#I could t think of anything specific for each prompt so

[blaithnne]

@sketchbookweek Day 2 | Witchcraft & Wilderness

[aziraphales-library]

hello! i was wondering if you could help me find some fics where aziraphale and crowley get drunk together and maybe realize some things about each other. not looking for anything specific, just that. thank u so much!!!!

Hey! We have some drunken fics here. And I've got a few more for you now...

I want to hold your hand (I think you'll understand) by victoridiaz (T)

“You’ll like this one.” Said Crowley, already pulling out one of the records. “It’s culture, Angel. You’ve got to get your head out of the eighteenth century.” What the hell, thought Aziraphale. He was feeling a bit adventurous tonight. He let Crowley man the record player. Aziraphale wasn’t very good with it anyway. - Crowley and Aziraphale get very drunk one night and Crowley decides to introduce the angel to a band he really should have heard of by now.

one late night (and another, and another) by gomensgay (G)

One night, after far more alcohol than was typically advisable, Aziraphale lets slip something he never meant to say. Something that, somehow, Crowley has heard before.

Human Affection by Lady of Prompts (G)

One night over drinks, Crowley makes an assertion about humans and kissing. After all, he *knows* these things, right? But Aziraphale refuses to believe him, and there's only one way to prove his point. Or, possibly, two idiots who are drunk and silly and very comfortable with each other having a very silly argument. Written for the Kisses_Bingo event, prompt: Behind the Knee Kiss -- Aziraphale’s hand was resting right there. Grinning, Crowley snatched it up and kissed the back of it. Well. Nearly. Thumb is technically part of the hand. “Crowley!” The angel jerked his hand free. “What’s that s’posed to prove?” “You din’ like it?”

Uncontrollable by Mizmak (G)

Will the kiss a drunken Aziraphale plants on Crowley's lips be an act he regrets when sober?

They have hands, but cannot feel by Augenblickgotter (M)

Aziraphale and Crowley have skated around each other, literally barely touching, and quietly longing. They've even had close calls and almost let potential feelings slip out. After averting the Armageddon, Aziraphale feels there's no time like now to confess how he feels. Does Crowley feel the same, or has he been toying with him all these years? Lots of yearning, drunk confession, pining, soul bearing and revealing and mild sexual situations.

That's Not Funny by cyankelpie (G)

Aziraphale has never sensed even a shred of love from Crowley, which is perfectly alright. It isn't Crowley's fault demons can't love. But then Crowley makes what must be a cruel joke at his expense, and Aziraphale can't control his emotions as well while drunk. Luckily, he doesn't remember the confession in the morning. Crowley doesn't see why the angel was so upset over something he probably knew all along, but he'll make sure it stays forgotten.

- Mod D

[icyhottodo]

SALTY COOKIES ˚₊✩‧₊

contains: 1k words, fluff, f2l, gn reader is a sorcerer as well but its mentioned once, kissing, yuji, nobara & gojo are menaces, maybe ooc? i tried T-T

summary: megumi has a certain soft spot for you. but maybe not the salted cookies you gave him.

prompt: "Are you mad at me?" "Why would I be mad at you?"

nini’s notes: i was scavenging through the depths of the internet to find inspiration and found one and RAN with it. this was supposed to be a kbg work but i miss gumi.

megumi gets angry at anyone on a regular basis. one thing your fellow friends noticed is that megumi would never get furious at you specifically.

"you’re lying, nobara," you say in disbelief.

"i swear y/n. it's like megumi never gets mad at you. he yells at us, but when he turns to you, he goes all heart eyes. look!" nobara dramatically exclaims to you before waltzing towards megumi. who was on the other side of the classroom, listening to yuji and gojo talk to each other.

nobara creeps up to megumi until she reaches just behind him and pops up from his back. "boo!"

"what the fuck, nobara- oh. hey y/n." megumi’s outburst was suddenly stopped when he turned around and saw you. (along with nobara hiding behind you as a meat shield. but megumi decided to ignore the short-haired girl and focus on you instead.)

megumi scooted his chair closer to you and leaned on an empty desk. placing his head on top of his hand with a small smile on his face. he greets you hesitantly, "hey y/n."

ever since nobara mentioned the truth about megumi acting around you, you could see how much nicer he acts around you.

"hey, i got you your favorite food." megumi offered, turning his head away from you to act uninterested. his eye catches a sparkly-eyed nobara, yuji, and gojo with their hands made into a ball.

"fushiguro! where's our foooood!?" yuji whines, shaking megumi’s body, with the other two frantically nodding their heads yes.

"you three can get your food." megumi rolls his eyes before walking away from their pestering.

you were finally sure that megumi has a soft spot when your peers decided to play a playful prank on the stoic man. they had baked some chocolate chip cookies, but the twist was that they intentionally substituted the sugar for salt instead. they walked up to you with a platter full of those salty cookies, asking you if you would want to hand those cookies to megumi.

"now, you don’t have to give these to fushiguro if you don’t wanna." yuji smiled anxiously, waiting for your reaction.

with the cookies being shoved into your face, you considered acting along with them or not. while the prank is harmless, you still felt slightly bad about tricking the guy. on the other hand, with this prank, you could tell for sure that megumi acted differently around you, perhaps even liking you. this outweighed your cons. plus if this went wrong, you could say yuji, gojo, and nobara told you to do so.

"alright, i will do it," you said as you smiled and took the platter of cookies. 

you found megumi training with maki in the courtyard. megumi saw you in the corner of his eye, and you gestured for him to come to you for a minute. because of this, megumi became distracted from his sparring, causing him to get whacked with a stick by maki.

"ouch. okay, you win this time; spar with the panda. i’ll take a break." megumi says, already jogging to where he saw you walk behind a huge willow tree. megumi left so fast that maki hasn't even gotten the chance to reply yet.

panda says, "fushiguro liked y/n, huh?"

"salmon."

"here," you said, showing off the plate. "i made some cookies for you to try."

"what's this for?" megumi asks, cautiously taking a cookie from you. you weren’t the one who usually bakes or gives anything out of the blue.

"i was just trying out new hobbies. i want to see if i am any good at it." you lied on the fly, without thinking. maybe you should take acting as a side job instead of being a sorcerer.

with your explanation, megumi takes a bite out of the cookie and immediately grimaces. megumi slowly chews on the piece of cookie before swallowing it down his throat harshly. you can notice his adam’s apple bobbing up and down when he has entirely consumed the sweet.

"i’ll be frank with you. it's salty, did you maybe switch out the sugar for salt by accident?"

after hearing this comment, yuji and nobara jump from who knows where much to megumi’s surprise. gojo sticks his tongue out and says, "it was a joke, bleh. we baked that and told y/n to give it to you."

you could see the cartoon-like cross-popping veins appearing on the corner of megumi’s forehead. megumi was ready to scold them, but before megumi could yell at them, yuji had pushed his other two friends, gojo and nobara, away, taking the plate of cookies from you in the midst of it. leaving the two of you in silence, which made you feel awkward.

is megumi mad at you? maybe you shouldn't have said yes to your friends. you asked shyly, looking at the floor away from the black-haired man. "are you… mad at me?"

a few seconds of silence passed by, making you more anxious by the second. the silence was broken when you heard footsteps came closer to you, megumi’s shoes appeared in your eyesight. you felt a rough hand touch your face, his thumb finger touching below your lips while the rest of his hand was tucked under your chin.

megumi gently pulls your head up to meet his gorgeous blue eyes with an adoring smile on his face. megumi was mere centimeters away from you. "and why would i be mad at you?"

well, that was a surprise. megumi eyes wander down onto your lips, making butterflies erupt wildly in your stomach. his eyes went back to your eyes. "can i… kiss you?"

megumi’s voice was so tender yet still had tones of uncertainty. you smiled, nodding your head at his question. megumi gave you a simple, fleeting peck, but it had you wanting more. you smiled at him when megumi pulled away, but you took him by the collar and passionately kissed him.

"i… i really like you, y/n," megumi said breathlessly.

"i like you too."

[aquietwritingcorner]

And Suddenly, it was Too Much

For @tmnt-write-fight for @misshowdoyoudo

Title: And Suddenly, it was Too Much Prompt: Donnie needs someone to help him wind down after a bad experience (not iteration specific)  Fandom:  TMNT 2003 Word Count: 3128  Author: aquietwritingcorner/realitybreakgirl Rating:  T Characters: Donatello, Leonardo Warning: SAINW Summary: It took a few seconds for the realization to hit Don. Home. They were home. The minute Leo said the word, it was like the realization of where he—where they—were standing hit Don. He suddenly realized that he was standing in their undamaged home, with his living brothers and father, and Casey Jones was alive and walking up to them, asking them if they were playing a prank on him. The realization slammed into Don, hard enough to send his head spinning and his stomach violently churning, and he wasn’t prepared for any of that.    Notes: I really couldn’t help myself. I’m so sorry. SAINW has so many neat little ways it can be played with. Also, slight reference to a fic I posted earlier this month towards the end, but you don’t have to have read it to understand.    ffn || AO3

___________________________________

And Suddenly, it was Too Much

It took a few seconds for the realization to hit Don. Home. They were home. The minute Leo said the word, it was like the realization of where he—where they—were standing hit Don. He suddenly realized that he was standing in their undamaged home, with his living brothers and father, and Casey Jones was alive and walking up to them, asking them if they were playing a prank on him. The realization slammed into Don, hard enough to send his head spinning and his stomach violently churning, and he wasn’t prepared for any of that.

Which was probably why the next thing he did was turn around, hunch over, and throw up right there on the spot.

He heard exclamations from his family, even as he sank down onto his knees and wretched again. There wasn’t much on his stomach. There hadn’t been much food in the Resistance, and he’d felt bad about eating when he was clearly better fed than most of the people there.

His stomach rolled again, as he realized where he was and what he had and remembered what he had just left.

“Don? Donnie? You okay?”

Don realized that Raph was talking to him, squatted down next to him with a hand on his shell. Don turned his head to look up at his family. Suddenly all he could see were his three very dead and freshly killed brothers somehow standing in front of him. He took a shuddering, shaking breath, feeling like he couldn’t breathe right.

“Don?” Leo said, frowning at him. “Don, come on. Say something, bud.”

Don wanted to. He wanted to respond, to do something, say something, but it was like he was frozen. He barely felt like he was breathing right, much less capable of anything else.

“Donnie?” Mikey tried. Don’s breath hitched. The last time Mikey had called out his name had been right before the Karai Legionnaires had slashed him to death. His breath caught in his throat, and he felt like he couldn’t breathe.

“Master Splinter?” Mikey said, turning his head away from Don. “What’s wrong with him?”

“Did the Time Scepter do something to him? Or the War Staff?” Raph asked.

Leo was looking at Don with concern. “No, I…” Leo hesitated, then knelt down. “…I think this might have to do with where he was sent.”

Don’s head jerked up, and he stared at Leo. Leo frowned at him.

“I’m right, aren’t I?” he said, reaching a hand out to place on Don’s head. “I—I saw a little of each of the places all of you went, when I tried to pull you all back. Don’s was… it was dark. The Foot symbol was everywhere. He was with a bigger turtle. I think—I’m not sure who it was, exactly. I didn’t look that closely. They were running, and the bigger turtle was saying something about people working eighteen-hour days.”

Splinter frowned, gently nudging Raphael out of the way so that he could move next to Donatello, reaching out to check on him. “I did not see anything when I pulled your brothers to me,” he said.

“The Gyoji helped me—or, well, Draco and the Daimyo’s son disguised as the Gyoji. He made a… a portal of sorts? One I could look through while I tried to pull everyone back. That’s why I could see a bit of each place everyone was.” Leo explained. “But I don’t know what happened.”

Don said nothing, just knelt there, staring and shaking, his breaths still uneven.

Splinter shook his head slightly. “Come. Let us get Donatello to the couch and then we can—”

“No!” the word burst out of Don, surprising everyone, including himself. “No! I—”

And suddenly, it was too much. He looked around the lair, almost wildly. It was too much. It was just too much. A warm, unbroken home. His family looking at him with concern and warmth. The brightness and color and welcoming atmosphere. Not to mention his family.

When they had looked at him before, in that future, it had been distant and guarded, but with just a little bit of hope. Hope that had been misplaced. Hope that had failed them. He had failed them. He’d gotten them killed. Murdered. Destroyed. And now they were looking at him with such compassion and trust and concern—Splinter and Casey, too—and it was—it was—

Don stumbled back, away from the warmth of his family. It was ungraceful, panicked, and he went from kneeling on the floor to the bottom rim of his shell clacking against it as quickly moved back. He scrambled to his feet, the concerned looks his family was giving him too much and he backed away and then—

He bolted.

He ran, almost blindly, going on instinct more than anything else. He headed out into the sewers, barely even realizing that his family was calling out after him. He just fled, taking twists and turns in the sewers, going deeper and further in, into old tunnels and places that no one went, until he was finally too exhausted to go any further. He had no idea how long he’d been running, but it had to have been a while, given the state he was in. He stumbled to a stop, his legs shaking from the exertion, a sheen of sweat covering him, chest heaving with gasping breaths. His heart was beating wildly, aching fiercely. He tried to take another step, but his body wasn’t having it, and he practically fell right then and there.

He couldn’t go on. He’d pushed himself to his limits. He didn’t even bother to move from where he’d half fallen, half sunk to the ground. He shook, tears that he hadn’t yet had time to cry starting to pour out.

He’d killed his brothers. His plan had killed his brothers. He’d seen them, heard their deaths, felt it ripping at him. It didn’t matter that they’d agreed to it. It didn’t matter that they had gone in knowing that they might die. It didn’t matter. They were his brothers, and they had died enacting his plan.

