… he's not sure he noticed it was getting that bad. When was the last time they did laundry? In the kitchen he looks to see if there's still Kool-Aid in the pitcher, and there is, but all the cups are dirty, jumbled in with the mugs in the sink, and—when Dad's here they take turns, regimented, no matter if Deanna's got work or if Sam's got homework—even Dad takes his turn, and Sam can say a lot about his dad but shirking duty's not one Sam can really lay on him—or at least, not this kind of duty, and thinking about it that way's got a weird curdling kind of acid lacing its way through Sam's gut, because—he's mad, but. He's not an asshole. He's—almost certain he's not an asshole. Right?

Four o'clock on a Friday. He has homework. He has all those arguments he put together. Most of them boiling down, if he plays them back, to how life isn't fair. He hugs the cold pitcher against his stomach, looking at the full sink. When he goes to put it back there's a takeout box on the top shelf he didn't notice that says, scrawled in dark pen that bites into the styrofoam, EAT ME. New since that morning. He cracks the lid and finds: club sandwich, pale steak fries, wilty greyish broccoli. The kind of thing Dee would never order. He takes a deep breath and closes the fridge. Okay. Okay.

The rental is from some old lady. Sam didn't meet her but watched Dad talk to her through the windshield while whatever deal got done. Lemon-faced broad, is what Deanna called her, leaning in confidence over the back of the bench seat while Sam tried to pretend he was reading, but the house she was letting them rent for cash was more-or-less furnished, a couch and a TV and plates and a weird carpeted cover on the toilet lid, and in the closet by the kitchen there's stuff people could use to clean. Not that it's been used, much. Sam's never had a lot of opportunity in his life to practice this stuff—the only good thing about motels is that someone else is paid to clean them—but, hey. He reads, he's watched movies. Mrs. Doubtfire had that whole vacuuming scene. It can't be that hard.

By nine o'clock Sam's exhausted. The kitchen alone took an hour. The vacuum bag burst, and that's when Sam learned that vacuums took bags, and that's also when Sam learned how to replace one, and got completely covered in a silty fine dust that he thinks might still be in his lungs when he's fifty. He took a break to eat the sandwich and fries and broccoli, all cold and needing salt but if this house has one thing, it's salt, and he was ravenous like he usually only is after a long afternoon of training with Dad clapping his hands, making them go faster and faster. Bathroom was freaking gross, and the trashcan stunk bad from what he realized only too late was tampons in little mummy-wraps of TP, and then he kind of gagged but—blood's blood, right, and it's not like he hasn't seen his share. Tired or not, though—that was the whole point, wasn't it, so: the bedroom, smelling like weeks of undone laundry, and he opens the window on the back wall and—gets to work.

The second good thing about this house: it's only two narrow streets inside the cramped neighborhood, so it's a five-minute walk to the laundromat out on the main road, in the middle of the strip mall between a nail salon and a donut shop. 24-hours with an attendant who barely looks up when Sam comes in dragging two army duffles full of everything he could stuff into the bags, and a machine that spits out quarters in exchange for the crumpled bills in his pocket, and no one else in here, because it's a Friday night, and who's sad enough to be doing the laundry on a Friday night?

He takes over the folding tables in the middle of the silent machines and gets to work. This he has done, because Deanna's given him the rundown: separate whites from colors, jeans & jackets from soft stuff that might get torn, check pockets for money & tissues & bullets. He starts the sheets first, glad at least that Deanna's not doing this—he doesn't need any commentary about crusty cotton, thanks very much—and then it's unzipping both bags, making three horrible piles. Blood on the sleeve of Deanna's blue canvas jacket. Sam's favorite jeans with mud ground into the knees from the fight he got into at school, the other day, which he still hasn’t told Dee about, because he hates the expression she gets when someone's commented on the hot chick who picks him up after school sometimes and wants to know how much she charges. Not the first time, anyway; probably not the last.

He finishes with his own duffle and turns to Deanna's, upending it completely. T-shirts, camisoles, underwear of all kinds. Bras, that he untangles and attaches the hook & eyes, like she showed him, so they won't catch on everything else. Rolled up jeans, and the wad of flannel shirts he'd scooped up from the dirty pile and shoved in, and then, rolling out of a plastic bag like the one Sam uses for his dirty shorts, a plastic clamshell-style box, and when he picks it up he takes a second, tired and staring, before he realizes what he's looking at, and then he drops it with a huge clatter onto the linoleum, loud enough to be heard over the rattling washer, making the attendant glance up over her book, uninterested. "Sorry," Sam says, and she returns to the paperback, and Sam stares at the thing by his feet. Lurid pink against the speckled yellow-grey floor. Absolutely zero way to mistake it for anything but—what it is.

The bell on the door jingles—some lady, backing in with a huge basket in her arms—and Sam stoops quickly and picks up the box and throws it into Dee's duffle. His face is so hot his cheeks are prickling. He wipes his hand over his mouth—is briefly revolted, because he—he touched it, and now he's touching—but the new customer's noticed him, and she smiles briefly in that way people do when they're in the same space and never plan to speak, and he's got to be normal, because this is—normal. He's doing laundry. He shoves loads two and three into their washers and drags the bags off the table so the new lady can do her own sorting, and he decamps to the chairs on the far side of the room from the attendant booth, more or less hidden, where he can see the TV in the corner playing a silent version of The Mask, and he points his face at the TV and watches Jim Carrey make goofy faces and he's being very very calm and casual because he's just a person, doing his laundry, and he's watching a movie that's pretty funny, and he's not thinking about his sister's dildo, tucked into the bag between his feet. At all. Just watch him.

Past midnight, when he's walking home. Slight cool breeze that feels good. He keeps flushing, on and off. Over the waiting for the wash cycle and then switching everything over to the dryers and then the hour plus of waiting for that he'd gone through various stages. Gross-out obviously first. But—he did know that Deanna went out with guys, and he'd seen her with guys even, although never—never all the way. But when that dude who'd run the desk at the last motel had had her backed up against the counter with his hand on her ass and his mouth tucked up close under her ear when Sam came in to get a soda from the machine—when Deanna had seen Sam walk in and grabbed the guy's shoulders, warning, and then when a beat passed and she relaxed and was squirming and laughing lightly and saying, hey, Sammy, get me a Crush, would you? I'll get back to the room in a minute—it's not like Sam didn't know what was going on. He reads. He's seen movies. He's seen those kind of movies, too. He's lived with his sister his entire life and he had sex ed at like five different schools now. He jerks off. He does get it. He just didn't expect—it was always kind of—academic. Theory versus practice. But now—

The Impala's parked in front of the house when he turns the corner to their street. Shit. He fumbles for his keys in the porch-light but it turns out not to matter: the door flings open, and Deanna says, "Oh my god, Sammy!"

Sam hefts the bag he'd dropped over his shoulder. "It's Sam," he says, as calmly as he can, and walks in through the clean living room back toward their bedroom with every no-big-deal bone in his body.

It smells better in here, at least. He dumps the bags onto the clean and empty carpet between the mattresses and slings the sack with their sheets on top. Eruption of Fresh Breeze as he drags out the wad of cotton, still warm. Two top sheets, two pillowcases, two of the thin filler blankets they stole from motels a five years and who knows how many miles ago, and he's splitting them between the two halves of the room when there's an ostentatious throat-clearing behind him, and he bites his lip hard, and turns around with the blankets still in his arms, and Deanna's leaning in the doorway, giving him a look like he's some alien species she's never seen before.

"So," she says.

Sam shrugs. "So?"

She raises her eyebrows, looking exaggeratedly around the bedroom. He hasn't seen her since this morning, since he slammed the door the first time, and she looks—like she always does, pretty much. Messy ponytail, a lot of eyeliner, purple plaid shirt tied up under her boobs because she says it gets better tips at the bar, and if anyone would know it's her. She's holding a beer, dangling lazy against her thigh, and she taps a nail against the glass one-two-three times before she meets Sam's eyes again, squinting a little. "Did you get replaced by a pod-person?"

Sam rolls his eyes. "No."

"Shapeshifter? Some kind of, I don't know, djinn wish freak where the dishes get done but I'm gonna get all my blood sucked out before Monday?"

Sam drops her green blanket on her bed, flush crawling from his throat to his ears. "No."

"Okay, cool," Deanna says, and then when Sam looks up at her she's smiling, crooked, in that way where she's kind of sweet and kind of sorry and kind of making fun of him, all at once. That smile where she's just—his sister, annoying and comforting in equal measure. "You ate, right?" He nods, thinking: eat me. Deanna's smile angles, making a dimple peek into one cheek, and she tips her head. "Bet you could eat again, huh?"

Sam's stomach twinges. Dee and Dad say he's going through a growth spurt; the only way he notices is that he's starving, half the time. "I guess," he says, shrugging.

Deanna rolls her eyes but she's not mad. "He guesses," she says, and comes forward, and grabs Sam's wrist while he's trying to shake out a pillowcase, warm, tugging. "C'mon, short stuff. Walt sent me home with the manager meal. Might as well make sure it goes to a good cause."

In short order he's pushed down at the kitchen table, another styrofoam box in front of him. Burger, more fries. He takes the burger—he is hungry—but swivels the box her way, and she sits across from him, eating fries one at a time, the corners of her mouth tipped soft. Easier than he's seen her since Dad left. The burger's cold but it's not the first time he's had a cold burger; he wolfs it down, avoiding her eyes, and she finishes her beer and then gets up and brings back two, uncapped, pushing the other right in front of him.

He wipes the back of his mouth with his wrist. "Dee," he says, careful.

