#I don’t think it’s morally bad. I don’t think it’s even technically bad. I just like drawing more than I like painting

[raysmayday]

Ok ok but a fallen stars au, where instead of just switching the two parties where shattered dream just goes around doing what nightmare does

you have a nightmare going around and spreading positivity by forcibly changing negative aus scripts and s!dream going around and stopping him

I imagine passive would still be the guardian of negativity in this au (am?)but because of dream also functioning as a negativity guardian he would be forced into the position of guardian of positivity to keep the balance sense he can’t physically do this job (he’s literally not able to) he goes to the extreme method of going into negative aus and forcing them to become positive (by what means is up to you)

And dream who has basically been driven mad by corruption sees this as a personal attack on him (it’s not poor passive is just trying to maintain balance) tries to stop him

Now I don’t really know exactly what would happen with blue here but I’m leaning towards blueberrer where the original blue tried to help rehabilitate shattered (and maybe ink) and this ended..poorly to say the least and in the end he gets stuck in the antivoid

Now ink is where this really gets interesting. because the fact that passive is the one who is changing the scripts au gives us the opportunity to use his canonical morality . Now for those of you that do not know inks canonical reason for defending aus is not out of a love for the people in it or empathy for them. But because nightmare and error are interrupting/changing their scripts  now with this information, it is not hard to say that economical version of ink or at least a very close canonical version of ink in the scenario Would side with shattered and blueberror  this could be an especially interesting dynamic, if inks not even evil in this AU.in a similar way of how he’s morally gray in cannon and he and is only siding with the people that we consider the good guys because it furthers along his own goals we could have a reverse situation of that here.

Especially if error still exists, and he is both preventing a AUs from being saved and saving them at the exact same time!

((I won’t divulge the post to much. but this could be used to actually take a look at inks, sort of blue and orange type of morality in a way that isn’tjust essentially pointing at an ink and saying “look neurodivergent person bad”.  Because Like he’s not like technically wrong about his beliefs, like yeah, from the perspective of someone who lives in that universe he’s wrong, but from the standpoint of someone outside of that universe, a.k.a. us he’s actually the closest thing to correct about the function of their universe then anyone else! and sure, is only helping people that are getting hurt because of others changing the script fucked yes!is stopping people from helping them if their pain is in the script also fucked ,yes! But from the perspective that nothing in your world is a real and that the closest thing you can get to actual real interaction is with these gods(us) who you can only assume would want their creations to to follow the storylines that they set it’s not that weird that you’re gonna try to enforce that ! is he wrong by thinking that we want that … yeah. but is it that shocking that he came to that conclusion ….. no .))



[breadclipp]

it can be hard to fashion a critique of contemporary painting without accidentally coming across as somewhat conservative. Having said that, learning that a lot of painters project photographs onto their canvases and trace them rather than sketching stuff out breaks my heart a little bit

[thatbadadvice]

Help! I'm a Perfect Genius, but This Potential Employer Asked Me a Boring Interview Question!

Ask A Manager, 13 Feb 2024:

I was rejected from a role for not answering an interview question. I had all the skills they asked for, and the recruiter and hiring manager loved me. I had a final round of interviews — a peer on the hiring team, a peer from another team that I would work closely with, the director of both teams (so my would-be grandboss, which I thought was weird), and then finally a technical test with the hiring manager I had already spoken to. (I don’t know if it matters but I’m male and everyone I interviewed with was female.) The interviews went great, except the grandboss. I asked why she was interviewing me since it was a technical position and she was clearly some kind of middle manager. She told me she had a technical background (although she had been in management 10 years so it’s not like her experience was even relevant), but that she was interviewing for things like communication, ability to prioritize, and soft skills. I still thought it was weird to interview with my boss’s boss. She asked pretty standard (and boring) questions, which I aced. But then she asked me to tell her about the biggest mistake I’ve made in my career and how I handled it. I told her I’m a professional and I don’t make mistakes, and she argued with me! She said everyone makes mistakes, but what matters is how you handle them and prevent the same mistake from happening in the future. I told her maybe she made mistakes as a developer but since I actually went to school for it, I didn’t have that problem. She seemed fine with it and we moved on with the interview. A couple days later, the recruiter emailed me to say they had decided to go with someone else. I asked for feedback on why I wasn’t chosen and she said there were other candidates who were stronger. I wrote back and asked if the grandboss had been the reason I didn’t get the job, and she just told me again that the hiring panel made the decision to hire someone else. I looked the grandboss up on LinkedIn after the rejection and she was a developer at two industry leaders and then an executive at a third. She was also connected to a number of well-known C-level people in our city and industry. I’m thinking of mailing her on LinkedIn to explain why her question was wrong and asking if she’ll consider me for future positions at her company but my wife says it’s a bad idea. What do you think about me mailing her to try to explain?

Sir,

You have been wronged in the most grievous of ways by a coven of retaliatory, self-aggrandizing women who have failed in the extreme to recognize your brilliance, your talent, and above all, your general superiority.

Of course you should mail this mediocre "grandboss" on LinkedIn to inform her of the deep offense she caused you by interviewing you in the first place, let alone doing so using a boring question — indeed, you have a moral and professional obligation to do so in order to preserve your honor and the honor of scores of men like you who have never done a single solitary thing wrong in their lives, ever.

But I beg you to consider doing more. A single, private message to one incompetent bitch may not convey to the necessary parties the depth and breadth of the situation. Many, many people have important lessons to learn from your experience, and I encourage you to share it widely. Consider making a public LinkedIn post, and ensure that it is shareable across platforms. Depending on your financial resources, a billboard with your name, professional headshot, and contact information could go a long way toward ensuring that everyone in your industry who needs to know just how you handled the way these women treated you, does know about it. I hope that in your continuing job search, you are able to connect with potential employers who have a much better grasp of all you bring to the table.

[textmel8r]

[ DRABBLE ] 𝐎𝐅𝐅𝐈𝐂𝐄 𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐑𝐒 ! ( fourth installment ) in which you are forced to plan a corporate event with your office enemy .

୨୧˚ part; one. two. three. four. five. six. seven. eight.

୨୧˚ incl; kento nanami

୨୧˚ cw; smut (?) , dub-con , alcohol consumption , profanity

( flashback; ) Wreaths and holly plants decked the usually barren, white walls of the seventh floor office level, and soft Christmas music looped on the overhead speaker in attempts to induce a jolly spirit. Colleagues conversed, discussing plans for December break over plastic cups of spiked cider. Everyone seemed in high morale; even Gakuganji, who donned a cheaply made Santa suit, still wrinkled from its time being folded in a package. Your first ever office party was about as much as you expected–not the worst time, but certainly not the best time, either. It didn’t help that you were still technically the “newbie” despite having been a member of the company for a few months at that point. Man, it was hard to make friends in an office full of stoic suits.

You remain near a far wall, slumped against the oversized copy machine with a drink in hand. Nobody had even appreciated your dress; a modest crimson thing with white, cottony trims to mimic Old Saint Nick. Figures. You pout into your cup, knocking back a heavy swig.

“Woah-ho, you sure went all out.”

The dialogue was unexpected and you sputter on a swallow of liquor, startled. A preemptive hand pats your back, something like a mother trying to burp a newborn. You swallow your spit at last, recollect yourself, and whip your head up to follow the source of the voice that nearly killed you. There stood a man tall and spindly in his stature with the most beautifully long, goldish hair drawn back into a ponytail. He is dressed down, wearing a simple pair of dark jeans and a sweater in favor of the suits nearly everyone else sported. 

“You shouldn’t sneak up on ladies,” comes your meager reply. Your free hand smooths down the skirt of your dress, and you clear your throat. “You scared the shit out of me.”

The man smiles apologetically. “Ah, I noticed. My bad.”

“It’s okay. Just… just don’t do it again.”

“Roger that.” He has his own drink, and you manage to catch a glimpse of it over the rim of the solo cup. It’s a dark, murky color, much more amberish than the cider that was being served. “I haven’t seen your face around before, it made me curious.”

“I secured a position here during spring.” Now that you think about it, he was unfamiliar to you as well. You would have definitely remembered that ponytail. “Are you–I mean, do you work in this building?”

He shakes his head. “Nah, they got me holed up in the Shibuya location,” he winks, leaning in. “I make it a habit to come to all the office parties, though. I can’t resist a little holiday cheer.” Two bony knuckles move to brush delicately against the trim of your dress. “I’m Haruta Shigemo, and you’re…?”

“Not interested.” 

Shigemo juts his bottom lip out. “C’mon, don’t be like that. I can’t know your name?”

Holding an index finger to your chin, you pretend to think about it. “What will you give me in return?”

A smirk worms its way onto Shigemo’s thin lips. He angles his hip toward you and pulls up the hem of his knitted sweater, gesturing to the uncanny flask half sticking out of his jeans’ pocket. “I brought good stuff,” he sings quietly, away from prying ears, and suddenly you understand the reason for his drink being a couple shades too dark. “And I’m good at sharing.”

Yeah, maybe it wasn’t the wisest decision to accept unknown liquor from a virtual stranger, you should’ve really considered all of the possible outcomes to this situation. You’d already had a little over two cups of warmed cider, rotating on the axis between tipsy and full on drunkenness. Your foggy brain didn’t care much to think about how some of this so-called “good stuff” would only lead to an inevitable, total inebriation. Or, a less likely but just as concerning scenario, Shigemo’s flask could be chock full of poison. Either way, you were itching to turn a less-than-okay party experience into a fun one.

“Y/n L/n,” you said finally, and Shigemo looks pleased. Strategically as to not give away the secret, he stood before you and widened his shoulders to create a makeshift cover while he poured a solid few glugs from flask to your cup. Immediately, the booze reeks of something strong like industrial glass cleaner. Your nose wrinkles as the stench singes the hair from your nostrils. “Smells fucking rancid.”

“Maybe you’re just not used to top shelf liquor?” Was that a dig? You’ll show him that you’re plenty accustomed with expensive booze (you’re not. not at all).

So you drank it. The taste of piss mixed with vinegar nearly made you retch, but after your second glass and an assload of determination, it started to taste… good? Maybe this Shigemo guy wasn’t too bad. The rest of the night was a blur of silly dancing to dumb Christmas songs, ugly laughing at the horse calendars pinned to the wall, and… well, the bathroom.

“We shouldn’t be doing this.” Your tone was breathy, a cross between giggly and pure apprehension. There in the men’s restrooms, you were perched up on the sink counter. That festive dress was slipped up around your hips by two slender, greedy hands, and a tiny waist worked between your thighs. Shigemo kissed you into silence.

“Why not?” He kisses you again, fumbling with his belt buckle. He’s nipping down your neck, whispering, “The risk is so fucking hot.”

And oh goodness, was he a man on a mission. Tearing the collar of your dress down beneath your breasts, fingering holes into your sheer stockings, stuffing a fist inside your panties… You were in no state of coherence to stop him.

Had it not been a professional obligation on his part to attend this year’s Christmas party, Nanami finds himself fantasizing about all the ways he’d much rather be spending this brisk winter evening. Probably soaking in his tub, nursing a glass of red wine and working on that book he’d been putting off thanks to the ungodly amount of work on his plate as of late. Then, he’d exercise those cooking skills he seldom had time to use and prepare a meal that had much more to offer than these feeble, sugary snacks at this party. Seriously? Cookies and cake? They were adults for goodness sake.

The floor was stuffy and claustrophobia-inducing. Everywhere he turned, Nanami was accidentally bumping somebody with his shoulder or his elbow or some other limb he lost track of. And the conversations were abysmal. Nanami has always been good with his words—he had to be in a profession like this—but Christ, talking to his zombies-for-coworkers was a worse fate than death itself. They drone on about office assignments, about deadlines and paperwork with no hint of light behind their eyes. Is that what he looks like to others? A worrisome thought, that Nanami was just as much of a slave to the corporate world as they were.

The deep train of thought is cut off before it spirals when red catches his eye. A dress red as rubies sticks out like a sore thumb among the sea of blacks and blues and grays of suits. You’re dressed in a silly get up, like those Mrs. Claus actresses in the malls that take pictures with children. Y/n L/n, Nanami recalls your name. He knows you, the newest employee in the office. He’s had very few chances to speak with you, and when he did it mostly consisted of him relaying orders from Mr. Gakuganji. But even in those brief instances, Nanami saw it plain as day: you were different. The first lively fool he’d seen in a while, eyes still glinting with the prospects of optimism and naive hope for the future. Foolish indeed, but he couldn’t bring himself to hate it. You were a breath of fresh air, but Nanami knew that it was only a matter of time before you were beaten and battered into another mindless cog in the corporation's machine.

A strange urge bloomed within the hollows of the man's chest; an urge that told him to initiate communication with you. Perhaps just a "hello" at the very least, seeing as you were his direct subordinate. It was the polite thing to do, right? Or maybe that was just a weak excuse he convinced himself of because Nanami didn't want to admit that you intrigued him in every sense of the word. You would provide an interesting back and forth, something Nanami desperately craved in the throes of this tedious party.

Golden eyes scanned the room. But no matter how long and meticulous he stared into the mass of bodies, Nanami could not locate the shade of red that had incited this search to begin with. There was a muted pit of disappointment the settled heavy in his stomach when he came to the realization that you simply were gone. He didn't doubt the probability that you ditched, no, he'd commend you for doing something he could not. Nanami sighs under his breath, lets his shoulders droop, and takes the last swig of his drink (water of course, the spiked cider was much too sweet for his tastes) before maneuvering through the crowd towards the bathroom. A five minute breather alone in a stall sounded like Heaven on Earth.

He shouldered through the metallic door, eyes closed, fingers tugging the knot of his too-tight tie as he stepped inside the restrooms. Only the sound of a feminine gasp was what pried his heavy eyelids open.

All three bodies froze: Nanami by the entrance with a slack jaw and wide eyes, a man he vaguely recalls from the Shibuya district stood between a pair of opened legs with his jeans tugged down to mid-thigh, and you. You, with your stupidly red dress in disarray, the neckline dipped below your bare breasts and the lower hem bunched up around the curve of your waistline. There you were, sitting up on the sink completely exposed... God, that bastard's hand was still buried down the front of your panties.

As if time suddenly unfroze, said bastard rips his hands away from your most delicate parts in favor of pulling his jeans back up. Nanami blinks once before cocking his head to the side at the unnatural speed of light, focusing on the faux plant in the corner, the uneven tiles beneath his dress shoes, the cracks in the eggshell paint on the wall... anything besides your indecent self.

"Whoops, would ya' look at that?" Shibuya fucker laughs halfheartedly as he fumbles with the button on his jeans, flustered and giggly. "Guess we got a little carried away there, my bad man!" He slinks towards the door, towards Nanami, but pauses. "Hey, you're Nanami Kento, right?"

"Yes." It's a cold response. Nanami doesn't look to the other man, instead he keeps his eyes trained down as to not get another eyeful of you.

"Aha right! Well," Shibuya fucker sweatdrops, clasping a hand over Nanami's shoulder. "Let's keep this a secret from the higher ups?"

The elder grimaces. "Please don't touch me."

The hand is ripped away. Shibuya fucker shows his palms in sort of a defensive stance as more anxious chuckles erupt from his throat. "Good seeing you, then!" And with that, he slips out of the bathroom leaving you high and dry. The prick didn't even bother to stay and help you get recollected.

"I'm decent." You sound meek, a tone Nanami has yet to hear from you thus far. It sounds small. Humiliated. "You... you can look now."

So he does, only to regret it. There you are, hopped off the sink and standing before him in a pitiful display. Your slender neck was tainted with love marks, darkened bruises bit into flesh with little artistry. Your stockings were shredded carelessly, bits of plumpness squishing through the holes. Your hair was mussed, forehead sweaty, lipstick smeared and... why was Nanami so irritated by the sight?

"What..." He starts, trying to find the words. "What is the matter with you?"

You gawk. "Nothing."

"Nothing." Nanami scoffs, hands pressed to his hips. "How careless could you possibly be? Fucking at a work event? I mean, for fuck's sake Y/n."

"I'm sorry, okay?" Your words are clipped. As if you have any right to catch an attitude with him right now.

"Sorry doesn't change the fact that you..." His sentence trails off into a tiny, frustrated growl scratching from the back of his tongue. The man takes his nose bridge between his thumb and forefinger. "The door was unlocked. Anyone could've walked in and saw you like that!" Exposed. Bare. Vulnerable.

"I don't know what else you want to hear other than sorry." Nanami doesn't miss the microscopic vocal crack in the word sorry. You hug yourself tight, forearms crossed over your chest. Your shoulders stutter, and your lips are sucked between your teeth to hide the wobble in them. "I'm... sorry."

You dress strap hangs off your shoulder. Nanami can't peel his gaze away from the strip of fabric. He takes a slow step in, gauging your reaction to it. You don't show any signs of discomfort, so he advances closer. The red strap is dainty against his rough fingers, so he cautions himself to be extra gentle when slipping it back up into place.

"Thanks," you sniffle.

He shushes you. Nanami isn't done yet, far from it. You still look disheveled and sad and weepy and he can't fucking stomach it for some ungodly reason. So he gets to work, first wetting a paper towel in the bathroom sink—the same one you'd been getting groped on a mere few minutes prior—and gingerly swipes away the smeared makeup from your kiss-swollen lips. Then, he's taking it upon himself to straighten out your hair. You let him stroke down your baby hairs without pushback, limply letting him rearrange your appearance as if you were some sort of life sized doll.

Nanami steps back to admire his work. The evidence of foreplay was nearly gone, save for the dreadful state of your stockings and those ugly teeth-shaped indents down the side of your neck. “Take those stockings off before you leave the bathroom,” he utters. “They look…” Slutty is the word that comes to mind first, but he’d never say it aloud. So he leaves it at that.

You’re looking at him with an unreadable expression. If anything, Nanami discerns a little concern in the way your brows turn upwards. “Are you going to tell anyone about this?”

He wants to oh so bad. To be the lame tattletale and snitch to Mr. Gakuganji because fraternization is wrong, and fraternization in the workplace is double wrong. “I should report you,” there’s a pregnant pause, “but I won’t.”