And he’d seen them. He’d seen them. The image of their broken and dead bodies was never, ever going to leave him.

He wasn’t sure how long he stayed there like that, eventually shifting aching muscles sit, although he stayed curled up. Time meant nothing to him, and he had no way to keep track of it, having sacrificed his watch and shell cell to the resistance. But it was long enough for someone to come looking for him, if the footsteps he heard meant anything. He recognized them, knew he should probably move so that he wouldn’t alarm their owner, but he found himself too exhausted and tired to do even that. He just stayed where he was, not bothering to move.

The footsteps stuttered for a moment, and then hurried towards him.

“Donnie?” Leo said, a touch of underlying panic in his voice. Don felt his brother’s hand on his shoulder, squeezing it, “Donnie? Are you with me? Look at me, Donatello.”

Exhausted still, Don slowly turned his head from where he had it buried in his arms, just enough that Leo could see part of his face. Leo searched his face, and then sighed, settling down beside Don. Don buried his face in his arms again, and listened as Leo called the others.

“Yeah. Yeah, I found him. No. I… let me handle this, okay? Yeah. I’ll call. Okay.”

He hung up his phone, and then looped an arm around Don, tugging him into his side. Don didn’t resist, but he didn’t lean into it either. He could almost feel Leo’s frown.

“Don… you’re shaking,” his brother said.

Don said nothing.

Leo fell silent for a few moments, staying there with Don. The silence settled into them, but it left Don uneasy. It felt tense, in a way that silence with Leo had never felt tense before. It felt like… It felt like the silence with the older Leo. But this time, instead of it being Leo who was there, stony faced and holding back, radiating judgement, it was Don who was silent and holding back, putting up a wall between him and his brother.

“…Why did you run?”

The question, though quiet, startled Don. He didn’t respond right away, not even sure how he could begin to explain himself.

“…It was too much,” he said, eventually.

He felt Leo shift, just slightly.

“What was too much?” his brother asked.

“All of it,” Don replied, and his mouth felt dry. “The lair, all of you, it was too much.”

“How was it too much?” Leo asked softly.

Don’s shoulders hunched. “…It was too bright,” he mumbled. “Everything was… was there. Complete. Whole. Ready. And it felt too… too bright.”

“As opposed to here, where it’s dark and abandoned,” Leo said.

Don blinked and shifted his head up just enough to look around a little. He was in an old junction, long out of use, dark, damp, and in a state of disrepair. It honestly wasn’t that different from how broken down the old lair was. It had that same sense of hopelessness and an almost dampening effect.

“…Yeah,” he whispered.

Leo hummed. He was quiet for a moment more, and then he asked another question. “And how were we too much?”

Don tensed, and automatically leaned away from Leo a little, but Leo was having none of it, firmly pulling him in. Don felt like he couldn’t swallow, couldn’t breathe quite right, and his heart started pounding again as he thought of the compassion his family had looked at him with, and the dead brothers he had left behind, not even able to tell them goodbye or to bury them. He’d just abandoned them. Again.

“—cared,” his voice only started working partway through his sentence. “You looked at me with concern. And—and—” his breath caught. “And you were alive!”

The answer burst out of Don, and with it, an adrenaline rush. He made to get up, to leave, to flee again, but Leo’s reflexes were faster, and he reached out, catching Don’s arms by the elbow and pulling him back down. Don was off-balance, exhausted, and not expecting this. Leo sat him down and looked him in the eyes and Don found he couldn’t look away.

“Donatello, what do you mean?” he demanded. “We’ve always cared. And we’ve always been concerned when someone is sick. Unless—” his brain started to catch up. “—unless you were some place where we didn’t.” Leo’s eyes widened at the thought. “Donatello. Donatello, I need you to tell me what happened.” Don shook his head, closing his eyes, but Leo gave him a firm shake. “No. I need you to tell me. Because I can’t fathom of a world where I didn’t care about you.”

Don let out a sob but refused to look at Leo.

Leo didn’t let him go.

“Where did you go, Donatello?” he said. “Where. Did. You. Go.”

“The future,” Don said, it slipping out. “I went to the future.”

“The future?” Leo repeated. “That place…” he paused. “The Shredder had taken over, then?”

Don nodded.

“And we… didn’t care?” he asked, hazarding a guess.

“There was a resistance,” Don said, his voice hoarse.

“No, I mean—we didn’t care about… you?” Leo paused. “No. It was more than that, wasn’t it? Because there’s no way we wouldn’t care about you, unless we had stopped caring about each other.”

Don shuddered and another sob broke out, although he nodded.

Leo was silent for a moment. “The Shredder took over, we stopped caring about each other and…” he paused, clearly turning the little Don had said over in his mind. “…and we died, didn’t we? And you…” his voice softened. “And you saw it, didn’t you Donnie? Whatever happened, you saw it.”

It was like something that had been holding him back snapped. Like just the idea of someone else knowing, even if it was just a guess, was some sort of permission or release. Don let out another sob, and practically fell into his brother’s plastron. Leo moved his arms, quickly wrapping his arms around Donnie.

“Shh, little brother,” he said, rocking Donnie a bit, tucking his head under his chin. “Shh. I have you. I promise.”

Don let out another choked sob at that, and forcibly pushed his way back out of Leo’s arms. “But you broke it!” he said, accusingly. “You will break it!”

Leo looked at him, confused. “Break what?”

“That promise! You—” He stopped, swallowing.

“I’ll what?” Leo demanded, grabbing Don’s wrist again. “Donnie, I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“You won’t have me! Have us!” Donnie burst out. “I’ll—I’ll disappear! You won’t know what happened! No one will! And then the Shredder will invade the lair, and Splinter will die! And then you and Raph will fight, and you’ll stop caring and stop being there! Raph will, too! Mikey will go through losing his arm, alone! Raph will lose an eye, alone! You’ll go blind, alone! April will mourn Casey, alone! And then I’ll reappear, thirty years later, but it’ll be too late! None of you will care about each other until it’s too late! When you’ll all die because you followed my plan, and it’ll be all my fault!”

His voice echoed off of the ceiling and the walls, as if it was repeating that it was all Don’s fault.

Don slumped again, leaning against the wall. He’d thought all of his tears were gone, but apparently, they weren’t.

“…Its all my fault,” he said, brokenly. “I disappear and… and everything goes wrong. You all die. You all stop caring. Because of me. Because I left. And then because you listened to me, you all die. It’s all my fault.”

Leo reached up and cupped Don’s face, firmly turning his attention towards him. “No, it isn’t,” he said firmly.

Don’s eyes met his. “Yet it is,” he insisted. “I was there. I saw what happened. I—I watched you die. I saw your bodies. I—”

Leo’s hand squeezed Don’s wrist. “No,” he said. “Don, I… I can’t imagine what that was like. I don’t want to. But if we couldn’t hold together after you disappeared, then that’s not on you. Because I can’t imagine a world where you wouldn’t fight with everything you had to get back to us. Whatever happened, it wasn’t your fault. It was on us to keep it together, and we failed. Not you.”

Don trembled under his brother’s touch. “But I still killed you,” he said. “My plan—you listened—and you all died—”

Leo looked grim. “That’s always a possibility,” he said. “Splinter… Splinter’s gone over that with me many times. I hope I never face it. I wish you hadn’t. But Donnie, look at me.” He let go of Don’s wrist and brought that hand up, cupping both sides of Don’s face with his hands. “We are alive now. We are here. We’re whole, and we’re healthy. And now that we know this and know what might happen, we can be on guard for it. We can plan for it. And we can make sure that we never, ever, fall apart like that. We’ll change the future, and it won’t ever have to happen.”

Don stared at Leo, trembling, and another sob broke out of him.  This time, when Leo pulled him in closer, he didn’t resist, didn’t try to pull away. He just clung to his brother and sobbed. Leo tucked Don against him, holding him close. Instinctively he rocked Don a bit and, just as Don had done for him not so long ago, Leo leaned into his instincts and quietly churred, trying to tell Don in the most basic way they had that he was safe, and he was cared for. Don let it reverberate through him and let himself believe his big brother’s words.

They must have been out there a while, but Leo never rushed Don. He allowed him to calm on his own, doing his best to soothe him. He ran a gentle hand on Don’s head.

“Are you ready to go home now?” he asked softly.

Don hesitated, but then nodded.

“Good. Mikey’s probably got some soup waiting,” Leo said.

“…’m not hungry,” Don said.

Leo hummed. “Then you can have some tomorrow.”

Don was quiet for a moment. “…wasn’t certain,” he mumbled out.

“What?” Leo asked.

“Food wasn’t certain,” Don said. “I didn’t want to eat. I was too well-fed.”

Leo’s arms tightened on him. “Well food here is certain. And you’re going to eat. If not today, then tomorrow. Now, let’s get out of here.”

Leo stood, leveraging Don up with him. Don was practically spent, not an ounce of energy left in him, and he wavered on his feet. Leo was under his arm in a second steadying him, and they began the long walk home.

At some point in the walk, it all started to blur together, and Don started to lose track of where he was and which way they were going. He wasn’t even entirely sure when he ended up on Leo’s back, his brother carrying him as Don’s exhaustion took over. He didn’t even look up when they entered the lair, burying his face in Leo’s neck. Voices washed over him.

“—oing to be okay?—”

“—ust exhausted and—”

“—on the couch—”

“—needs time to process—”

“—blankets and warm—”

“—not gonna lea—”

He felt himself be shifted around, sat on something, felt someone settle in behind him. He cracked his eyes open. Mikey was sitting a mug of soup on the coffee table. Raph was shaking out some old blankets. Splinter was tucking one around Don and Leo.

Don felt arms tighten around him, and Leo’s voice in his ear. “Just rest, Donnie. I promise, we’ll all be here when you wake up.”

Don’s eyes looked at his family one more time, this time seeing them, and not what they had been in the future, and closed his eyes. He felt Splinter press his nose to his forehead, something the old rat had always done to show affection to his sons, especially when they were younger.

What he had seen—what he had done—still ate at him. But it seemed less all-encompassing now, and more like something that could, in time, be dealt with. But that was a tomorrow problem. Right now, he was going to lean against his big brother and let his churring soothe him to sleep.

[mappingthesky]

angst prompt idea: they get into a fight and nymphia says ‘just leave me alone’ in the height of emotions but doesn’t really mean it, and jane would actually leave thinking that’s what she wanted, making nymph cry even harder

basically miscommunication at its finest

i said leave (but all i really want is you)

It’s been building in the way that all breakdowns do.

Everything accumulates. The things that are all manageable in the moment - the insecurities, inconveniences, odd interactions and instances of discomfort - start to stack up, sticking to each other like snow, feather-light flakes amassing into unmovable drifts, and suddenly they’re an avalanche crashing down upon her. All at once it becomes unbearable - the weight of the world which Nymphia has fought so hard to remain soft in spite of.

It’s not the first time that Nymphia has hit a rough patch, but it’s the first time Jane is here to see it, and for some reason it’s making Nymphia spiral out, like swerving to avoid the ice and driving them right off the fucking road.

It could be because she’s used to dealing with this alone. That she’s used to everyone assuming she’s alright, used to disappearing until she can find it in herself to be sunny and bright once more. It could be that she’s scared to let Jane see her like this, scared that every day she remains sullen is doing irreversible damage to Jane’s vision of her, whatever it is, and replacing it with this - the slow blinking, soft-spoken, unsure, shell of a girl that Nymphia is lost somewhere inside of. It could be that Jane is being so sweet about it, that every one of her tireless attempts to lift Nymphia’s spirits so clearly comes from her heart, that she’s so obviously willing to do whatever it takes. It could be that, because with every one of Jane’s displays of affection meant to make her feel just a little bit better, Nymphia feels guiltier. More frustrated with herself and her inability to pull herself out of the hole she’s in. More afraid that it’s their grave. More afraid that she’s dug it herself.

Maybe that’s what’s scaring her into silence now, as Jane tries to will her to open. She’s been rattling off things they could do for a few minutes now, trying to coax Nymphia out of the apartment with the promise of a walk around the park, or a trip to the thrift store, or slurpees at 7-11. It’s been days of this, and Nymphia wants it to happen just as badly as Jane does - for something to light her up, to pull her from the place on the couch she’s content to spend the rest of her life wallowing in, for some miraculous gleam to pierce through the low-hanging fog that’s clouding her vision. Jane sighs, and Nymphia feels too heavy to hold.

It’s not Jane’s fault. She’s unfamiliar with the freezing over of Nymphia’s feelings, unprepared for her aloofness after the bright, sparkling fizz of the first few months. She’s doing the best she can with absolutely nothing to go off of. Jane asks for the second time if it’s anything she’s done, and Nymphia feels worse than she did the first. “It’s not you,” Nymphia says, and can’t quite admit the other half of it out of some newfound fear. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know why I feel this way. I don’t know how to stop it.

“You would tell me if it was me, right?” Jane asks and it’s like a knife, her voice a thin blade of worry. It cuts right through Nymphia - that Jane thinks she could be to blame, when Nymphia has created this hurt all on her own. The truth is that there’s nothing Jane could do that would hurt her quite like this, in the specific way that Nymphia hurts herself. She doesn’t know how to confess something like that, isn’t sure she would want to even if she did. All she can do is nod, and the hot tears spill over as the thoughts completely overwhelm her.

Jane’s oh, Nymphia is crushed with concern, and she moves to comfort her so instinctively that it makes Nymphia’s heart break all over again, because it’s Jane we’re talking about -Jane, the girl who was too shy to make the first move or say the first I love you or shed the first tear is now breaking through her own emotional barriers to comfort her, coming to Nymphia’s aid like it’s as natural as breathing, and Nymphia is the one that’s too emotionally tapped to know how to respond to that. She feels Jane wrapping around her even though she’s unsure, can feel her wondering how to go about putting her back together, and all Nymphia can manage in the face of Jane’s bravery is to cry into her hands.