"You earned it," she says, and holds out her bottle, neck first. Not like he gets to drink with them much but he knows this part—he clinks the necks together, clumsy, and drinks at the same time as her. Bitter and kind of gross as always, but she smiles at him again when she lowers her bottle. "Hell. Who even knew the carpet was that color?"

The argument's completely dissolved. Maybe she won; Sam doesn't care at this point. "I'm not sure old lady Franken remembers it's this color," he says, and Deanna sniggers, and takes another sip of her beer, and then leans over the table and tucks her hand into his hair and kisses him on the forehead, so abrupt that Sam just freezes and lets it happen, even if he's been too old for her to do that kind of thing since—well, since—forever. The amulet he gave her swings forward between them, gleaming.

Dee tugs his hair, just slightly, at the nape of his neck. "Thanks, Sammy," she says, quiet, and it's the apology they won't say out loud, soft between them. She touches his jaw, quick, and straightens up, and says, "Bar was extra greasy today, somehow. I'm taking a shower. Don't drink the rest of the beer without me, huh?"

"As if," Sam says, and she ruffles his hair back—this time he does duck out of the way, scoffing—and then she disappears into the bathroom, and he's left with the last few bites of burger and this warm feeling all through him, from his belly all the way up to the flush in his cheeks, because—Deanna's annoying, frustrating, too demanding and too invasive and too much, all the time, but—ever since he can remember, this is how it's been. When she's happy, and when she's proud of him, and there's this answer in his chest. Like it's a Michigan winter and he's freezing to death, but then he gets into the Impala and the heater's on full and he holds his hands up to the vents and there's that prickling, tingling thaw that means—home safe.

He makes the beds, as much as possible. Cases on each of their pillows, thin blankets smoothed somewhat into place. They're lucky it's April, and luckier that they're in Louisville and not Bismarck; mostly it's Sam who's lucky, because he doesn't exactly mind camping in the cold but Deanna bitches absolutely nonstop, out loud if they're alone and under her breath if Dad's nearby or, somehow, Sam's convinced, using some kind of psychic brain powers when Dad's right there with them so that even if she's not saying anything out loud Sam can hear every single thought she's having about cold toes or fingers or freezing my frickin' tits off. How would that even work, Sam has said, and she's just huddled closer to the fire and flat-out pouted. It's sort of cute. In a deeply annoying way.

He's unpacking their duffle bags when the shower turns off. He thought she'd be slower. The tile in here's even kinda white now! comes echoing through the mostly-closed door and around the corner into the bedroom, and she sounds genuinely delighted. Sam bites his lip, setting his stack of jeans next to the pile of his folded shirts. He's worked his way around to her side of the room and is making more stacks—her jeans and cut-off shorts, her jackets, the more complicated pile of her tops—when she leans into the bedroom, and he looks up to find her—towel wrapped around under her armpits, legs bare and gleaming, wet hair clipped behind her head, amulet cord shiny-black around her neck. "Dude, you aren't careful, I'm gonna get used to this," she says, crooked smile firmly in place. "It's gonna turn into the adventures of rockin' Deanna Winchester and her butler baby bro."

"Fat chance," Sam says, which does come out a little thin when he's laying out her clean bras on the freshly vacuumed carpet. She raises her eyebrows, looking between the clothes piles and his face, grin getting bigger, and Sam shrugs. "It stunk in here, okay? I do have a nose that works."

"Well, we know who the culprit was there," she says, and disappears for a second—back, before he's finished pairing her boot-socks—and hands him his discarded beer from the kitchen, and crouches down next to him, smiling soft at the clean clothes. "So, full-service Sammy—" ignoring Sam's scoff— "Are there any clean pjs in here, or do I gotta sleep in my altogether?"

"Ew," Sam says, firmly, and Deanna wrinkles her nose at him, making fun. He hands the beer back, ignoring in his turn how she promptly steals a swallow, and unzips her bag further. Not like she's got a fancy matched set like people in movies; she mostly sleeps in Sam's old D.A.R.E. shirt he got in middle school that would've fit a linebacker better than an eleven year-old, and a pair of Dad's old boxer briefs, which Sam finds honestly weird but Dee claims they're the softest things ever and, well, Sam has now folded them, and they're… pretty soft. But still. They're past the pile of her folded underwear, which he hands out to her, and under the—oh. Right.

He doesn't look up when he pulls out the plastic bag with the dildo. "Here," he says, holding the clothes over to his left where she's crouched. She doesn't move and he waggles them. "C'mon. I don't need to see any more naked sister than I have already."

To his credit, he manages to sound like he mostly has his crap together. Dee pulls the pjs out of his hand, slowly. He wraps the plastic bag more securely around the clamshell box and tucks it into a space between her boots and her jeans, and with that her duffle's pretty much empty, other than the little zip-bag with her tampons and pads and condoms. Like Dad taught them, he rolls the duffle up into a tight burrito that can get tucked neatly in with everything else, and with that he's done. House is clean.

"Okay," Deanna mutters. "Awkward."

Sam's mostly been able to ignore how hot his cheeks feel. He shrugs, standing up, and Deanna stays hunched there on the ground, her arms folded over her chest holding onto her pajamas and holding the towel in place, grimacing. "Not like it's nothing I haven't seen," Sam says.

Deanna frowns at him. "You're fifteen."

Sam rolls his eyes. "Sixteen," he says. "In, like. Three weeks. Come on, I know what a dildo is. Didn't you call that last werewolf one? He got super mad, too."

Furious, actually, enough to charge like an idiot out of cover at the pretty girl mocking him, bait dancing out in the open, which meant that Dad, waiting with Sam behind the cover of the trees, could shoot him in the heart. The blood spatter hit Dee's face and she spat it out right onto the corpse, and called him something else Sam couldn't hear.

"That was pretty funny," Deanna says, now. Her ears are pink. "Still. Didn't mean for you to, um. You know."

"Maybe now you won't ask me to do laundry," Sam says, and makes his tone all sweet and hopeful like a little kid.

Deanna makes a really strange face, hesitating, and Sam can't hold onto it before he starts sniggering. She stands up, finally, rolling her eyes. "Dork," she says. Blushing, still, which is pretty rare for his sister, but at least she's not freaking out. "Fine. Grown-up Sammy, knows all about dildos. Guess that means I don't need to give you the advanced sex talk, huh?"

"Can't be any worse than the last one you gave me," Sam says, which on second thought might be the last time he was this embarrassed, and she snorts, her eyes drifting down, away. Still pink. All scrubbed clean like this she looks different—no eyeliner, her skin shining soft. Freckles all over her cheekbones and nose and her curved-in shoulders. A loop of hair's curling at her neck and Sam reaches out, tugs it—not hard, but enough that she blinks, looks up at him. "No big deal. Swear."

She looks up into his eyes. Her lower lip sucks in and drags out slow through her teeth, shining wet. Something warm curls in Sam's gut and swoops high up into his chest and then plummets straight down. He catches his breath. "No biggie," Deanna says, while Sam's still trying to reorient himself, and she gives him a one-sided smile. She turns back toward the bathroom, says over her shoulder, "Hey, I think they're playing Evil Dead on the movie channel tonight. You make the popcorn and I'll braid your hair."

"Ha," Sam says, watching her bare leg disappear around the corner, and he holds his knuckles to his cheek, feels how hot it is. The bag sits on the floor, inert. He stares at it, thinking—stuff he shouldn't be thinking—and then reaches up and yanks the chain so the bare bulb winks out. He's left in the dark, the fan turning slowly overhead.

They sleep in on Saturdays. Meaning, mostly, Deanna sleeps in on Saturdays, because as far as Sam can tell, given the opportunity, she goes into a coma. In the quiet of the house Sam does most of his homework. Sophomores at this school do geometry for some reason and it's kiddie stuff but it means he can blast through the assigned problems for Monday and Tuesday and the extra credit, too, before he gets through his first cup of coffee; world history is going over the creation and spread of Christianity, and he has to fill out a worksheet on important dates and leaders in the Roman Empire at the turn from BC to AD; in health they're studying the reproductive system, and again this is stuff he pretty much already knows, but it's at least kinda interesting to see how the egg cell is about the size of the period at the end of the sentence. He's put his fingernail there, comparing, when Deanna wanders out of the bedroom, yawning. 10:30, according to Sam's watch. Not even close to her record.

"Hey, short stuff," she says, blurry. Makes a happy noise when she finds the coffee made. Sam's filling out another worksheet—the bilateral conduits between ovary and uterus are called fallopian tubes, he writes carefully—when she wraps an arm loosely around his neck, a kiss mushed against his hair. A boob squishes against his shoulder. "Hm. Nerd o'clock?"

Sam goes tch, barely paying attention. He's nearly done with this page, and then it's just the chapters they've got to read for English.

"Ooh, sexy," Dee says. She taps her nail on the cross-section of the female body in the textbook, on the breast diagram with its layers of nipple and fat and milk ducts neatly labeled. "No shame, but c'mon, porn at the table? Rude, Sammy."

"Dude," Sam says, lifting his head, and she snickers and lets him go, slumping into the chair across the table. Her bun's all messed up from sleep, crust still at the corners of her eyes. Holding the weird chipped mug that says KENSUCKY in both hands under her chin, apparently trying to inhale caffeine through the steam. Kinda gross but all soft and relaxed. Not a bad way to start a Saturday. "You got a shift today?"

She groans, takes a slurpy sip from the mug. Wrinkles her nose. "Blah," she says, sticking out her tongue. Sam rolls his eyes. If she refuses to put milk in that's her own problem. "Four to close, same as yesterday." Sam checks his watch again and she raises her eyebrows. "That work for your schedule, boss?"