Why? He asks himself.

You seemed to have read his thoughts. “Why?”

Nanami doesn’t have an answer to that. Where is this slice of mercy coming from? All he knows for certain is that staring at the trembling woman in front of him any longer will have him blow a fuse. “Go home, Y/n.” It’s the last thing he offers before turning on his heel and walking back out into the Christmas function, swallowing down each and every confusing feeling swirling around his brain.

likes and reblogs are appreciated !

tags . • @justbelljust @amnmich @ti-mame @silkija @maddietries @vyntagei @ebrysteria @aesukuni

[eelhound]

"I think Homer outwits most writers who have written on the War [fantasy archetype], by not taking sides.

The Trojan war is not and you cannot make it be the War of Good vs. Evil. It’s just a war, a wasteful, useless, needless, stupid, protracted, cruel mess full of individual acts of courage, cowardice, nobility, betrayal, limb-hacking-off, and disembowelment. Homer was a Greek and might have been partial to the Greek side, but he had a sense of justice or balance that seems characteristically Greek — maybe his people learned a good deal of it from him? His impartiality is far from dispassionate; the story is a torrent of passionate actions, generous, despicable, magnificent, trivial. But it is unprejudiced. It isn’t Satan vs. Angels. It isn’t Holy Warriors vs. Infidels. It isn’t hobbits vs. orcs. It’s just people vs. people.

Of course you can take sides, and almost everybody does. I try not to, but it’s no use; I just like the Trojans better than the Greeks. But Homer truly doesn’t take sides, and so he permits the story to be tragic. By tragedy, mind and soul are grieved, enlarged, and exalted.

Whether war itself can rise to tragedy, can enlarge and exalt the soul, I leave to those who have been more immediately part of a war than I have. I think some believe that it can, and might say that the opportunity for heroism and tragedy justifies war. I don’t know; all I know is what a poem about a war can do. In any case, war is something human beings do and show no signs of stopping doing, and so it may be less important to condemn it or to justify it than to be able to perceive it as tragic.

But once you take sides, you have lost that ability.

Is it our dominant religion that makes us want war to be between the good guys and the bad guys?

In the War of Good vs. Evil there can be divine or supernal justice but not human tragedy. It is by definition, technically, comic (as in The Divine Comedy): the good guys win. It has a happy ending. If the bad guys beat the good guys, unhappy ending, that’s mere reversal, flip side of the same coin. The author is not impartial. Dystopia is not tragedy.

Milton, a Christian, had to take sides, and couldn’t avoid comedy. He could approach tragedy only by making Evil, in the person of Lucifer, grand, heroic, and even sympathetic — which is faking it. He faked it very well.

Maybe it’s not only Christian habits of thought but the difficulty we all have in growing up that makes us insist justice must favor the good.

After all, 'Let the best man win' doesn’t mean the good man will win. It means, 'This will be a fair fight, no prejudice, no interference — so the best fighter will win it.' If the treacherous bully fairly defeats the nice guy, the treacherous bully is declared champion. This is justice. But it’s the kind of justice that children can’t bear. They rage against it. It’s not fair!

But if children never learn to bear it, they can’t go on to learn that a victory or a defeat in battle, or in any competition other than a purely moral one (whatever that might be), has nothing to do with who is morally better.

Might does not make right — right?

Therefore right does not make might. Right?

But we want it to. 'My strength is as the strength of ten because my heart is pure.'

If we insist that in the real world the ultimate victor must be the good guy, we’ve sacrificed right to might. (That’s what History does after most wars, when it applauds the victors for their superior virtue as well as their superior firepower.) If we falsify the terms of the competition, handicapping it, so that the good guys may lose the battle but always win the war, we’ve left the real world, we’re in fantasy land — wishful thinking country.

Homer didn’t do wishful thinking.

Homer’s Achilles is a disobedient officer, a sulky, self-pitying teenager who gets his nose out of joint and won’t fight for his own side. A sign that Achilles might grow up someday, if given time, is his love for his friend Patroclus. But his big snit is over a girl he was given to rape but has to give back to his superior officer, which to me rather dims the love story. To me Achilles is not a good guy. But he is a good warrior, a great fighter — even better than the Trojan prime warrior, Hector. Hector is a good guy on any terms — kind husband, kind father, responsible on all counts — a mensch. But right does not make might. Achilles kills him.

The famous Helen plays a quite small part in The Iliad. Because I know that she’ll come through the whole war with not a hair in her blond blow-dry out of place, I see her as opportunistic, immoral, emotionally about as deep as a cookie sheet. But if I believed that the good guys win, that the reward goes to the virtuous, I’d have to see her as an innocent beauty wronged by Fate and saved by the Greeks.

And people do see her that way. Homer lets us each make our own Helen; and so she is immortal.

I don’t know if such nobility of mind (in the sense of the impartial 'noble' gases) is possible to a modern writer of fantasy. Since we have worked so hard to separate History from Fiction, our fantasies are dire warnings, or mere nightmares, or else they are wish fulfillments."

- Ursula K. Le Guin, from No Time to Spare, 2013.

[carajilloplz]

Omg can u write a fic abt Art Donaldson and Patrick trying to hit on foreign exchange student!reader, could end in fluff or smut

no bc this is literally my fantasy i’m an international student at a D1 tennis school IM GONNA GO FERAL. loosely based off of my experience with the cornell men’s tennis team but we’re not talking about that.

warnings: SMUT 18+ MDNI, patrick x international student!tennis player!reader, this might be bad i wrote this over the course of like 3 days and changed the plot completely lol, smoking and drinking, oral!male and female receiving, facesitting, technically cheating? vague but everything is morally dubious with these three, unprotected p in v, hair pulling

uh enjoy ig i hope it's not too bad

Tashi? You’d known her since forever. You attended the same tennis camp when you were girls and never lost contact. Having played a few matches during Juniors, you stayed pretty close. So when you saw her on your match schedule for the upcoming month, you shot her a text saying you had to go out together when you were at Stanford for the weekend.

Your match rolled around and you were definitely focused. Winning meant you stayed at the top of your conference, which wasn’t the ATP ranking but it was still important to you. So you trained, and hard. You were a good player, quick on your feet, and the training paid off in your first doubles game that weekend. Before your game, you got to catch a wave and a smile from Tashi sitting in the stands, next to a mousy-looking blonde guy and a very cocky brunette. You noted that the brunette was more your type, but the blonde was cute enough. Must have been Tashi’s friends.

You started your match, extremely harmonious with your partner, and you swiftly caught every ball headed your way. From the stands, Art and Patrick were shamelessly throwing around comments as they saw the ball bounce back and forth.

 “She has an insane serve. I heard she’s like a tennis prodigy in her country.” Art gushes, getting cut off by Patrick quickly with “I don’t know how you’re paying attention to her serve when she has such nice legs. I’d like to have those wrapped around my head soon.” 

Winning the game 4-6, you were happy with the result. 

You watched Tashi play her doubles match, flawlessly annihilating your teammates. When the time came for yours and Tashi’s match, you felt the playfully challenging energy in the air. Patrick and Art were at the edge of their seats, and as the game started they both were practically drooling at the match. They couldn’t decide whether to look at you, or Tashi, or the ball. Both you and Tashi were smoothly tearing each other to shreds, grunting and running around, you always catching the ball just in time. 

“I don’t know how she’s doing it but I think she’s going to beat Tashi” Art mumbles, slumped into his seat as he switched his focus from the ball, to the way you moved, to your figure.

“I call dibs” replies Patrick. He was staring at you too, staring intently and admiring the way your arm smoothly hit the ball with a thwack in a way that threw Tashi off. 

“Don’t do that to Tashi.” mumbled Art again, playfully hitting the brunette next to him. He didn’t even take his eyes off of you. He knew too damn well that Patrick could not care less, and didn’t know whether to feel for you or Tashi. Pat and Tashi had been having a rough time anyways, so it was really a matter of time before either of them caved.

Finishing the match, you and Tashi gave each other a friendly hug. You noticed that the two boys that had been sitting with Tashi were rushing down to congratulate the two of them. 

“Great game, babe.” The brunette said, giving Tashi a small peck. You noticed that she didn’t really appreciate the gesture. The boy turned to you, “And this is?”

Tashi introduced you, explaining that you went to tennis camp together, the whole history. “And these two idiots are Art and Patrick.”

“Nice to meet you too, you guys play tennis?” you ask, intrigued but it was kind of obvious.

Art answers before Patrick can open his mouth— “Yeah, I play here at Stanford too, I’m just injured right now,” he says, pointing to his shoulder, which had muscle tape peeking from the sleeve of his shirt. “Pat’s just… there.”

“Hey! I play too, dipshit. I’m playing the Miami Open in a few weeks.”

Tashi was done with her games of the day, and said she’d be taking a short break. “I’m going to take a shower and heading to bars later, want to come?” She asks.”You can come and get ready in my dorm with me.” You nod in approval, following them as you headed to the locker rooms. Patrick and Tashi were walking together as he was clearly rambling about something that she was unfazed by. 

“So they’re a thing huh?” you ask Art, who was walking next to you.

“Yeah I mean, he comes to visit every once in a while but I don’t think that they’ve quite put a label on it yet.” He answers quite honestly, “She’s a very focused person.”

“I know, that’s why it was strange to me that she was with somebody.”

Art nodded in understanding, “I know, I say the same thing and they’re surprisingly sticking it out.”

“Honestly I don’t know how she does it.” you admit. The few times you had been involved with someone it went to shit because of your schedule.

“What do you mean? I thought Tashi said you were dating someone.” Art asks, furrowing his brow.

“Oh no, I broke up with him forever ago, he was on my team before he had to stop playing because of an injury. He’s a full-on NARP now and that really got in the way.” You scoff slightly, laughing to yourself and shaking your head. “Doesn’t seem strange to me that Tash wouldn’t check my Facebook, I’ve deleted all my posts with him since.”

“Yeah she’s like that,” muses Art. “Lives in her own world and we’re all moons revolving around it.”

. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁

After changing in the locker rooms and staying to watch the rest of the singles games, you headed to your hotel to freshen up a little to head to Tashi’s and get ready. 

Walking over to the dorm, you run into Patrick, already wearing what you assumed to be his bar clothes — some jeans, nikes, and a gray shirt that says ‘I told ya’. 

“Hey Patrick, you heading to Tashi’s?” you say amicably, trying to strike conversation with your friend’s…? You don’t know what he was.

“Yeah, you?” he asks, pulling out a carton of cigarettes and lighting one. Pat sends the pack your way as an offering “Want one?”

“Yes please, and yeah, I’m getting ready at Tashi’s for tonight. She’d said we would go to bars?”

Patrick goes to light your cigarette and you two continue your walk towards the dorm. “I think you look gorgeous just like that, but to each their own.”

You roll your eyes and fill the rest of the walk with small talk, which to your relief was a relatively short walk so it didn’t get too awkward. As you headed into the elevator, you went to press the button and couldn’t remember what floor Tashi had mentioned. “On what floor does she live?” You ask, as the elevator comes to a close. You could feel his eyes on you. Looking back at him, you catch him staring and give him a questioning look. 

“Patrick?”

“6th floor”

A moment of silence passes between you two. He, of course, breaks it. “Your accent is cute. I don’t know, it fits you.” Patrick is very clearly snaking his eyes up and down your figure, and you didn’t know whether you wanted to stop yourself. “You’re not from around here are y-”

“I don’t know what you’re playing at, Patrick, but you’re with my friend and that is not something I want to intrude in.” You snap. It felt a little mean but it’s not something you’d want to do to Tashi. 

He snorts, laughing to himself and furrowing his brow, “I’m not with Tashi, if you haven’t noticed. She barely gives me the time of day unless she wants me to fuck her.”

You’re surprised at his statement, a little less so at his crass choice of words, but you realized that that’s the kind of person he was. Extremely conflicted with how to react, you noticed the lustful look in his eye and the little bite he gave the inside of his cheek. You couldn’t. You turned away and looked at the numbers of the floors go up excruciatingly slow. Pat hesitated, but at this point he had nothing to lose. 

“If it raises the chances of you being interested in me, then no. For all intents and purposes I am not with Tashi.”

. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁

Later that night, at some dingy college bar, both Patrick and Art were inquisitively leaning towards you and Tashi. You'd all had your fair share of drinks and there was something in the air, you didn't know what it was but it made you feel magnetic, especically towards Art and Patrick. You liked Art and everything, but you couldn’t help but notice how he would always be catching a look at Tash and sweeping in to mediate when she and Pat would begin a harmless spat. Patrick, on the other hand, had very much caught your eye. Something about him made you curious, maybe it was his nonchalance and light cockiness towards everything. But from your previous conversation, you now knew that he was clearly intrigued by you, leaning his head to the side like a confused puppy as he listened to you explain that you were an international student.

“Oh so you’re far far from home” He comments, “And you’re not from the US?”

“Don’t act too surprised Pat, a lot of international students come to US universities to play tennis.” you reply, “And yes, I’m pretty far from home”

He nods in understanding. “That’s cool, honestly. I’d love to visit and see what your country’s like.”

You smile back, looking up at him through half-lidded eyes and the liquid confidence taking over, “You can come anytime.”

Eventually, you and Patrick keep up the conversation, drinks flowing, and notice that Art and Tashi had disappeared, God knows where.

“Did they really leave us here?” Patrick asks, bewildered when he noticed that Art and Tashi were nowhere to be seen. You shrugged. “I mean, I don’t mind it to be honest. I had to head to my hotel so I would have been going back alone anyways.”

“I can’t let you do that, that’s dangerous.” Patrick said, quickly inserting himself as the hero of the situation. “I’ll take you to your hotel. Where are you staying?”

“Oh just at a Holiday Inn down the street.”

“No way! I’m staying in that one too,” he says. “C’mon I’ll walk you back.”

You don’t know if it was the drinks or the tension you still had from today’s game but somehow, you ended up making out with Patrick in the elevator on your way up to your room. Patrick’s lips clashed against yours, bringing you closely into his embrace as you two killed the time before getting to your room. You separated the kiss for a moment, looking Pat dead in the eye.

“Not a word to Tashi about this.”

“No worries baby, she wouldn’t even care. She’s probably busy doing Art right now. She prefers him.” he admits, shrugging unconcerned and leaning back in to kiss you.

Luckily, your room was one of the first ones accessible as you got out of the elevator, so you reached into your pocket as you both stumbled towards the door. You fumbled with the key for a moment as Pat left some kisses on your throat, lost in you and your every move.

Finally being able to open the door, you two connected in a kiss once more and clumsily moved towards the bed, clothes coming off sloppily. Bumping against the end of the bed, you and Patrick fall onto the soft and fluffy duvet, heavenly on your tired muscles, heightening the pleasurable sensations of Pat’s lips on yours. 

His kisses were desperate, frantic, rushed, matching all the possible descriptive words for the way he was reaching at all of the grippable parts of you as he sloppily kissed you, teeth clashing. He was panting, and you were also desperately clawing at his t-shirt, moving your tongue against his and travelling your hands back into his hair. There was something about how the two of you just melded together, maybe fuelled by the underlying guilt of what you were doing, but also the insatiable need to blow off some fuckin’ steam.

You could feel how he was starting to grow hard in his jeans, starting to kiss your jaw and neck.

“Let me get on top, Patrick” you gasp, out of breath, pulling him back into the kiss and rolling over so you’re straddling him. He’s reaching up to you, grabbing your ass as you wrap your arms around his neck in order to keep him close. You start rolling your hips, bringing yourself to hit that sweet spot, easily accessible through under your skirt, and moaning into his mouth at the feeling. Gripping the edges of his shirt, he follows your lead of taking it off as you remove your top as well. For a moment he stops, slowly leaning back into his elbows, taking the sight of you squirming on top of him.

“Suck my dick.” He says, something so gluttonous yet pleading in his eyes. “Please.”

You look down at him, licking your bottom lip at the mere though of hearing his moans with your mouth on him. Nodding, slowly, you start kissing at his body, making your way down and occasionally looking back up at him. He’s got his head thrown back taking in the tenderness of your touch. You get to his jeans, tented up by his hard cock and start unbuckling his belt. Making your way through his layers, you reach into his jeans and start palming him, feeling how hard you had made him feel. You hear him moan shamelessly at this, saying your name and encouraging you to continue. 

He starts pulling his jeans and underwear down, barely enough for you to be able to access his cock, which you grab in your hand and spit on, beginning to pleasure him. His moans are loud as you continue, licking his tip and sending him into a spiral, moaning a load of curses and your name. As you keep going, he starts tangling his hands in your hair and trying his best to get it out of your face. 

“God, baby you look so good like that sucking my cock, fuck.” He groans, throwing his head back. You look up at him, and his blissed out expression just fuels you even more, his stomach muscles contracting and his eyes scrunching closed giving you more of a reason to keep bobbing your head up and down on his cock. You gag around him, your mouth already salivating and sloppy, and you went up to take a breath.

“Want to return the favor, Pat?” you ask, looking up at him through half-lidded, pleading eyes while you kept languidly stroking his cock. He took a single look at you and nodded. 

“Yeah, of course baby,” he says as you sit up. “C’mon, get on me.”

You furrow your brow— “You want me to sit on your face?” You reply with a smirk, climbing up his body

He smirks back, “How else would I return the favor?” Pat leans in to give you one, long hard kiss, the taste of himself in your mouth making his dick twitch. “Can’t wait to taste ya, babe”

You giggle, straddling him as he moves backwards a little in order to reach under you. At the first contact his lips have with your throbbing pussy, you let out a surprised moan and you grip his hair. He grabs your hips, a strong grip pulling you down towards him and making you have to find support against the headboard. 

“Fuck, Patrick that feels so good.” You moan, throwing your head back and leaning into his grip. You didn’t care if he suffocated right now, at this point what was of utmost importance was the pressure in your stomach building as he continued to run his tongue along your folds, taking his time to kiss at your sensitive clit. He really did know what he was doing. 