“Baby,” Jane says, and Nymphia can hear it in her voice - the mounting desperation, the options she’s running out of. “What can I do?”

Nymphia doesn’t know why it happens - why she goes cold when she so desperately wants to be warm. Why she becomes so irritable, why she leans so hard into her roughness when she knows what she really is - patient, kind, loving. The truth is, she’s exhausted. It’s hard work to be so soft-hearted. Sometimes it’s too much to ask.

So all she does is shrug, mumbles that there’s nothing Jane can do. She hears the words come out of her mouth in slow motion, and doesn’t know why she can’t stop them, why she can’t seem to say this is enough. Just hold me until I stop feeling like this. Just see it through with me.

“Hey. Talk to me, Nymph,” Jane says, soft and urging, like she can sense the words Nymphia can’t seem to bring to the surface. It’s more of a plea than a command, but all Nymphia can hear is the frustration buried at the back of it - the part of Jane that surely must be exhausted from her unrewarded efforts, exhausted by Nymphia’s inability to keep it together.

“I can’t read your mind, baby,” Jane reaches out to brush Nymphia’s hair from her face like it’ll reveal something, like she’ll find some semblance of an answer there. “I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me,” Jane says as gently as possible, but it still sounds like a cue, like she’s begging for something to go off of.

“Okay,” Nymphia says, because she doesn’t have anything at all. “So go.”

She can feel it - the moment of impact. The moment Jane pauses, still mid-reach, still tucking Nymphia’s hair tenderly behind her ear. The moment lightning strikes, the moment the air goes electric.

Jane’s eyes go wide. She looks startled, dumbfounded, afraid to move. Her lips ghost open, breath visibly hitching in her throat. “What?”

”Go home,” Nymphia hears herself say, her voice a scrape against her own soul, a contradiction to everything she cares about. She sees Jane wince, watches as the reality sets in, and the right words feel farther away than ever.

“Nymphia,” Jane shakes her head, scrambling to find her footing amidst the shaking of the ground they’ve been standing on. “I don’t think I-“

”Just go, Jane,” Nymphia forces the words through her teeth and can’t seem to figure out why she sounds so angry.

She watches the pain rippling out across Jane’s face, the searing flare of her eyes. The way Jane watches and waits for Nymphia to change her mind, the way she looks like she’s going to reach out again but doesn’t, the way she awkwardly rises from the couch and looks around the room like she should have more to take with her. Like it’s wrong to leave without Nymphia beside her. The way she so obviously doesn’t know what to do with herself - whether to fight or to flee. The way she’s never sounded quite so meek as when she says goodbye and tells Nymphia to call her if she needs anything. The way she shuts the door so gently, like she’s trying to be silent, like she’s scared to upset Nymphia with something so insignificant as the click of the door even as she’s being shoved away. The way she pauses on the other side like she’s waiting for Nymphia to change her mind. The way that, when Nymphia doesn't move, her steps sound different as she walks the length of the hall - heavier, somehow. And then Nymphia knows why she’d sounded so angry - because she’s doing this to Jane. Because she’s doing this to herself.

There’s a few moments where she can bear the quiet, and then it all comes crashing down, because Nymphia is utterly, completely alone. Because she didn’t have to be.

-

Nymphia misses Jane from the moment she lets her slip away.

She spends most of the night sulking in it, recounting everything that led up to the moment when it all went wrong while the sun sets on her and what feels like everything else. She stays there until the room has gone dark, illuminated only by the far off glow of the hallway light, the blinking power button on the television, the electric green of the clock on the stove.

The night passes, and the sun rises whether she wants it to or not. She knows how this goes. She’s weathered this sort of storm before, knows that there’s nothing to do except feel her way through it. She’s done it before, but it’s not until she wakes that realizes she can’t do it again. Not in the same way she’s done it before. The ache is bigger now that she’s let someone in and shooed them away, and Nymphia desperately wants Jane to hold her hand through it, wants to go back in time and undo the thing that she thinks could do her in for the rest of forever.

She does it more times than she cares to admit - types out a long text message to Jane, deletes it, types a shorter one, deletes that too. The various iterations of the apology doesn’t matter. They all boil down to the same thing. i love you, i’m sorry, do you still love me?

They don’t matter, period, because Nymphia never sends them. She’s scared to see the damage she’s done, to inevitably take inventory of what survived her most recent storm. She hopes beyond belief that Jane will be the first to reach out, that she’ll magically know just what Nymphia needs in the way that all star-crossed lovers supposedly do, and is reminded fifteen times that afternoon that there is no such thing - that star crossed lovers are doomed from the start, that’s what makes them so. And just when Nymphia starts to think that Jane must truly hate her, that she must have already moved on and left Nymphia in the dust to chase after happier, more stable girls, she remembers that she’s the one who sent her away.

-

It’s on the third evening without Jane that Nymphia is forced to reemerge. She’s sat in the dark for longer than she cares to admit, has doom scrolled far past the point of finding anything interesting, and has effectively run out of anything remotely appetizing in the pantry. And so she rises, drags herself into the shower and lets the hot water remind her that there’s something inside her that can still be warmed. She pulls on something she can disappear inside of, sweeps her still-drying hair into a ponytail and slips on her headphones. When she emerges from her apartment building and onto the city streets, she’s reminded that there’s still a world out there - a world that will carry on with or without her, a world in which anything can happen. It doesn’t matter that she’s doing it on her own terms, replacing the noxious whirr of the world with her own personal soundscape - as she walks the seven minutes to the supermarket, she’s meeting that world halfway. It’s a win in itself.

She’s only feeling so brave on this particular trip, so she sweeps through the aisles quickly, eager to get home and label today a success, if only for her brief stint in human interaction. She plucks a few things off the shelves, whatever sounds remotely appetizing, and finds herself thinking of Jane; her insistence on satisfying Nymphia’s sweet tooth, on coming home with brown paper bags of flaky pastries or chocolate-covered confections or sweet, doughy balls of mochi. Missing Jane and all of the sweetness that comes with her, Nymphia rounds the corner, and nearly runs right into her.

Jane’s at the end of the aisle and reaching for a bag of those dark chocolates that she’s gotten Nymphia into, because of course she is. Her blonde hair is in a top knot and she’s dressed for comfort much like Nymphia is - leggings, a t-shirt, a cardigan slipping down her shoulder. She gasps ever so slightly, tugs the airpod from her left ear and looks back at Nymphia, a little awed and a little afraid. She looks so soft, so warm, so much like home that Nymphia just wants to curl into her, to give in to her completely.

“Hi,” Nymphia says and her voice wavers, because it’s the first word she’s spoken in two days, the first thing she’s said since she sent Jane away.

If the last Nymphia saw of her was Jane’s complete and total collapse, this is exactly the opposite. Jane’s eyes flash, her chest fills, and Nymphia wants to pour into her again and again. “Hi,” she says, and it’s almost a whisper, almost a smile on her lips.

Nymphia looks at Jane and doesn’t know where to start. There’s a breathlessness between them, a brink that they stand on together. Somewhere between uncertainty and sureness. Nymphia looks at Jane and knows where she wants to end.

Her eyes fall to the bouquet of sunflowers that peek out of Jane’s basket, pretty and plastic-wrapped. Nymphia has a horrible, gut-wrenching thought. Jane interrupts it.

”I, um,” Jane stammers, looking down and shaking her head at herself, mouth closing momentarily, a little ashamed of herself but admitting everything anyways. It’s a little sad, somehow still endearing. “I was gonna drop them off for you,” she shuffles her feet, avoiding eye contact. “And some other stuff,” she says, and Nymphia notices the things at the bottom of the basket. All of Nymphia’s favorites: the instant noodles, the hot chips, the loose leaf teas that Nymphia can never justify splurging on, and the strawberry bubblegum, and the dark chocolates with chili that Jane had been reaching for (because of course she did).

“Sorry. If that’s weird,” Jane sputters in the way Nymphia knows she does when she’s nervous. “I was going to call you. Or text. Um. But I didn’t-I didn’t know if you wanted to talk.”

“It’s not weird,” Nymphia blurts out, and Jane’s head snaps up. “It’s nice,” Nymphia hears herself say, but it’s so much more than that. “I wanted to text you.”

Jane blinks through the disbelief, and Nymphia wonders for the hundredth time what the last forty-eight hours have been like for Jane. Whether she spent them hoping beyond hope in the same way that Nymphia had. She thinks maybe she did, because:

“You did?”

It’s the shyest Nymphia has seen Jane since the very start, when both of them were so unsure and so obviously smitten in the way that women who fall for each other so often are: both so in love and so unwilling to believe that it could be possible.

”Yeah.” Nymphia suddenly feels like she could cry, and is suddenly aware that she’s feeling again. All at once she’s swept up in the exhilarating thrill of risking it all, of surrendering so completely to someone else. “I wanted to text as soon as you left.”

Jane’s breath sort of hitches and the look in her eye is so many things at once -hope, fear, relief, worry. They open their mouths at the same time, both start with, “I didn’t-”, both sort of gasp and start to laugh at each other, and it’s the best sound in the world, because Nymphia didn’t know if she could ever laugh again, if she’d ever hear that sound she loves so much - Jane laughing just for her.

“You go first,” Jane nods, and she could be giving Nymphia a second chance, except she doesn’t quite have to. Nymphia could never fail her, would never need a second chance. Jane would never write her off in the first place, would keep choosing her time and time again.

“I didn’t want you to go,” Nymphia says, because she wants to be honest with Jane; she feels that she owes her that much. So she speaks softly, slowly, making sure that every word is as close to what she means as possible. “I don’t know why I told you to leave. I was scared, I guess. I’m sorry.”

Jane shakes her head, “I didn’t want to go, Nymphia, I swear. I only did because I thought that’s what you wanted.”

”I know. I thought that’s what I wanted too.” Nymphia’s bottom lip is curling out and her eyes are starting to mist and she’s in the middle of a fucking supermarket. “But it’s not.”

Jane swallows. “No?”

“No,” Nymphia shakes her head, can barely get the words out without choking up, but she’s determined. She wants to. She doesn’t care who knows, just as long as Jane does. “I want you there with me.”

Through the first of the tears that are welling up in her eyes, Nymphia can see Jane resisting the impulse to reach for her, just barely holding herself back long enough to ask. “Can I-”

Nymphia sputters, half-laughing. “Please.”

This is the part that makes all the work of letting Jane in worth it - the part where Nymphia is completely enveloped by her, slotting so perfectly into place against her, because she isn’t meant to be alone. She’s meant to be with her. They aren’t star-crossed lovers destined for some ultimate doom, and they aren’t the stars of some great tragedy. They’re something so much simpler. Something so much better. They’re just each other’s people.

“Are you okay?” Jane says against her hair, not daring to let go, not even wanting to, because this is all she’s wanted from the start - to know what to do.

”I will be,” Nymphia squeezes tighter, eyes shut, savoring her return to safety. “Are you okay?”

”Yeah,” Jane says, and Nymphia can hear her smiling. “I think I will be too.”

[thelovelylolly]

Hello, dear! I saw your prompts for Valentine’s Day and if it’s possible I thought about number 3 (“god, you always make me blush so damn much.”) with Billy Hargrove, where he is always flirting with the reader and teasing… And it isn’t relevant but if it’s okay maybe the reader be plus size, since there aren’t many fics with it. I’m terrible at describing things especially in English, so sorry if it’s a little confuse

Thank you 💙

Makin' Me Blush

Summary: He gets under your skin, but you love it Warnings: reader is described to be curvier, ooc billy bc thats the only way i write him lol Word Count: 602 Notes: good lord i havent written for billy in a WHILE so here we go (i hope u enjoy love <3)

You met Billy on his first day at Hawkins High. He was in one of your classes and sat behind you. Your teacher assigned you to catch him up and help him with the class, and that led to your friendship with him. Though, he toed the line between friends and more.

He constantly teased you and flirted with you, something you tried to brush off. You had learned when you were younger that most boys didn't really like you, usually using you as a bet or prank. You weren't "pretty" like the other girls that would get asked out on dates, and you had come to terms with that.

You were beautiful, you knew that, but you were just meant to be with someone outside of Hawkins.

Billy's flirting didn't really affect you, just making you blush. You always replied with some flirting or a making jab at him.

What you didn't know was Billy really liked you. His flirting wasn't a joke or anything like that. He wanted to be around you, he wanted to hear your voice and laughter, he wanted to be with you. But he couldn't communicate it easily, having grown up in a household that didn't give him good examples of love.

So, he just flirted with you and teased you, hoping that you would catch on.

It took a while, but one day, you and Billy were walking around Hawkins. You didn't have a specific destination, you two just wanted to walk and talk together.

Since you weren't going anywhere special, you threw on your favorite top and jeans with your old converse. You didn't think you looked any different than usual, but to Billy, you looked gorgeous no matter what you were wearing.

As you two walked down the street, Billy saw a car about to pass by you two. He gently put his hands on your waist and moved you around so he was between you and street. It was a sweet yet simple gesture, and had your face heating up.

"God, you always make me blush so damn much," you mumbled, hiding your face in your hands.

"What was that?" He asked. Both of you slowed to a stop and turned to each other.

"Nothing, just...you're always making me blush. Why?" You replied, your hands slipping into your pockets as you looked at your shoes.

"Isn't it obvious?" He tilted your face up with his finger, making you look at him as he leaned in closer. "I really, really like you, sweetheart."