"I have to meet Noelle at the library at two."

Deanna actually focuses, finally. "Noelle?"

"From English," Sam says. At the continued blank look he sighs. "She's my partner for the Shakespeare project. I told you about that."

"Oh, right," Deanna says, dragging it out. Her mouth curves, in that way that broadcasts to space that Sam's about to be made fun of. "No-elle."

Sam waves his hand. "Okay, get it out."

"No, no," Deanna says, grinning. "I think it's great that the two of you are so focused on your education." Like a dirty word. She slurps at her coffee again, annoyingly loud while making big eyes at Sam over the rim, and splutter-snorts at whatever expression Sam makes. "Relax, dweebus. I'll give you a ride over there. Walt's been on my ass about being late, though, so if the hot Shakespearean action keeps going past like 3:30 you gotta find your own way home."

"Thank you, Deanna," Sam says, perfectly polite, and she mouths it back at him purely to be annoying.

Quiet then, though. She drinks her coffee; he fills out his worksheet. She eats a bowl of cereal and watches whatever's coming through on the rabbit-ears—Seinfeld rerun, sounds like—and Sam reads another fifty pages of The Age of Innocence, and he's bored to death but they're going to have essay questions on it next week, so. She gets up to wash dishes—not such an imposition now that it's just two mugs and two cereal bowls—and touches Sam's shoulder as she goes, just—checking in, basically, clearly not even thinking about it on her way to the sink, but it's a soft little warm thing that goes through Sam's t-shirt and through his skin down into his chest, because Dee just—she really has been pissed off, this last week, and he didn't realize until last night how much she doesn't touch him, when she's mad. He didn't know how much he missed it.

Dee goes out to mess around with the Impala, doing… whatever it is she does when she's got time to kill and an engine under her hands, and Sam ends up finishing the book for English. The writing isn't his favorite but he got caught up in the plot. It's… depressing, to say the least. All these people, doing what they're expected to, and all of them worse off for it.

He vents this to Deanna, sitting on the toilet while she's doing her make-up for work. Newland's a coward and Ellen got cold feet and May's boring and why didn't any of them just—do what they wanted?

Deanna finishes her eyeliner, leaning back to look at the effect. "But didn't New-guy knock up May?" She catches his eye in the mirror; he shrugs, already seeing the point she's going to make but still annoyed at the fictional idiots. "I don't know. I mean, it sucks, but—you gotta do what you gotta do. It was like medieval times or whatever, right, so it's not like anyone was being smart about babies."

"It wasn't medieval times," Sam says, and Deanna shrugs, in her turn. She ties up her hair, like she usually does on civilian days: ponytail, bangs falling around her face that she tucks behind her ears. He watches her swipe on a layer of lip gloss, feeling mulish. "Seriously. All he had to do was—go talk to Ellen, sack up."

That gets him raised eyebrows in the mirror. Like Dee isn't gross or cussing or whatever, all the time. She smacks her lips, makes an O of them, staring down her reflection. "Sounds to me like he sacked up, but it was for the kid, not some random broad," she says, but like she's barely paying attention. "You wouldn't like him any better if he were some deadbeat dad."

She goes all heavy-lidded at herself, makes kissy-face. Model-pretty, his sister. Smart, too—sometimes, Sam thinks. Rarely. Another look, backwards in the mirror, lips parted and her face set like she's in one of those Calvin Klein perfume ads, sexy for no reason. "Good?" she says, breathy.

She's wearing the thin dark green henley unbuttoned as far as it'll go, her amulet resting in the split and the inside curves of her black bra showing on either side of it, and those jeans that sit so low on her hips that there's two inches of creamy-white stomach peeking out, her silver ring heavy on her thumb and those little silver studs in her ears and her face just—her face. All she ever needs. "If you're into that kind of thing," Sam says, dismissive.

All the model-sexy collapses and she snorts, grinning. "You're such a sweetheart," she says, and swivels away from the mirror, smacking her hands against her hips. "So—are we going, or what?"

"Or what," Sam says, outraged, sitting up straight. "I was waiting for you—"

Deanna drops him right in front of the library, a minute to two. "Phone charged?" she says. Sam sighs, gathering his backpack. "Yeah, yeah. I'm going to the Checker, and then I'm gonna swing by the discount mart for some groceries—you want anything? It's gotta sit in the car."

"Just no more peanut butter," Sam says. Pleads, more like. He's eaten his weight Peter Pan this past month.

"Starving kids in Ethiopia or wherever would kill for that peanut butter, you know," Deanna says, but she just swats his hip. "Go on. Miss Noelle ain't gonna wait forever."

Sam sighs, again, but Dee's checking the wing mirror to pull out, not paying attention, and so he piles out onto the sidewalk, swinging his backpack over his shoulder, engaging with the normal world. "Make sure she's really into it before you try for second base, tiger," Deanna says, leaning over the bench seat, and Sam says, "Oh my god, leave already," and slams the door, and Dee grins wide at him with her tongue between her teeth before the engine throttles up and the car leaps away, too fast through the sedate Saturday afternoon parking lot, making too much noise, just too—everything. He watches it go, face hot, and then closes his eyes and tips his chin up, feeling the springy breeze and remembering that—okay, there are people in the world who are not his family, who are totally normal, and one of them is—oh, waving, through the glass doors of the library, and Sam packs everything that is weird and Winchester down and away and waves back, trotting along the sidewalk and up the steps to meet Noelle, who smiles at him broad and then shy, and Sam can do this. Sam's good at this.

When she comes to pick Noelle up, Mrs. Cooper offers to give Sam a ride home, too. She has a blue minivan, with a little boy strapped into a carseat on the middle bench, giving Sam a sticky and curious look while Noelle stows her bag. "No, thank you, ma'am," Sam says. Actually-polite, not the voice he used on Dee earlier. "My mom's on her way."

"All right, sugar," Mrs. Cooper says, and Noelle waves from the passenger seat as they move sedately out into the neighborhood. Mrs. Cooper has a faded bumper sticker that says her child is an Honors Student at Jefferson County Middle. Sam tries to imagine the Impala with something like that and snorts out loud, then feels bad for it, even if no one's around to hear, or even know what he's thinking. Mrs. Cooper seems nice. Noelle's nice. It's all just—nice.

He gets to the basically-a-dive where Deanna works at half-past six. Marv's, says the flickery neon sign, though Sam has no idea who Marv is, and it's the kind of place that has windows but they're made of block glass, impossible to see through, and the door has iron security bars over the front. Not somewhere the Coopers visit, probably.

About half-full, when Sam comes through the door. In about a quarter second he takes in: jukebox playing Styx, yuck; cigarette smoke in the air; a couple guys playing darts, laughing loud, already kind of drunk, hopefully won't be a problem. Deanna's behind the bar, leaning on her elbows, talking to two guys, smiling like she's really interested, but she catches Sam's eye for a split second and tips her head toward the back. He goes where he's pointed: the tiny two-seater booth right by the kitchen doors, where he's already spent hours doing homework even if Dee's only had the job three weeks. Marv's is a pit but it's better than being home alone. Sometimes.

He's deep in his fresh-from-the-library copy of Helter Skelter when there's a tickly-shivery drag of fingers at the back of his neck, rucking his hair up, and he jumps. "Great situational awareness, kiddo," Deanna says, while he shudders, and sets a Coke in front of him. She drops down into the other side of the booth, raising her eyebrows. "You and books. Seriously, I think a ghoul could've snacked on your innards just now."

"If a ghoul's in the bar then we've got bigger problems," Sam says, and she huffs. She looks back out over the bar, eyes going from table to table. Like there's actually a ghoul, and not just people drinking the daylight away. "You still working until midnight?"

"Unless a handsome prince comes and steals me away," she says. Her eyes slide sidelong to him. "You got a chariot out there you haven't told me about?"

"Not yet," Sam says.

She smiles at him, and then the door opens again—another two guys, biker-looking, who probably will appreciate flirty service from a pretty girl, and who hopefully will tip well, since that's the whole point of this stupid gig. Deanna bites the tip of her tongue and takes a deep breath, and stands up. "I'll get Carlos to make you something—what, sandwich, burger?"

"Chicken strips?" Sam says, and she nods and says, "Don't disappear into the book, Poindexter," and then she's behind the bar again, smiling warm and wide at the two new guys, and in a gap between songs on the jukebox Sam hears her say, "Hey, fellas," sweet as pie, and they smile back at her like it's a compulsion, because that's what Dee does to guys. It's only Sam, he's pretty sure, who knows the difference between the smile these guys are getting and the one he just got. It's a subtle difference, but—it's different.

He has his dinner, and tucked into the back here he does get to watch the bar, between sections of his book. Deanna's good at this, like she's good at practically everything: engines and crossbows and classic rock and figuring out what Dad wants before he even says it, and sometimes before he thinks it, as far as Sam can tell. Seems like that last skill extends to here. Saturday night and it gets busier, although no one looks to steal Sam's table. Wendy the waitress comes in for her shift, but Sam can see that it's Dee the guys want to talk to, who they wait for, whose attention they drink up, as much as the beer. Sam goes to doctor the jukebox at one point, slotting in his quarters for the Led Zeppelin songs he's heard least if he can't get anything actually from this decade, and when he turns around Deanna's at one of the four-tops in the middle of the room, the yellow-and-blue beer sign neon shining bright on her hair, and she's leaning on the back of one guy's chair while another one's telling some joke, from their faces—Deanna laughs, on cue, bright over the music—and Sam can see, through the tables, how the guy's hand is curled around the inside of her thigh, his thumb sliding up the inseam of her jeans while she leans in, close, and that weird thing swoops through his gut again. Queasy and hot, in what ratio he can't decide.