“Patrick please, shit you’re gonna make me come.” He doesn’t budge, just pulls you closer and nods his head against you, speeding up his movements and making you a moaning mess, gripping at his hair and rocking your hips against his mouth to keep that momentum and buildup in your belly. Patrick clearly senses this, moving his tongue faster and more intensely.

“Cum, baby” you feel him mumble. Immediately at his words, you feel yourself snap and a rush of energy archs your back and makes you gush all over his face. He comes up, making you straddle him, and he smiles at you with his mouth still glistening with your release, looking voraciouslt at you. 

“You have no idea what you do to me.”

Patrick brings you into a passionate kiss, once again sloppily coming together with him manouvering himself to be on top of you. All of your clothes had come off at some point, all of the contact had been so frantic, truly taking your mind off of everything else as you felt him on you. He was rock hard, still aroused from your blowjob, and he started nudging the tip of his cock on your entrance. You come back to your senses, pushing him away for a moment and giving him a look, which he quickly realized what it meant.

“Fuck I— I’ll just buy you a pill tomorrow.”

This was enough for you to give him a nod and make him start sliding inside you, letting out a heavy groan as he bottomed out. You let out a tense moan, grabbing at the bedsheets next to your head, and bringing your arms around his back as he began his thrusts, breathing hard into your neck, kissing it erratically between moans. 

“You’re so tight, oh my God” He groans, picking up his pace, making you a moaning mess and pulling him closer to you. He was hitting a spot inside you that was bringing your orgasm back, the pressure in your belly building again as he roughly grabbed your hips. Patrick brought his lips back to yours, sloppily kissing you with tongue to shut your high-pitched whines up. “Don’t be too loud baby, your neighbors are going to complain.”

A solution clearly comes into his mind as he sits back and turns you around to be on all fours, the sudden force on you making you yelp as he pushed you down against the pillow. He teases his cockhead against your folds, then reaches down to speak wantonly into your ear. “Now you can be as loud as you want baby.”

At that, you melt in his touch and let out a long, languid moan at the feeling of him slipping into your cunt, sopping with your arousal and absorbing his hard thrusts. You scream into the pillow as the pressure in your core keeps building and his thrusts hit the right spot that send you into a delirium. Patrick is a moaning mess behind you, the obscene combination of sounds, skin against skin and pleasurable moans making him even more aroused. He’s harsh, pulling your hips to match his pace and you feel him reach up and pull your hair back, revealing your fucked out face to him. “Make me cum again, please Patrick.” you groan, rolling your eyes backwards in pleasure as he speeds up his thrusts, bringing you closer to your orgasm. 

“Fuck, I’m going to come baby—” he moans, his thrusts made more erratic at the sensation of your cunt around him. You begin to feel yourself let go as he thrusts sloppily one, two, three more times and pulls out of you, coming all over your back.  You collapse under him, and he kneels back to admire your gorgeous ass painted by his work. “Patrick, you better not tell Tashi about this.” He hears, mumbled tiredly from under your messed up hair. Shaking his head and rolling his eyes (because really, you were thinking about that now?), he gets off the bed, walking into your bathroom to grab a towel for your spent, cum-stained body.

a/n: hope u enjoyed ig !! took me forever lol but if you liked this would like to request some ideas you are more than welcome to !!

[egcdeath]

cupid’s arrow

pairing: joel miller x reader

summary: you and joel have your first valentine’s day together. (part of the soccer parents alternate universe)

warnings: alternate universe: no apocalypse, established relationship, domesticity, so much fluff. be prepared to call your dentist.

word count: 7.5k

author’s note: happy extremely late valentine’s day!!! i tried to incorporate a little bit of all the requests i got for this fic, so special thank you to everyone who helped make this fic happen!!

technically the timelines don’t really line up from this fic and the l word (many i love you’s are uttered) but you know what. it’s valentine’s day. valentine’s day magic ✨

“So, what’s your Valentine’s Day plan this year?” Sarah asked on her otherwise quiet commute to school.

Joel drew his attention away from the road to glance at his daughter and smiled to himself, just the slightest bit. He always found it oddly endearing to see just how invested his and your daughter were into your relationship. At this point, it was no secret that Sarah and Chloe had worked hard to set you and him up a multitude of times, and Joel certainly wasn’t mad about it. If anything, he was grateful for your kids being nosy and sharp enough to know when to make a move when you and himself clearly could not.

“Well I want our first one to be a good one, so I booked a reservation at this really nice restaurant. Pretty expensive, pretty hard to get into, but she deserves the best,” Joel said with a deceptively nonchalant tone.

Joel couldn’t even lie—he was proud of himself. He couldn’t even remember the last time he had spent Valentine’s day with anyone other than his daughter, and he’d booked the reservation the moment that it was available. The restaurant really was notorious for being hard to get into on a non-holiday, let alone Valentine’s Day, so he was sure you would appreciate the subtle-yet-grand gesture.

“Dad,” Sarah began, her tone slightly apprehensive as if she were preparing to break bad news to him. “I know this is your first Valentine’s Day in forever, but a restaurant is just… it isn’t enough anymore.”

“What?” Joel asked, slightly taken aback. Given that he hadn’t had a serious relationship in some time, and was more than slightly insecure about his ability to be as good of a partner as you expected, hearing his daughter explain that a fancy dinner wasn’t enough in the modern dating scene was jarring at the least, and terrifying at the most.

“Don’t worry. You’re lucky that your daughter is full of ideas. We’re gonna give your woman a perfect Valentine’s day.”

-

At your daughter’s request, you were painting Chloe’s nails to match the upcoming holiday to the absolute best of your ability. You tried your best, but your hand-eye coordination wasn’t amazing, so the best of your ability ended up being a set of pink nails with one red finger–but your daughter was enjoying the process regardless.

“So mom,” Chloe began, fanning one hand as she attempted to speed up the process of drying her nails. “What’re you getting Joel for Valentine’s day?”

“I was thinking of taking him on a date to his favorite cafe. Something a little more relaxed,” you lightly dabbed some acetone where you’d gotten some polish on her skin.

“That’s sweet but… are you sure Joel wants that? I mean, you two always go there. It’s not particularly romantic.”

It wasn’t exactly shocking that you weren’t great with big romantic gestures. Nathan had been morally opposed to them, or too lazy for them, or something that ensured no one ever did anything romantic for you, and in return, you very rarely did anything romantic for him. Given that the last time you spent a Valentine’s Day (or anniversary… really any day that called for romance) with someone was with him, you weren’t even really sure where to start.

“Oh,” you thought aloud, trying to process the idea that small gestures wouldn’t really do justice to portray just how much you loved and appreciated your partner. “I guess you’re right.”

“Let me help you,” she insisted, excitedly grabbing onto your arm as her eyes lit up.

Well, it wasn’t like Chloe wasn’t good at these things. If it wasn’t for her and Sarah’s intervention, you and Joel never would’ve been together in the first place. It certainly wouldn’t kill you to let her help you out in this field.

“Okay, fine,” you agreed, playing up your reluctance.

“Yay!” she cheered. “This is gonna be so fun.”

You certainly hoped it would be.

-

On the morning of Valentine’s day, you were somewhat surprised when your alarm went off and you found Joel’s side of the bed to be both empty and cold.

Considering that your plan was to wake up early to leave a gift in the kitchen before Joel had the chance to get there, your Valentine’s Day plans weren’t off to the best start. You immediately rolled out of bed and suppressed the groan you wanted to let out at the sweet smell wafting up from the kitchen—both from anticipation of something delicious waiting for you, and the knowledge that your plan had been foiled.

After doing some rummaging through his closet, you managed to find the box of the coffee machine that you’d hidden, and hesitantly began your trek downstairs, knowing that your big reveal would be slightly less ideal. When you arrived in the kitchen, Joel was standing at the stove and diligently working on something. He glanced back at you, and a smile instantly formed on his lips at the sight of you—bed hair, old pajamas, and all.

“Good morning, gorgeous,” he greeted, setting his spatula down and coming over to give you a tight embrace. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

“Happy Valentine’s Day,” you said right back, relaxing into his hug despite the large box in your hands slightly obstructing it. “What’re you doing?”

“It’s a surprise,” Joel stated plainly, stepping back to look at what you were holding. “What’s this?”

“Your gift. I know you love coffee more than you love any person who’s in this house right now, so it’s time for you to get rid of your archaic machine. This is a Nespresso. Very modern and very good, or so I’ve heard,” you extended your hands to offer the box, which he gladly accepted

Joel examined it, the smile on his face not even faltering for a moment. With all this smiling, you were sure his cheeks would hurt by the end of the day. “Thank you so much. I can’t wait to use this,” he set down the box on the counter then gave you a peck. “Now, go back upstairs so I can finish working on your surprise.”

“Mm, sounds good,” you hummed, still fighting sleepiness as you retreated back up the stairs.

Well, your gift reveal may not have gone exactly the way you wanted it to, but you were pleased to see that Joel was still happy with what you gave him. Chloe would be proud.

“What is this?” Sarah asked, looking down at her plate of oddly shaped pink pancakes.

It was clear that this was what Joel had gotten up early to work on—Valentine’s Day themed pancakes. Although there was clearly an attempt at making what you could only assume were hearts, the pancakes came out as blobs more than anything else.

“…Hearts?” Joel suggested, sounding very unsure of his answer as he sipped his cup of coffee (made by his brand new machine).

“Dad…” Sarah trailed off, pushing around parts of her pancake.

“Are you gonna eat them or not?” Joel retorted, obviously a little less than enthusiastic about the reaction to the pancakes he’d gotten up early to work on, and worked quite hard on.

“I’m not gonna say no to breakfast.”

“I tried my best. It’s harder than it looks, okay?”

“They’re cute,” you interrupted. “It’s the thought that counts. I love them,” you hummed. The least you could do was support Joel in his romantic endeavors. Sure, the pancakes didn’t look amazing, but it really was a sweet gesture. And maybe they didn’t look the best, but they certainly tasted good.

Sarah didn’t exactly look like she believed you, and she glanced skeptically at Chloe, who was quietly giggling at the oddly shaped amoebas on her plate.

“I’m not an artist,” Joel explained, almost apologetically as your kids picked at their pancakes.

“We can tell,” Chloe murmured, earning herself a glare from you and a giggle from her friend.

“I never asked you to be one,” you assured. “It’s abstract. And it’s good enough for me.”

Joel quickly pecked your lips, eliciting a collective ‘ew!’ from the table.

“Alright, that’s enough from you two. Finish up quickly so we can get you to school on time,” you instructed.

The girls reluctantly agreed and finished up their abstract plates without much more protest or teasing before grabbing their last few items and heading off to the car.

“Did you actually like it? You can be honest with me,” Joel asked as you finished off your mug of coffee.

“I was being honest! I really did love it. It’s sweet that you put so much effort into doing something nice for me. Waking up all early, being in the kitchen all morning… I bet doing pancake art is pretty difficult.”

“It is, and you’d never guess that it is. The batter kinda just runs all over the place,” he explained, grabbing your empty dish and dropping it off at the sink. You got out of your seat and followed him over to where he stood, attempting to assure him that you really did enjoy the thoughtfulness of his gesture.

“Well, I love that you tried so hard to make something nice for me to wake up to,” you took a step closer to Joel, giving him a brief little peck to show your appreciation. “And I love you.” you leaned in for one slightly longer kiss and Joel’s hands softly cupped your cheeks as the kiss deepened.  

Joel finally pulled away, dropping his hands down from your cheeks to your hands so he could hold them. “As much as I’d like to kiss you all morning, we do have two kids waiting to be taken to school sitting in my backseat right now.”

“Unfortunately, you’re right,” you sighed. “Can we pick up where we left off when we get back?”

“Of course,” he agreed, beginning to lead you out the door.

-

Although your morning plans may have fallen through, your plan to pick up on your make-out session certainly did not, which was how you found yourselves waiting for the shower to warm up so you could hop in together and wash off the ever present scent of sweat and sex.

“It’s been too long since we last showered together,” you remarked, testing out the heat of the water with the palm of your hand before taking a step inside.

“It’s just that my shower is so small,” he explained, following you into the shower. “And we always end up thinking showering together is better than it actually is.”

“It is small, but I like being this close to you,” you countered, hugging him from behind. “We’re bonding. Don’t you like bonding with me?”

“I do, until one of us slips, and won’t stop talking about how they almost died for an entire day,” he set his hands on top of yours as you embraced him.

“That was once, Joel. One time!” you exclaimed, breaking away from your partner to reach for his shampoo.

“One time too many,” he responded.

Although ‘almost dying’ was a bit of an over-dramatization, it certainly wasn’t fun to fall in the shower. The day began as a slow Sunday morning at Joel’s place. Your daughter was at Nathan’s for the weekend, and Sarah had been at a sleepover with some friends. Given that the two of you had the house to yourselves, you certainly made the most of it before heading to the shower to clean yourselves up. Halfway through Joel assisting you in exfoliating your legs, you were met with the sound of a door opening and closing downstairs, making you practically leap out of your skin, and lose your balance, leading you to fall pretty hard. Joel helped you up and immediately began to take care of you, and granted you weren’t too badly injured, but you refused to let Joel forget the time you dramatically tripped in the shower because Sarah got home from her sleepover a little early.  

“I can’t believe you’re treating me like this on Valentine’s Day,” you sighed, pouring some shampoo and reaching into his hair to massage his scalp. “We should probably break up.”

“I agree,” Joel practically sighed, relaxed from the way your fingers were working in his hair. “I think it’s for the best.”

“Okay, I’ll let the girls know when we get out of the shower. The parents that they worked so hard to set up are never going to see or speak to each other ever again,” you said the words very seriously, but the way you were massaging Joel’s scalp told a completely different story.

“Sounds like a plan,” Joel purred, letting you work your magic as you played with his hair. “You’re too good at this. Why don’t I let you do my hair more often?”

“Psht, you're preaching to the choir here,” you reached forward to rinse off your hands. “For the record, this is one of your Valentine’s gifts. Savor it while you can. Especially before we finalize our breakup.”

“I’m savoring,” he insisted.

You two took your time in the shower, truly enjoying an endeavor you didn’t often do with each other. By the time you finally stepped out, the water had dropped several degrees, and you were both becoming human prunes.

Just moments after Joel wrapped his towel around his hips, he had disappeared back into his room, leaving you peeking past the bathroom door to see what he was up to. It certainly wasn’t unheard of for one of you to get ready without the other, but you preferred to have his presence with you in that humid little bathroom.

Joel came back just a few moments later, slightly more dressed, and now wielding a flat, red box.

“I got you something,” he announced as he joined you at the sink, bashfully looking down at the item in his hands.

“Oh?” you said curiously, glancing at the box as Joel slowly opened it, revealing a thin, silver necklace with what looked like a small diamond attached to it.  

“It’s a necklace,” he explained, beginning to lift the dainty accessory out of the box so that he could fully display it to you.

You were immediately taken aback by it, an involuntary, “It’s beautiful,” slipping from your lips.

“Can I put it on you?” Joel asked cautiously. You eagerly agreed, excited to have a little piece of Joel on you at all times. You turned around and lifted up the back of your hair so that he could gently wrap the necklace around your neck, and he fumbled a bit with the clasp until it was just right.

“I love it,” you expressed, observing it in the mirror and running a finger against the chain of the necklace as you fully took it in. “This is too nice.”

“Nothing is too nice for you, my love.”

“You are such a sap,” you laughed, leaning forward to get a good look at the accessory and fully admire its beauty.

“And you love that about me,” Joel punctuated his sentence with a kiss to your cheek, leading you to giggle like a schoolgirl.

“You’re right. I do. Thank you,” you said, still checking yourself out with your new piece of jewelry.

“Can I take you somewhere?” you asked, glancing over at your partner in the mirror as he reached for his toothbrush.

“Sure. Where?”

“It’s a surprise,” you said with a knowing smile.

“So, where are we going?” Joel asked as you drove, the sunglasses on your nose preventing him from getting a good read on you.

“What part of surprise do you not get?” you teased, glancing over at him with a smirk. “We’re almost there. Hold your horses.”

Eventually, you pulled up to a little strip of businesses, and grabbed Joel’s hand as you led him out of the car and through a door.

You two were instantly hit with the smell of fragranced oil and the sound of rain from a sound maker as you walked further into the dim location. It was clear to you that Joel was still more confused than anything else.

“Are you sure we’re in the right place?” Joel asked you in a whisper.

“Yes Joel, we are,” you laughed softly at his apprehension. To be fair, he didn’t have an idea of where he was or what you were making him do, but that didn’t make his nerves any less entertaining.

“And where exactly is that?” he followed up.

“We’re getting massages! C’mon,” you beckoned him to follow you up to a desk, where a bored-looking receptionist checked you in.

The two of you sat next to each other in the waiting room, waiting for your masseuses to prepare your room.

“What made you pick this?” Joel asked curiously.

“I dunno, you’re always telling me how sore you are after work. I thought maybe this would help your pain a little. It’s also very relaxing. You’re gonna love it and have a great time.”

There really weren’t too many problems you found that a nice massage at this salon couldn’t fix. When you found the time in your busy schedule to treat yourself to something nice and do a little self care, a deep tissue massage was always one of the first things you decided on doing. It was only a matter of time before you brought Joel along with you, and when you casually mentioned something about Joel to your masseuse, she did mention wanting to see him. Although, Chloe was the one to put the puzzle pieces together to you and suggest the couples’ massage.

“So you’ve done this before?” Joel questioned, still looking somewhere between a little cynical and a little trepidatious.

“Mhm,” you hummed, already imagining yourself getting every kink and bump in your back teased out.

“Walk me through it,” he suggested, seeming a little more comforted knowing that you had actually done this before.

“Well, we go in, they leave, and we strip down to our comfort level, then they just give us a nice deep tissue massage. It might feel a little uncomfortable at first, but it starts feeling pretty good pretty quickly.”

Joel’s expression circled back to slightly skeptical, his brow raised and eyes slightly squinted as he looked at you.

“Don’t make that face! You’re gonna love it. And I’m literally gonna be right next to you. When I called to book this, the receptionist said that the massage tables are so close together, we could hold hands the whole time if we wanted to.”

