#I think in one of the previous texting videos phil was like ’what was I doing at 09:30?’ | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

fbfh · 2 years

Text

rocks at your window pt. 4 - ricky bowen x reader

disclaimer: this series contains smut and chapter by chapter warnings, so as with all nsfw works, ricky is aged up to 18+!! ricky and reader are 18 and in their senior year

additionally, we're working towards a ricky x therapy plot so he's going to start expressing some symptoms of mental illness and bpd starting in this chapter but I promise he does get therapy eventually and has a good support system (he gets worse before he gets better yk) and obviously i'm not a professional and this is for entertainment so while I have done my research pls take this with a grain of salt!! or several!! /lh

!! contains some spoilers for season 1 of hsmtmts, and previous chapters of this fic !!

wc: 11k I know

genre: smut, slice of life/coming of age, one sided pining, fluff

pairing: ricky bowen x (afab she/her) reader

warnings: NOT PROOF READ AT ALL, more facebook messanger texts we'll politely pretend aren't facebook messanger, protecting carlos and seb during hoco (+ one use of the word homophobia), you're the dolly levi of the friend group, a LOT of hello dolly references??, TOOTH ROTTING FLUFF, ricky's falling HARD, antagonist!nina, one sided rina angst (like BIG gina angst), big red is ricky's temporary therapist, ricky has bpd, ricky kind of splits on gina??, ricky has anxiety too, dr phil and big red and natalie's emotional support hamster are the only consistant things in anyone's life, drama/general messiness, oral (m + f recieving), sneaky quiet late night don't wake up the parents sex, making out, ricky thinks you smell so good he has to bang you right now, "stay quiet or I stop", switch!ricky, switch!reader, calling ricky a good boy, praise kink, giggly sex, waking up the morning after to an empty bed but not at all on bad terms (and no ghosting)

summary: ricky works up the guts to ask you to homecoming. if you can navigate all the drama, maybe he'll get to rearrange yours after dancing together all night.

song recs: old friend - mitski, 10 minutes ago - cinderella (1997), dancing - hello dolly (1969), in love on valentine's day - paul sandrone, daniel farrant, james knight (spotify link bc it's literally not on youtube??? tracking down this song was a nightmare /lh), you turned the tables on me - billie holiday, born to be brave - nico iaciancio cover (bc that's what I think the original sounds like in canon), soulmate who wasn't meant to be - jess benko, perfume - new hope club

a/n: could I have split this up?? yes but I'm not going to. also congrats 2 me bc I'm officially in the 10k one shot girlie club!! this is the longest thing i've ever written and my eyes are burning. ricky has bpd, I knew from the moment I saw this motherfucker I was like "yup bpd and mommy issues" and I was RIGHT why is no one talking about this also go watch crazy ex girlfriend

EDIT: I FORGOT TO ADD THE LINK TO THE VAMPIRE DIARIES VIDEO YOU REFERENCE IN THE BEGINNING (obvious spoilers for vampire diaries lol)

tags: @yesv01 @afidiofobia @aliyahsutherland @hopefullhearts @afidiofobia @aliyahsutherland @matiere-detoiles @ifilwtmfc @uselesssapphickitten @nxstalgicnxbxdy @ggclarissa

There’s no reason to be nervous. Ricky has literally no reason to be nervous. You’ve been together practically 24/7 since… all this began. He ducks his head down and his eyes land on the smooth counter top of the booth you’re sitting in. Heat rushes to his cheeks as it so often does around you, as he remembers all the time you’ve spent together. He tries to pay as much attention as he can to your summary of the video essay on vampire diaries you’d watched while doing homework last night, even though his thoughts are racing, and all centered on you. On asking you something really important - but also like, totally not a big deal or whatever.

“So apparently they just regularly bring characters back from the dead,” you inform him with a laugh, and take a sip of your coffee. He didn’t think people could look particularly cute while sipping something until he met you… until he got close with you.

“Yeah, that’s pretty crazy,” he agrees, hoping he sounds normal. You glance up at him to make sure he’s okay. You can tell he seems a little distracted, and he knows he has to ask you. It’s now or never.

“So…” he begins.

“Yeah?” you lean forward, already invested in what he has to say. God, he loves that. He loves the way you care, really care about what he has to say. He lets out a small, breathy laugh, that you mirror when you hear his.