Your eyes widened as a smile pulled at your lips. "You...like me? T-this isn't some joke?"

"Why would I ever joke about this?"

"Well..." You trailed off, hoping he could put two and two together.

"Oh..." He said, his hands going to your sides and running up and down your curves. "They're all dumbasses to pass on a smart, funny, beautiful girl like you."

He leaned in, but you were the one to close the gap. You could feel him smile against your lips as his hands wrapped around to your back, pulling you closer. You arms wrapped around his neck, one of your hands getting lost in his curls. You couldn't think of anything else in that moment, only how good of a kisser Billy Hargrove was.

When you pulled away, you two were breathless. Still, Billy smiled at you and, if you already weren't blushing enough, you nearly melted under his love filled gaze.

"You're cute when you blush," he said.

You breathlessly laughed, a smile settling on your face.

"I hope you keep making me blush, then."

[gavisuntiedboot]

Level 8000 (Gavi x Reader)

28 day writing prompt challenge - prompts are here

Day 6: Meeting for the first time

"Alright I'm going to get onto an online server. No one try to reach me for the next several hours."

Your roommates laughed at the warning as you slipped your headset on. You adjusted the ears, bringing the mic over your mouth, and settled back into the couch. Your hoodie and sweats swamped your form, providing maximum comfort for your gaming session. Were you a fantastic gamer? No. But had you fixated on two or three games for long enough to get good at specifically those games? Yes, yes you did. One of those games was FIFA. You had played all the events throughout the World Cup, in between the early morning matches, and late at night when your 7pm Redbull kept you up until the early hours.

This binge playing over your winter break, as well as the game events, lead to you having a crazy stacked team. You had a super high Neymar as your front man, meaning that as long as you got the ball in the last 1/3 of the field, you were almost guaranteed to score. When all your real life friends had grown tired of you winning 7-0, you turned to PS online. People on the internet were ruthless. You played against stacked teams, losing your first dozen matches. But as you practiced and upgraded your players (as well as googling some good team formations), you started to win. Your win-loss ratio improved immensely with the addition of one piece of equipment: headphones with a mic. You started to join the voice chat, and the sound of a woman sent these poor gamer boys into a frenzy, allowing you to score two goals before they could recover.

Now it was your escape. You loved the power of overwhelming men just by saying "good luck", and the profanities that followed when you won. Tonight was no different. You had already beaten four different whiny men, and had tied a game with another girl on the voice chat, who practically squealed with delight when she heard the sound of your voice. Now it was time for match number 6 of the night, and you were sufficiently warmed up, ready to destroy.

[Opponent] - 6avira30

You smiled, thinking to yourself 'Awe, a Gavi fanboy. I wonder if he has him in midfield." The audio connected, and you heard a couple different male voices yell at each other in Spanish.

"Hello?" You said softly into the mic. Couldn't have them think you were anything other than a soft uwu girl using her boyfriend's account. The voices stopped suddenly, with a long pause before the reply: "Are you a girl?" You laughed at the question. It was not the first time you had gotten it, but the utter confusion in the boy's voice caught you off guard. "Yeah, I am. Hurry up and lock in your team so we can start the match." "Ay, be patient. My great strategic mind needs time to work."

You groaned into the mic. These "strategists" often were the most annoying people to play with, and often the one calling you a cheater or a bot or saying that your "man" was playing while you were on the mic. You locked in the same team you always used, and waited for the great mastermind to lock in his squad. The match began a minute later, and you were not surprised to see it was mostly Barca players, old and new.

"Wow a Xavi-Iniesta midfield. It's been a minute since I've seen that." You said, trying to get the ball across the center line.

"They're the best duo in the world. Everyone should have them in the middle." The boy replied, harshly attacking all your midfielders. It had been a while since you encountered someone who played this aggressively, but it was interesting enough to get you to sit up straight.

"Really? Given your tag, I thought you would have Pedri and Gavi in the middle."

The boy got quiet at this, the statement clearly catching him off guard. It was the lapse in focus that you needed, getting the ball to your super-charged Neymar, and slamming a goal in from outside the box.

"What the actual fuck was that?" A yell came in from the other side. You laughed freely now. This was a fun match. You were being challenged in the middle of the field, really having your defense tested. The boy kept you entertained online, asking all the typical questions about how you got so good. The match ended 3-1 to you, and you were about to say goodbye when a notification popped up on your screen.

[6avira30] - Rematch Requested

"You want to play against me again? One loss wasn't enough?"

"I'm not going to lose again. I just have to recalibrate the squad."

You continued playing against the same opponent for 7 or 8 matches in a row, the conversation moving from the game to your lives.

"So you've never been to a football match in person? How is that possible? You live in Barcelona!"

"I'm a university student who is struggling to pay my rent. I don't have the time or money to buy tickets. Well, at least the tickets that I want."

"Well, what tickets do you want?"

"I want the ones that are right up on the field, so at the end of the game I can ask Lewy for his shirt at the end?"

"Lewandowski? Not one of the younger players?"

"Nah, everyone is always yelling for Gavi's shirt. And while it would be nice to see Gavi or Pedri shirtless, I feel like if I was ever lucky enough to get one of their shirts, my life would be in danger. So I would rather get a shift from DILF Lewy."

A loud laugh came in through your headphones. The boy yelled at his friend in the room, "She just called Robert a DILF."

At the end of the match (a 2-1 win for you), it was time to log off. You informed your online partner, bidding him a good night.

"Wait wait, before you get off, could you send your number in the chat? It's fine if not but I'd really like to talk to you again."

"My number? Why not just my Instagram?"

"I... Can't really follow you on Instagram. It's kind of complicated."

You sent him your number and logged off, going to bed with a stupid smile on your face. A boy had asked for your number. Could he be a weirdo in his mom's basement? Absolutely. But you could find that out later.

You woke up to a text that read: Hope you slept well - Lindo from PS Live. The stupid smile stuck to your face all day. For the next two weeks, you texted this boy almost every waking moment. You could not get enough of him, despite the fact that you couldn't get him to tell you his name.

[PS Live Boy]: Want to have coffee with me tomorrow?

The text set the butterflies in your stomach free, the fluttering feeling spreading to every cell in your body. You has said yes embarrassingly fast. He texted you the location: a pretty upscale coffee shop in the shopping district. Like 17 euro black coffee upscale. You now jumped up and down like a giddy school girl - PS Live boy had money.

You walked into the place, the hostess looking over your skirt and sweater with a sickly sweet smile, asking who you were supposed to be there with. PS Live boy had left the table under your name as to maintain his shroud of mystery. You sat at the table, reapplying your lip gloss and checking your hair in the camera of your phone.

[PS Live boy]: you can't freak out when you see me

[PS Live boy]: Because then I would have to leave and block your number

[PS Live boy]: and file a restraining order. and i dont want to do that

You let out a nervous breath, smiling at your screen. Usually when men said not to freak out, it was because they were ugly. The hostess that didn’t like you walked over to the table again, closely followed by someone in a hoodie, hood pulled up to cover their face. She pulled out a chair, and your PS Live boy sat in front of you. He thanked the hostess, before turning back you you and pulling his hood off.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

Gavi looked at you with a cheeky smile playing on his lips. You were overwhelmed. Pablo mf Gavi had met you on PS live and liked you, asked for you number, and was now here on a date with you.

“Three weeks of being mysterious was worth the look on your face.”

“As Spain’s youngest player on the national team, how are you so shit at FIFA?”

“Okay okay okay, let’s go back to you being surprised and not talk about me getting my ass kicked 8 times in a row. Pedri still makes fun of me?”

“Dang Pedri was there? I should’ve asked for his number instead.”

“You have me leveled up to like 8000 in FIFA. I know you want to be here with me.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A/N: this was supposed to be done last night but I fell asleep lol. I love the idea of Gavi being kinda cheeky and self confident. Most talented young boys are (because society inflates their egos). Anyways, see y’all later tonight w day 7!!

[cabezadeperro]

oooooooh I’m so excited to catch you open to prompts!

I’d love to see jangobi + “I love you so much it terrifies me” (from this post in your inspo tag: https://www.tumblr.com/cabezadeperro/718494931255263232) if that happens to spark anything 😁

hello!!!!

established relationship, vaguely canon compliant/canon divergent. T, ~830w.

---

Obi-Wan pauses half-way to the laundry room, blankets piled high in his arms. The cotton is cool and smooth against his cheek, and the bedclothes are heavy and uncomfortable to hold. He resettles his arms around them, clumsily trying his best to accommodate the weight and the shape, and breathes in.

It’s weak, but it’s still there. His soap and shampoo, his aftershave, the specific brand of blaster oil he uses on his weapons. Obi-Wan closes his eyes, perfectly aware of the fact that he’s standing in the middle of the ship’s corridor with his face buried in a pile of dirty laundry, and not quite managing to care. 

Jango just left. He spent a day, two days, two days, three days and two nights. They spent most of that time together, arguing about everything and nothing at all, talking around all of Jango’s many secrets, but they also shared a bunk, and now he’s gone again and Obi-Wan doesn’t know when—if—he’ll ever see Jango again, and the knowledge has just begun to sink in.  

Obi-Wan has cared about people before. He wants to believe it’s always been like this, that he has always been like this: feeling too much, too strongly, to the point of distraction. But now the longing hits him like a wave, and he finds himself inhaling two nights of shared sweat, and his feet feel like they’re rooted to the shitty metal sheeting of the ship’s floors, and he wants nothing more than to travel back in time to that first morning, to two mornings ago.

He makes his way to the laundry space tucked in a corner of the galley and dunks everything into the old sonic washer. He has to jiggle the cover in place, and then he’s watching his own fingers moving across buttons, and the small room floods with the rattling of the machine. 

He could call him. They’ve never been the kind of people who call each other—too dangerous, too busy, too honest—but he could call Jango, and Jango would reply, and he might even be happy to hear Obi-Wan’s voice, to talk to Obi-Wan or argue with him or just listen to him ramble. Obi-Wan can picture the bemused expression on Jango’s face, that one he no longer knows or wants to hide, half-way between charmed and amused, and Obi-Wan should know better but this happened to him anyway and now and then he doesn’t quite know how to deal with any of it, or if he wants to. 

But he could call Jango, and he’d pick up his comm, and he might be annoyed or baffled or rattled or all at once, but he’d listen. Obi-Wan’s felt him reach out, hands still and eyes hot and something coming to life from behind his mental shields, blooming and reaching out.

It scares him: Obi-Wan knows very well that Jango has made it as long as he has by not caring, by keeping his soft parts well-protected. Obi-Wan has tasted his fear in his dreams and in his nightmares, and he’s felt it, well-hidden as it is behind Jango’s teeth and under his breastbone.

Anakin’s in the cockpit, nominally keeping an eye on the nav computer, in reality doing Force knows what. He’s occupied and happy about it, his usually buzzing mind as still as it gets. 

He thinks he knows everything there is to know about Jango and Obi-Wan: he’s met some of Obi-Wan’s previous liaisons, and he knows what to expect. He left them the main bunk room on the upper deck and slept in one of the crew bunks on the hold, and he complained about it all the while, but he didn’t care that much.

Obi-Wan waits until the washer’s done and then he takes out the clean bedclothes and makes the bed again. They smell of nothing. Afterwards, he sits down on the thin mattress and breathes out, closing his eyes. It’s a small, narrow space. The first night they slept there together, Obi-Wan woke up in the middle of the night cycle, freezing, half-hanging from the bunk bed, Jango hogging all the blankets and curled around himself, his back tucked against the wall. Obi-Wan can still feel him in the room—his Force signature is well-known, cold and sweet like snow or metal or cooling blood on the back of Obi-Wan’s tongue. 

His comm unit is in his trouser pocket. It digs into the meat of his thigh a bit, and Obi-Wan shifts on the mattress until it doesn’t. He closes his eyes and reaches out as far as his mind will go, the galaxy all around their Order-issued shuttle crowded and very empty at once. Jango’s there, one of many little lights, small and getting smaller. Obi-Wan can’t see him or touch him, but he can feel him, like the shadow of a faraway star, and it used to be enough, but knowing him has changed Obi-Wan, and now it’s not.

[sitp-recs]

HP Rec Fest, Day 28

I’ve been reccing underrated fics since this blog was created and so I thought “there’s no easier @hprecfest prompt than this one” lol famous last words, this post took me ages to prepare 😂 I was initially overwhelmed by the amount of fics that came to mind, and going through my bookmarks and old recs only made it worse. How was I supposed to shortlist?? In the end I gave up and decided to rec 2 Drarry fics + 2 rare pairs. I could have included so many more but I really didn’t want this to become a tl;dr post and these rec blurbs are already going out of control, so here we go!

Day 28) an under-rated fic:

Drarry

In Dreams by @moonflower-rose (E, 38k)

Harry wasn't expecting to ever see Draco Malfoy again. He also wasn't expecting to walk into a political conspiracy that morning either, but apparently that's exactly what the day has in store for him.

I’ve screamed quite a few times about this fic (see my rec here) and every time I do it’s in the hopes that more folks will stop whatever they’re doing and go feast on this. not only a delicious and intriguing case fic with Rosie’s trademark epic dialogue and superb sense of humour, this also wins the award of best fic opening I have ever read. the way I gasped at chapter one and am forever haunted by its utterly devastating ending oh my god!!! my heart belongs to this gritty Harry, and the slow burn is masterfully crafted within the urgency of their teamwork to solve the mystery combining comfort, grief and hope in a thrilling, poignant and perfectly paced adventure. plus, the emotional payoff is chef’s kiss, honestly I cannot recommend this enough!