“Alright, fine. But if I hate it, I get to say that I told you so.”

“Okay, deal,” you agreed.

Your massage was going so well, you swore you were on a different planet. Sure, you didn’t have a very physically labor intensive job, but all the stress you'd accumulated over the last… however long always seemed to find itself stuck in your body. The massage was doing exactly what it needed to in terms of getting it out.

Joel groaned your name, his voice slightly distorted by his face being buried in the head pillow. “I take back everything I said.”

“I know,” you responded, far too gone to even really process what he was saying.

Walking out of that studio, you felt like a brand new person. Maybe that person was a little oily, but you felt like your body had gone under a complete transformation in just that hour.

“I can’t tell if I want to take a nap or run a marathon,” you exclaimed, stretching out your rejuvenated limbs.

“That was an amazing gift. Can we make this a V-Day tradition?” Joel asked, opening the car door for you.

“Hell yeah,” you agreed, getting into the passenger’s seat and breathing out a heavy sigh. “To think you thought you wouldn’t like it. Now I get to say I told you so.”

“Fair. I deserve it. That was life changing. I could marry you for thinking of that.”

Chloe actually thought of that, but Joel didn’t need to know that. For all you cared, he could keep thinking that you were the romantic genius.

“So what’s next on the agenda?”

“Just sit and wait. It’s a bit of a drive, so maybe you can get in that nap you wanted.”

You unsurprisingly slept like a rock after that massage. So much so, that you woke up to Joel softly saying your name and gently shaking your shoulder as he attempted to let you know that you’d arrived at your next destination.

When you opened your eyes, you were met with a an interesting looking building in front of you, one you’d seen in tourism handouts, but hadn’t yet visited for yourself—despite the many times you said you wanted to.

“Is this an art museum?” you asked aloud despite already knowing the answer.

Joel simply flashed you a toothy grin before popping out of the car, walking around it, and opening the door for you.

“I know you’ve been saying you want to come visit for a while,” he explained, slipping his hand into yours while you walked inside.

“I don’t know why I’m so surprised that you actually listen to me. Thank you,” you expressed.

You and Joel took your time walking around the museum, exploring the exhibits, reading the labels on pieces, and taking in all of the interesting and beautiful art. It was refreshing to come to a museum and not be rushed the whole time by an impatient daughter or disinterested spouse, and Joel expressing every now and then that despite being surrounded by so much beauty and artwork, you were the prettiest thing in the museum certainly enhanced your experience.

The two of you entered an exhibit that was obviously targeted towards children as you approached the end of the building, and your eyes immediately fell on a station that was clearly designed for kids to use. You walked towards it, and plopped down on one side of the tiny table before Joel sat down right across from you.

“Isn’t this for kids?” he asked you, his knees audibly creaking as he attempted to get comfortable on his tiny stool.

“Whatever. They’re all at school anyway. Or at least, they should be,” you grabbed a marker that was on your side of the divider, along with a piece of paper. “Wanna draw each other?”

“Haven’t we already established today that there’s not an artistic bone in my body?”

“C’mon, Joel,” you pleaded. “Please? As a Valentine’s Day gift?”

“Fine. Only because I love you. But you’re not allowed to laugh.”

“Swear,” you agreed despite knowing that it was more likely than not that you were going to laugh. While Joel reached for his own writing utensil and paper, you set your hand in front of the timer on the desk, giving you both five minutes to work on your portrait.

The man across from you focused deeply on his paper, looking pensively and seriously down at his paper and up at you every now and then rather than actually putting his marker to the paper.

After five minutes, the built-in alarm went off, and you both put your markers down, evaluating the work you had done.

“I don’t know if you want to see this. It’s really bad,” Joel confessed, awkwardly moving the paper out of your direct eyeline.

“It’s definitely not! Here, we’ll show each other at the same time. On the count of three?”

The two of you lifted your papers at the same time, and you involuntarily giggled when you looked at Joel’s. It was more or less an extremely basic stick figure with hearts around it. To be frank, your picture of Joel was basically the same.

“Hey, part of our agreement is that you wouldn’t laugh!” Joel said in between laughter of his own.

“Joel, you’re laughing too!” you giggled, the two of you progressively laughing harder until your stomachs were hurting. Eventually, you were able to catch your breath and collect yourself enough to get some actual words out. “Here, let’s swap. I wanna put this on my fridge.”

“Please don’t,” Joel gasped as he tried to catch his breath. “I don’t think I’ll ever live that down with our daughters.”

“Oh honey,” you responded, still fighting your fits of giggles. “That was the plan.”

-

After your museum date, you and Joel grabbed a quick lunch at a nearby cafe before heading back to the girls’ school to pick them up. You’d agreed to split up for the rest of the afternoon so that you had time to prepare for a nicer dinner in the evening.

It had been a long time since you’d dressed up like this. Although it was fun to get all dolled up, to put on a new matching set of lingerie under a new, formfitting dress, spend a good amount of time working on your makeup at your vanity, and take your time doing your hair, you couldn’t shake off the nervous feeling you were getting.

“Mom! Joel’s here!” Chloe yelled from your living room.

“You can let him in! I need to finish something up.”

You heard the familiar sound of conversation between Joel, Sarah, and Chloe while you finished up applying your lipstick, taking deep breaths as you did so. You just needed to see Joel, then you would feel better. To be quite honest, you were slightly intimidated by the restaurant he’d picked that night. Obviously you knew how exclusive and difficult to get in it was, but with how elite it was, part of you worried that you would stick out like a sore thumb.

But Joel had clearly worked so hard on making this night perfect for you, so you weren’t going to let a few nerves get you down. You grabbed your purse and headed downstairs, where your partner stood in your living room listening to your kids.

“Wow,” Joel said involuntarily when his eyes fell upon you. He immediately took a few steps towards you, setting a hand on your waist as he admired you.

“I don’t know why it always surprises me when I see how gross you guys are,” Chloe said, somewhere between a laugh and a cringe. “Okay, it’s time for you to get going. You don’t want to miss your reservation,” your daughter was practically pushing the two of you out the door, a little too enthusiastic to have the two of you gone. “Bye now!”

You finally were able to get a good look at Joel once you’d been shoved out of the door. He looked amazing in a well fitted suit, and a bouquet of red roses in hand.

“You look so handsome,” you gushed as you accepted his flowers. “How did I get so lucky?”

“I’ve been asking myself the same thing. I mean, you always look gorgeous, but you somehow found a way to look even more amazing.”

“Well thank you!” you giggled, letting Joel open the door to his car for you like the gentleman he was.

Joel sat down in the driver's seat, and began to head in the direction of the restaurant. Despite how late you were on the road, it seemed like traffic in the city was particularly bad. You and Joel kept up a light conversation, but the elephant in the room was clearly the traffic, and the fact that with every passing minute, the traffic only seemed to grow.

Your eyes flicked around in a cycle between the traffic ahead of you, your hot, but increasingly anxious date, and the clock on the dashboard. With just a few minutes until the time of your reservation, you finally piped up.

“Do you think we’re gonna make it on time?” you asked.

“I don’t know,” Joel answered quickly, his nerves quite obvious from the speed of his speech. He then followed it up with a slightly less agitated, “I hope so.”

“You know what? I’ll call and let them know we’re running late,” you suggested, reaching for your phone as if that would solve all issues.

That would make things better, right? You knew all that went into Joel getting this reservation, and you weren’t just gonna let it all slip away because of a little traffic.

You pressed your device to your ear and the phone rang once, then twice, then three times before you were informed by a robotic voice that the line was busy.

The scene of traffic didn’t seem to be getting any better either, with the cars in front of you essentially coming to a full stop every now and then. Time was quickly passing by, yet you weren’t making much progress distance-wise.  

You called again to no avail, and attempted to maintain your composure. They would pick up soon enough, and you would get to your reservation on time, and you and Joel would have a lovely evening at that very fancy, exclusive restaurant.

Finally, someone on the other line picked up. You breathed out a sigh of relief as you were finally able to connect with an actual person, and attempt to explain your situation to them.

“We are aware of the car accident and the traffic jam it caused. However, regardless of external circumstances, our grace periods only last ten minutes. Unfortunately we’ve already given away your table to someone else on the waitlist. Our deepest and sincerest apologies.”

You looked over at Joel helplessly, disappointed to deliver the news about something he’d been so excited for for so long.

“Okay, thank you,” you said, quickly hanging up. “I’m sorry,” was the first thing you said to Joel. “They gave our table away.”

“You’re joking,” he said almost flatly, clearly in disbelief that something he’d worked so hard to plan for had slipped through his fingers so easily, and over circumstances that were completely out of his control.

“I’m sorry. We were later than their grace period. But it’s okay! We can just go somewhere else. I’ve heard about a few good restaurants nearby?”

“It’s Valentine’s day. They’re all gonna be fully booked,” he sighed, defeat clear in his tone. “Should I just turn around?”

“No! Right now I’m hungry enough that I’d eat your shoe if you put it in front of me with some silverware. Just… take me anywhere. Maybe somewhere you like? Preferably without a long line?”

Joel fell silent as he thought for a moment, trying to come up with a location that he enjoyed that wouldn’t be particularly busy that evening. As he pondered, a light bulb seemed to go off in his mind, leading him to turn his vehicle around and begin to take you elsewhere.

Your heels clicked against the pavement as Joel took your hand and led you towards a food truck. The smoky aromas hitting your nose were nothing short of heavenly, and if Joel believed that it was good, you were definitely taking his word for it.

“Is that… Joel, is that you?” the man in the window asked in disbelief as the two of you approached.

“It is,” he confirmed, a bit shyly.

“Damn, man! I almost didn’t recognize you all dressed up! What’s the-“ his eyes fell upon you, and his face lit up as he put the pieces together. “Who’s this?”

Joel introduced you by name, and wrapped an arm around you subconsciously. “We’re just celebrating Valentine’s Day.”

“Well you picked the right spot. Nice to meet you, sweetheart. I’m Louis.”

“Hi Louis. You know Joel?” you asked, curious about the camaraderie the pair seemed to have.

“I practically watched him grow up, so yeah, I guess so,” he flashed the two of you a smile, the look he gave Joel slightly more knowing than the soft one he offered you. “What’re we ordering tonight?”

Joel looked at you and shrugged, giving you the go-ahead for anything. It wasn’t like he wasn’t planning on spending a whole mortgage and kidney worth on food at the restaurant you had a reservation at.

You ordered a few different things from his menu, led more by your eyes and nose than your stomach. Louis nodded as you spoke before calling something out to the people working by the grill, and maintaining his position at the window so he could talk to you two.

“Why haven’t I met your friend before, Joel?” Louis asked, teasing in his voice.

“Well, obviously I was waiting for the most romantic day of the year to bring her here,” he looked away from his family friend and back to you. “You know, most people say that bringing your partner here is basically like having a ring in your hand and dropping to one knee.”

“Oh?” you laughed. “I’m flattered. Are you proposing to me?”

“No, not yet,” Joel shot a wink at you, and you felt a slight warmth rise to your cheeks. Of course, he was joking, but if he asked you in that moment to marry him, you’d probably say yes.

“Depending on how good this is, I may be proposing to you, Louis,” you teased, deflecting from the fantasy of marrying your partner.

“Hey! No need for that. Joel’ll bring you to one of my barbecues this summer. I promise you’ll eat so much of my food that you’ll never even want to even think about it again. Right, Joel?”

“Correct. Why do you think it’s been so long since I’ve visited you last?”

“Oh, excuses, excuses,” Louis dismissed, glancing back over his shoulder at the employee preparing your food. “Well lovebirds, since it’s Valentine’s Day, how’d you meet?” he questioned curiously, leaning further onto the ledge so he could get a good look at you and Joel.

“Our kids played soccer together on the same team, so we met through arguing like, all the time,” you laughed, glancing over at Joel who seemed just the slightest bit embarrassed at your frankness of your unconventional meet-cute.

“It sounds kinda bad when you put it like that. We were basically flirt-arguing,” Joel attempted to explain.

“Maybe you were. I was just arguing. But eventually our girls became friends, and we were forced to spend more time together, and I realized he’s not half bad,” you were downplaying just how much you adored the man standing next to you for a bit of comedic effect, but the quick look the two of you shared seemed to communicate everything it needed to for Louis.

“You’re not too bad yourself,” Joel said, cracking an adoring half-smile at you.

“That is too damn sweet,” Louis expressed as he looked between the two of you. He had to do a bit of reading in between the lines, but it was clear to him that the two of you were a rather happy pair, as evidenced by your comfortable body language and the fond teasing. He was clearly quite pleased to see Joel as happy as he was with you. “As much as I’d like to chat and hear more, your order is unfortunately ready. We’ll catch up another time?”

Louis turned around to grab your boxes, and leaned back over the ledge to pass them to Joel.

“Of course. If I don’t get back around sometime soon, we’ll definitely be at one of your barbecues this summer.”

“Good,” Louis nodded. “And before you head back home, stop back over here. I’ll make Sarah her favorite, and something for your daughter too!” he offered you both.

Louis’ barbecue was no joke. You and Joel absolutely demolished everything that was ordered as you laid in the bed of his truck, sat on the blankets Joel had packed for a previous picnic and had never seemed to put back.

“Why hadn’t you brought me here sooner?” you asked, sauce on the edges of your lips. “I feel like a brand new person after this.”

Joel reached over, dabbing at your mouth with a napkin to clean up what you missed. “I told you, this is like serious engagement food. If I brought you here too early on, I might’ve scared you off by moving too fast,” he jokingly explained as he set down the napkin and dragged himself a little closer to you.

You playfully rolled your eyes at the explanation, but leaned onto Joel regardless. “Yeah, whatever,” you muttered, setting your head on his shoulder and looking up at the night sky.

“Do you remember that night when you helped me out with making the team dinner?” Joel seemingly asked out of the blue, wrapping an arm around your shoulder.

“I do,” you nodded, glancing away from the sky and instead looking at Joel. “We’re a pretty great team.”

“We are,” Joel agreed, pausing for a moment. “Do you remember when I asked you out for the first time?”

“Of course I do.”

“I was so nervous. I really liked you a lot, but I wasn’t completely sure you’d say yes, and I didn’t want to ruin the friendship we’d been working on, or make things awkward for the girls. I just kept looking at the sky so I wouldn’t see you and think about all of those things,” he confessed, looking to the sky as he spoke.

“Are you nervous now?” you asked, noticing him watch the stars above you.

“No,” he assured you. “It’s just really beautiful out here tonight. Really clear.”

You leaned in closer, practically sitting on the lap of the man next to you at that point, “Do you see anything good up there?”

“Yeah,” Joel answered, his words blowing a few strands of hair as he spoke.

“Show me?” you asked, curiously peering up at the sky to attempt to see what Joel might’ve been seeing.

“Of course,” he agreed. “Well that right there is the big dipper. And the little dipper, too.”

“Where?” you asked, despite seeing it clearly. You had stargazed with Joel a handful of times, and he always did this cute thing when he saw something that you couldn’t see—grabbing your hand and leaning into you while he pointed out the stars with your own fingers, essentially cuddling you as he did so. His knowledge of what he was looking for, the competency in his actions, and the proximity he kept with you always drove you a little bit wild, and you’d be a fool to turn down an opportunity of getting that side of him out.

Joel took the bait, not even realizing that it was bait. He gently guided your arm to point out the constellation, speaking quietly next to your ear as he narrated what he was seeing. It was taking everything in you not to jump his bones then and there as he helped you see each set of stars.

After a period of pointing out constellations to each other, the two of you finally seemed to run out of observations to make, leaving you quietly sharing space on the blanket laid out in the bed of Joel’s truck.

“This has been my favorite Valentine’s day ever,” you expressed, gazing up at the stars with far less effort than you’d had previously. “I do love spending the day with you, but you really went out of your way to make today sweet. I appreciate it.”

“Hey, I can’t take all the credit. You are the one who arranged that absolutely life changing massage, and the Nespresso machine was great too. I will definitely be using it all the time now.”

“You know, it’s so weird. I used to hate Valentine’s day. Dread it every year because I just knew I’d be disappointed. But you changed that for me. Maybe it’s all the stuff we got to do, but I honestly think I’d be happy doing laundry or something with you today, as long as it meant I’d get to be with you.”

You were thoroughly exhausted after your day of Valentine’s activities, paired with the digestion you were going through after all of that dangerously delicious barbecue you and Joel had consumed. It was safe to say that the ride back to your place was a quiet one, only filled with the occasional uncomfortable grunt or a comment reminiscing on how good your dinner was.

By the time you opened your door, you were shocked to find your living room completely uprooted and transformed into a massive pillow fort. Your daughters, who conveniently were sitting inside of the fort, didn’t seem to notice you as you came in, as they were far too caught up in the Hallmark movie they were watching. Eventually, the sound of feet shuffling caught their attention, and the pair were out of the fort in record time.

“Happy Valentine’s Day!” they both cheered, making jazz hands towards the fort.

“To commemorate your first date, we built you a new and improved pillow fort,” Sarah explained, as she continued to Vanna White their creation.

“This time, it’s big enough for all of us. You’ve had enough alone time today,” Chloe expressed. “Come, come! Are you ready for the tour?”

Your kids showed you the inside of the fort, and there honestly wasn’t much to see. However, it was still quite impressive that they’d managed to pull off putting together such a big fort in such a short period of time.  

“But before we lay down, go change into pajamas. No one should be in a pillow fort in a suit. That’s just ridiculous,” Sarah remarked

“You heard the girl, go!” Chloe emphasized, herding you two upstairs without even giving you time to voice any sort of protest.

“You really went all out this year,” Joel gushed as he followed you into your bedroom.

Hearing him say that did make you feel a little guilty. Sure he didn’t need to know that Chloe had done most of the heavy lifting when it came to celebrating this holiday, but it felt wrong to keep things from him—even something as small as not coming up with original ideas.

“Joel, I have to tell you something,” you began hesitantly as he unzipped your dress.

“Oh no. Are you breaking up with me? Are you pregnant?” he glanced at you over your shoulder.