“So, homecoming is soon,” he smiles, and is pretty sure you know where he’s going with this. Your eyes widen in moderate surprise.

“It is? Already?” you ask, pulling out your phone to check your very messy calendar. “Jesus, I thought we still had a few more weeks…” you muse, and Ricky smiles. God, how can you make everything - even being a little scatterbrained sometimes - so fucking cute?

You look back up from your phone, snapping him back to attention. His breath is shallow.

“So…” he says again, and rubs the palms of his hands up and down his jeans. Why is he so nervous? He has no reason to be nervous. You’re silent, waiting for him to continue in a way that feels patient, encouraging even, instead of critical like it would be from someone else.

“...Do you want to go? To homecoming?”

His heart is in his throat.

“Like, together?” You take another sip. He’s so choked up, so worried you’ll say no. He nods. You smile.

“Hell yeah,” you lean back and pull out your phone to text your mom, who is currently at a PTA meeting, about dress shopping this weekend, biting your lip as you type. Relief turns to elation as you discuss plans, coordinate rides with your friends, and get a plan together. He bounces his leg, getting really excited for all this. He’s never been one for school dances, but with you… it’s a whole different story. He can’t stop looking at you.

“So, what color is your dress going to be? You know, so I can get a tie to match.” A light, happy chuckle dances across the table and you hum in consideration, glancing down at the scone in your hand, your favorite flavor that’s become somewhat of a signature with you and Ricky.

“Peach.”

You both giggle.

“Perfect.” he smiles. You’re going to look so pretty in a peach dress. At homecoming. With him. A burst of kinetic energy waves through him at the thought. The atmosphere is nice, comfortable. It always is with you. You finish the bite of pastry in your mouth.

“You know,” you start, “maybe you should go suit shopping with your dad. It might be nice to have a guy’s day together.”

His mom has been gone for a few weeks now, and he told you how badly his dad is struggling. He means well, it’s just… been hard on him. It might be nice, he thinks, really nice to go out and spend some time with his dad, have some fun. He doesn’t remember the last time they had a day like that together. He’d really like that, if his dad wanted to.

“Yeah,” he agrees, wondering when a good time to bring it up will be, “that would be nice.”

Around the time you’re ready to head home, your phone lights up with a text from your mom, informing you everything at the PTA meeting went great, and she’ll fill you in on the details at home, and you thank her, informing her there’s a hazelnut coffee coming her way.

It’s Friday night, and you have less than 24 hours to homecoming. You’re not sure how you were able to find a dress you actually like in the right color on such short notice, but somehow you managed. You and Ricky have been texting all day, filling each other in on how last minute shopping had been going for each of you. He was shocked at how well today went with his dad. He was bracing himself for the worst for a lot of the afternoon, but the day progressed and nothing bad happened. They even got dinner afterwards.

Now, you’re sitting at your desk, finishing some homework while you facetime each other and fill him in on the whole cast’s plan to be there for Carlos and Seb tomorrow night.

“And, like,” you continue rambling as you wrap up your science worksheet, “it’s so ridiculous that that’s even necessary, you know? Out of all the living things in the world, humans are the only ones who thought to make up homophobia.”

“Right? Worst idea ever,” he muses.

“Exactly!” you exclaim in agreement, looking up at your phone. You mutter something about how stupid people can be, eyes moving down and skimming your paper, double checking your answers one last time. Ricky watches you do this. Your desk light casts a warm glow over you, and he can see some of your posters on the opposite wall from where you have your phone propped up. He knows exactly which ones they are, too. He has every detail of your room - and of you - memorized by now.

He’s supposed to be finishing his english homework, that’s the whole point of facetiming each other this late, to keep each other company while you work. Instead his papers lay discarded on his desk as he watches you, a look of fondness dusting his face. You tap your pencil against each question on your worksheet, eyebrows scrunched, mouthing the answers to yourself as you go. Occasionally you’ll stop, turning to your book to check a chart or vocabulary word, then erase your answer and select a different one.

“And that’s why we proofread,” you mutter to yourself, and Ricky giggles. You look back up at him, smiling, then back at your paper for one last once over.

“Okay, I’m just about done,” you say, putting your homework in your bag to turn in later, with a satisfactory sigh. Ricky glances at the time. It’s getting late already. He’s torn between wanting to make sure you get enough sleep, and wanting to talk to you all night. He watches you rub your eyes, suppressing a yawn.