It's a long night, torn between bored and tense. Walt appears from the back where he does nothing, as far as Sam can tell, and frowns at Sam, but Deanna catches his attention and asks some question about the POS Sam can't hear and Walt's face melts into soppy butter. It's honestly embarrassing. A minute of that and Deanna has to move off to get refills for the biker guys at the bar, and Walt pats her hip when she goes. Her hip, not her ass. It makes a difference, but how much of one Sam doesn't know.

Kitchen closes at eleven; last call at half past; and by midnight there are just a few guys that have to be ushered out. When Wendy closes and locks the front door Deanna bends over and buries her head in her folded arms on the bartop. Sam closes his book—he's nearly done, just from trying his best not to pay attention to the customers, no matter what Dee said—and brings his cup up to the bar himself. "Thanks, sweetie," Wendy says—she's like thirty, Sam wishes she wouldn't talk to him like he's her kid—and then she says, to Dee, "Thought Ty was gonna try to order off-menu by the end, there. Might've gotten you a big tip." Kinda smirky, the way she says it, though Sam doesn't know why.

Deanna levers upright, unfolding like a push-up, and gives Wendy the same kind of smile she was giving the guys, earlier. "Walt's going to need help with inventory," she says. Her mouth tips, fake-sorry. "I was gonna stay, but my kid brother's here, you know, and Walt said I better get him home safe." Wendy's expression goes kind of still, kind of murderous, but Deanna just lifts a shoulder and then says, "Got your bag, Sammy?" and when he nods she says, sweet, "Have a great night, 'kay?"

Outside it's cool but not cold, butts ashed all over the sidewalk. "Bitch," Deanna mutters, while the neon OPEN sign flickers out over the not-really-a-window. Sam's smart enough not to say anything. Dee takes a deep, deep breath, blows it slow with her chin tipped up at the night sky. Not a lot of stars, in the city. Sam rocks back on his heels, thumbs hooked into his backpack straps. Kinda smells like pee out here. There are worse places to wait.

Finally, Deanna: "Okay," she says, and tips her head toward him. "You ate, right?" He nods. "Okay," she says, again, and shrugs both shoulders, like she's dropping a bag she's not carrying. "Let's roll."

Tapedeck comes on super loud—the Stones, which isn't as bad as it could be—but Deanna cranks it down, letting them drive in relative quiet back out to the dumpy neighborhood with their rental. "Your project go okay?" she says, and it's kind of absent but she's also actually asking, so Sam says, "Yeah, we're doing this like—compare and contrast thing, Romeo and Juliet vs Hamlet," and Deanna gives him this sidelong look across the bench seat and says, "Isn't that the one where those teenagers bang and kill each other?" and Sam opens his mouth, not quite sure how to correct everything wrong with that question, before they pass under a streetlight and he sees that Deanna's got one of those teasing dimples tucked up into her cheek. "Pretty much," Sam says, instead, and Dee laughs, softly. "Hot stuff," she says. At a stoplight with no one else around for apparent miles she tugs the tie out her hair, and it falls in a wavy mass over her shoulder, and she makes this little noise like that's a weight come down, too. Sam sucks the inside of his cheek, watching her, not trying to pretend he isn't. Her wrist, loose and soft on top of the steering wheel. He wants to put her in some other life. Like that's an option.

At home—rather, back at the rental house—she tugs her boots off in the bedroom and then, glancing at Sam, tucks them into the line of her neatly-laid out clothes. She peels her henley over her head and tosses it into the corner—a new dirty clothes pile, but at least it's fresh instead of moldering weeks old—and pulls the D.A.R.E. shirt on, and while Sam's sitting on his mattress, pulling off his sneakers, she undoes her belt and shucks her jeans off, right there, so Sam gets a flash of purple underwear before the shirt falls down around her hips and there's just a mile of white thigh. "I want an entire chocolate cake," she says, peeling off one sock at a time. "Like. Triple layer, fudge frosting, those fancy, you know, rosette things. That and a fork."

"Um," Sam says. She drags her hands through her hair, cracking her neck side to side. "I think there are M&Ms you didn't eat in the kitchen?"

Deanna snorts. "That'll work," she says, and then squints at him, one-eyed. "You going to bed?"

Sam shrugs. She looks tired-but-not, loose and on edge. "You staying up?"

"Well, yeah," she says, like it's obvious. Smile spooling out, somewhere between the smile Sam usually gets and the ones those guys at the bar do. "I got these M&Ms to crush, I hear. If there's no cake."

Late night TV always sucks. They end up on the movie channel, like always, and it's—ugh, that terrible Street Fighter movie, but Dee throws down the controller and grins and says, "Perfect," and darts over to the kitchen quick and returns with: yes, the family-size bag of M&Ms, but also two beers, one of which is for Sam, again. He takes it, feeling weird—since when is he included in the list of grown-ups in the family?—but then Dee plops down into her corner of the couch and tucks her toes under Sam's thigh, and tugs the candy bag closer to her telling Sam that if he wanted some, he should've been smart enough to buy his own, and that feels more normal. He leans his elbow on his side of the couch and Deanna slouches into hers, bare legs gleaming in the TV-light. Van Damme is so bad in this movie. "Bite your tongue," Deanna says, wiggling her cold toes under his thigh, and Sam sighs, and drinks his beer, getting slowly used to the taste, and ignores Dee while she wrangles her bra off under his shirt and drapes it over the couch back, smooth black satin gleaming in the TV-light. He sort of watches the movie but mostly he listens to Deanna's commentary, and how Raul Julia is the best, and if they hit the arcade she bets she could beat his ass with Chun Li, and he's kinda warm and kinda nervous and kinda bored and kinda glad, all at once, but even with all that he does fall asleep at some point before the movie's over, because he wakes up when Dee's pulling the empty bottle out of his hand, careful and quiet. The TV's off. He hears her feet pad away, over the carpet, and then she's back, tucking something—his coat—around his shoulders, like a blanket.

He keeps his eyes closed, keeps his breathing soft. He gets to feel her swipe his bangs back, tucking his hair behind his ear, and then there's her fingers on his jaw, and then—a kiss, very soft, against his cheekbone. Her lips are warm. When he falls back asleep he dreams they're in the car, sleeping together in the backseat—the bench magically big enough to hold both of them end to end and side by side, like it hasn't been since Sam was like eight years old—and he's spooned around her, his arm over her waist and his nose in her hair, and her ass round and soft pressed up against him. His hand goes between her legs and feels that hard ridge of denim inseam, prickling painful against his fingers like it's the edge of a saw, or rose thorns, and it hurts but he keeps dragging his fingers up, light gleaming all over the back of the seat electric blue-and-yellow and making it so that when she turns her head, and stares at him, he can see the exact look on her face, but when he jolts awake in the pre-dawn light, breathing hard and sitting up straight and pushing a hand against his aching dick, he can't remember what the expression was.

Deanna wakes up when her phone rings. Sam's lying on his back with his arms folded over his face, breathing in and out very evenly, and gets to hear the whole thing. A muffled fuck and then the fabricky scramble through her discarded jeans, and then the phone flipping open, and then: "Dad?"

Who else would it be, Sam thinks.

His hair's wet and sogging out the pillow but he doesn't want to move. It was a very long and very hot shower and he scrubbed clean until his skin and hair squeaked. That didn't make anything go away but at least he couldn't smell beery cigarette smoke on his skin anymore. Not nothing. He turns his head and past the shadow of his arm Deanna's sitting up on her mattress, bare legs tucked beneath her, shoulders curved up around the phone like a girl from a movie whispering to her crush. The morning's coming through the blinds in clear white, striping her thigh, all the way to where Sam's shirt is rucked over her hip and her underwear's showing, alternate lines of dark and vivid purple. Creamy skin above that.

"Yeah, of course," Deanna says, while Sam's closing his eyes very tight. Weird purple bursts against the inside of the lids. Can't escape, apparently. "You need—?"

She's cut off. Little affirmative sounds while she listens. Sam takes another one of those deep breaths but jerking off in the shower apparently wasn't enough from how everything south of his navel seems to be on high alert. He folds his arms over his ribs instead, thinking tactically—he's got the blanket over his waist but if Dee goes to the bathroom he can change from his pajama shorts to his jeans, and maybe go for a walk or something, or read the Manson book to calm down, or—something—and when he looks again Deanna's shifted around, too, her back to the wall, her knees pulled up, shadows between them. Her lower lip sucked between her teeth. "Yeah," she says, soft. "'Kay. Be safe."

The phone's closed against the angle of her jaw, and she holds it there with her knuckles against her lips for a little while, eyes low, playing with her amulet with the other hand. "So?" Sam says, like he's not having an alternate crisis.

Her eyelashes dip, and then she leans forward, wrapping her arms around her knees. "Another week." She shrugs, like what can you do, except when has Deanna ever been casual about Dad gone on a solo job for weeks on end. An answering sourness crawls down Sam's throat to his stomach—that what if that's there whenever Dad's gone, but then again it happens when Dad's here, too. At least it takes care of the other problem, and as soon as Sam realizes there's a weird horrible mix of relief and shame that dumps over his head, like a prank bucket of shitty paint.

Luckily Deanna can't see it: she takes a deep breath and leans forward, her knees spreading out in a butterfly, grinning. "Means we still get to pick what to watch at night, huh?"

"You're joking," Sam says. If she wants to pretend to be casual, Sam can too. "I never get to pick."

"Aww," Deanna coos. "Little brother problems. I think they got a column for that in Highlights for Kids, you should write in."