Survival of the Species by @romaine2424 (E, 47k)

Draco approaches Harry on the 9 ¾ platform, after their sons have boarded the Hogwarts Express, and invites him over for tea. The discussion they have leads them on an adventure that neither could have expected. There be dragons! HPDH compliant but before any other canon info had been released.

considering this masterpiece was published back in 2007 I think I’m allowed to say this is definitely a formative story when it comes to the creature genre, more specifically Veela fic. I first read this a couple years ago and my jaw legit dropped at the amount of world-building and carefully researched lore that went into this. so detailed and intricate and different from everything I’ve seen before or since, I was truly fascinated and couldn’t stop reading. kudos to the amazing slow burn covering years of their struggles stuck together in a dragon cave and having to rely on each other to survive. I loved seeing the hardships and how they genuinely came to care for each other, definitely one of the most moving and convincing Veela love stories I’ve read in the fandom.

Rare pair

With a Look by earlybloomingparentheses (Ginny + Deamus, E, 5k)

Now, twenty years old and done with boys and looking forward very much to putting her hand down some lucky girl’s shirt later this evening, Ginny looks at Dean Thomas’s gold-painted fingernails and feels heat pool between her legs.

I think about this fic every now and then - such a sensitive, thought-provoking and beautiful homage to the 🏳️‍🌈 community. the visceral and contemplative tone takes it beyond your regular PWP, and I’ve rarely seen gender and queerness explored quite like this. seeing Ginny figuring out and owning her identify is mesmerizing. her voice is powerful, sexy, earnest and articulates so many complex and layered feelings - I was particularly moved by the inner turmoil of not looking “queer enough”. I’m sure this fic will be eye-opening and comforting to so many people out there, and that’s why I never cease to rec it. an intimate character study, a sinfully hot and self-indulgent threesome but above anything, a poignant love letter to the queer community.

Passion, Patents, and Pen Pals at the Ministry by @violetclarity and @yrfrndfrnkly, art by @anaxandria-writes and @veelawings (Hermione/Pansy, T, 32k)

After an extremely ill-timed lovers'-tiff-turned-food-fight at the Ministry leaves her less one boyfriend and suspended without pay for six months, Hermione pleads for some position–anything–to fill her days until her suspension is up. The good news is, her temporary position in the Magical Games & Sports's Ludicrous Patents office is just down the corridor from Harry's office in General Inquiries. The bad news is Harry's officemate is Pansy Parkinson, the Ministry's operations are shockingly outdated, and every altercation between Hermione and Pansy winds up a headline in MoM's internal rogue gossip zine, Hot Goss.

rivals to secret pen pals to lovers yes please?? this hilarious Pansmione is a ship triumph and yet criminally underrated. I had a blast getting into the world of Ministry gossip & politics, and immediately fell in love with all the characters, l especially with this lovely meddling Harry. it’s SO MUCH FUN to watch poor him (and Blaise omg what a duo) in the middle of a ladies’ tug of war. I’m impressed by the amount of world-building especially around their workplace, not to mention all the side interactions and the fun, organic slow burn. I love this take on identity porn with tons of banter and Pansy and Mione connecting through their shared worldview and feminist principles, such a power couple ✊🏼 the mix of semi-epistolary, witty dialogue, dorky meddling friends and mild angst make for peak entertaining, I laughed non-stop and cheered so bad for them. femslash ftw!!!

[fanaticsnail]

My work got pushed back a couple hours so I got to read part 3 and it was Worth the Wait. (Warning; Long.)

First of all, an overall review; I love the way you portrayed how much they (reader and Sanji) love each other. It's easy and totally understandable to rely on the fact that people reading fanfiction are fans and therefore already have an existing love for the characters. But I feel like I could read this without knowing anything and immediately love it. If I were totally knew to your blog and had never heard of one piece I wouldn't even need to read the series establishing the characters and their chemistry and setting it up to be rooting for these two (although I still would want to bc the writing and story is so good). The characters personalities and their chemistry are already existant and palpable. And as a part of a series (specifically the finale) it stands up. There's still an element of them not yet being together and getting set up, but it's less stakes and angst and it feels like a natural progression instead of like it's drawing it out unnecessarily for drama. The start of this part has just enough closure and sweetness that we know they like eachother so we don't have to sweat or stress about that. You have rewarding our reading every step of the way but left enough room for anticipation to build for HOW they get together at the end and the main event. The romance hooks us because we know there's still more to come.

Okay, now a play-by-play;

"“-I don’t get all those fancy words,” he shrugged with a broad smile, “but if you’re asking for us to stay here a bit longer to have Sanji get better, that sounds good enough to me.”" - your honour I love him.

"As you began to dive your hands below the water once more, you felt two forearms lace themselves around your shoulders and a warm chin and cheek nuzzle against the left-hand side of your neck." - the domesticity!!! The sweet warmth! I feel like I'm feeling the sun on my face and breathing fresh air the morning after it rains and the smells are about! I love how genuine you make characters, beyond just the touching but that's a good example. If we're using these fics to escape obviously I want to escape to a world where someone is unashamed of their love and not embarassed to show it to you. The idea that just because a character is badass and cool then they have to stay being badass and untouchable in their coolness is so one dimensional and boring characterisation, and often pretty ooc for certain characters! I've said it before in many different ways but your writing breaths life into these characters in a way that allows us to immerse ourselves and it's so welcoming

"His drowsy and charming smile clung to his lips as he gazed into your eyes baring nothing but adoration into your orbs." - idk what it is about this sentence but I can vividly picture this EXACTLY, like I can see Taz/Sanji making this exact face.

"He whined, a pout falling to form against his lips.

“Juste un petit bisou?” he asked you with a shaken breath, a small whimper pulling within his throat. (Just a small kiss?)." - barking. Foaming at the mouth. Chewing him up and shaking him viciously like a chew toy. I love it when men whimper.

"A small raspy growl left fled from his throat" <- I think this is a typo? Just letting you know

"“-please,” his words halted your steps, prompting you to turn towards him, “please, I’ll behave.” "

"My love," - what if I laid on the train tracks. What then

"You brought your lips up to graze his cheek, almost gracing his clean-shaven cheek with a kiss as you drew it towards his ear; “you’ll need to be for what I have planned for you. I want you writhing,” your lips caressed the lobe of his ear, “I want you breathless,” your tongue flicked the shell of his helix, feeling his breath hitch in his throat again.

“I want you gasping for air beneath me; groaning for me, pleading for me,” you bore your teeth, collecting the corner of his jaw in a small nip; “it’s not you that’s the problem, love, it’s me.” " - I want to make him cry and beg and then wipe his tears and give him everything he asked for and more

Also, parallels to part 2? (“So when I take you into my arms to completely ravish you, worship you with my body,” he looked at you through the corner of his eyes, “I get to determine exactly how long I need to feel you against me.”) which is also called back to when he says "I wanted to worship you"? You naughty minx you

When he snaps???? I love it when characters get so desparate they become depraved like an animal

I don't want to put too much of the NSFW stuff here because I don't know what you can put under the reader more and I don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't read yet.

I love his mixture of French and English

His begging? Some men were born to beg and lord if he isn't one of them

“P-Please,” he struggled against his own words to successfully articulate his desires, “please I need you. I need you so much. Please let me see you. Let me make love to you. L-let me bury myself into you. I can’t h-hold on, please-.” and “not like this, not like this.” - lord have mercy cause I am not going to heaven. He deserves so much good kind tenderness and I wanna give it to him but at the same time I desparately wanna make him cry and scream and moan and beg more

"tracing his fingertips against your own as you pressed feather-light kisses against his forearms; smiling against his muscles as he willed himself the courage to face you." And "Continuing to trail kisses further up to kneel before you," - Gomez Addams vibes

"“My darling,” you whispered while drawing his face away from your glistening core, “if you’re so desperate to bury your pretty cock into something, I have something better than the mattress.”" - first of all, the dialogue in this is *chefs kiss* perfection. Second of all; I just know that when he got pulled away there was a string on his tongue that snapped and fell on his chin and looked like drool and he lapped that shit up with his piercing and the wetness glinting in the light

He definitely smashed that timer to smithereens after that I know he got a taste and couldn't bare to look back to limiting himself ever again.

The way I be kicking and shrieking always at your notes, @sexc-snail. I had to hide and perch myself atop my kitchen counter to get to the high ground like some feral cat.

Thank you for pointing out typos. I need to get myself a beta reader 🤦‍♀️. I'll usually come back after a few days and read my writing like: "Oh crap: typo, spelling error, double word, not formatted correctly, doesn't make sense" and doctor my fics after it's been read, commented on and shared 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️.

The way you've done a play by play of my writing, I so appreciate it. I'm all like:

Again, writing a begging, pleading, desperate mess of a strong (but also very domesticated in this case) male lead is my favourite thing at the moment. I love it, truly.

Also, having readers "picking up what I'm putting down" is so, so fun for me.

I'm glad you enjoyed the fic and the series so much. I thoroughly enjoyed writing it.

Joined Tumblr to write fluff, @sordidmusings encouraged me to join in on writing for the smut and apparently it's a part of my character now; and we're all the better and worse for it 💀.

[pure-ablution]

Do you have any advice for creating an online dating profile?

I’ve never used apps myself . . .

... but I do know how to put together a good profile! I’ve helped out several girlfriends with their profiles, and this is the very scientific formula that seems to get best results.

The Bio

You want to keep things short, sweet, and to the point. Your bio can’t be too long; it needs to be playful, but still make your intentions clear. If you’re using Hinge, then you’ll have multiple questions to choose from, and I recommend doing a bit of research around this and reading a few other Hinge-specific guides before you start. If you have the option for a voice prompt, use it, and make sure that you use it wisely—your voice matters just as much as what you say, and it should fit in with and enhance the overall vibe of your profile. Don’t overthink the bio, the photos are the most important part, but you do want to make sure that everything is cohesive.

The Photos

The photos are the most important part of your profile. Men are visual creatures and, honestly? I don’t think many people download dating apps because they appreciate the literary masterpiece that is the bio. You want to max out your photo count—I’m going to give advice for 6 photos, but adjust to the limits of whichever app you’re using.

The main photo

This is the first photo on your profile, and you want it to be your best one. My friends have used these photos as models for their own, and it always works a treat. There’s something about a backless or low-backed dress, looking over your shoulder, and sitting out in nature that just works wonders, and I’d definitely recommend using these photos as inspiration for your own shot. You want to be smiling softly, looking invitingly back at the camera, maybe brushing your hair behind your ear—the main focus of the photo should be on how contented and glowing you look.

The conversation starter

This is a photo that you want to have a crazy story behind it, and it needs to look fun and approachable. Most men will choose this photo as the one to start your conversation, so make sure you have something to say about it. It can be that time you travelled out to Mongolia in a banged-up Toyota, or that time you helped a cow give birth, but it needs to be fun and funny. You can really put anything here, and a lot of my girlfriends use old travel pictures or photos from our uni antics, but I’d suggest keeping it PG and avoiding anything that looks distinctly illegal or promiscuous—it needs to be a kind of wholesome fun.

A photo with the girls

A photo with the girls is a must, and I strongly suggest that you all agree to meet up and take the ‘the girls’ photo at some point and each use it on your own profile. It shows that you have friends, a social life beyond dating, and perhaps most importantly, your friends might be open to dating his friends. I’d recommend a group photo of around 4–6, all girls, and a reasonably natural, if not candid, shot at a cute event like brunch or a craft morning. It helps if you’re all roughly the same ‘level’ of beauty but different ‘types’, if that makes sense, so that nobody is outshining the others and none of you can be mixed up with someone else.

The other conversation starter

This is where you put in the slightly more cultured photo. It can be at a museum or a gallery, or a shot of you partaking in one of your hobbies, but it needs to be interesting and show you at your most passionate. Your eyes need to invite him to ask more—and, just to warn you, he will ask. We take photos at the museum near us, in front of our favourite paintings or statues, and quite literally have a short prepared analysis ready, in case he asks. You can’t be a phony on this one, you need to genuinely know what you’re talking about, so pick what you love and prep just in case.

A fancy event

I’ve put photos of Audrey Hepburn here because I can’t find anything on Pinterest that gives me what I want. This could be just a ‘my uni’ thing, but where I am, you need a black tie (or preferably white tie) photo. Just the one, and it doesn’t have to be over-the-top, but he needs to be able to visualise you in that environment and know that you’d slot right in. I like the photo on the left especially, and we’ve staged quite a few copies with the girls, because it shows you at your most sparkling, social self, and leaves him wondering who your conversation partner might be.

The spoilt princess

This is totally the Slavic girl in me coming out, but I firmly believe that you need a bouquet shot in your profile. It’s not tacky (usually—avoid those huge bouquets of 100 red roses!) and it can be as simple or as fancy as you like, but it shows you off and tells him instantly your expectations as a potential date, without being entitled about it. I love the bouquet shot and I think it can be done so well, it’s miles better than any equivalent with a fancy cocktail or whatever, and it can be played off totally innocently if need be.

[ashwin-the-artless]

Cities

Here's a post that strongly intersects with @your-tutor-abacus' blog, but I think I'll write about generics and let it reference this post when it goes to write about specifics.

The cities on the Sunspot (`etekeyerrinwuf) are build very differently than most cities on Earth (or, at least U.S. cities) and there are good reasons for this.

We all tend to take for granted what we've grown up with, so when we write about living and doing things in the cities where we've grown up, we'll tend to reference metropolitan civil structures without explaining them. Unless the story has a moment that specifically deals with why those structures exist, then we might get introspective an analyze them.

But, when you gone from one culture to an alien one, it absolutely prompts analysis and you can find yourself obsessed with it for a while, so I'm claiming this subject.