“No! And no, that’s just my food baby. It’s just that… basically everything I did for you today, Chloe helped me come up with. I was gonna get you a box of chocolates, show you this number,” you gestured at the lingerie revealed by your fallen dress, “then call it a day.”

“You wanna know the truth?” he asked before reaching into your dresser and tossing you a set of pajamas. “I needed Sarah’s help for almost everything today, too. Obviously it was a great day, but… I don’t need fancy things from you or huge romantic gestures, despite what our children might think. Your love alone is plenty.”

“Promise?” you asked, pulling on your pajama shirt.

“Swear.”

“Can we shake on doing a massage and getting barbecue next Valentine’s Day, nothing more and nothing less?”

“That sounds perfect,” Joel agreed, shaking your hand to drive in the point of your agreement. “Now let’s go check out that pillow fort.”

Chloe and Sarah snuggled against you as a new, cheesy rom-com played out on the television in front of you.

“So, how was your V-Day?” Chloe asked, looking between you and Joel mischievously. Obviously, the kids were curious about the fruits of their labor, and you genuinely could not blame them. With all the effort they’d put into making your day great, they deserved to know just how pleasant it was.

“It was amazing,” you confirmed, squeezing your daughter’s shoulder.

“We couldn’t have done it without you two,” Joel added, tossing a not-so-subtle wink at Sarah.

“Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?” Sarah asked with a slightly uncomfortable laugh.

“It means that you two are hopeless romantics, and without your guys’ help, we would’ve had a painfully boring Valentine’s Day,” you explained.

“Can you blame us for wanting to help you two old farts out? You haven’t celebrated this holiday in like 200 years,” Chloe retorted.

“Nothing wrong with that,” you affirmed. “You guys are good eggs. Is it too late to ask you both to be my Valentine?”

“Yes,” Chloe deadpanned.

“Nope,” Sarah said, popping her ‘p’. “But only if you get us heart-shaped boxes of chocolate.”

“I think that can be arranged. Right, Joel?” you asked.

“Fine. I’ll pick up some discounted chocolates after work tomorrow,” Joel said it begrudgingly, but deep down you knew that his softie heart was bursting with love for your family.

“Thank you. Happy Valentine’s day, my lovely loves,” you expressed, pulling the girls next to you closer to emphasize your point.

“Ew, mom,” Chloe squealed, only egging you on to pepper her cheeks in kisses.

This had by far been your favorite Valentine’s Day, and it really wasn’t even close. When you were surrounded by your favorite people in the world, doing something ridiculously thoughtful and sentimental, there was no way you could ever ask for more.

[gojo-enthusiast]

Suguru Geto ~ Bad Day, Don’t Fuckin Speak

*Bad Day at work* MDI, 18+ Only! Suguru usually being loving when you two have sex, has an exceptionally challenging day, as he finds out Satoru deleted all of the contract agreements for an account Suguru was supposed to have signed today.

Psa: rough sex, degrading, calling names, P in V, unprotected sex, blowjob, biting, pinching, ass slapping. Fluff at the end okay okay

Word Count: <1750+

No proofread! Like, reblog! Follow me on X (Twitter) 🫶🏻

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

Suguru was always loving when it came to sex. He was always gentle, and patient. Knowing it always took you a little bit longer to adjust, especially to his size. Suguru the very loving husband of yours, always listening to you about your day, and cuddling up to you on the couch. Watching some tv show he would never pick for himself. But he knows how much you like it, so he didn’t really care.

You had texted him asking him what he wanted for dinner, not getting a response. Suguru was always good about responding, you had even seen that he read it, so why didn’t he respond? You just figured maybe he was just a little busy. Well a little busy was an understatement, he was extremely, ungodly busy. Satoru his co-founder of a company they built together. Sponsoring new celebrities in campaigns, and dealing with marketing, publicity, things like that. Satoru had by accident trashed the contract for a new model they were signing on, TODAY! Satoru didn’t realize the papers he deleted from his computer, had been the PDF that Suguru sent to Satoru. Of course Suguru could have simply printed it again, but they were in front of the new model as Satoru realized not only did he shred the physical copy, thinking it was the draft, but he deleted the PDF. Suguru had to pretty it up, saying they have been having some unfortunate technical difficulties, as Satoru’s laptop had crashed. And they were waiting on his new one to arrive. Making some bogus excuse that everything was done through Satoru computer. Rescheduling the visit for the following day.

“What the fuck Satoru!” Suguru yells, “You had one fucking job!” Suguru hisses, “man it’s okay, they’ll come tomorrow.” Satoru says, sipping his iced caramel frappe. Suguru knocks it out of his hand, making Satoru finally stand up mad. “HEY! THAT WAS LIKE $7!” Satoru exclaims, “YEAH AND THAT CONTRACT DEAL WAS $3M THAT WE CAN POSSIBLY LOSE BECAUSE OF YOUR INCOMPETENCE! You realize they are modeling for the top designer brand in 2 weeks, if he doesn’t sign that deal, WE GET NOTHING!” Suguru yells.

Moral of the story, Suguru was fucking fuming still. He walks in the door, and you hear him. Perking up, excited to see your lovely husband. You made his favorite food, Zaru soba! “Hey baby!” You say smiling, going up to him for a kiss, he brushes past you, causing a frown on your face. You aren’t used to him being upset, quite frankly you had never seen Geto this mad.

You’ve seen him frustrated but never to the point where he brushed past you. “Hey, Suguru. What’s wrong?” You say walking up to him, as he’s walking down the hall to your shared bedroom. No response. “Suguru.” You say again, getting worried. “Suguru Geto!” You shout. You weren’t one to shout, but he was just not listening. He turns around, and gets close to your face, you can see his face is red as a tomato, and he looks like he’s about to burst.

“Quit fucking calling my name. Can’t you see I want to be left the fuck alone.” He says through gritted teeth. You didn’t know what to say, your eyes start swelling up in tears. Your husband had never spoken to you that way. He turns away, walking into the bedroom, walking into the bathroom slamming the door.

You sit on the edge of the bed, feeling that lump in your throat. He finally gets out the shower, You hear him on the phone, with who you’re guessing is Satoru.

“Quit fucking calling me. You’re the last person I want to speak to. You fucked up my whole day, now I have my wife crying because I’m so angry at you!” He yells, “Oh fuck you Satoru. Suck my cock!” Suguru yells before you hear silence. You’re guessing he hung up. He opens the bathroom door, and the light from the bathroom door is showing Suguru the tears down your cheek. “Su-Suguru.” You whimper, “Y/N, no.” He puts his hand up gesturing he doesn’t want to hear anything. “I want silence. I don’t want to hear anything but my cock in your mouth, and your pussy. Do you understand?” He hisses, walking up to you, gripping your hair to have you look up at him. “Do you understand?” He repeats, you nod. Tears streaming down your face, you had never seen this side of him, so you didn’t know if you should feel horny or scared. Honestly you were a mix of both, feeling your nipples harden.

Suguru takes his towel off, exposing his hard member. Bringing your face down, tapping his swollen tip on your lips, his way of telling you to open the fuck up. You open your mouth, taking in his swollen cock, feeling his hands lace behind your head, into your hair. Throwing his head back, feeling a relief already. “Fuck yes.” He moans, “deeper.” He pushes himself deeper into your mouth, feeling his cock in your throat. Your gagging, drool coming out of your mouth, and tears streaming down. “Suck, you slut.” He hisses, as much as this should be hurting your feelings right now, you were so wet from this. You had always wanted Suguru to sometimes turn off that sweet loving husband, and just fuck you like a whore. You start to squeeze your thighs together, feeling yourself get wet. “Spread your legs.” He demands, watching you spread your legs. “Touch yourself.” He adds. You reach down, pulling your panties to the side, feeling your juices instantly touch your fingers, you start to rub your clit, moaning on his cock, as he thrust it in and out of your mouth. “give me your fingers, the one in your cunt.” He demands, you take them out, lifting your hand up to him, he leans down, still have your face pushed against his cock, he sucks your fingers. “You dirty fucking whore. Wet from sucking my cock. Is this what you want? For your pretty little mouth to get fucked?” He groans, face-fucking you. “Answer me!” He hisses, you nod, as you still have his cock shoved down your throat, feeling yourself about to pass out from the lack of oxygen. Finally he cums, you feeling it going down your throat, he pulls out. And you’re coughing, catching your breath. “Are you fucking crying still?” He asks, you nod no, wiping your tears.

Next thing you knew, he had your panties across the room and your shirt was somewhere. He was biting you all over, leaving love bites all over. Not caring if someone will see it. “Suguru-“ you moan out, “what did I fucking say!?” He slams his fist on the bed, your head right next to where he just slammed, “what did I say!?” He questions angrily, “y-you s-said th-that you-you did-didn’t want to hear-he-hear me sp-speak.” You stutter, “Don’t make me tell you again, do you understand?” He hisses in your ear. You nod.

“Turn over.” He demands, you were taking to long, he flipped you over himself, arching your back for you, putting you in the position he wanted, he wanted to fuck you from behind. you didn’t mind this position, but you loved to see his face, and he loved to watch you cum. But today, he didn’t want to look at you, he wanted to look at your pussy pull him in, and cum around him. He slapped your ass, as your knees got weak, “keep your back arched.” He demands, “yes sir.” You say. You weren’t supposed to speak, but the yes sir was allowed after he heard it. “I’m going to let that one slide, since you sounded so fucking sexy saying that.” He whispers in your ear. You had to control your moan, as you felt him sink into you, he was kissing your g-spot so perfectly. He starts thrusting, not even giving you time to adjust, he leans forward, fondling your titties, pinching your nipple. Causing a yelp come out of your mouth, he leans back, back straight, he slaps your ass hard. “Shut the fuck up.” He says sternly.

You are in pure bliss right now. You are loving every minute of this. Loving every minute of being fucked so stupid. He is thrusting faster and faster, slamming into you, with no remorse. He puts his hand on your clit, and starts to rub it fast, wanting you to experience a high level orgasm as well. Because no matter how angry he is, he would never let you go without being satisfied. He loves you to much to do that to you. At this point you forget the whole no sound rule, you are moaning out, “I’m cumming, I’m cumming” you moan, “fuck. Yes. Cum around this cock.” He grits his teeth. Finally releasing his seed into you. And you cum around his cock. He’s slowing down his pace, he pulls out, flipping you on your back. Inserting his cock back in, rocking his hips back and forth again. Feeling you twitch and hug his cock so perfectly, causing a second orgasm to erupt from you, and a third for him. He watches your face as you cum around his cock, his favorite sight. “You look so beautiful when you cum baby.” He kisses your lips, you kissing him back. “Sugu.” You moan, latching your arms around his neck. “I’m sorry baby, was I too rough?” He asks, kissing your cheek. “Yeah but it felt goood, it’s okay Sugu.” You say kissing him back. “Just, don’t ever ignore my kisses again.” You pout. “I’m sorry baby, I had a terrible day. I needed to fuck out the steam. I should have been gentle.” He says caressing your neck, rubbing the parts he left marks on. “It’s okay baby, I liked it.” You say running your fingers through his hair. “Oh did you?” He smirks, feeling his cock harden up again. All of a sudden he grabs his phone and takes a video of his cock entering into your cunt, and sends it to Satoru saying, “Someone was a victim to your incompetence today. Handle the account tomorrow, I won’t be coming in.” He presses send and throws his phone to the other side of the bed, “I’m gonna fuck you all night princess.” Suguru smirks.

Suguru surely didn’t show up to work, and Satoru did exactly what Suguru told him to. Fearing that when Suguru comes in, he might just beat his ass.

[gallierhouse]

Not enough talk about how the show’s set in Dubai. Like, Dubai is this intensely class segregated society populated primarily by wealthy expatriates, that’s in the middle of the desert. They have a ski resort and the tallest building in the world and the deepest pool. No one actually lives there (the locals live in Abu Dhabi); it’s a ghost town populated by people who come for money, tourists, immigrant labor, models and sex workers. It’s beautiful and shiny and a giant playground and it’s got everything and nothing. There’s no income tax. It’s got a legal system so punishing cheating is technically still illegal. They import water and they import workers and they build this beautiful sparkling city. It’s vampiric. Louis doesn’t even seem to leave the house, he just stays inside and gets deliveries from the blood farm and plays in his fake little garden. Armand leaves to “hunt,” and sometimes he watches the ships come home. Dubai primarily exists to attract tourism and as a vanity project, like, come here, we’ve got cool stuff! It’s not really an interesting place to live. It’s interesting to visit, but it doesn’t have much of a local culture (because of the expatriate population and tourism focus), and it’s really not that big. It feels like a place Louis and Armand are hiding in, so they can be away from the big bad world and all its problems, exemplified by their very limited interactions with the outside world. Then Daniel brings the outside with him and all its problems.

I’m kind of talking around the problem, but I’m not super enthused to go into detail. But I think the setting is really important to the story, and it tells us a lot about who Louis and Armand are in 2022, for all their moralizing, narrativizing, and editorializing. And Dubai is beautiful. It’s beautiful and empty and a little fake. They don’t even have sewage.

[tropes-and-tales]

Alone Time

Day 13:  Masturbation (Frankie Morales x F!Reader)

(For the 2023 Kinktober event that I created on my own because I am boring and basic and am trying to keep it simple this year...found here!) 

CW:  Frankie is mildly creepy and a thief; pining; smut (masturbation, male; Frankie's imagination; a pinch of voyeurism); 18+ only.

Word Count:  2415

AN:  This was requested by an anonymous person!

It’s not rock bottom, but it’s damned near close.

Other men Frankie’s age have so much more:  family, a mortgage, a steady job.  What does Frankie have?  An ex-wife, a suspended pilot’s license, and a shaky year’s worth of sobriety.  He’s got a head full of bad memories—his time in the service, Tom’s death, the implosion of his marriage.  He’s got a tricky back that aches in bad weather and pinches his sciatic nerve if he breathes the wrong way.

The sum total of his personal belongings are stored in your garage and in your spare bedroom, where Frankie has been crashing since…well, when he sits and counts out the months, it makes him feel like the world’s biggest asshole loser, so he doesn’t dwell on it.

It was supposed to be a temporary thing.  It’s been ten months.

Hell, it takes less time for a baby to be formed and born.  Frankie Morales?  Ten months of crashing at your place and he’s no closer to launching on his own.  Rent is too high, his credit is abysmal, his mechanic job pays next to nothing, and he’s so damned broke that he’s technically owed alimony (though his pride will not allow him to accept it).

But if he sits and ticks off all the reasons why he hasn’t left your guest room yet, there’s a couple of reasons he won’t voice. 

That you stopped calling it your guest room and started calling it his room almost immediately after he moved in.

That you integrated his stuff into the wider home—his chipped coffee mug in your kitchen cabinet, his beer in your fridge, his scuffed work boots lined up neatly beside your shoes in the entryway—so he’d feel at home.

That you cook for him, that you wheedle his favorite meals from him and have an uncanny ability to know when he’s having a rough day and needs the comfort of a good meal.

That you eat his paltry attempts at cooking for you, a poor stab at repaying you, that you smile and thank him and pretend not to wince when something is burnt or too heavily salted.

That the casual intimacy of living with you—even platonically—has knocked something loose in him.  That seeing you early in the morning, mussed hair and sleepy eyes, rumpled pajamas as you get the coffee started…or seeing you before bed, after you shower, your skin soft and damp and smelling like your herbal soap.  It all makes something warm unfurl in his chest, and when Frankie starts to think on it, it makes him feel out of control.  He has no right to develop feelings for you.  You’ve been nothing but generous with him, and he cannot repay your goodwill by being a creep.

So he doesn’t dwell on it.

-----

He doesn’t dwell on it, and he doesn’t give it voice. 

He sits on the couch and listens as you dart between your room and the bathroom, getting ready for a work holiday party.  He listens to your muttered curses, your bathroom mirror pep talks you give to your own reflection.  He listens to the patter of your bare feet as you bounce between dressing and doing your makeup.

A moment later, you appear, a clutch in one hand and a pair of heels in the other.  You stand in the doorway and fix him with a nervous smile before you ask, “do I look alright?”

Frankie has a beat to study you—the dark green dress, the tasteful amount of cleavage, the skirt that flares just above your knees.  He looks closer and sees that you’re in stockings, subtly patterned, and as he watches, you brace yourself in the doorway and slide your heels on one at a time.  You usually don’t wear much makeup, but for this party, you’ve gone all in:  dark lashes framing your eyes, velvety red lips.

You look beautiful.  You look like a damned present just begging to be unwrapped and ravished, and Frankie clears his throat roughly before he answers you.

“Yeah, you look alright.”

You snort, shake your head.  “Jerk.  Seriously, is it too much?  Not enough?  Give me something to work with here, Francisco.”

“You look nice.”  He swallows hard, amends it by adding, “you look beautiful.” 

“Alright, nice, beautiful,” you laugh as you pull on your coat.  “Good adjectives.  Thanks, Frankie.”

He gives you a mock-salute.  “Anytime.”  And because he feels like a sulky asshole now—he can never strike the right tone with you, tries too hard to hide his feelings and so swings too hard the other way into sullen indifference—he adds, gentler, “no, you look great.  Seriously.”

That earns him a hug.  You walk over to where he sits, and you lean over to wrap an arm around his shoulders.  Even the brief press of your body against his is enough to fuel a month of fantasies, because you look feminine as hell—dress, heels, deep red lipstick on your kissable mouth—but you’re wearing a warm, almost masculine perfume.  You smell like tobacco and rum, undercut with the sweetness of vanilla, and the juxtaposition makes him perk up at a cellular level.

“Be good,” you tell him once you release him from the hug.  You walk towards the front door and gift him one of your sweet smiles.  “Enjoy your alone time.  I’ll be back late.”

“You be good,” he replies.  “And drive safely.”

-----

You leave, but your presence haunts Frankie.  The ghost of your perfume lingers, as does the click of your heels as you walked out.  The image of you in that dress feels like it’s burned on the back of his eyelids.