Sam throws his pillow at her and she catches it, sniggering. More real than the grin before. "All right, whatever," she says, and unfolds from the mattress, stretching tall with the pillow held high overhead—Sam cuts his eyes away, in self-defense—and then hops the six inches down to the carpet, sighing. "Day off. Let's get some work done, huh?"

Bar's closed on Sunday. Marv's religious. Go figure. "I was gonna do laundry today," Deanna says, making the coffee, and she sends a sidelong conspiratorial glance over her shoulder, and Sam feels himself flush, collarbones to hairline. Luckily she's focused on grounds and filter and fishing her KENSUCKY mug out of the drainer, so he doesn't get ragged on for it. Deanna would be happier if he did the housework stuff more often; he's not sure he can take the intensity of her gratitude. It's just embarrassing, aside from everything else.

He's sent to get the groceries out of the trunk from Dee's trip yesterday: bread, ramen, condensed tomato soup, rice, strawberry jelly, 24-pack of beer, canned green beans. He holds up a can while she's sipping her coffee, raising his eyebrows, and she shrugs. "You said no peanut butter," she says, and, well. Sam did say that. Breakfast is generic-brand Eggos that she pops into the toaster and that get smeared with jelly, and she leans against the couch eating hers while watching the local news, watching with a professional eye for anything officially weird—nothing; as far as Sam can tell nothing interesting has ever happened in Louisville, ever—and Sam watches her. Her knee turns in, her thigh flexing. Toes painted blue. She sucks jelly off her thumb, eyes heavy on the TV, and Sam—oh, goddamn it. He sits up very straight at the table, tries the trick a kid at the last high school taught him: flexing his thighs, hard and quick, trying to redirect bloodflow. Sometimes he wishes he was born a girl. At least then it wouldn't be so obvious.

"Ugh," Dee says. Sam's eyes fly open but she's just shaking her head at the television, going to commercial. "Seriously, they can't get one cattle mutilation?"

"Super lame," Sam says. Kind of breathy. Deanna doesn't seem to notice. She scratches her thigh, absent, and drains the last of her coffee, and sighs. Tongue swipe along her bottom lip. Jeez-us.

"Guess we don't have a choice," she says, and tips her head at Sam. Pursed lips, apologetic. "You know what that means."

"What does it mean?" Sam says, and she wrinkles her nose, and he does get it, finally. "Aw, no—"

"Aw, yes," Deanna says, and ruffles his hair back on her way to the sink. "C'mon, kiddo, I don't like it any more than you do."

"So we could not, right?" Sam tries.

Obviously not: Deanna shakes her head, rinsing her mug. "Meet at the car in ten, soldier," she says, while he bangs his head against the table. "And if you're not in the bathroom in thirty seconds then I've got dibs."

He gets up, goes. Isn't shy about slamming the bathroom door when he does. In the mirror his hair's all screwed up and he's pink in the face and he's scowling. "Shut up," he says, to his reflection, and hustles.

Sam doesn't actually mind PT. He likes running, which is super lame after all the years of bitching about it—and there is absolutely zero chance he'll ever admit to Dad that he does—but there's something kind of satisfying about getting to the end of five miles and feeling that blood-rush through every part of his body, thighs humming and lungs working hard and his head clear.

That Deanna hates it is icing on the cake. "Can't the monsters just run to me," she pants, hands on her knees.

"Don't you wanna be the one doing the chasing instead of being chased?" Sam says, stretching his quads.

Deanna gives him a baleful look through her hair. He grins at her and she gives him the finger.

They're out in the woods, since Deanna drove them way out past the edge of the city. Better for the next part, but also good practice. They spend a lot more time sprinting at midnight between tree-trunks and leaping over rabbit-holes than they do on nice smooth high school tracks. Sweat's sticking Sam's shirt to his back but it's a pretty spring day, new leaves all over the trees and wildflowers coming up, white and yellow and pink.

"Ugh," Dee says, while Sam's feeling relatively at peace with the world. She redoes her ponytail, higher and tighter, although the choppy layers around her face don't quite make it. What passes for her PT gear are cut-off denim shorts, a grey camisole with a bloodstain making it unsuitable for the public (though it's not her own blood, which she insists counts for something), and a bright blue sports bra that she cusses at every time she wrestles herself into it. Better than bouncing, she says, and Sam figures he's got to believe it. She tucks her amulet behind the line of the bra and nods, and then says, "Okay," and levels a look at Sam. "Come at me, punk."

"Wait—" Sam says, backing up a step. "I thought we were shooting. Aren't we shooting?"

"Can do that too," Deanna says. She starts to move to the side, gearing up to circle him, and he rotates to face her, hands up. "But your grapple's kinda sloppy. Gotta keep you ship-shape."

Her eyes are tracking the important points—his hands, his feet, how his torso's turned—all the stuff they've used in wrestling, practically as far back as Sam can remember—but he hasn't often been this alarmed, not like now, all the sunny springtime peace of the run draining out to leave him nearly panicked. "This is dumb," he tries, continuing to back up, letting her pace him backwards.

"This is important," Deanna says, patient, like they haven't had the same argument fifty times. "Anyway, it's for me as much as you. You don't want me to be ship-shape, too?"

"Cute," Sam says, and Deanna smiles at him—really smiles, not one of those mocking sugary ones—and he catches his breath and says, "Dee," not knowing how he's gonna get out of it, and then his back hits a tree, his head clonking back against the bark, and she says, "Gotcha," and darts in.

He blocks the first punch, takes the second to the ribs. "Fuck!" he says, shoving, and she dances back, grinning at him, her boots kicking up the leaf-litter and moving easy over the uneven ground.

"Gotta think fast, little brother," she says, and hops in to aim a shot at his face—he ducks, and slaps her side as hard as he can with an open hand—connects, and she lets out this quick little noise, but that left him open for another punch to the chest, her knuckles right on his breastbone, pushing the breath out of him. He slaps at her again, wild, and she leans back and then dives right back in, making him block at shoulder and waist and jaw, dancing quick, light on her feet even in the clunky boots, making him work for it.

They don't swing as hard as they can but they don't pull back much. Dee's faster, Sam's stronger; Dee's better, but Sam's not bad, and they block each other's hits way more than they actually connect. When they started doing this Sam was nine and Dee was thirteen, and it didn't seem fair at all because she was like a foot taller than him, bigger and older and better at everything, but Dad said that was the point: making Sam catch up, grow up, get strong, and giving Deanna the chance to practice with someone who wouldn't really hurt her, especially then.

With all these years of practice they know each other's tells, even if they're also supposed to practice hiding those. Sam lands another slap on her hip and takes a soft-ish punch to the gut as punishment; she lunges for his leg and he catches her arm and uses her momentum to throw her around, stumbling back through the loam, panting. He could've gotten her there and didn't. They both know it—she frowns at him, chest heaving, and comes around to his left, circling, hands held loose and ready. Coming up on the end—if they're not going to really hurt each other, there's usually just the one end—and Sam knows where the trees are in the clearing now, avoids getting boxed in, waiting.

Deanna charges, aiming for his shoulder. He braces—and then, no, her eyes dart down—he swivels on his right leg, reaches for her forearm when she goes to grab his knee—pulls her in, close, and she cusses even as he yanks her around, stumbling, and shoves her chest-first into the nearest trunk, using his weight and height, her arm twisted behind her back between them, his chest and hips and legs crushed up against hers, stilling her, subduing.

"I win," he says, panting.

"Shit." Burst out, bitten. She strains, flexing and pushing back, but he's got thirty pounds on her and once they're grappled there's no way. Her arm twists in his grip but he keeps her still, fingers tight, making sure she gets it. Her head drops against the bark, a long sigh gusting out, her shoulder slumping soft, and that's when Sam feels past the adrenaline rush the warm-soft length of her body, her vanilla shampoo and the sweat at the back of her neck rising in his head, his hips pressed up against her ass, his stolen-from-school gym shorts thin, making him—

He steps back, hot-faced. God, is he—he glances down but not yet—not yet, and he crouches in the dirt, folding his arms over his knees, still breathing hard. Like that's why.

"Telegraphed that feint," Deanna says. She turns against the trunk, leaning her head back. Sweaty, flush high in her cheeks and ears and down her throat, disappearing into the blue bra. She puts her wrist to her forehead, puffing out a deep breath. "You're getting faster." Not even a compliment, just stating facts. Like she always does when they're really working. He sniffs, shrugging, and she leans forward, putting her hands on her knees again, squinting at him. "If it was a dirty fight I woulda got you, though. Left your nuts wide open."

"Thanks for not hitting me in the nuts," Sam says, dry, and she raises her eyebrows, like, try me.

Breeze swirls into the clearing, cool on the back of his neck, his bare arms. Deanna closes her eyes against it, lips parting in pleasure. Sam's gut wobbles but—he's calmed down, mostly, and he can stand up without embarrassing himself. "So," he says. Like it's no big deal. "Can we go home?"

"I got a case of empty cans in the trunk that need to get full of holes," she says. "You won the fight. So what? I'm gonna kick your ass at target practice." He makes a rude sound and she smiles, loose, and then finally opens her eyes and looks right at him—heavy, warm, like—yesterday in the bathroom mirror but real, this time, her lashes dark with sweat and her skin flushed and her chest rising in a deep breath, and he—he—

"C'mon, pipsqueak," she says, tipping her head back to where they parked the car. "I'll even let you choose, handgun or rifle."