“We should probably go to bed now,” it’s more of a question, but you agree anyway. You pick up your phone and walk into your bathroom, grabbing your toothbrush as you say your drawn out good nights.

Ricky thought he was nervous asking you to homecoming? Turns out that’s nothing compared where he is now, waiting for you in your foyer. Somehow your house had become the unofficial get ready spot for the girls and Carlos, and meet up place for everyone else. So that’s where Ricky finds himself, barely unable to socialize or talk with his friends, all his thoughts preoccupied with you. He hasn’t seen you all day; you and the girls have been getting ready together, and he’s been trying to teach Big Red to dance all day.

Ashlyn comes down first. Her bubbly presence immediately eases some of the tension in the atmosphere from Ricky and EJ having to wait together in such close quarters. She waits with them for the others while they finish getting ready. It doesn’t slip past Ricky how nervous Big Red suddenly gets when she comes down the staircase.

Natalie is next - almost. Half way down the stairs, a snap resonates off the walls, and she freezes. She looks down at her left shoe, the heel of which has completely snapped off.

“Oh my god,” she mutters, and walks carefully back up to your room. A minute later, presumably after she informs you about her wardrobe malfunction, Ricky hears your voice, faint and bouncing off the stairwell.

“It’s okay, that’s the risk you take with stilettos,” you say, trying to calm her justified panic. He hears you say something about how Margot Robbie broke a heel at an award show a few years ago as your bedroom door closes again.

The door opens, and Carlos appears at the landing. His face falls slightly as he realizes Seb isn’t here yet.

“It’s okay, he’s probably going to meet up with us at school.” Ricky comforts.

“Yeah,” he agrees with a laugh at his own nervousness, “yeah, you’re probably right.” Carlos takes a deep breath, and Ricky notices the swirly, metallic red pattern on his suit.

“You look great, man,” He says, hoping to take Carlos’s mind off the unexpected radio silence from Seb. The comment is appreciated, but seems to catch him off guard.

“Thanks,” he replies, “dude,” he punctuates with a friendly - very awkward - punch to Ricky’s arm. It’s more of a nudge, but he appreciates the sense of comradery nonetheless.

Footsteps echo down the stairs, and Ricky looks up, stomach twisting in anticipation. Natalie emmerges, much more carefully this time. She greets everyone, then starts talking to Ashlyn about the shoe incident. Ricky is trying really, really hard not to look like he’s waiting for you, but it feels almost impossible to focus on anything else.

Finally, several painfully long minutes later, he hears the click of high heels approaching the steps. He walks to the bottom of the stairs, heart thumping as you round the corner, and all the breath is pulled from his lungs at the sight of you. You descend the stairs, hair and dress flowing and bouncing with every step, glowing under the chandelier light. Your dress, mid length and flouncy, a peachy champagne that compliments your hair and skin tone perfectly, shimmers subtly when you move, glistening like starlight.

Your makeup is understated and glowy, bringing out every beautiful feature you have - which is all of them. Your hair is perfect, glossy and voluminous. Your earrings look like little pink silk flowers, and there are matching, larger silk flowers on the side of your heels. Your nails are manicured a soft peachy pink, with little sparkling accents. You even smell like peaches, he realizes, subconsciously taking a step closer to the bottom of the stairs as you get closer. You seem to descend in slow motion as Ricky takes in every detail.

Your expression mirrors his the moment you see him. You did not expect him to look that good in a suit. It couldn’t fit better, the cut and seams of the dark fabric perfectly accentuating his physique. His tie matches your dress, the same shade of peach, and you bite back a smile. The expression on his face can only be described as a breathless wow, and it’s something you'll never forget. Your cheeks are warm and suddenly it all feels real. You find yourself very excited to have fun at homecoming with him tonight.

You finally float down to the bottom of the stairs, stopping in front of him. It’s quiet for a moment, as you take each other in, face to face. You’re both struggling to find the words, thrown off guard by the energy in the air, by each other. Behind you, Ashlyn claps awkwardly.

“Alright, everyone ready to go?”

You and Ricky both giggle at the same time, and his chest warms at how in sync you are.

“Yeah,” You confirm, smiling over at Ashlyn and grabbing Ricky’s arm in a way that makes his heart palpitate, “let’s go.”