He tries to settle.  He tries to relax.  He orders in, puts on a mindless movie.  He picks at his food, drinks a beer, then a second beer.  Hours pass and he still feels jittery, and it’s like the early days of his sobriety, but he’s not craving cocaine.  He’s craving you, which is stupid because he’s never had you, so it’s all conjecture—pure imagination, pure pining.  Pure want.  But the fact remains:  he’s not hard, exactly, but he’s at the point of near-arousal, the ghost of you just in his periphery.   

Frankie puts his picked-over food in the refrigerator.  He cleans up a little.  He should go to bed, try to sleep, and so he makes his way back to his room.

But in the hallway, he pauses by his doorway and glances towards your bedroom.  The door is cracked.  Frankie has been in there before, has sat on the edge of your bed once when you were sick with a migraine and he nursed you back to health.  Alone, with you out of the house, your bedroom feels like something in a gothic novel:  the forbidden chamber, your sanctuary.

Be good, you told him, and Frankie wants to be good, but his feet lead him the few steps to your door, and his hand pushes your door open wider.  The scent of your perfume is stronger here—the incongruously masculine scent that reminds him of a dark-lit jazz club, even though he’s never been to a dark-lit jazz club.  The scent curls around him, fills him up, and he steps inside your bedroom.

You’re neat but not painfully so.  A neat stack of books are on your bedside table.  A basket of freshly folded clothes sits on the bench at the foot of your bed.  He steps further inside and studies the top of your dresser:  the little dish that holds some of your jewelry, a half-burned candle, a row of lotions and perfume bottles.  He leans against the dresser and looks at your bed, and of course he pictures you lying there, which leads to him imagining more.

You lying on the bed.  Naked.  No, in that green dress.  He imagines unzipping it, pushing it off your shoulders, dragging his nose along your warm skin and smelling the perfume on you, your fingers threaded through his hair as he—

No.  He rewinds it in his head, starts over.  You lying on the bed.  In the dress.  He imagines pushing up your skirt, imagines you in garters, imagines shoving your skirt up—

No.  He shakes his head, goes back to the first scene.  Stripping you slowly.  Yes, that’s better.  Frankie was always the kid who unwrapped his Christmas presents slowly.  His mother saved the paper, so it was a contest between him and his brothers to see who could unwrap it the best while saving it for future Christmases.  He could strip you just as carefully, his fingertips dancing over your skin, making you twitch at too much sensation, moaning out his name—

No.  It’s still not right.  He switches the two of you in his mind, imagines himself on the bed, you perched over him.  Your hands undoing his belt, his zipper, grasping his cock and stroking it before lowering your head, wrapping those red fucking lips around him, your dark-fringed eyes gazing up at him while you—

“Fuck,” he breathes out, aware of how he’s passed the threshold of near-arousal into outright excitement.  He’s hard just from imagining it, and his erection presses painfully against his jeans.

He turns to leave, but his gaze falls on your basket of clean clothing.  Christ, he could swipe a pair of your panties, and the thought tempts him but it’s going too far…so he reaches out and swipes one of your t-shirts instead—a soft cotton one you wear around the house.  He’s still crossing a line but it doesn’t feel quite as bad, so Frankie flees to his own room with your shirt clutched in his hand.

But not before he pauses, hesitates.  He snags your bottle of perfume and spritzes your shirt with the scent. 

He has no plan; he’s operating on lust alone, but he figures he can just wash it on the sly and give it back to you, give you some tame lie about it getting mixed in with his own laundry.

-----

In his room.  Door locked, just to be safe.  Lights off, naked in his bed, the soft scented cotton of your shirt clenched in one hand and held up near his nose.

His other hand gripping his cock, stroking himself.  Eyes closed.  Pretending it’s your hand and not his own.

Frankie tries out the fantasies from in your room.  You on the bed, you in the dress, you with your skirt hiked up around your waist.  He tries out other fantasies he’s entertained in the past:  taking you against the kitchen table, taking you on the couch.  A million positions, a million scenarios, and he can’t settle on one.  His orgasm feels far away, unattainable.  He’s never been good at just imagining things, has usually relied on a handful of tried-and-true porn clips he’s saved on his laptop, but he doesn’t want that now. 

He wants to imagine you.  He sighs, refocuses.  He reaches over to his nightstand and squirts a fresh dollop of lotion into his palm, then grips himself again.

You….you wouldn’t rush it.  You’d go slow.  If it was your hand and not his own, you’d go slow, so Frankie goes slow.  Strokes his cock slow and steady, imagines you pressing those kissable lips to his neck, his chest.  You’d leave smudges of dark red lipstick on him, a trail marking him as yours.

“Good boy,” you’d whisper to him.  “Such a good boy for me, Francisco.”

“Yes,” he whispers in the silence of his room.  “Always for you.”

“Such a big cock,” you’d whisper to him.  “So thick I can barely get my fingers around you.”

Frankie tilts his head back, brushes his nose against the bunched-up t-shirt.  He takes a deep inhale, feels the answering throb in his cock as he strokes a bit faster.  He imagines you whispering more to him, imagines you telling him how you can’t wait to feel him inside you, his big, thick cock splitting you open, your pussy molding to the shape of him, how wet you already are for him just from jacking him off—

“Always wanted to do this,” you’d breathe in his ear as you stroke him faster, harder.  “Touched myself at night thinking about you, Francisco.”

His orgasm, so far away initially, takes him by surprise.  He feels the hot coil of anticipation snap, and he groans out your name over and over in the darkness of his room as he comes, spurts of cum painting his belly and thighs, coating his hand.  He lays there a long moment, his blood and heartbeat roaring in his ears, his harsh panting slowly calming.

Frankie lays there a long moment, and the post-orgasmic bliss fades too quick.  Masturbating is a release, but it always leaves him faintly sad afterwards.  He’d rather have the real deal, obviously, but he’d rather have all of it.  He wants the afterglow of sex with you, wants to fall asleep beside you.  Wants to wake up too early and take you again.  Wants to know how that smoky, whiskey-tinged perfume of yours pairs with the scent of sex.

Frankie wants all of it, and when the post-orgasmic bliss fades, he despairs that he’ll never have it.  That he’ll be stuck contenting himself with these pathetic moments, jacking off to the smell of you, your soft shirt laid against his skin.  That he’ll be stuck at rock bottom.

But the nice thing about rock bottom, as they cliché goes, is that there’s nowhere to go but up.  Frankie has hit his bottom and is on an upward trajectory—he just doesn’t realize it yet.  It’s the final moment of him not realizing, of feeling maudlin about himself.  When he stands up and reassembles himself enough to leave his room and clean up in the bathroom, he’ll run directly into you:  standing outside his door, high heels in hand, eyes wide at what you’ve just heard.

You’ve heard everything.  Frankie and the obvious sound of him masturbating.  Frankie and the sound of him groaning out your name over and over as he came.

Frankie so wrapped up in his fantasy of you that he failed to hear your car in the driveway, the click of your key in the door.  Frankie so wrapped up in his own world that he hasn’t realized that hours have passed; that it is late and you’re home when you promised.

[howtofightwrite]

Does Ser Arys Oakheart’s performance in The Queenmaker in AFFC (killing a handful of men and jumping clear of his palfrey before being swiftly dispatched by Areo Hotah) suggest a decent amount of martial competence on Arys’ part, in your view?

I’m going to make George R.R. Martin fans angry again and say, no. However, this is because I don’t feel any of Martin’s characters (throughout his work) really demonstrate any degree of martial competence. A lot of Martin’s characters aren’t supposed to possess any martial competence, but even the ones who are meant to don’t have it. Their “martial competence” is roughly the equivalent of action figures being angrily smashed together. For me, his fight scenes/battle scenes are the weakest part of his writing and I tune them out. Martin heavily focuses on “ironic” surprises and subversions of expectations like in the scene with Arys Oakheart, where everything is going well and then the character is just randomly and unceremoniously offed.

Boom. Goodbye.

“Like they would be in real life!”

I’m going to imagine someone yelling that because I’m sure someone, somewhere wants to.

Look, unlike Starke, I read A Feast for Crows and I genuinely have no memory of this character. They have been memory holed. They are gone. (Which is wild because I remember random minor character deaths from a lot of other major and minor fantasy properties that I read as a tween ages ago.)

The thing about reality is that real people are also capable of the following: Strategic and tactical awareness, long term strategic planning, working in unison with their fellow soldiers, and, yes, that includes knights in the Middle Ages. Knights in the Middle Ages might’ve (sometimes) been wealthy bastards, but they had to be functionally aware of violence and its impacts or they weren’t knights for very long.

Martin does not understand how armies and professional combatants function, their purpose, or their place in maintaining order in a feudal society. The irony is that politics are not his forte. His combat sequences read like they were written by someone who spent a great deal of time reading original historical accounts and not enough time thinking from the perspective of the people committing those gruesome atrocities. Make no mistake, medieval warfare was far, far more gruesome than anything you’ll find in Game of Thrones and the most terrifying part is the reasoning behind those atrocities was actually sound. Once you’re past the shock value, GOT is fairly comforting because the majority of the time no one makes sense. There’s a moral lesson hidden in the undercurrent ready to bludgeon the audience when they least expect it and all the violence works from that perspective, and all of it is written very specifically with the audience’s reaction in mind. Martin doesn’t seem to care how it works both on the technical front or in the utilization of violence to deliver narrative catharsis, he cares how the audience will react.

His violence doesn’t feel good, which is his intention, he doesn’t want it to feel good, but it also doesn’t feel bad. The violence just sort of exists.

One of the pieces of tragedy that is fundamentally important is a sense of foreboding. In fiction, death flags aren’t necessarily bad. In a tragedy, they’re necessary. Character death doesn’t need to be surprising to be meaningful. In fact, death is often more meaningful when the audience knows it’s coming. Whether it’s because they want the character to die or because they don’t want them to die. Their death creates narrative catharsis. The catharsis releases the tension, it feels good. Satisfaction through tears. When the audience and the narrative knows death is coming, it creates tension. If you invest early, the tension builds, and builds, and builds until it pops. The trouble is that, one way or another, the author has to invest in the character for that to happen. The surprise can be how the character dies, the manner of their death, and even who kills them, but not the fact they die. Shock value is sudden. The reason to use shock sparingly is that it lacks a lasting payout and eventually the audience acclimates. Too much shock obfuscates the narrative importance of a character’s death and shortens the long term impact of their loss. The impact of the death ends up as sudden as the death itself. Here, then gone, then forgotten.

In a well-structured tragedy, it doesn’t matter whether the audience cares about the character who dies or not. It helps, but the focus of the impact is on how it affects the other characters, how that loss is felt, and the way it’s internalized. An observation that’s always stuck with me is when I was in college studying Shakespeare, and my professor told us that Shakespeare structured his tragedies and his comedies the same way. They’re the same until the fourth act, and it’s the characters’ decisions leading into the final crisis which ultimately decides whether the story will end happily or tragically. All Shakespeare’s characters are important cogs in his play (including the bear.) When one of them goes, the narrative and the characters feel it. If a character is never important to the story, then the impact of their loss can’t be felt.

Martin’s characters don’t fight smart. They don’t fight cleverly. They don’t really fight stupid either. They fight with the combined equivalent of a single brain cell failing to function harmoniously. Probably the standout sequence for me that demonstrates this point is the Battle of the Crab from House of the Dragon. They had two dragons, a beach, an isolated cave system where their enemies were hiding to get away from the fire. They had corpses, and they had tar. And what didn’t they do?

Set shit on fire.

Smoke. Cave. Smoke. Cave. Smoke. Cave. Smoke.

The easiest and most low energy plan in the world that should be obvious to anyone who has ever cooked in an enclosed space. While this is a great way to signal that your characters suck at warfare, the characters involved were supposed to be the ones good at it! People being burned alive as they got smoked out of a cave is more gruesome than what actually happened and would have demonstrated the power of the dragons a lot better. Instead of, you know, the mighty House Targaryen being outwitted by… a cave.

If the dangers of dragons could be mitigated by a cave, people would just live in caves and not castles like they do on Pern.

Thank you for listening to my fanwank.

(No, the presence of saltwater would not have, in fact, saved the pirates. However, the Targaryens could have tarred the driftwood, set it ablaze, and let the tide carry it inside in addition to setting fire at every entrance like real military tacticians. Which shouldn’t be a reach given that half the army was made up of sailors.)

(They could’ve also used the crabbed up bodies for this with the added bonus of it being extremely horrifying, smelly, and gross.)

(We’re not talking about the Crab Army.)

(I mean it!)

-Michi

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[antitheticaldreamgirl-13]

A Gaylor’s Perspective on Cassandra

I wonder if Cassandra is about people’s reactions if Taylor were to come out, with Gaylors as Cassandra and Hetlors as the other people in the town, who didn’t believe her at first. Thoughts under the cut.

“When the first stone's thrown, there's screamin' In the streets, there's a raging riot”

At the first mention that Taylor might not be straight, people are deathly offended. “When it's “Burn the bitch," they're shrieking When the truth comes out, it's quiet”

It’s easy right now for Hetlors to berate and criticize Hetlors—after all, Taylor isn’t technically out. However, if Taylor WERE to come out, then the Hetlors would be in a tricky position, no longer able to critique Gaylors and claim the moral high ground. Thus, they would be quiet.

“So, they killed Cassandra first 'cause she feared the worst And tried to tell the town”

“Feared the worst” doesn’t refer to suggesting that Taylor might be gay, but rather that she is and she is afraid to come out, that she has TRIED to come out but nobody paid attention. Hetlors don’t like hearing this though, so they often harass Gaylors. “So they filled my cell with snakes, I regret to say Do you believe me now?”

Again, once Taylor had come out, Gaylors or, in this case, Cassandra, would be proven correct. But the damage would be done, the snakes would already be in the cell.

“I was in my tower weaving nightmares Twisting all my smiles into snarls”

Now I think it switches to Taylor’s pov. She was inclined to be friendly, to believe that her coming out would go well, but it hasn’t, so her smiles are now snarls. “They say, "What doesn't kill you makes you aware" What happens if it becomes who you are?”

Her coming out, with all the bad reactions it received, made her aware of the still present homophobia. But it also greatly affects her too—it already does, and she hasn’t officially come out (yet)—so it’s become who she is.

“They knew, they knew, they knew the whole time That I was onto somethin'”

Now it sngwitches back to the Gaylors’ perspective, and “they” again being Hetlors, who maybe subconsciously know that we’re onto something, but they don’t want to admit it.

“The family, the pure greed, the Christian chorus line They all said nothin'”

Interesting that she brings up religion here…a religion that is often used to shame gay people….just saying… “Blood's thick, but nothin' like a payroll Bet they never spared a prayer for my soul”

People who seem like allies—people who are even family—can turn against you due to bigotry, in this case homophobia, and the benefits of betraying you (“like a payroll”).

“You can mark my words that I said it first In a mourning warning, no one heard”

The Gaylors understood Taylor truly first, but nobody was paying attention. Nobody paid attention to Taylor herself during her lover era, where she showered herself with rainbows, bisexual colors, and made a gay music video.

So yeah, those are my thoughts.

[liebgottsjumpwings]

AUGUST AFTERNOON | FAYE FISCHER | MASTERS OF THE AIR

Summary: Faye Fischer and her newly acquired friend Ken Lemmons spend a sunny afternoon at Thorpe Abbotts, Faye thinks about the past few years and is then (not so) rudely interrupted by a certain curly haired pilot. Who had managed to make her blush several times some days ago.

Warnings: general war violence, implied minor (and not canon) character death.

Word count: a bit over 2500

Note: this was meant to be a little less than 1k word blurb, turned into way more. I hope it isn't too boring as most of it delves into Faye's experiences before the mota canon. That is also because I use my ocs to study certain historical events, so this really is just self indulgence. Please pretty please let me know what you think of it! (This fic is also posted on AO3)

AUGUST 21, 1943, 16:32 

“What kind of name is ‘Just-a-Snappin’ even?” Faye Fischer wondered out loud, only half expecting an answer from the man in front of her as she came to sit up from her lying position in the grass. She squinted, just about able to make out the text on the B-17 Ken Lemmons was working on. Her squint disappeared as he came into her sight, blocking the warm ray of sunshine she had been enjoying moments prior, her eyebrows furrowed into a frown. “You’re gonna have to ask Blakely that one,” answered the curly haired man standing in her sun. Looking at him, she wondered why he would hide those curls under that beanie. Probably so all that working grease wouldn’t get into it. 

Faye shrugged, letting herself fall back into the grass. “Whenever I ask Blakely a question, the man answers with a goddamn riddle,” she let the end of her sentence continue into a sigh. Ken just laughed, his hands firm on his hips. The sun made the edge of his curls shine, almost like an aureole. Visually, him standing in her sun wasn’t so bad, it looked quite pretty. Her skin was starting to miss the warmth of the sun rays, though. Faye’s fingertips tapped on the cap of her camera lens, the Contax II had been laying on her stomach, under one of Ken’s work rags, to shield it from the sun. “Keep standing like that,” Faye ordered him as she removed the cap from the lens, turning on her camera. 

“Aren’t you only supposed to use that for… you know… work purposes?” she heard him ask as she fiddled with the exposure settings. A scoff escaped past her lips as she lined up the viewfinder with her left eye. “Shut up, they made me pay for my own film rolls when I arrived in England, so they’re mine technically anyway” Faye deadpanned in response, snapping a photo of Ken. “Besides,” she continued, putting her camera back under the rag again, letting her head fall back into the grass, “don’t you think the photo I just took wouldn’t go over well with all those war bond leaflets?” She held up her hands, reading an imaginary leaflet “Purchase a war bond so our curly haired cuties can maintain our bomber planes!” she sarcastically called out. It earned a belly-laugh from Ken, who then turned around, readying himself to get back to his maintenance work as he continued laughing, “I hope to God not.” Faye smiled in response, “Yeah, well, I’ve taken more leisure photos on this camera than the OSS would be comfortable knowing. It is only fair because nearly all film rolls were mine anyway,” she trailed off, closing her eyes again as the warm August sun blanketed her. 