What are Sunspot cities like?

Unlike Earth cities, which have mostly grown up naturally around various human settlements that gathered around important resources, Sunspot cities were designed from the the ground up deliberately.

Some Earth cities were created in similar ways, especially the colonial ones. A country will pick a spot where it wants a city and hire a bunch of professionals (or politicians) to socially engineer the city to meet some sort of national ideal and to practice social engineering in the process.

There are still some real fundamental differences between that and what happened when the Sunspot was built.

Unlike any place on Earth, or the Earth itself, the Sunspot is a constructed world, built literally from the ground up (or inward) to be a safe place for its inhabitants to exist with sufficient resources for everyone.

It's a spaceship, not a planet, even though it's big enough to have multiple cities in it, and a whole ecosystem of plants and animals. And it had to be designed to be indefinitely sustainable.

Part of that was, in contrast to its predecessor ship, was making sure that every living thing on the ship (including every person) had equal access to resources in order to minimize conflict.

So, wherever you might live on the Sunspot, ports in the floor and/or ceiling deliver everything you could possibly need to thrive there.

You, as a living being with a biological vessel, get an allotment of ship resources, and it's probably more than you'll ever use, because the population is kept low enough to do that (which is a dire concern on a generational starship, but a false one on Earth, really).

This means that neighborhoods, communities, and cities are not built around your typical sets of resources. In fact, Belowdecks, they aren't built around any resources.

Abovedecks, in the Garden, the primary resource considered is psychological. Each city is built in an area of the Garden where the environment may best fit the psychological needs of a predicted portion of the population.

So, there are cities in the plains, the mountains, the forests, the shorelines, near rivers, and under the water to create a wide range of possible living conditions and psychological amenities.

But, besides that, the organization of neighborhoods and specialized buildings is totally different than Earthlings may be used to.

Because, the one resource that the ship systems cannot control, just by virtue of the two Living Rights, are people. Community.

But community can be encouraged and accommodated.

So, all quarters and structures Belowdecks are modular and reconfigurable. Designed so that wall can be constructed or removed as needed. Hallways are left permanently in their original locations to make navigation easy and accessible to all, but between the hallways people can do just about anything.

But, by default, the Founding Crew set this up with sets of personal quarters arranged to surround communal gathering spaces. And those communal gathering spaces have been used for libraries, audiences, galleries, warehouses, kitchens/cafeterias, and Artistry collectives of all types. And the resulting structure overall resembles the arrangement of cells in living tissue, with the community spaces serving as the cytoplasm and organelles contained by the cell walls of the living quarters. Each cell developing into a specialized purpose according to its inhabitants whims and agreements.

And then, the Abovedecks cities where designed in a similar way, except that the potential cells were originally simply foundations for buildings, and they were placed spaced out enough so that their development would have minimal impact on the environment around them.

It's been over a hundred and thirty millennia since then, and the cities and communities have evolved a lot. But the basic structure and pressures (or lack of pressures) from resources remain. And certain collectives or types of Artistry have gathered or dispersed in each city over time and given them their respective characters.

Some cities, like Gopra Pyle, have a huge central collective that unifies all the smaller collectives around it, and have developed sort of a singular municipal Art project that everyone's proud of that has spanned generations of contribution.

Others, like Frra, are more diverse, sometimes homogeneous and sometimes divided, with four major collectives to countless collectives more evenly distributed throughout their perimeter.

So, like, in most cities on the Sunspot, you're not going to find anything like a commercial district or industrial site or set of warehouses. You might find an audience with surrounding libraries that's frequently utilized by the local government, and that might look like a governmental district in an Earth city. But the civic pride that is displayed by that area by its architecture and activities is going to be unusual to Earth sensibilities, and likely a lot more fluid and less focused.

With the Network, the resource tubes, and tram system, almost everything aboard the Sunspot is decentralized. And it shows.

If anything in a city serves as a landmark or gets your attention, it's usually a communal work of art commemorating a past even, serving as a meeting place that you too can use, or just sitting there trying to be beautiful.

[tinygameroom]

Overall thoughts on Emio chapters one and two:

General & Non-Spoilery:

- the gameplay is hit or miss with me so far. I like the scheme of it and how it theoretically allows the player to intuit what they need to do... However in practice it feels clunky and alternates between holding your hand by directly telling you what you need to click next, and making you walk into walls of the same options and dialogue until you find the right one. It is not always clear when you need to return to a point of dialogue and when it's exhausted, and often I know WHAT I want to ask about or observe, but not HOW. Is this because it's the early game, because I'm new to this gameplay, or because the game is genuinely clunky? It's hard to tell yet.

- I've never played Famicom Detective Club before and not a lot of mystery games in general, so I have a complete outsider perspective (much like the player character.)

- it's unclear to me at this point how much choice affects things. Are there different endings, can we get the case wrong, does the order or manner in which we gather and review evidence matter? The game so far seems to funnel into the same results with minorly different dialogue. Saying unexpected or wrong things during review changes nothing. I tried to experiment as much as I could but never found anything that seemed genuinely affected by my choice. I can appreciate if it's just a mystery story we get to observe and watch unravel, but it feels like the options offer more than that without quite delivering it, yet.

- Overall though I really like the premise so far and the characters are pretty strong. The art style is great and I love the sprite animations. The game already has a lot of personality.

- The music, acting, and sound design are also good so far.

- The dialogue and investigation system does have its issues for me, but I appreciate that it doesn't repeat information and dialogue too often, and that it restates things in more natural ways. I appreciate the review mechanic as well.

Spoilery thoughts:

- one of the specific things that frustrated me was how LONG it took before I could bring up that the mode of strangulation was different, considering how I clocked it as soon as Utsugi told me about the original murders. I also find it a bit frustrating how much of the player character's contribution is summarizing and presenting information given to him by other people, and answering Utsugi's prompts like he's in school (or his Watson, I suppose). I want to make and present my own observations. Like as far as I was able to determine, you can't tell anyone that you noticed the path behind the pump station. Essentially there's no point to going there.

- Utsugi is sus. Him being on the previous case, knowing so much about it, being so close to everything is too convenient. And the case was unsolved. He ends chapter two saying he's going to be 'occupied' because he wants to study the original case and/or the Emio myth, and it just makes me wonder about him.

- also the way this game meters out already available information is. Interesting. Why didn't Utsugi frontload that this case resembled the cold case instead of waiting til we returned to the office? Why did it take so long to explain Junko's connection? For that matter, why isn't everyone meeting to share all of their information once instead of sending this rookie to bother the police captain for each potentially relevant anecdote?

- and why the hell is Utsugi smiling so much?

- I feel like Kamihara has something important he wants to say but keeps getting nervous. The scene by the bus stop in particular is like, why is he being so cagey? I don't think it's just because Kuze is there. But then I don't know what to think of their dynamic yet.

- I lean towards there being different killers unless it's Utsugi, because a copycat who was close to the original crimes sounds a lot more likely due to the time gap. I think the changes in MO could be explained in myriad ways but there's just not a lot of relevant characters who are old enough to have done both.

Overall I had a lot of fun playing so far and I look forward to chapter three! Crossing my fingers for a good mystery.

[drabbles-mc]

Not Yours Anymore

Steve Murphy x OC Mari Fernandez

For Day 24 of @narcosfandomdiscord's July Smut Challenge: exes having sex

Warnings: 18+, language, smut, hair pulling, alcohol, light angst, Steve being a lil bastard man

Word Count: 3.2k

A/N: the way i craft up a new OC and immediately fall in love with her. trust that i WILL be looking for excuses to write more of her in the future sksksk

Narcos Taglist: @garbinge @sizzlingcloudmentality @panagiasikelia @616wilsons @hauntedforsst @mirabee @buckybarneshairpullingkink @boomclapxox @nessamc @supersanelyromantic @padbrookcottage @mysun-n-stars @raincoffeeandfandoms @justreblogginfics @ashlingnarcos @proceduralpassion @artemiseamoon @hausofmamadas @narcolini @cositapreciosa (If you want to be added to any of my taglists, please let me know!)

There was a moment when Maristela thought that she was hearing things. It’d been so long since she’d gotten a good night’s sleep that she thought she might’ve finally lost it. She tossed and turned, her thick dark curls spreading across the pillow and getting dangerously close to getting in her mouth as she did so. She tried to force herself to just go back to sleep, enjoy what precious little bit of rest she was getting, when she realized that the knocking sound wasn’t stopping. Someone was actually at her door.

She didn’t have to check the time to know that it was too late for visitors. Grabbing her gun off her bedside table, she fumbled her way out of bed and made her way to the other end of her apartment. She was shaking her head the entire way, partly to wake herself up, partly because she was already annoyed with whoever it was, whatever the situation was about to be.

Standing up onto her tip-toes, she glanced through the peephole. When she saw who was on the other side, she sucked in a slow, deep breath. She was reaching for the deadbolt when the knocking picked up again. She almost turned around and left him stranded there off the principle of it.

There was one more forceful knock before she heard him speak up from the other side. “C’mon, Mari.”

Rolling her eyes, she pulled the door open. Steve froze up, fist raised and ready to start knocking again. Her eyes flicked from his hand to his face. “You wake up Señora Sanchez down the hall with that shit, I won’t stop her from beating you with her newspaper.”

Steve meant to have something witty to say in response to that. He was usually better at that, the bitterness that they tried to pass off as the same rough sarcasm everyone used with each other throughout the base. But after everything that had happened that day, and then to show up and see her standing in front of him the way she was, all of his thoughts came to a screeching halt.

Her hair was messy, frizzy from sleep. He knew that she’d been tossing and turning based off that alone. Despite the remnants of eyeliner that were smudged beneath her eyes, darkening her already dark circles, she looked more alert than he’d felt before she opened the door. He saw the way she clutched her gun tightly in her hand. Her finger wasn’t on the trigger, but it wasn’t far from it either.

He could’ve handled all of those details with some semblance of grace. Or at least, whatever he had that was as close to grace as he could get. But then he saw her standing there in one of his old t-shirts. One that had rips along the seam of the collar, one that he was fairly certain she’d told him to throw out on more than one occasion. And yet she clearly hadn’t gotten rid of it either.

When he had stood there staring at her long enough without saying anything, she prompted him. “What, Murphy?”

He snapped out of it at the sound of her voice, more specifically at the sound of her calling him by his last name as she stood there in his fucking clothes. “I don’t think you get to call me that when you’re still wearing my shit,” he said, gesturing to the shirt she was wearing.

Looking down at herself, she scoffed. “You left it behind—not your shit anymore.” She paused, again waiting for an answer, an explanation, that didn’t come. “So? Did you actually finally come to get your t-shirts back or…?”

He sighed, shaking his head. “Can I just,” he looked up and down the hallway, like he was starting to worry that your neighbor might come out of her apartment with a rolled up newspaper in her hand, “can I come in?”

She thought on it for a beat longer than she should have before finally stepping back, opening the door a little wider for him to step through. As he stepped past her, Mari could catch the scent of liquor, of cigarette smoke. One of those things was a constant with him, and one of them wasn’t. She put the locks back in place on the door, buying herself an extra couple of seconds, also giving him the same in case he suddenly felt like spitting out the reason he had shown up at her door in the middle of the night.

When she turned back around to face him again, the expression on his face had shifted. He still looked tired, still a little over it. But the edge in his features softened just slightly. Taking the few steps from the door to the center of her living room where Steve was standing, Mari raked her hand back through the mess of hair on top of her head. Steve couldn’t help but to notice the way the hem of his shirt crept slightly higher up her thighs as she did so. He also was too aware to miss the fact that it didn’t seem like she was wearing any shorts underneath it.

“Murphy,” she repeated, “what’s going on? Why…” she trailed off for a moment before deciding that the question didn’t need to be built out anymore. “Why?”

He shut his eyes for a moment, trying to fight the urge to snap back at her. An argument was so inviting. It was easy, and they were good at it. But he didn’t need a fight. “Please, Mari,” each word felt like a herculean effort as he tried to keep his tone in check, “can we drop the agent-officer bullshit for a minute? Please?”

That was the most she could ever remember hearing him say the word please. Stepping away, she went to the kitchen and grabbed a glass for each of them. The clatter of her gun against the counter felt deafening with how silent her apartment was.

“What happened?” she asked as she poured whiskey into both of them, a little more in hers than his.

He shook his head. “I feel like I’m losing my fuckin’ mind.”

She shrugged as she put the bottle away. “You probably are.”

“What the fu—”

“I’m sorry, did you come to your ex’s apartment in the middle of the night looking to be coddled?” she asked, the question as sarcastic as it was genuine. She had no idea what the fuck Steve would want from her at this point. He certainly hadn’t seemed like he wanted anything from her when he left her a few months before, throwing all her things that were at his apartment into a box and dropping it off like a care package.

“I don’t,” he shook his head as he walked into the kitchen, taking one of the glasses she’d poured for himself, “I don’t know. Who else was I gonna go to?”

“You and Peña in a spat or something?”

“He wouldn’t get it,” he mumbled out before taking a sip of the drink in his hand.

Mari shook her head. “I don’t think you get it.” She saw the incredulous look on his face and shrugged before downing more of her drink than she probably should have at once. “What? I still don’t know why you came banging on my door tonight.” She swirled the liquor around in the glass. “What do you want from me, Steve?”

His eyes dropped to the glass in his hand. “I don’t know.”

“Not to be a dick,” she took another sip of her drink, “but you remember that you left me, right? If you wanted middle of the night chats, maybe you shouldn’t have dumped me.”

The lack of fault in her statements stung, but still Steve said, “You still let me in.”

“Want me to kick you out?” she countered without hesitation.