"Thanks a lot," he says, as sarcastic as he can, and she grins and pushes away from the tree and brushes past him, fake elbowing like a dick but really just soft-warm, close, and he follows, forced to think the calmest, plainest thoughts he can, focusing on what's around: running water in the creek, and birdsong, and trees casting dappled shadows across the trail, and not at all the way her hips move, nor the freckled soft skin of her shoulders, nor the way he thinks he could fit his hands around her waist, hold her in place, and she'd turn her head and look up at him over her shoulder and she'd say—he can't imagine. In the image her mouth opens and no words exist.

They make it back to the rental house in the late afternoon. Shooting—yes, Deanna cored more cans than Sam, about which she crowed like an idiot—but also swinging by the post office box across town Dad had rented before he left, and stopping for gas, and then using one of those do-it-yourself carwashes, where Sam gets roped into helping, although he doesn't know why when Dee's always popping up behind him to re-do whatever sidepanel he's just finished. Not even trying to be bossy; she's just obsessive, even if she keeps making Miyagi wax-off jokes and waggling her eyebrows like she's funny. Sam determinedly doesn't laugh.

Sweaty and sore and yet kind of glad, all told, when they pile through the door. This is the kind of day Sam's never minded: working, with his family, but safe. Deanna groans, pulling her boots off, and says, "Oh my god, I have like a thousand dibs on first shower," and so Sam's left to sit in the bedroom, stripping off his sneakers and socks and sweaty shorts, sitting in his t-shirt and boxers, listening to her sing very very off-key—Long Black Road already sounds weird an octave higher—and then he sits on his mattress with his arms around his knees and feels all the good ache in his thighs and forearms and the sore spot where the rifle kicked back during shooting practice, and then he blinks and sees that what he's looking at is the plastic bag with its clamshell box, tucked next to where she tossed her boots, and this weird heat corkscrews down from his heart to his balls, quick as dropping a coin down a well, and he—licks his lips, swallows. Listens to the water hissing down.

Deanna comes out in her towel, again—amulet still on, like it always is, although her hair's loose, dripping down her back. "Your turn, stinky," she says, and Sam passes her like it's nothing, says, "Hope you left some hot water," and she says, "Can't rush the finer things, Sammy," and Sam strips and climbs into the tub and puts his head directly under the spray, taking that first rush of luke-cold before it goes hot, drowning. Like it helps. It smells like her in here: vanilla shampoo, peachy soap. He scrubs his hair back from his face and breathes wet under the spray and when he reaches down he's already hard, has been, needing—god. To get his head straight.

Not the first time. Not the last, given his track record. From furtive schoolyard magazine-sharing and pilfered late-night cable and the way they watched Basic Instinct and Dee paused it at that exact second and said, oh yeah, that's the stuff, and laughed fizzingly at Sam while he turned red and she pushed him over on their shared bed and mushed his head under the pillow, smothering him in heat and soft and warm girl-smell, pussy behind his eyes—god, yeah, he's got the mental images, enough to get him there. The shower's hot and deafening and his head goes blank except for that, imagining without context, just—soft boobs and the soft white curve of tummy between the navel and the too-low rise of jeans. The pink wet split, and what he imagines it'd be like to sink two fingers in, or to make like the too-tan guys with too-white teeth who get their heads between spread thighs and make the girls make those sounds—except, no, not exaggerated like that, because even if Sam hasn't done it he knows girls don't scream, that way, because he's got his sister and he's heard her, in her bed that's so often less than a yard from his. He's laid awake in the night listening to the wet rhythmic squishing that hardly rocks the other mattress and heard, too, the puffs of breath through her nose, the way he can tell that her bottom lip's bitten between her teeth, the way she makes that little tiny caught whining noise when she's getting close, the way he'll be hard as a tire iron with his arms folded under the pillow, trying his absolute damnedest to pretend he's asleep, and his eyes wide open in the dark of a motel room lit only by the green numbers on the clock radio to see the way the shape of her legs spread under the shiny polyester comforter and then the way her hips lift under the shiny lump of it and then the sound, a tiny grunt through her nose, the slick pumping squish going still, and then—his favorite part—this long sigh, like she's been holding up a weight and finally gets to let it down, her knees splaying wide-out and flat, the barest tiniest shine of light on her lip as she lets it out of her teeth, the heave of her chest where the blanket's rucked down, the way her head turns, toward him—

When he gets out of the shower she's dressed, kind of. Dad's boxers and a freshly-washed grey camisole. Hair loose and drying wavy over her shoulders, although she swipes it all over to one side, leaning over the stove, peering into their battered single pot. "Hungry?" she says, and then immediately snorts and says, "Dumb question."

"Ha," Sam says. The radio's on, the crappy local rock station that has way too many ads, but they play Metallica and AC/DC sometimes and Deanna says that's enough for her. "What are you making?"

"Oh, Sammy," Deanna says—leaning on the counter, smiling at him sidelong. Not hot, like she is for the guys at the bar, but something else. Sam's gut aches. "That'd spoil the surprise."

"Wouldn't want that," Sam says, trying for cool and somehow kind of landing on it, and Deanna winks at him. Winks. He takes a deep breath, and passes behind her to go to the fridge, and gets out two beers, and cracks them both. He hands one to Dee and bumps the cans together before she can object. "Try not to give us food poisoning, huh?"

Deanna lifts her chin, her eyes narrowing. Smiles, slow. "No promises," she says, and when they take a drink at the same time, her eyes stay steady on Sam.

"So," Deanna says, drawing it out slow, lips a plush teasing O. Sam raises his eyebrows, like, so what? Dee raises her eyebrows back, making fun of him. "So: Noelle." Sam groans and Deanna grins wide at him, leans forward. "Don't front, little brother. C'mon, spill. You make much ado about her nothing?"

"That doesn't even make sense," Sam says, but it's without much strength, and Deanna sticks her tongue out at him, still grinning.

So it's been a couple of beers, and then another one to make up for the pretty weird dinner—tomato rice soup with green beans stirred in is not something that's going to end up on fancy restaurant menus, put it that way—and they're sprawled on either end of the couch, the TV on the news in case there's anything Dee would have to care about but silent, the radio still playing—the top 40 now, and Sam got to see Deanna bounce around lip syncing to how she didn't want no scrubs, which he groaned and rolled his eyes through but to be honest was actually pretty funny—and his head's kind of swimmy, kind of heavy, his cheeks hot and his fingertips cold, although maybe that's because he's holding his—fourth?—can of Milwaukee's absolute best, pretending like everything's cool. Everything is cool. Four beers in he can't imagine how they'd be otherwise.

"Hellooo," Deanna sings. He blinks at her. "Ground control to Major Sammy? You in there?"

"Yes," Sam says. Dignified. Maybe. "Where else would I be?"

Deanna looks like she thinks something is very funny. Never a good sign. She leans forward, her elbow on the back of the couch, her knees spreading out. "N-O-E-L," she says. "Let me hear it. She cute?"

"She spells it with two Ls," Sam says, which makes Dee wrinkle her nose. "And—I don't know. I guess."

"You guess." She whaps his knee and then grabs his shin, waggling his leg back and forth. "Dude, you are a hot-blooded American male. You can do better than guess. Unless—" She squints at him, assessing. "Are you gay? Or—wait, your junk works, right?"

"Yes!" Sam says, and then, hastily— "No!" Dee snorts, taking a sip of her beer, and while she's mopping foam off her chin he wraps his arms around his knees, annoyed. "You suck."

"When they ask nice," Deanna says, and then pauses, her tongue pressed up against the back of her front teeth. Shining, pink. Sam looks at that and then away, at the TV. Weather this week will stay warm. Rain on Thursday. The weather guy has stupid gelled helmet hair. A soft warm grip on Sam's ankle, low. "Hey, Sammy."

Warm, and a little wet from the beer. It races up the nerves from Sam's ankle to his heart and then back south to his nuts, confusing, worrying. Good. "Noelle's cute," Sam says. He licks his lips. "Smart. She's on the volleyball team."

"Selling girl scout cookies, too, I bet," Deanna says. Her thumb skims up the inside of Sam's ankle, where there's that dip. Kinda ticklish, kinda not. "Didn't ask about her test grades, dweeb. What's she look like?"

Sam shrugs. "Tall? I guess. For a girl. Blondish hair. Skinny, kind of."

"She got good tits?"

When Sam turns his head Dee's really watching him. He chews on his bottom lip. She's still got her arm laid out along the back of the couch, holding her beer loose in long fingers, and her other hand around his ankle, scooched forward so she can reach—cleavage made even when she's not wearing a bra, the amulet he gave her spilling off-angled over the pressed-up white curve. Her eyes dark and kind of hard to see in just the TV-light, with the sun down and them not turning on any other lamps. He shrugs again, and then nods. Yeah, Noelle's boobs are okay.

"Yeah?" Deanna says. The tip of her tongue touches the center of her bottom lip. Shine. "What about her ass?"

"It's okay," Sam says. His voice sounds weird.

"You kiss her?" Deanna says, and then without waiting: "No, huh. But you want to, huh? Maybe after the library. Or before volleyball, with the uniform on, you dog."

Sam's never known why guys who want to have sex are called dogs. Deanna's thumb is working in little circles on the inside of his ankle and the skin there feels like it's on freaking fire. "You kiss Walt?" he says.

Her thumb stops. "Walt?"

Like it's the dumbest thing ever. Sam unfolds enough to take a drink from his can. Warm now, bitter, but it's something to do with his hands. "I think he wants to kiss you."

"Oh, you think," Deanna says, sarcastic. Sam takes another gulp, too quick, and has to stop himself from coughing like a dork. While his eyes water Deanna lets go of his ankle—a cold spot there that he regrets immediately—and leans over to the table, grabbing a can from the box, cracking it fresh. "Walt wants me to blow him under the desk in the manager's office. Good thing we're gonna be out of here before he works up the balls to ask."