The warmth took her back to August, nearly three years back, 1940. To the emerging hills behind Mulhouse, in the occupied region of the Alsace in France. Back then, she too had snapped a photo that the OSS would turn their noses up at. She couldn’t help it, though, the sleepy little cottage the, back then, above ground resistance she was attached to used as their base of operations was too pretty against the sunny hills. Plus, the whole rule against taking photos that do not directly aid the war effort was bullshit anyway. They increased her morale, no? Surely a heightened sense of morale would aid the war effort. Just like her friend, and resistance member Isidore was aiding the war effort by developing the photos Faye had taken recently. His girlfriend, Julienne, a distant cousin of Faye’s neighbors back in Louisiana, the Klotz family, laid next to her in the grass, yelling at her sweetheart to stop working so hard and join them in the warm sum. She still remembered the minty smell of the Ground Ivy that tickled against her cheeks in the field near the cottage as she watched Isidore exit the cottage, some of the successfully developed photos under his arm, he dropped them above the two women. The photographs whirled softly down onto them, like those propaganda leaflets that had recently been dropping from planes over the region. The association made her chuckle. She much preferred these photographs over those leaflets. 

Oh, how she longed back to be in that sleepy little field just behind Mulhouse. Unknowing and indifferent to what was about to wash over her. Over her dear friends. Over her distant relatives, up north in Sélestat.  How she wished to gain that sense of unknowing and indifference once more. The fleeting feeling of walking back home from the shul on those warm August evenings, taking the train from Mulhouse towards Sélestat, being greeted by her grandmother’s second brother, the one who stayed behind in Alsace. Being taken in to his family, learning about their extensive history and connection to this land. It made her feel proud, like her family here. All of that despite the impending feeling of calamity. That feeling grew more and more with each news item about the Germans inching closer. Forcing themselves back into the territory they’ve claimed as theirs for eras. This time, it came paired with a terrifying venom against a group of people so deeply rooted in this region. 

After the annexation of the Alsace into Nazi-Germany, the resistance group Faye had been attached to by the OSS was forced to go underground. Her work, instead of reporting back to the OSS on current events in the border region between France and Germany, became a high-risk operation that aided the Alsatian resistance in its activities against the Nazi occupier. When it happened, the OSS had forbidden her to associate publicly with her family and the community she had built up. They deemed it ‘too riskful’. And because Faye had no choice, she listened to those orders. And just like that, her growing connection with her ancestral home region, her family, the core of her very identity was snapped away. Just as quick as it had flourished. She watched the treatment of her people become more and more dire every day. She watched and she could do nothing but watch. Nothing outward anyway. In secret, she was doing more than she ever had done. Risking everything to make it harder for the Nazis to spread their hatred and evil. In return, she got the gnarly gift of having to distance herself from the recently cultivating bond with her family that lived halfway across the world from her. 

Yes, she still had Isidore, Julienne and the rest of their group. Though, as they were forced to become underground, a painful strain started to form on their friendship. Understandably so, tensions were high, risks were always there and the imminent feeling of doom never stopped looming over the group. 

Which ended up being for good reason. Come the early February days of 1943, Faye found herself with her left cheek pressed into the cold ground where the minty Ground Ivy once grew. The barrel of a Karabiner 98A straight against her right cheek. She still wasn’t sure who gave up their activities to the SS. She wasn’t sure if she cared enough by then either way. Or now, for that matter. In the two and a half years that spanned from that first summer in Alsace to February of 1943, Faye had grown disillusioned to the point that she wasn’t even sure if she cared about living, or dying. Maybe it was for the better that death seemed so close. That it came to her in the form of a German rifle. 

That was until she remembered why her family decided to migrate to the United States. Back in the late 19th century, the Jews of the Alsace were already facing hardships. And it was those hardships that made her grandparents decide that from there on out, their family line would not suffer under those hardships anymore. So they set sail to Louisiana, because their children, and their children, and their children (and so on), deserved a life of flourishing. So it was there, February 1943, with the cold barrel of a Karabiner 98A pressed to her face, that Faye decided that she would honor that wish. She would not die at the hands of those who wished her dead. 

She wasn’t sure how, but she ran, she ran until her feet gave out and Isidore made them duck into a dense shrub. His face stained with dirt, much like hers. And through the dirt on his face, tears traced their paths. Then it dawned on her that Julienne hadn’t made it out with them. Faye hoped with everything she had in her dear friend wasn’t left out, alone in that cold field. But there wasn’t much time for hoping. They had to make it to safety. To a place where they couldn’t be reached by those who were looking for them. 

Switzerland. Within a few days of frantic fleeing, both of them somehow made it to Basel, just over the border. Isidore’s previously tear-filled eyes had turned empty by then. And Faye feared for him. She feared for everyone they had to leave behind. The fear didn’t leave her when she walked away from the hospital she had helped Isidore to, so his wounds could be looked at. Not caring much for her own, and after the OSS had been made aware of her whereabouts, they had arranged a route to England for her. To ‘escape’ the risk she found herself in, according to the OSS. She still scoffs at the mention of ‘risk’, the OSS would never fully know. And so, after a goodbye ‘for now’ and a promise to keep in touch, she departed for the train station of Basel, on towards Bern, and from there, hopefully England. She watched the fields roll by, they were barren, empty of life. She tried to not let it remind her of Julienne too much. Hoping that her friend had somehow made it to safety, like her sweetheart and Faye.

Her memories were disturbed by the warm sun once again being taken away from her. This time, it wasn’t because a certain crew chief by the name of Ken Lemmons was standing in between her and her blanket of warmth, it was because Faye hadn’t noticed the time pass by and the sun having moved behind the officer’s buildings on the air base. She let out a groan at the feeling of her back cracking as she sat up, her camera falling into her lap. Slowly opening her eyes, to her surprise, ‘Just-a-Snappin’ had been exchanged for a different airplane. Though, her eyes were too blurry from the sun shining onto them, to make out the name. These damn pilots and their airplane names. 

What she did make out was Ken and what seemed to be a pilot, standing by the plane as Ken pointed out several things on the wing. The pilot nodding, seemingly intently listening to Ken. Faye, after rubbing her eyes intensely, was able to make out more of the scene in front of her. Her sight darted towards the plane again, reading. ‘Rosie's Riveters,’ she mouthed the words. Way better name for a plane than whatever Blakely was thinking with his one, Faye thought. Her gaze moved over to Ken and the still unknown pilot again. Squinting, she could make out the brown curls, kept small and neatly arranged on top of his head. The 100th and their tendency to hide their gorgeous curls irrationally annoyed Faye to no end. She eternally cursed Ken for hiding them behind his beanie, too. She looked back to the nose of the plane, ‘Rosie’s Riveters.’ Oh. Robert Rosenthal. The man that had made her blush the other night without even knowing he had. Robert Rosenthal had arrived at Thorpe Abbotts some two weeks after Faye herself did. She had been sitting with Helen and the other women as she watched him come into the officers’ club, his feet carrying him, dancing towards his crewmates. It was his little twist and the way his jacket moved in the air flow created by it; itt had been the first time she smiled that day. And Helen noticed. Sending Faye a teasing look as she dug the nose of her shoe into Faye’s shin. The action made Faye’s cheeks turn bright red, sinking deeper into her seat, disappearing into the shadow of the curved wall as she let out a soft, intoxicated giggle. 

It wasn’t much later, after Nash had successfully achieved a dance from Helen, that Rosenthal’s eyes locked with Faye’s. The same red from before creeping up from her throat to her cheeks as she gave him a shy smile. His returning smile was beaming, like a direct ray of sunlight across the room. She would receive a few more of such smiles from him throughout the night.

Now, with his pilot’s hat snug under his arm, Faye could see him smile at Ken, a thankful smile. And who wouldn’t be thankful for Ken Lemmons. The man worked tirelessly to send them up safely into the air. But, oh she was sure it was Robert Rosenthal standing there, alright. Yeah, that smile, of which she had been on the receiving end several times now, she recognized it. The familiar, uneasy yet welcomed feeling creeped up in her stomach again. She could feel the flush in her throat. Combined with the hours of direct sunlight she had received over the afternoon, remembering their shared looks made her slightly lightheaded as she rose to her feet. Hoping to quietly leave, as to not gain the perception of both men standing some feet away from her. 

Mission unsuccessful, though, damn it. “Fish!” she heard Ken call her. Her arms dropped beside her body as she turned around, her camera swinging with a little delay. She caught it, so it wouldn’t hit her on her stomach. For some stupid reason, her breathing increased in frequency as she watched the two men walk over to her. She had to consciously try to not take a step backward everytime they took one forward. She tried to keep her eyes strictly on Ken.“You think that is a better name for a plane?” he asked, pointing towards the B-17. Her eyes followed his pointing, reading the text on the nose of the plane for a third time. Before she realized, she already voiced her opinion. “I think naming anything but a pet or a human is a weird thing anyway,” she retorted, eyes dead set on Ken. Next to him, she heard a chuckle. “I’m actually quite proud of ‘Rosie’s Riveters’” she heard the curly haired brunette next to Ken say. There was no fighting it anymore, she had to actually look at him now. And she was sure you could compare the color of her cheeks to the apples they served in the breakfast hall, bright red. Still, like she always did, she came up with a retort; “Well, it’s better than Blakely’s, I guess,” she said, a sly, yet slightly shy smile appearing on her lips. The brunette in front of her let out a hearty laugh, his eyes crinkling. It tugged at Faye’s heartstrings, “Yeah, I’ll take that.” he said. And there it was again, that goddamned smile.

[suzukiblu]

more black zero please!

“I hope you all know I’ll be holding that against you,” Black Zero informs the Justice League, eyeing them darkly. Assholes. Assholes willing to strap a two year-old clone to an atomic bomb to investigate a threat they didn’t know jack shit about without backup. 

He could use a stronger descriptor than “assholes”, actually. 

“This isn’t the situation where you get to threaten people,” Superman says, narrowing his eyes at him. Black Zero genuinely debates taking a page from his teenage selves’ books and flipping him off. If Superman wants to talk to him like he’s somehow under the impression that he’s the strongest person in the room, he should, perhaps, remember that Wonder Woman is three feet away from him, and also that Black Zero himself is, again, an upgrade. “This is the part where you give us a reason not to send you to the Phantom Zone.” 

Black Zero really should just punch him. 

“Well, if you’re going to try me on hearsay, technically I am a minor,” he drawls, raising an eyebrow at Superman. He really did expect someone more impressive. “I’m the exact same age as your ‘Kon-El’, in fact.”

“I mean, give or take a reality,” Superboy says, gesturing awkwardly. “But, uh–yeah. I mean, Black Zero didn’t time-travel or anything, Cadmus just grew him to full-size and then kinda, uh . . . tossed him at Metropolis and told him to just . . . go be Superman. Which did not go well, for the record, so like–I mean, I get the Phantom Zone concerns, but he didn’t start out bad, and, well . . .” 

“It did not go well, no,” Black Zero agrees, his lip curling in disdain at the memories. Superman looks unsettled for a moment, then narrows his eyes at him in obvious judgment, like he thinks he has the right. 

“You’re a psychological adult,” he says. “You knew better than to do what you’ve done.” 

“You stayed dead in my reality,” Black Zero says, wondering what the inside of this idiot’s head must be like. Sunshine and puppies and bullshit, apparently. “Left it all to me. And you don’t know a thing about what I had to do.” 

He knows much better, in fact. Better than Superman, who was accepted even as an alien stranger who lied about his name to everyone he met. Everyone in Black Zero’s home reality had known exactly who he was and where he’d come from and what he’d been made for from day one, but they’d never trusted him half as much as their precious original Superman, even before things had started going bad. 

Black Zero still finds that ironic, considering. He has human DNA. He had humans he cared about. Specific and visible ones who weren’t just allied superheroes or people who could conveniently spin his existence for the press. 

No one could say the same about Superman. Not as far as they knew. 

“And you clearly made your choices,” Superman says. Black Zero gives him a flat look, then decides he’s not worth acknowledging any more than he already has and looks back to Superboy. 

“I’ve never actually met a Superman before,” he says. “Are they all this fucking sanctimonious?” 

“I mean, I’ve gotten some very weird lectures from the guy,” Superboy admits, making a bit of a face. “But he’s not–what the fuck does ‘sanctimonious’ even mean, asshole?” 

“It means he thinks he’s morally superior to the rest of the conversation,” Black Zero says. “And that he’s making a point of shoving that ‘fact’ in our faces.” 

“He is morally superior to us,” Superboy says in exasperation, scowling up at him again. “He’s Superman! That’s his whole thing!” 

“And I’m sure you came to that conclusion completely on your own, and through no outside influence whatsoever,” Black Zero says dryly. “Definitely no ‘very weird lectures’ were involved in the process.” 

“Don’t twist my fucking words around!” Superboy snaps indignantly. 

“Kon . . .” Superman says, his jaw tightening. Black Zero continues to ignore the spare parts, for obvious reasons.

[mangoisms]

i want your hands, your future plans (to the bitter end)

━ pairing: tim drake x f!reader

━ summary: A night on the town and a first-time encounter with Tim as Red Robin — and knowing that, too.

━ word count: 3.3k

━ contains: super brief mention of stalking (within the normal canon-typical range), established relationship, suggestive content

━ a/n: technically takes place as an extension of my other tim fic, i'll be the dangerous ledge (you be the parachute), but prior reading not required! title is from this song

━ you can read this on ao3 as well

“And he just left! He left! At the first sign of trouble, he is gone and he leaves me behind! You know, I’d get it if it were out first date or something, ‘cause like, whatever, you don’t owe me anything — would still be nice but it’s not something I’d get mad at since it’s Gotham but… you know?”

You do know. And you do think it’s fucked up that Amir’s boyfriend abandoned them at their date to Amusement Mile after a false alarm about the Joker. 

It’s just that… three men have been tailing you guys for the last two blocks. 

You two didn’t have that long of a walk after coming out of the station; Amir lives in the Upper West Side like you, their apartment building only a few blocks from Rose Oaks, you would find out. But it doesn’t take long for others to notice an opening and take it. Not in this city. 

Amir hasn’t noticed yet. You only noticed because, well, when you have a vigilante for a boyfriend, you’re guaranteed a crash course in all manners of suspicious activity and whether danger is on the horizon. 

And danger is very much on the horizon. 

You already pressed the panic button on your watch, though. Tim outfitted it. A standard WayneTech smartwatch configured with a panic button that sends your location to him and can also be sent to the others. 

It’s just a matter of continuing on your way. Keeping an ear out. Wondering when the two of you need to start running. 

A breeze flutters your sundress. You frown a little bit. You aren’t dressed for it. Not with your wedges. Neither of you are. Amir wanted to drown their sorrows in margaritas at a new restaurant in the Fashion District and you went along for moral support. They’ll probably fare better than you with their ballet flats. 

You do have a taser. Voltage as debilitating as Dick’s escrima sticks. Or so Tim tells you. You’ve, fortunately, never encountered those up close and personally. 

You hope it won’t get that far. You are strong and independent. But strong and independent can only get you so far in a city like this and you are secure enough to not mind relying on your boyfriend for help. Especially since he’s, you know. A vigilante. 

Any of them could help. You don’t mind. Send Cass or Steph or Helena. They can save you any day. 

But that’s not necessary. 

A choked yelp stops you. Amir stops their rambling, tensing. You spare a glance over your shoulder and watch as the three men go down quickly. 

“Woah,” they mutter, the both of you now turned, watching Red Robin step away, men down for the count, hands cuffed, pained groans escaping them. 

“I didn’t hear them,” they mumble. “Shit. Shit.”

You squeeze their arm. “You okay?”

They look a little pale. Which is saying something, with their russet skin. 

“Yeah. Yeah. Just…” They shake their head, watching Tim — Red Robin — straighten up. “Never seen one of these guys in person before.”

“Me, neither.”

And that isn’t a lie. Not technically. This is your first time with Tim as Red Robin for a… prolonged period of time. And it’s… not bad. Not bad at all, you think, eyeing the imposing figure he cuts with his suit, Kevlar molding to broad shoulders and a lean, muscled figure. The shadows from the nearby street lamp make the panes of his face even sharper, prettier, in the night. 

But you have to remember your position here. This is Red Robin, one of the Bats, one of Gotham’s many vigilantes. Not Tim Drake, your boyfriend. Even if you saw him off tonight, helped clasp his cape to his suit and press the domino mask to his face, you cannot give anything away. 

“Are you two alright?” he asks and you immediately notice the modulator, changing the pitch and tone of his voice. Most likely for Amir’s sake. You hate it but understand the need. 

“Yeah,” Amir says, a little dumbfounded. “Yeah, man. I mean you…”

“You saved us,” you finish, looking at him. It’s hard to tell where his eyes might be with the white lids of the mask but the tilt of his head is in your direction. 

A spark of energy skitters up your spine as a moment passes and he drags his eyes off you. 

“Just doing my job,” he says, demure, something about it amusing to you, making you glance to the side, lips pressed together to suppress a smile. “Can I walk you two home?”

“Oh, you don’t have to,” Amir says. “I’m sure you have, uh, other things to be doing right now…”

Even if that were so, Tim is unlikely to leave you two alone. If he won’t walk with you, he’ll shadow you. You know he will. And honestly, you’d like him to do it, too. But Amir is just being nice. Trying not to burden Red Robin, a figure that, arguably, has many burdens, especially regarding the city. 

“I don’t mind,” he says, then pauses and hastens to add, “as long as you two are fine with it, I mean.”

Amir looks at you, a question in their dark eyes. You just nod at them, letting them know the decision is in their hands. 

They glance back at him. “Alright. Sure. We’re not far. Won’t keep you long.”

“Like I said. I don’t mind.”

He falls into step with you, with him nearest to the street and Amir between you. For the best, probably.

For a minute, it is painfully awkward.

Well, painfully awkward for Amir.

You? You’re just trying to stave off a smile. You never quite anticipated you’d ever have to play this game of pretend with Tim but it’s… fun. A little thrilling, if you want to be truly honest. A secret the two of you share. With poor Amir caught right in the middle of it. 