“Mari—”

“Quit,” she waved him off with her hand that wasn’t holding her glass, “fuckin’ saying my name like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you give a shit about me still. Like you’re not just here because you didn’t wanna be alone and you’ve got nowhere else to go.”

“Where do you go when you feel like that?”

The question he asked was not the question he meant. What he meant was who do you go to when you feel like that, but she didn’t correct him. “Nowhere,” she replied honestly. “I buckle the fuck down and get through it. Because the last time I tried going to someone,” she motioned back and forth between them, “we ended up here.”

“Want me to go?”

She let out a deep sigh. “So I can feel extra shitty when you leave and go get in a fight with some guy at a bar somewhere? End up in jail, or the hospital?” She shook her head. “No. You can sleep on the couch.”

The lift in his eyebrows said that he wanted to make a comment about the couch, but he was smart enough to, just this once, keep his commentary to himself. “Thanks.”

“Yea.” She finished off her drink, grabbing her gun before going to leave the kitchen. “Wait here. You can borrow one of my shirts.”

“Your—”

“You left them!” she called back.

Steve had no better judgment left at that point, so he found himself following Mari back towards her room. He assumed that she could hear him behind her, but she didn’t say anything. He lingered in the doorway for a moment as she crossed the threshold. It looked pretty much the same as the last time he’d been there. He watched her as she crossed the room to her dresser. She crouched down, pulling open one of the bottom drawers where, he assumed, she kept whatever shirts he’d left behind.

His brain couldn’t take the time to process the weight of that when he saw the way his shirt rode up, revealing the black fabric and lace that made up her panties. He sucked in a quick breath, the sound much more obvious than he had bargained for. He knew that Maristela heard it, because she was shaking her head as she balled up one of his shirts in her hand and stood back up. She nudged the drawer shut with her foot before turning around.

Steve was completely inside her room now. He was looking around, as though that would make it seem like he hadn’t just been staring at her. She tossed the shirt to him. “Couch is out in the living room, in case you forgot.”

He chuckled, catching what she’d just thrown. “Right.”

She collapsed the distance between the two of them. Looking up at him, she said, “Goodnight, Murphy.”

Dropping his head back, Steve stared up at the ceiling for a moment before letting his eyes close. “Can you not, with that?”

“What?”

Tilting his head back down, he looked at her. He leaned in, towering over her. “You know what.”

“If you wanted to stay on a first-name basis, maybe you shouldn’t have—”

He cut her off by pressing his lips against hers. He felt the way that she didn’t give in for a moment, the hesitation lasting just long enough to make him think that he was about to be on the receiving end of a palm to the face. He wouldn’t really be able to blame her for it. His body tensed up in return as he braced for it, but instead her palm landed against his chest as she finally let herself give into him.

Steve let the shirt she’d just handed him drop to the floor as he brought both his hands to her sides. They lingered for a moment before sliding down over her hips. He pushed the fabric of the t-shirt up, bunching it until the pads of his fingers were grazing across skin instead of cotton. His fingers splayed across her back, sliding down until they were slipping just beneath the waistband of her underwear.

She broke their kiss as he maneuvered her back towards her bed. “You’re still sleeping on the couch,” she said, her breath warm against his skin.

He kissed her again, rough and brief, teeth tugging at her bottom lip just slightly as he pulled away. “No one’s sleeping yet.”

Steve picked her up, all but tossing her onto the mattress. He peeled his shirt off over his head, tossing it aside before undoing his belt and pushing his jeans to the floor. He was down to just his boxers as he climbed up onto the bed, positioning himself over her, slotting one leg between hers. He kissed her, hand creeping up to cup the side of her face for a brief moment before his fingers wound their way back into her hair. He gripped onto her and pulled, earning a moan from her as her eyes shut, her body moving with the force he was giving. She arched her back, her core grinding against his thigh that was between her legs.

He only let go over her so that he could pull her underwear down her legs. Once they were low enough Mari kicked them off the rest of the way. Her legs were trembling with anticipation as his hand snaked up the inside of her thigh.

“Oh my god,” Steve’s words came out somewhere between a whisper and a moan as he trailed his fingers between her legs, feeling how wet she already was.

Mari tried not to think too much about the sound of Steve’s voice in that moment, tried not to let it sink its claws into her the way that it used to. Instead she gripped onto the waistband of his boxers and started to push them down. A distraction but also something that got them closer to the end goal.

Steve was quick to help her kicking out of his boxers and tossing them off the bed. He pulled her legs so that they were wrapped around his waist. His hand came back to the side of her face. He was about to pull her lips to his, thrust into her and lose himself, but she planted her palm flat against his chest. Her arm was stiff, keeping the barrier between them.

Confusion crossed Steve’s face. “What—”

She answered with her actions instead of her words. Shifting her hips and pushing against his chest, she easily maneuvered the two of them so that their positions were reversed. Steve was flat on his back beneath her, Mari left straddling his waist. He looked up at her, eyes a little wider than they had been. The smirk that was curling the edge of his mouth made Mari’s thoughts get fuzzy for a moment before she remembered the reality of it all.

His hands found purchase on her waist, gripping tight as he lined her up with him. Her palms were flat against his chest, fingertips setting into him just slightly as her eyes raked down his entire body until they reached the point where they were about to be connected. She felt the delicious dig of his grip as he pulled her, thrusting into her.

She would’ve hated how easily they found their rhythm again if it didn’t feel so good. Steve’s hands ran up her back, her fingers curling over the curves of his shoulders as her hips rolled against his. She could feel the tension in Steve’s muscles, the way he was fighting to have any semblance of self-control. His eyes roamed over her body and face. For as much as he was losing himself in the feel of her, all the sensations he thought he’d never get to experience again, he couldn’t help but to soak up the look of her too. The way her jaw was a little lax, the way her hair was starting to fall in front of her shoulders. Maybe he didn’t have the right to be looking at her like that anymore, but then again he didn’t have a right to be doing most of what he’d done already so he might as well go for broke.

Mari moved her hands from his shoulders. Steve watched as she brought them to the bottom hem of the shirt she was wearing. She was about to take it off, easily slip it off over her head and toss it aside with everything else. Before she could, Steve reached out and stopped her, grabbing tightly onto her wrists. She stilled as she looked down at him, traces of confusion lingering in her features along with everything else.

His voice came out low, raspy as he said, “Leave it on.”

She hated that he said it like that. Hated even more that it sent a jolt right to her core to hear it. She listened, though, relinquishing the fabric from her grip. She shook her head at Steve, leaning down to bring her lips to his in a kiss. Right before she did, she muttered out a quiet, “Motherfucker,” before locking her lips onto his.

Once she leaned down to kiss him, Steve wrapped his arms around her. He kept her close, feeling her hips move against his as her tongue slid along the inside of his bottom lip. In that moment the mess of everything was blotted out. It was just her pressed against him, all of the complications of it gone for the time being. Life outside the four walls of her bedroom didn’t exist and they were both better for it.

He could feel that she was getting close, the whines she let out, the intensity of her movements. Steve gripped onto her hair again, pulling her head back just enough so that he could get access to her neck, sinking his teeth into the sensitive skin there. He felt the way Mari’s nails dug into him in retaliation, but it only served to help pull him over the edge with her. His other hand glued itself to her hip as he came, pinning her as tightly to him as he could manage as he spilled into her.

She was breathless as she let herself collapse against him. All the tension in her muscles was gone. Her head dropped, forehead pressing against Steve’s shoulder close to where her nails had dug before. Both his hands drifted to her back, wandering over the fabric of the shirt she still had on.

After a few minutes of quiet between them, they each caught their breath. Mari carefully separated herself from Steve, flopping onto the mattress beside him. She was staring up at the ceiling and she could feel him looking over at her.

“You still have to sleep on the couch,” she said, draping her arm across her forehead.

He chuckled. “You sure?”

“Positive.” Her eyes shut, heart still racing faster than it should’ve been in her chest.

“Fine. Gonna keep the shirt you gave me, though.”

She shook her head as she watched him slip back into his boxers and grab the shirt from the floor. She huffed out a quiet laugh as he made his way back towards the door. “Night, Steve.”

He was glad she couldn’t see the small shift in his expression as he registered the words. “Night, Mari.”

[koolkat9]

GerEng Week 2023 - Day 3

@gereng-week

Prompt: Proposal/Wedding || Flowers/Garden

Rating: T

Pairing: GerEng

Word Count: 970

Read on AO3

Proposal

“Have you ever considered getting married?”

The carnation buds he was about to plant fell from Ludwig's palms. “What?”

Arthur rolled his eyes, an amused huff escaping his lips. He scooped up the bud and planted it in the spot he had made for it. “Marriage. Ever thought about it?”

Ludwig’s heart hammered in his chest, its thrumming running through each nerve. “I…never really thought about it. Our existence…Nothing seems to last. Plus…It hasn’t even been a decade since same-sex marriage was legalized. Even if I was human and could get married, it still wasn’t possible for so long.”

“Plenty of nations get married.”

“For alliances, yes. But they never last. Politics are ever-changing. Today’s ally is tomorrow’s enemy.”

“That may be true. But even then, some of those marriages still live on. Erzsébet and Roderich got remarried. Roderich also is reconnecting with Toni. Czechia and Slovakia may not have remarried yet, but they’re dating. Francis and Allie have been discussing getting–”

“Okay fine. I meant legally we can’t get married for love. Things are too turbulent.”

Arthur scoffed, hands thrown into the air. “Who cares about what the law thinks? It’s just for…the symbolism you know? And we no longer have to be tools for our government.”

Ludwig planted the next carnation, its yellow petals smiling up at him. Ludwig wasn’t smiling. “But we’re still the representation of our people. They influence is and–”

“But we can still be our own people,” Arthur bursted, “Our people’s influence is no more than a thought drifting through our heads.”

“I never coloured you as an optimist Arthur.”

“I expected you of all people–” Arthur rose to his feet, rubbing his dirt-covered hands against his pants. “You know what? Forget I said anything. I’m done for the day.”

“Should I–”

“Do whatever you want. Keep planting, come inside, go home. I don’t care.”

“Arthur…”

But Arthur was already heading inside.

For the rest of the afternoon, Arthur was silent. Ludwig wanted to ask why exactly Arthur blew up over this, but he knew when Arthur gave the silent treatment, that meant he needed some time to cool off. That evening Arthur ate dinner in the study, claiming he was going to work on his writing. When they went to bed, Arthur faced away from Ludwig, wrapping the blanket tightly around himself. Ludwig’s hand twitched, desperate to reach for him. But he didn’t. They needed space. and Ludwig would give it to him.

— — —

Sleepless night or not, Ludwig awoke at the crack of dawn as usual. His mind never pausing on its replay of his argument with Arthur. Did Arthur want to get married? He never mentioned it before. Never seemed like the type to settle down either. Did he want to marry Ludwig specifically? What brought this on all of a sudden?

Or perhaps it was more of Ludwig bringing up the painful side of their existence. The burning question of where the nation ended and the human began. What that could possibly mean for them. He dug the edge of his palms into his temples. Why did he over-explain himself? To bring that up?

He needed a jog. Clear his head. Breakfast could wait just this once.

Arthur was up when Ludwig entered the bedroom. Ludwig froze, back stiffening. Arthur was rarely up this early unless…

“Do you want to get married?” Ludwig blurted out. “I-I don’t mean like a proposal I just…I want to understand what’s going on.”

“Maybe…I don’t know…” Arthur huffed, flopping back down on the pillow. “I never considered it before. Like you said, we couldn’t do so legally except for alliances that never lasted. But haven’t you realized? We’re immortals, we’re nations, but we’re also human. We have our own wants, we fall in love, we form friendships, we desire connection. And I guess…When I see the couples go by with matching rings, or when I pass a wedding magazine, I can’t help but imagine what it would be like to just have a ceremony. A reception with friends and family.”

Arthur shook his head, covering his face with his arm. “It’s so sappy that even I cringe but–”

“I’m not ready,” Ludwig cut in, “We’ve only been together since the 70s and–”

“That’s not long for our kind,” Arthur finished. “I know. I didn't mean to imply that we’d do so now. It’s just that…with all this talk about possibly walking out of our government jobs, the idea we could actually move in together if we go down that path, a wedding seems more possible now than ever. I was just…mm…testing the water I guess. But we don’t have to. Just…And I’m going to sound cheesy here…I’m just happy to be with you.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“What.”

Ludwig sat on the edge of the bed. “I said I’ll think about it. But I’m far from ready for it.”

There was a rustling, arms wrapping around Ludwig’s waist, chin resting on his shoulder. “There’s no rush. I’m sorry for pressuring you. Even though it wouldn’t be legally binding, it’s still a big step.”

Ludwig leaned back into the embrace. “Okay.”

“And you don’t really think we don’t have free will?”

“I…Well, considering I fell in love with you when I did. When we were still enemies. And it never faded.”

“I get it, they’re loud sometimes. But we still choose in the end right. Like we chose this?”

Ludwig nodded, turning back to peck Arthur’s temple. “Now that everything is settled, are you up for some breakfast?”

“Hmm. No.”

Arthur pulled Ludwig back onto the bed. Ludwig let him, twisting around to properly wrap his arms around him. “Fine. A few minutes of cuddling. To make up for last night.”

“Oh of course,” Arthur teased, burying his nose in Ludwig’s hair.

[inevitably-johnlocked]

hey steph! hope your having a good day!

I was wondering if you had any "first dates" type of fics, because that's the current mood (woo yeah projection)

Hi Nonny!

AHHH, You know, I really needed to make a "Dating" list, so here we are! This one has fics specifically where they Date Each Other, and not NECESSARILY a first date, but definitely think you'll enjoy these anyway!