She says it like, no big deal. Like, duh. Deanna drains the last of her previous can and drops it into the pile they're making on the carpet, and then leans back with the new beer tucked between her thighs, making a damp condensation spot on the thin grey fabric of the shorts. Sam drains his beer, too, and gets another, too, although he leaves his empty upright at least so it doesn't spill drops on the carpet. It takes some concentration; his balance is a little weird.

"Shit, we made a mess, huh?" Deanna says, while Sam leans doubled over his own knees, setting up all the cans like bowling pins. "Ruining all your hard work."

"Don't want you to get mad at me again," Sam says, which is kinda supposed to be making fun of her but he also kinda means it. All the cans upright and he flops back onto the couch, full beer resting on his stomach. "Plus, like. You've been all—nice. I didn't know vacuuming would get me all these perks." He lifts the beer in a little toast before he takes a sip. One of Deanna's cheeks sucks in before she toasts him back, takes a swallow too. Sam smiles at her, feeling weirdly light in his chest, even if things are just super—weird. "I get anything else if I keep doing all the laundry? Gonna let me drive?"

"In your dreams," Deanna says, immediately.

"What about… let me pick the music?"

"You know the rules, dingus." She lets her right foot drop off the couch, thigh stretching out long, wide. "I'll keep you fed. Consider yourself lucky, punk. But…" Smiling at him, crooked and small. Beer still between her legs. "That really was cool, man. I know I was bitching and all, but. I didn't really expect you to do anything."

Sometimes that's the kind of thing that makes him feel like a baby, getting a pat on the head. This time it's—different. Sam feels heat rising up in the center of his cheeks. "Homework doesn't take that long," he says. "Figured you were right, I could manage the laundry or whatever too."

"Wait, wait," Deanna says, eyes opening wide, "I was right?" Sam rolls his eyes and flicks a drop of beer at her, which she promptly returns with interest, and when he's wiping scattered foam off his cheek, grinning, she says, "Sounds like a deal to me," and then, in a different voice—"Although if you're gonna be in my stuff, guess I ought to find a different hiding spot, huh?"

Half a second to remember what she means and then the heat in his cheeks flames up over his whole body. Lurid pink. Big? Even two days gone he can't quite remember. "No big deal, remember? Where else would you keep it, anyway—glovebox?"

She snorts. "Get pulled over and hand that out to the cop with the license and reg? Yeah, guess not."

"Where'd you even get it?"

"You never heard of a sex store?" Deanna says, tipping her head. "Thought you were all grown-up now. Give me that beer back, Kid Icarus—"

He pulls it back out of her mimed grab and she ends up leaning forward toward him again, his drawn-up feet practically tucked up between her spread legs. That half-circle of damp is still there on the cotton, high up on her thigh. "I meant where. Or like—when, I guess."

"Back in Houston. So—what, four, five months ago?" She shrugs, rests her beer on his knee like it's a cupholder. "You really haven't done laundry in a while, huh."

"So, you…" She raises her eyebrows at him like a dare. He swigs his beer, clears his throat. His fingertips are cold. "I don't know. It's kinda weird. Like, when the girls at school talk sometimes, it's like—they talk like it hurts, or something. Like they just do it because their boyfriends want to."

This from Jackie Martinette and Laura Kennedy, who had a full whispered gossip session on the subject in study hall while Sam tried desperately to pretend like he was on another planet. Bad enough to spring wood at home in bed while Deanna walked around in her underwear after a shower; truly mortifying at school when any second he'd have to get up and walk to second period biology.

"You think girls aren't getting anything out of it?" Sam lifts a shoulder, really not sure. In porn sometimes they shriek. He doesn't associate much good with shrieking. Deanna smiles at him, sort of patronizing but also warm, friendly. Like she's sharing good news. "Sammy, if you know what you're doing it's all kinds of good. When you're hot for it and it's go time?" She makes this low purry sound, deep in her throat, her eyes half-lidded.

Sam swallows. "Go time?" He's amazed his voice doesn't sound weird.

"Girls get horny just like guys, you know," Deanna says. She licks her lips, shining flushed. The TV bursts blue-yellow color over her cheeks, the rise of her chest as she takes a deep breath. "Harder to tell, I guess. But if it's go time a girl should be so wet you just slide right in, you know? Even if you didn't eat her out first. I mean, that's how it works with me."

Sam's so hard he's dizzy. He drains his beer, lets it slide down to the pile on the carpet, hooks his hands around his own ankles, keeping his knees together so she can't see. "What do you think about?" he says. The air's thin, hot. Deanna blinks at him, slow. "When you're—using it. Like—guys, or…?"

"Brad Pitt in Thelma & Louise," Deanna says, and Sam laughs, not expecting to. She grins at him and her face is pink, too. "Yeah, guys. But not even like—specific guys. Just… what feels good, you know? When a guy holds my tits right—not squeezing hard, but just…" She tucks her beer up against her crotch and cups one boob, pushing it up high and full through her camisole, fingers splayed wide, her thumb brushing over her nipple where Sam can see it hard and poking through the cotton. Her other breast curving plush, that nipple also round and tight, and Sam reaches out and copies her, sliding his palm up her ribs and feeling the sudden rise of them and spidering his fingers wide over the soft heaviness, shifting to hold it up high to match, his thumb glancing over the nipple and it's—oh, rigid as a bullet but giving somehow too, tilting under how he sweeps back and forth, swollen hot. Her cleavage looks incredible, the amulet squished between both boobs like she's wearing a push-up bra, the cord disappearing between them. He imagines very suddenly licking there, swiping up with his tongue in the dark shadow like he's imagined licking a girl's pussy, except he'd keep going, lick up into the hollow of her throat, lick up over her chin and push his tongue into her mouth and see what that was like, see how it tasted, and he's thinking that, rolling her nipple over and over under his thumb, when he sees that her lips are parted and she's staring at him, chest heaving, and he's—god, he wants to kiss her. He wants to very badly.

"Like that?" he says, thin. She nods, quick. He holds his ankle very tightly with the other hand. "What—what else? Do you think about."

The tip of her tongue touches the center of her top lip. Sam's balls lurch. Deanna's eyelids dip but don't close, and she says, "A guy fingering me. But not like most guys do it. Stabbing in like they're trying to buttonmash in Street Fighter. There was this dude in Buffalo—he got me off over the top of my jeans, just rubbing right, steady. Got me so wet it soaked through. Thought I was gonna marry him."

The can of beer's right there, on the y-front of the old boxer-briefs. Sam's breathing through his mouth, lips drying. "You fuck him?"

Deanna's ears are dark red. "Yeah," she says. A breath. "In the bar bathroom, over the sink. That's a good one, when I'm using the dildo. I was so wet. Just thinking about it—swear to god, like someone turned on a faucet in my pussy, Sammy."

He pushes forward and she grabs the beer can, holds it right there for some reason, so it doesn't spill when Sam crams his fingers between the lukewarm wet tin and the cotton, curving over—soft too, warm too, hot as he pushes his fingers down, when she spreads her thigh wider and her hips tip forward, crushing his hand between the couch cushion and her pussy and the cotton that, fuck, is wet, sticky, and he pushes his fingers up, where it gives, and—and—

"Sammy," she whispers, and he looks up and he's, oh, squeezing her tit hard, hard enough that when he startles and lets go there's a ghost-white impression of his fingers above the line of fabric that floods red right away, and he takes in a breath to say—nothing, absolutely nothing comes to mind, but it doesn't matter because she grabs his wrist and pushes his fingers right up against her tit again, and then drops the beer over the side of the couch, letting it thunk to the carpet, glugging, and curves her hand over his hand between her legs, pressing it harder against herself, groaning, a sound he's only heard in the dark.

His head's thick, like oxygen's not getting in. Her hips grind in and he presses up hard, with the heel of his hand and his fingertips, and she shudders so maybe it's good. He pulls at the neck of the camisole and it yanks to one side but Dee shakes her head, shifts—Sam yanks his hand away, but she only pushes forward, up on her knees—still holding his fingers up against her pussy—and then reaches down and pulls the camisole off over her head, entirely, so she's bare from the waist up except for her amulet, her tits white and full, her nipples blushy red, the skin around them drawn up tight. He grips one in just the way she showed him and drags his thumb around the bare skin, rolling the nipple without the barrier of cotton, and she makes this tiny little noise high in her throat, like she can't help it, so hot that Sam leans forward and slurps the nipple into his mouth so she'll make it again.