“Should thank you,” Amir suddenly starts after a couple minutes of silence. “Since, like she said, you saved us.” 

“Just doing my job,” he says, echoing his earlier words. 

You shouldn’t. You shouldn’t. It’s a monumental thing, acting normally here, pretending you don’t know Red Robin personally, intimately, but your coworkers know you’re fond of the superheroes of your world, of the vigilantes of this city, particularly Red Robin, so, you think, trying to justify it, Amir would think it odd if you kept quiet this entire time. 

Even if, should they have noticed your odd silence, an entirely plausible excuse would be that you were too nervous to speak with him…

But you think his recklessness is rubbing off on you. You can’t help yourself. So —

“Doing more than that, I think, walking us home,” you say lightly, conversationally. 

An electrifying tension flexes in the air between you, despite Amir’s obvious presence physically between you, and you get hit with the nearly unbearable urge to get your hands on him. 

Doesn’t help that something about him being suited up like this sort of… really does something for you. 

The name leaves something to be desired, that’s for sure, and you’ve teased him about it since Red Robin (the restaurant) isn’t even that good, like their whole thing is bottomless fries but, like, the fries aren’t good and it’s kind of embarrassing for them. A little embarrassing for Tim. But not as embarrassing as going by Drake, that’s for sure. And sure, yeah, Red Robin is supposed to be after a bird but… you know? The connection is impossible to ignore. 

But…

Questionable naming decisions aside, the suit itself, the suit he designed, all blacks and reds with sparse accents of yellow, it’s nice. Good. Great. Flattering for the muscles you know he has. 

Your face warms. The summer heat of the night edges on uncomfortable as a different kind of heat settles inside you. 

He clears his throat. You bite your lip. 

“It’s the right thing to do. And I don’t really have anywhere else to be right now so… might as well make myself useful. Personal escort isn’t really the worst of what I sometimes have to do. Preferred, maybe.”

You barely stop yourself from saying Preferred, huh? 

Remembering your present company. 

Don’t want to tip them off. And also, they know you have a boyfriend. Would look really bad if you started flirting. Even if it is with the one vigilante you admit to liking quite a bit. But your real life romantic relationship is a little more important than what is perceived as a parasocial relationship to others.

Of course, the truth allows you to stretch those boundaries. But you only like Red Robin — really like, you mean — because you know that is Tim. Your Tim. So. 

“I’m sure we’re better company than a couple of goons,” Amir says. 

A short laugh. “You’ve got that right.”

“Prettier, too,” they add, arm tightening around yours. A teasing squeeze. 

You chuckle. 

“I would also have to strongly agree there,” he says smoothly. 

Amir hums, a curious note to it, but one you don’t get to look too closely at as they point ahead, at the brick apartment building on the next block, sandwiched between a bodega and nail salon. 

“That’s me.”

Once you get close enough to the entrance, Tim lingers behind, letting you two have your space as you follow Amir to the door. 

They dig through their tote bag, eyes on your face, barely illuminated by a dim street lamp nearby.

“I’d ask if you were going to be okay but I don’t think I need to,” they remark quietly, voice low enough to carry only to you, eyebrows arched. 

You blink. “Why not?”

A furtive glance at your vigilant (heh) guardian, who looks out at the street. Surveying your surroundings. Trying his absolute hardest not to eavesdrop on your conversation even though you know he must be dying to. Being a vigilante for over a decade erodes some of the more basic social courtesies. You don’t let him get away with it on most days. Certainly not now since it seems like something is about to be implied. 

“Sort of seems like he likes you,” they say, finally fishing out their key and fixing the bag over their shoulder. 

“I don’t think we interacted that much to get that kind of impression. Also, boyfriend?”

“Yeah,” they say, grinning now, mischief sparkling in their dark eyes. “But Tim likes Red Robin, too, doesn’t he?”

You sputter a laugh. Then catch the most minute twitch of Tim’s body in your peripheral, head moving like he wants to look before he stops himself.

You quell your laughter, lips twitching still. “You’re kidding.”

“No,” they say very assuredly, voice still low — thankfully. “I am not. Could take him home. Have a little fun.”

You laugh again. Harder. Take him home. You will take him home. (At least you hope so. He agreed to patrol but didn’t agree to stay out as late as the others like to.) It’s just you aren’t taking him home to your boyfriend. Because he is your boyfriend.

But they don’t know that. And honestly, you’re too amused to mind this whole thing. It’s funny. Tim’ll get a kick out of it, too.

“I’m just saying,” they say, shrugging, finally moving to unlock the door. “You and Timbo are definitely a nice package together. If he had any sense, he’d take the opportunity.”

“Oh my god.”

“Just saying. Text me when you get back, okay?”

You smile. “I will.”

They wink, then slip inside, door rattling shut behind them. 

It’s hard to keep a grin down. Your cheeks ache with the force of it, face hot. 

God.

Take him home. Honestly. 

Shaking your head, still grinning, you turn around. Not surprised when you find Tim already turned, looking back at you, head cocked. No pretenses to uphold here. Not anymore. The thought makes your heart pound, a dizzying kind of heat taking hold of you once more, frenetic energy crawling under your skin and making your fingers twitch to touch him. 

But that can wait.

Instead, you gesture forward and he nods. The two of you begin your walk to Rose Oaks, which is a couple more blocks ahead. 

“Seemed like you two were having fun,” he remarks a minute later. The modulator is shut off, much to your relief. Though it hardly helps your growing desire to shove him into the nearest alleyway and kiss him breathless. Worsens it, if anything, that warm, familiar tenor gliding over you. 

“Amir was being very funny.”

“Oh?”

“I believe they were implying that you liked me. With the other underlying implication that I should take you home because of it.”

“Really now.”

You bite your lip, grin uncontainable. “Mmhm. And when I brought up the whole, you know, boyfriend thing, they said, Well, he likes Red Robin, too, doesn’t he?”

That startles a laugh out of him. 

You can’t help but join. 

It eases some of the tension. Tim drifts closer, still chuckling, gloved hand brushing the small of your back.

“They’re a riot as always, then,” he says, then sobers a bit, moving closer, until your elbow brushes his ribs. “Are you okay?”

You flash him a small smile. “I’m okay. Got a little anxious but I wasn’t alone, which sounds horrible but —”

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “It makes sense. It’s worse to be on your own. I’m glad you weren’t.”

“I’m just glad you were able to get here. I wasn’t expecting you specifically but it was nice.”

“I was in the area.”

“Well, thank you,” you say, sending him a soft smile.

Fingers skim yours. “Of course.”

You walk in silence for a minute. His hand brushes yours repeatedly. Gloved, still, but you don’t mind, finally hooking your pinky with his, feeling the textured, non-slip material. Odd but not unpleasant. He gives your fingers a gentle squeeze.   

You let them wander, your fingers tangling briefly, before your thumb skims the heel of his palm, fingers tracing over his palm, then traveling upward. You’re rewarded with the barest silver of warm skin from where the glove and sleeve do not meet. Your thumb skims it once, twice, then he’s moving and you’re moving, back, back, back into an empty alleyway until you’re pressed up against the wall, his arms around you, pulling you flush against him.

Though, you aren’t actually pressed to the wall. The arms that are wrapped around you save you a couple inches between the back of your dress and the brick wall. You wouldn’t care about it, too consumed with this moment, breathless as he curls around you, but Tim does, he considers it, and you love him a little bit more because of it. 

Your heart pounds so hard, you’re certain he can feel it, with how close you two are. Even through the thick Kevlar that protects him. 

Summers in Gotham City are hot and humid. Extremely during the day and moderately during the night. It still doesn’t compare to the heat inside you, burning for him. Your hands clutch his shoulders, fingers digging into the nearly-impenetrable material until the textured grooves of it are imprinted into your skin.

Tim breathes a little unsteadily, like you, bent close, breath ghosting over your mouth, smelling sharply of mint. On longer stretches of patrol when not much happens, he chews gum to keep awake. A special kind Bruce makes in-house and can be safely swallowed or if spit out, dissolves. Better than sustaining on coffee and energy drinks since, if they need to jump into action, most of the time, they end up leaving their trash behind, getting too caught up with everything. 

They’ll go back and clean it up but you’ve heard that it’s a little annoying sometimes, having to backtrack, having to do it at the end of long nights when they’d just like to go home and crash. The gum leaves no traces and doesn’t affect them, either. 

Some of them still drink that stuff, anyway, though. Duke is fond of an atrocious combination of Monster energy drinks and Takis. Cass is, too. His influence, you’re certain. 

But now, you’d just like to taste that mint for yourself. 

“Tim,” you whisper.

“Names.”

“I’m not calling you Red Robin like this.”

A soft chuckle. The sound sends goosebumps breaking out over your skin despite the warmth of the night.

He leans his forehead to yours. You close your eyes, basking in his presence. You can smell his shampoo. Lingering bits of his cologne. He had lunch with some WE board members today. Doesn’t hurt to stay on their good side, even if he doesn’t work with WE as much as before. 

You nuzzle your nose against his cheek. He smiles. You just know it’s so terribly lovesick. Mostly because you’re wearing a similar one on your lips right now.. 

“So…”

“So?”

“About what Amir was saying… what are my chances of going home with you tonight?”

You can’t help your smile from widening into your grin, your cheeks aching with the force of it, heady affection and love rushing through you, unspooling in your chest like cotton candy. Insane how much you love him. How attracted you are to him. Doesn’t matter how long it’s been, you think it’ll always be that way. You’ll always want more. More, more, more. All that he can give.

Maybe because of his responsibilities to Gotham. Maybe because you know you won’t have him entirely because of that. Maybe just because you love him. 

Maybe all of that. 

Now isn’t the time to think on it. 

“Pretty good, I’d say.”

“Just ‘pretty good?’ Not sure if I’m happy with that.”

“I could stand to be convinced.”

That’s all you need to say.

His lips meet yours in the next second and you press that much closer to him, suddenly wishing you didn’t have the thick Kevlar between you, that you could feel his skin against yours. But that’s hardly appropriate for a Gotham alleyway so you take what you get. 

The mint makes your mouth tingle deliciously. His breath is almost cold when his lips part, teeth nipping your bottom lip, eliciting a shudder from you. The kiss deepens, stealing your breath, mind blanking, the drag of his tongue against yours making your knees weak, a bit too hot and heavy for right now, a bit too intense, but not unwelcome, no, not at all. He gets like this sometimes, from the adrenaline of what he does, and you hardly mind alleviating the fervent energy inside him. Although alleviating might be too kind a word. Right now, you think, your nails scratching through his hair, windswept and windblown from patrol, a quiet, wanting sound escaping him at the feeling, you two have become more like a feedback loop, endlessly repeating, his desire feeding yours and yours feeding his. 

You don’t imagine he is complaining. 

You’re panting when you two separate and his lips are red more than pink now, on their way to being swollen. You’d love to see that to completion. Among other things. 

Tim can tell. Lips pulling upward. Smug. Pleased. You enjoy the sight too much to knock him down a couple pegs. Not to mention you’re still trying to get your brain back online. Always takes a bit when he kisses you like that. All open wanting and desire, like he wants to consume you. The thought makes your face hot. More hot.

“Patrol?” you ask breathlessly. Just a confirmation before you take the plunge.

“Wouldn’t start something I couldn’t finish, gorgeous. So? What’s the verdict?”

You take a deep breath. “The verdict is… take me home. Right now.”

“Gladly.”

[layer-10-love]

Lady Moon.

2012 leo x reader-

As the leader or the team, Leo tended to be more focused in leading and less interested in other ‘lesser’ hobbies. So it’s a bit of a surprise when you find a romance novel underneath his pillow.

aka, boy fail cringe leo (affectionate) also i wrote this like in 40 minutes so apologies for bad writing

As the appointed leader, Leo tried to be serious and mature about his role;with no help from his brothers. Strong, calm, confident, stoic and mature was what he was supposedly was. Unfortunately, anyone that knew him for more than a few minutes would know that he is none of these things. At least to a certain extent.

Truth is, Leo…was a big fat nerd. No surprise there. He liked watching space heroes and often gushed about it to the nearest living creature, giving them new meaningless memories and a massive headache. He liked making stupid jokes and god awful puns. It was honestly sorta cute to you.

What was a surprise was the book that was underneath his pillow. You technically weren’t supposed to be going through his things, but he technically should’ve given back that black cat plushie you let him borrow for Halloween. Picking up the book, you glance over the title.

‘The Man and the Moon.’

From the looks of it, it was a romance novel.

…Leo? Leon? Leonardo? Fearless?

You never pegged him for the type to read romance books, hell, you never pegged him for the type to read things other than Japanese literature or comic books.

‘A classic romance novel tells the story of two star-crossed lovers, Max and Luna - both literally and figuratively. Max is a successful businessman who has dedicated his entire life to making his dreams come true, and Luna is a quiet and mysterious woman who seems to have a special connection with the moon. Despite coming from different backgrounds, Max and Luna quickly find themselves drawn to each other, and they must navigate the rocky terrain of love and discover the true meaning of happiness.’

You read as you skimmed over the summarization of the novel. It seemed like a good read! But, if you talked to Leo about your little discovery, you’d probably be in for another classic Leo Lecture about not snooping. Again, it was fair in your humble opinion.

And if you shared this information with his brothers, he would be ridiculed and mocked by his brothers, despite them having weirder hobbies. Aka, Mikey and his weird obsession with boiling pizza. Ah, brotherly love.

You made a mental note on the book and carefully stored it away underneath Leo’s soft pillow.

He doesn’t need to know.

——-

Leo seemed to be busy more often than usual, with the lame excuse of being occupied with meditation and training in his room.

Which was a bummer since tonight was a movie night with everyone. Raph, Mikey, Donnie, April and even Casey were here!

You huffed and sat on the floor in front of Mikey who was sitting on the couch.

“So, what shitty slasher flick are we watching tonight?”

Raph grinned menacingly while holding a dvd and standing in front of the television.

“It’s not a slasher film, god knows Mikey would have nightmares again. Not that I’m against the idea of Mikey suffering, but I don’t want to have to let him sleep in my bed again.”

Mikey cheered from the back,

“I knew you cared about me! See, Casey? Raph likes me more than you.”

Casey frowned and groaned.

“C'mon! Do we really have to watch a baby version of scary movies?! What happened to entertainment and morality?”

“I’m surprised you know the word, ‘morality’”, teased April.

“Nah, I think he’s just throwing out random words and hoping that one of them will make sense. Remember when he said that we should ‘photosynthesis’ and ‘equilibrium’ with the enemy?”, you add mockingly, “You almost made Donnie pop a blood vessel.”

Speaking of Donnie, he rushed right through his lab door carrying multiple blueprints and plans for whatever new project he was working on.

“Hey four eyes! Gonna join us for crappy baby's first horror flick?”

“Why do you call me four eyes, Casey? I’ve never even worn glasses before, so why would you nickname me something that doesn't make any sense?”

“Easy.”, started Casey, “Glasses make you a nerd. YOU are a nerd without glasses, therefore you need glasses since you’re a nerd.”

“Casey connecting the dots? Hell must’ve flown over and pigs must’ve learnt to fly.”, you snickered.

After a whole debate between Donnie and Casey, the pizza was brought by Mikey and the rest of the snacks were laid on the floor by April and Raph. Monthly movie nights were truly a miracle.

But, there’s something missing.

“Where’s Leo?”, Mikey questioned while taking a disgustingly large bite of his pizza.

“Fearless? Eh, he’s probably in the dojo training like always.”

“Probably, but usually everyone joins for these types of things! Do you think he’s training or doing something else?”

“If you care so much why don’t you ask him for yourself, [Name]?”, Raph says, really not caring about anything else other than the movie that he picked.

You grumble and reluctantly head over to Leo’s room, hoping that he wasn’t doing teenage boy activities. Ugh.

You considered knocking on his door, but then you remembered the plushie he never returned and slammed the door open.

Leo scrambled off the bed and onto the ground, holding a familiar book before throwing it off into the distance, praying you didn’t see. He chuckled nervously while leaning suspiciously on his bed.

“Oh! Hey, [Name]…! Uh…do you need something?”

He seemed so anxious and nervous…it was actually kinda cute! It’s like you have two little creatures on your shoulder, each one trying to give you a way to navigate this whole situation.

‘Leave him alone and give him space! That’s the nice thing to do.’, says the one on your right shoulder.

‘Get the book and make fun of him!!!’, giggles the one on your left shoulder.

…it’s obvious who won.

“What were you reading, Leo?” You ask with a teasing grin, watching him squirm under your gaze.

“Oh…uh me? Uhm…comic books! Yeah comic books! I was reading a really weird part so that’s why I was surprised when you came in and…”

Whatever other words that were being soren from him was ignored, you only think about how oddly adorable it was.

You glance at where the book was hastily hidden and chuckled.

“What comic was it?”

Before Leo could make another desperate and obvious lie, you quickly snatched up the book from where he tossed it and read the title. It was the same one as before.

“The Man and the Moon?”, you teased.

“That isn’t mine! April just asked me to hold on to it for her!”, he blushed as he tried to regain his confidence and composure.

“Cmon, Leo, we both know you can’t lie to save your shell.”

He paused and looked away, blushing furiously and fidgeting with his fingers. You sighed and took his hand.

“Hey.”, you look into his eyes. “I pinky swear that I won’t tell your brothers. You know how they are.”, you think back to the time Raph was found playing a dating simulator, and how the bickering lasted for weeks.

“Plus,”, you continued, “it’s not the worst thing you've ever done.”

“…You don’t think it’s weird?”, he asked cautiously.

“Why would it be weird? Like, people read romance all the time.”

“But, y’know…I’m a guy…and a mutant turtle…and well…”

You shrugged and climbed onto his bed, leaning against his plastron once you had sat down next to him.

“Romance is nice, I guess. It’s just another genre in a variety of genres.”, you felt and heard his heart thump faster as he gulped nervously.

“So…”, You started, “Are you gonna go to movie night or what?”

Leo’s eyes widened as he seemed to have a revelation.

“The movie! Crap, I forgot about that!”