AND to make it a bigger list, I've added fics that came up with "date" or "dating" as a search result on my MFL list :)

As usual friends, feel free to add your fic or a fic you know! <3

FIRST DATES / DATING EACH OTHER

See also:

Date on a Dare

Victor Trevor / Sherlock and Other People

Sherlock and OMC's

Jealous Sherlock Because John Dates a Man

The Marriage Proposal Negotiation by Goddess_of_the_Night (G, 2,161 w., 1 Ch. || Dev. Rel., Possessive Sherlock, Insecure Sherlock, Fluff, First Kiss, Post Mary) – Sherlock hasn't ever really done anything the traditional way, so of course it wouldn't bother him to propose to John even though they're not even dating. And the fact that John is already on a date with someone else when he decides to do it? Tedious. 

Last Christmas by Mazarin221b (T, 3,911 w., 1 Ch. || Fluff, Pining Sherlock, First Kiss) – That Earth-shaking revelation, then, leads to a problem, and one that Sherlock realizes should be solved quickly, before John’s dates turn into girlfriends or boyfriends, because sometimes girlfriends or boyfriends can turn into wives or husbands while your back is turned. Every time John hums happily at the mirror as he shaves, splashes on a little gift cologne Mrs. Hudson bought him for Christmas, Sherlock is drawn back to that night by the fire, and the way John’s touch had made the world stand still.

Date Night by inevitably_johnlocked (G, 4,451 w., 1 Ch. || Anxious / Worried Sherlock, Caring John, Schmoopy Fluff, Fidget Cube, Baking / Cooking, Date Night, Established Relationship, POV Sherlock Holmes, Understanding John, Grumpy Sherlock, John’s Bum, Kisses, Hugs, Domestic Fluff, Touching, Hair Petting, Light Humour) – It's John and Sherlock's first Date Night as an official couple and Sherlock needs it to be PERFECT. Mrs Hudson helps. Part 7 of I-J's Tumblr Ficlet Collection

Correspondence by Cleo2010 (T, 8,031 w., 5 Ch. || Letters, Friends to Lovers, Jealousy, Dating) – Sherlock’s been spirited away on a case for Mycroft. Part of the deal was that he and John could communicate via letter until the case was completed. Maybe the cliche is true, absence does make the heart grow fonder. Or perhaps something is growing on the feet in the fridge. Read their letters month by month.

Six Dates by avawtsn (E, 7,421 w., 2 Ch. || 5+1, First Time / Kiss, Post S4-Compliant, POV John) – A rather accidental 5+1 written for the prompt “is this a date?” Hint: it is.

How To Give Your Boyfriend Who Doesn't Know He's Your Boyfriend the Best Valentine's Day Ever by unicornpoe (T, 9,832 w., 1 Ch. || Valentine’s Day, Fluff and Crack, Soft Sherlock, POV Sherlock) – Sherlock is pretty sure that John Watson is his boyfriend. He's also pretty sure that John doesn't know it. But with a little help from a magazine, some friends, three crepes, five dates, one awesome CD, and a stalker van, John is bound to realize just in time for Valentine's Day.

Uncharted Territory by J_Baillier (T, 19,603 w., 4 Ch. || Dystopian Future / Black Mirror AU || Alternate First Meeting, Angst, Drama, Homophobia, Bisexuality, Technology, Humour, Romance, Near Future, Happy Ending) – The System puts people through a series of assigned relationships in order to determine who their Perfect Match is. John believes that it works; Sherlock really, really doesn't. One of them is probably going to be wrong.

Dear John by wendymarlowe (E, 23,031 w., 64 Ch. || Post-TRF, Online Dating, Pining, Epistolary, Cybersex, Long Distance Romance) – With Sherlock dead, John eventually (under duress) makes a profile on an online dating site. And falls into a long-distance relationship with an enigmatic partner who reminds him of Sherlock in all the right ways. (Hint: it turns out to be Sherlock.) Part 1 of Dear John

Don't Leave Anything Out by lookupkate (E, 27,422 w., 24 Ch. || Letters / Epistolary, Misunderstandings, Angst, Happy Ending, Alternate First Meeting, Sherlock in Love, Pining Sherlock) – The first letter John writes home from Afghanistan is meant to go to a woman he went on only one date with. How it ends up in Sherlock's hands is completely innocent. What happens next is not. What do you do when you find out the person you're in love with has been lying about something as monumental as who they are? What do you do when you're the one who lied?How on earth do you put the pieces back together?

Classified(s) by blueink3 (E, 36,153 w., 4 Ch. || Wedding Date AU || Fake Relationship, Jealous, Pining, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, Happy Ending, Mary is not Nice, Escort Service) – Clara's American father is the ambassador to some such territory that Great Britain probably used to own, but she (and Harry’s undying love for her) is the reason John is getting on a flight at 12:30pm, flying across the second largest ocean in the world, and pretending to be in a perfectly happy, healthy relationship with an undoubtedly perfectly coiffed stranger. See, Clara is not only American (and wealthy to boot), she's also best friends with John’s ex-fiancée. Whom she's placed in the wedding party. As Maid of Honor. And John just happens to be Best Man. Bloody brilliant.

floating through a dark blue sky by Lediona (M, 58,966 w., 15 Ch. || Notting Hill AU || POV John, Celebrity Sherlock, First Date / Time / Kiss, Past Drug Addiction, Angst with a Happy Ending) – Of course, I’d seen his films and always thought he was, well, brilliant -- but, you know, a million miles from the world I live in. Or, when John is the owner of a travel book shop and the famous Sherlock Holmes stops in one day.

MARKED FOR LATER

A proposal in blood by Some_weird_queer_writer (T, 756 w., 1 Ch. || Marriage Proposal, Injury, Ambulance, Established Relationship, Date Night, Love Confession) – John and Sherlock go out for a date night when they're attacked and John is injured. Still, they make a promise.

Date Night by Calais_Reno (T, 1,477 w., 1 Ch. || Coming Out, Drunken Love Confessions, Drunk John, Fluff) – On a date, John and Sherlock out themselves to Lestrade. It's all fine. Part 1 of the Just Johnlock series

The Importance of February 14th by cypress_tree (T, 3,156 w., 1 Ch. || Fluff, Humour, Valentine’s Day) – Sherlock was born on Valentine's Day. John doesn't know this and invites him out on a date. Sherlock assumes it's a birthday celebration and believes so right up until the moment John kisses him.

Third Date by Calais_Reno (T, 4,111 w., 1 Ch. || Dating, Awkward Romance, Relationship Advice, Jealousy, Friends to Lovers, POV Lestrade) – John Watson dates a lot of women, but never gets beyond the Third Date. Sherlock solves it. Part 3 of the Just Johnlock series

It's all Fun and Games Until Someone Falls in Love by Malakia (T, 5,618 w., 1 Ch. || Alternate First Meeting || Fluff, Bullying, BAMF John, Online Dating) – Anderson and Sally while drunk sign Sherlock up for some gay dating event or website as a laugh, hoping to embarrass the detective. The next time they see Sherlock, he is on a date with his new boyfriend John who he met at the event/ through the site.

Come and Find Me by Salambo06 (M, 9,737 w., 3 Ch. || Different First Meeting, Fluff, First Kiss, Twitter, Awkwardness, First Date, Love at First Sight, Inexperienced Sherlock, Frottage) – Two days ago, Sherlock found himself being kissed by a man only known as John during a Pride event, before running away. But Sherlock soon realises that the said John intends to find him again, even it means asking the help of the entire Internet.

Not this year by Imjohnlocked87 (E, 16,293 w., 4 Ch. || Alternate First Meeting ||  Friends to Lovers, Valentine’s Day, Fluff and Smut, Implied / Referenced Drug Use, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Food Sex, Wall Sex, Angst with Happy Ending) – One month after leaving the rehabilitation centre, when Donovan asks Sherlock if he will be alone on Valentine's Day this year too, he replies he will be spending it with someone special.The only problem is that this someone doesn't exist.Because who would want to have Valentine's date with Sherlock Holmes? 

The Aftermath is Secondary by meet_me_in_samarra (E, 19,641 w., 5 Ch. || Punk AU || Pining John, Seductive Sherlock, Implied / Referenced Drug Use, Horny Idiots, Public Sex, Toilet Sex, Hand Jobs, Tongue Kink, Insecure Sherlock, BAMF John, Insecure John) – Will Doctor Holmes and Doctor Watson really go on the agreed date in the infamous punkrock club "The Misfit"? Will their sexual tension finally be resolved? Is it really going to be dangerous? And will Sherlock really wear the promised fishnet top? (Oh God, yessss!) Part 2 of the Wretched and Divine series

Cinema by thelookyouredoingthelookagain (E, 22,411 w., 12 Ch. || Different First Meeting, Nightmares, Flirting, Cinema, John’s Cane, John’s Blog, Therapy, First Date) – John's nightmares drive him across the street to the all night cinema where the tall, dark projectionist provides in an interesting distraction.

Gravity is missing from everything by meet_me_in_samarra (E, 23,557 w., 6 Ch. || Punk AU || Overdose, Suicide Attempt, Developing Relationship, Slutty Sherlock, Vulnerable Sherlock, Public Sex, Food Sex, Porn With Feelings, Sherlock’s Past, Sherlock Whump, Caring / Protective John, Insecure Sherlock, Anal Sex, Drug Use) – People bumped into him, cussing and throwing death glares. Blocking their way, Sherlock stood frozen in a throng of commuters. “Are you high?” one shouted into his vacant face. Funnily enough he actually was not. This was all John´s fault. Inflicting a date on him. To have dinner. Part 3 of the Here I Am series

Whenever it's right (AKA First Date) by Aliea (M, 26,493 w., 15/? Ch. || WiP || London Underground, Explosions, Doctor John, Sherlock Whump, Angst, Hospitals, Mind Palace John, Coma, Past Drug Use, Big Brother Mycroft) – Meeting the person you have been searching for all your life, never knowing that you have been searching until its over and you have them before you. What happens when you fall in love at first sight then everything goes to hell? Do you stay or go, take the risk or run for the hills. John has has never ran from anything, so he wasnt going to run from the man that changed his life in less than five seconds.

A Wizarding Barista's Field Guide to Seducing a Muggle by paradigmfinch (T, 29,344 w., 9 Ch. || Harry Potter Coffee Shop AU || Fluff, Wizard John, Muggle Sherlock, Bisexual John, Flirting, First Dates, Harry Watson, Secret Identity) – To help pay for Healing tuition, John Watson gets a job at a coffee shop in Muggle London, where he soon sets his sights on a particularly gorgeous customer. John's seen plenty of Muggle films. How different can it really be to woo a Muggle?

If Baker Street Could Talk by a_different_equation (E, 31,723 w., 12 Ch. || Neighbours AU || Blind Date, Domestics Life, Widower John, Pianist Sherlock, Developing Relationship, Slow Burn, PTSD, Mental Health Issues, Alternate First Meeting) – There is a very thin wall between 221b and 221c. As if by fate, it has separated two sitting rooms that now almost morph back into one. One sitting room belongs to Sherlock Holmes (43), a pianist; and the other one to Dr John H. Watson (45), whatever he might be after everything. Theoretically, John's a war hero, an ex-surgeon, a widower, and he’s telling everyone that he develops a game which might take a lifetime. There is a wall between them, but they cannot be separated.

Four Shots Series by Opy3332 (T, 34,736 w. across 5 works || Series WiP || Coffee Shop AU || MI6, Barista John, Developing Relationship, First Dates) – Series of stories revolving around John and Sherlock meeting under different circumstances--when John takes a job as a barista at SIS headquarters and meets Sherlock there.

Starting Over by Calais_Reno (M, 49,260 w., 10 Ch. || Alternate First Meeting || POV Alternating, Dev. Rel., Awkward Romance, Misunderstandings, Angst with Happy Ending) – A disappointing blind date set up by well-meaning friends brings together John Watson, invalided army doctor, and Sherlock Holmes, asocial, "married to my work" consulting detective. Two idiots falling in love.

To Poisons and Their Antidotes by thegirlinthedeathfrisbee (M, 66,648 w., 12 Ch. || Unilock AU || Deductions, Coffee, Dinners, Dates, Drug Use, UST / RST, Romance, Humour, One-Liners, Drama, Angst, ASiP, Oral/Anal, Hand Jobs) – Every poison has their antidote. Sherlock will meet the antidote to his poison in the most unlikely of ways. 

Follow Me Down by 221BeStillMyHeart (E, 67,725 w., 15 Ch. || Alternate First Meetings / Professions AU || Captain John, Daddy Kink, Suave John, Slow Burn, Pining, First Dates, Gay Sherlock, Jealous John, Case Fic, BAMF John, Caring John, Insecure Sherlock, Protective John, Protective Lestrade, Big Brother Mycroft, Fluff, Masturbation, Gentle John, Flirting Sherlock, Jealous Sherlock) – Sherlock Holmes is a 23 year old genius working as a forensic analyst at Bart's hospital. John Watson is a 38 year old army captain just back from war, working as the lead surgeon in the trauma ward. A chance meeting brings them together, and no one is ever the same.

What have you done? by Tildathings (M, 78,184 w., 20 Ch. || Internalized Homophobia, John’s Family, Coming Out, Sherock/OMC, Hugging, Suicide, John Deduce’s, Nightmares, Love Confession, First Date, Bed Sharing, Psychiatry) – John have been invited by Sherlock on a pub night?! Sherlock said to him at Monday that Greg and Mike wanted him to come with them on a pub night. Sherlock is afraid that he would do something wrong socially left alone, so could John come with him? When John arrives at the pub Two Broken Hearts he sees Sherlock talking to a man.