"Fuck," she says, the f drawn out like she didn't mean to. Her hand on his head while he mouths at her boob, licking and then opening his mouth wide and sucking hard, so she hisses and grips his hair tight, and so he learns to roll it under his tongue, suckling, like a popsicle he wants to last. Her thighs clamp around his wrist and then open, and he rubs her whole crotch front to back, not knowing what's best, from the y-front down to where she's sticky and all the way to her ass, squeezing where she's soft there, too, pulling her in except his knees are in the way. He squirms, pretzeled up tight like he is, and Deanna kneels up high so he can unfold and then his legs are between her thighs. She grabs his wrist again and that's fine, he lets her push and get his palm seated on the hard ridge of bone, his fingers squishing around in the wet cotton where she's so soft, riding the seam of the boxers back and forth, finding where—oh shit—yeah, where he can push, a gap, which must really be her pussy, where the dildo goes, where that guy from Buffalo was, where Sam could—

She grips his hair, pulls his mouth away from her tit. He comes off gasping. Flickery light from the TV but it's dark, dark, blood pulled up into the skin from how he was working there. Her hand goes to his jaw, her thumb sliding over his mouth—wet—smelling like… He licks and it tastes like—salt. Salt and something tangy, what's heavy in the air, stronger than the smell of the beer spilling onto the carpet and how he feels drenched in sweat, this—incredible thing, addictive, better than anything. A flex, against his buried fingertips, where she's soaked, and he finally looks up to see her staring at him, at his mouth. Her thumb drags over his lip again and he leans in to her other, paler tit, slurps the nipple in and cups his hand hard over her pussy and wraps his arm around her waist, holding her warm and close, drunk. His head swims but it doesn't matter—she keeps hold of his hair, keeping him up against her chest, and covers his hand on her pussy, pressing in this rhythm that's easy to follow, clutching hard and grinding and rolling her hips into his fingers, her breath fast and hot and puffing over his ear, everything between them getting sweaty, tense, her grip over his hand hurting almost and he'd worry about hurting her except clearly that's not an issue. He drags his teeth over her boob, sucking hard on the squishy softness, his tongue exploring the tight wrinkled rim around the nipple, and squeezes her ass with his free hand, and his wrist hurts so he flexes his forearm, grips the front ridge of bone over her pussy with his thumb, and Deanna jerks against him, curves in, holds his hand hard and still up against herself, and she's totally silent and even her breath is held and he lets go of her tit and looks up and she's staring at him open-mouthed. He rubs his fingertips against her crotch, squeezing through the boxers, and it's only then that she makes a little sound, jerked out of her belly, and she bends down—he blinks, not sure—but she just sinks down to his shoulder, her lips spread wide on the side of his neck, her breath heaving out of her like she just finished a five-mile run.

Her thighs spread over his. Their hands caught together, cupped wet. Sam's nuts hurt he's so hard and he doesn't know what to do. He wants her nipple back in his mouth, wants to put his mouth on her pussy and taste that tangy smell right at the source, wants to crawl behind the couch and jerk off with his fist between his teeth, fast and hard as he possibly can. Wants—

Her hand, on his crotch, through his shorts. He jerks, whole-body, like when Dee was showing him how to replace an outlet a few rental houses ago and they didn't bother with flipping the breaker. His boner's popping stupid-obvious so it's easy for her to grip it with her whole hand and it feels—god!—warm, even through the double-layer of the polyester and his cotton boxers, and firm, squeezing hard at first and then feeling the shape, from the base to the head. "Jeez," she murmurs, and he squeezes his eyes closed, every part of his body feeling shivery, strange, oversensitized. "When'd that happen?"

"What?" he manages. She smells so good he can't stand it—wants to hide, wants to disappear, wants to grip her ass and drag her down and rub off against her like he used to against the mattress, when he was a kid and didn't know how to jerk off right, only she'd be so soft, sweet, wet—

"You got a big dick," Deanna says, soft, her head dipping down, her cheek against Sam's cheek. "Fuck, that's—thick. All grown up, huh?"

He shakes his head, confused, and she laughs very softly but not mean, not like she can laugh, and says, "God—" and pushes his chest, bears him back down against the arm of the couch, and he goes because he doesn't know what else to do and he puts his hand over his mouth—oh oh oh the hand that was on her pussy, his fingers sliding wet, and he sucks them in, bites his own skin, tasting, the smell and tang clutching up his throat and his foggy head. Deanna groans for some reason and pushes up his shirt, her fingers skimming over his belly, on the sparse hair that's started to trail down from his navel, and she—lifts off his legs, her weight and heat disappearing, and he opens his eyes to find the world gone all smeary, dark still but the light from the TV splintering weird and wet across the ceiling, and when he looks down she's on her knees between his knees, her fingers cupping his balls through his shorts, squeezing the shaft, and she bends down like she's going to—her mouth open, like she's going to—and Sam's toes curl and his thighs spasm and he comes, hips jerking up into her grip, creaming up the inside of his shorts, pulsing, shocked.

His heart thuds in his throat. He breathes hard around his fingers, still in his mouth, and drags them out finally, curling wet and pruny against his chin. Deanna lets go, eyes at first pinned there at his crotch and then flicking up at him dark and wide-startled, her lips an O. Sam blinks at her and pulls one of his knees up, in, and somehow that makes her flinch, and she sits up high, back on her heels, arms folding over her chest and hiding her tits, her eyes still big, going all over his face.

Deanna laughs. Again. High and breathy, fake. Still not mean but—"Man, couple beers and we're crazy, huh?" she says, brittle and fast, and Sam digs his heels into the couch and scooches away, as far as he can, his back pressed all the way against the couch arm, his brain feeling like it's sloshing in acid. Deanna smiles at him, wide and with a lot of teeth, and swivels and stands, kicking a beer can, stooping quick to pick up her camisole, tugging it over her head, yanking it back into place. Sam blinks and wet runs down his cheek so he has to scrub the back of his hand over it, smearing. "Guess we really are hard-up," Deanna's saying, while Sam folds back over his own knees, stomach doing a slow horrible somersault. "Gotta work on your game, get that Noelle girl to go for it sometime."

"Dee," Sam says, but it's barely voiced, and Deanna shakes her head and rolls right on, walking off to the kitchen like it's nothing, saying, "Anyway—we screwed up the carpet—better get something for that before the beer soaks in—"

Sam's gonna hurl. He—oh, he really is—and he unfolds off the couch and his legs stagger but he makes it the half-dozen steps to the bathroom, to his knees, stomach lurching, eyes burning. Dinner and beer and everything else. He shudders, clutching the sides of the bowl in the dark. Sits there, miserable, for…

Faint touch to his back. He makes a weird sound, spits. Reaches up and flushes, and sits back on his knees, and his face is sweaty, hot, and Deanna's not in the bathroom with him but there's a cup on the side of the sink with water in it. He swishes the taste out of his mouth, spits again, drains the rest. When he gathers his brain together and stands back up he sways and there's—sticky wet in his shorts, cold and sludgy, and he leans his shoulder into the doorway and sees that Dee's cleaned up the beer cans and there's a towel on the carpet by the couch. He gets more water in the kitchen, drinks it down in cool stomach-filling swallows that make his gut slosh but in a way where he doesn't feel like it's gonna chuck up again, and when he goes to the bedroom—she's on her mattress, lying on her side, blanket tugged up to her shoulder. He stands between the two beds for a second, uncertain, until she turns over, her back to the room. "Go to bed, drunkie," she says, quiet in the dark, and he licks his lips and crawls onto his own mattress on his stomach, folding his arms under his pillow, staring across at her until the dragging sloshing tide in his head pulls him down, undertow sucking at his whole body, drowning.

In the morning her bed is empty. Sam's head hurts like someone took a sledgehammer to it in the middle of the night. His boxers stick crusty against his pubes. He takes a shower, nauseated and aching and wondering if it's possible to be poisoned by five beers. Coffee already made—he drinks a cup and then pours a second, miserable, and then the front door opens and Deanna's standing there, fully dressed and eyes wide and bright, and she says, "Rise and shine, wonderboy," like a chirpy bird, and then, "C'mon, I'll drive you to school," and Sam says, "I feel like crap," and she says, "That’s what happens when you drink with the big dogs, but no excuses, come on," and so he puts on sneakers and gets his backpack and loads himself into the passenger side of the Impala and slumps against the window while she drives, the two of them not talking, the radio on low to morning shock-jock crap. Wondering if this is what it's always going to be. This sick dragging awful, at the base of his skull and in his gut, making the morning into something that has to be endured, like every single day from this one to when he's dead will be—this. The Impala pulls up smooth to the drop-off area, muscling ahead of a champagne-colored sedan, and Sam sighs, and goes to open the door, and Deanna says, "Hang on."

He looks at her straight-on. First time, really, all morning, the humiliation feeling like it's coming off him like radiation, like if they had an EMF meter for it the thing would be shrieking. She looks like she always does. Part of the problem. Deanna's cheek sucks in and she looks in the rear-view, and then she meets his eyes, and her expression is—Sam doesn't know. She looks into his eyes and then at his mouth, and then at his hand on the door for some reason, and then she shakes her head, and touches her own lips, and then grips the steering wheel tight with both hands. "Knock 'em dead, Sammy," she says, looking out at the road.

First period, study hall. He drops his bag under the desk and drops his head onto his folded arms. The bell ringing hurts. Laura Kennedy and Jackie Martinette start whispering behind him, about the date Jackie went on this weekend, and he folds his arms over his head, shuts it out. He feels like he took a beating from a werewolf, but that's not the worst part. For some reason the thing that keeps repeating in his head, and what lasts all day, through English where he ignores Noelle and through AP Stats where he doesn't answer a single question and through the lunch he doesn't eat and through World History, staring through the review slides for final exams coming up in a few weeks, is how Dee laughed. High, and weird, and like she'd done something horribly embarrassing, like there was no way to live it down and so you just had to laugh, because what other choice did you have?

When he gets home the living room smells like stale beer. Deanna's not there. In the fridge, a styrofoam box with spaghetti and meatballs and no note, and he eats it by himself and does his homework and goes to bed alone, and she's not there the next morning, and she's not there the next afternoon when he gets home, either, and it's not until Wednesday morning that he wakes up and she's sitting crosslegged on the mattress across the room from him in the clear morning light and she says, before he's even registered that she's really there and what it means, "Dad's coming home."

He blinks muzzily and sits up and she's looking at him with her fingers knotted in her lap, her lips red and her eyes red, too, and then she gets up and walks out of the room. He watches her go, robbed of any other option.

#wincest #my writing #happy wincest wednesday #praying that read more works properly #anyway yeah #i have about ~5k more of writing to do #so ideally that'll come by next week #but at the moment just--#trying a slightly different writing mode here #hope that someone reads it lol

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