Standing with you on the dance floor, his hand on your waist as you attempt to teach him how to waltz, Ricky is so thankful for homecoming, for an opportunity to be close to you like this.

“I told you,” he laughs, enamored with your optimistic determination, “I can’t dance.”

“Yes,” you smile, “you can. You just haven’t had the right teacher.” His cheeks flush at your words, the feeling of your hands on his, and he’s hit with the sudden memory of the last time your lips were on his neck.

“I think you’re probably right about that…” he mutters under his breath. You bite back a smile, adjusting the position of his hand on your waist. You step closer, and his heart beats faster. He watches your face closely as you explain the basics of a waltz, a box step.

“Like in ‘Dancing’ from Hello Dolly.” you smile, eyes widening at the blank look on his face. “Oh my god, it’s a musical classic! Carol Channing played Dolly in the original broadway cast in ‘64, then Barbra Streisand in the film adaptation in ‘69.”

“Wow,” he smiles. He loves when you talk about theatre and Broadway, loves the way your eyes light up. “They’re like, really famous, right?” You let out a light hearted scoff.

“Broadway legends.” You smile, “The movie was directed by Gene Kelly, too, it’s amazing. We should watch it this weekend, if you want to,” you look up at him, eyes glittering under the soft twinkling lights.

“Yeah,” Ricky laughs, “definitely.”

After a moment, you remember why you brought Hello Dolly up in the first place.

“Right,” you say, memory jogged, “there’s a song called ‘Dancing’ where Dolly is teaching Cornelius and Barnaby how to dance so they can impress these girls who work at a ladies hat shop-”

“Cornelius and Barnaby?” he asks with a laugh.

“It takes place in 1890!” you say, jokingly defensive.

“Right,” he agrees, “so a… ladies hat shop…?”

“Totally era appropriate.”

You’re both giggling, trying not to be too loud. You lean your head forward, resting it on his shoulder. The sound of your laughter, the feeling of your head resting against him brings back that warm feeling he always gets around you. It takes you a moment to regain your composure. It’s been like this all night, the conversation flowing like a river, always making each other laugh over something or other.

“So,” you begin, once again ready to dance with him, “put your hand on her waist and stand.” You recite, moving his hand from your back to your waist and adjusting your posture.

“With her right-” you hesitate, making sure you have the correct hand, then continue, “in your left hand. And…” You step back with your left foot, motioning for him to follow, then back and out with your right, then together.

“One… two… three…”

You repeat the steps.

“One… two… three…”

And again.

“One… two… three…”

You look up at him, your smile blinding.

“Look, you’re dancing!”

He looks up at you, excited, disbelieving that he got it so quickly.

“Wait, that’s it?” he asks quietly.

“Yeah,” you nod, “see? I told you you can dance.” You start to move again, and he follows, hesitant but slowly getting the hang of it. After a second, he says your name, voice quiet and still watching the ground.

“Can you keep singing? It’s making it a lot easier…” he chuckles, hoping you can’t tell how much he loves hearing your voice.

So you do. You sing quietly, just enough for him to hear, about dancing and how it’s the perfect excuse to hold someone you like close to you, as you waltz carefully around the room. An electric, intimate feeling ties you together as you weave through the room. It's like something clicked, he thinks, because it makes sense. This, dancing, makes sense. He’s pulled from his epiphany by your melodic voice.

"We should do Hello Dolly, it would be so fun!" You giggle.

"Yeah?" He asks, smile mirroring yours, "Who would you play?" You let out a light hearted huff, considering.

"I would love to play Dolly," you admit. You had always hoped to portray the classic role, dreaming of being able to follow in the footsteps of other iconic actresses like Carol Channing and Barbra Streisand. You barely get the sentence out when Ricky nods, agreeing.

"You would make an amazing Dolly." You laugh, cheeks warm, flattered by his response.

"Who do you think I should be?" He asks, that playful energy flowing comfortably between you as he raises his arm, spinning you around.

"Well," you begin with a laugh, "if you played Cornelius we’d get to waltz together. But if you played Horace and I played Dolly we'd get married at the end."

His heart squeezes at your words, imagination already taking off like a wild horse. Again, your melodic voice pulls him back down to earth.

"But playing Irene would be fun too…" you sigh, twirling in his arms again, your dress glittering under the soft lights. Your hands return to their previous position resting on his shoulder and your waist, free hands clasped together, and you begin to move in tandem. You twirl and float around the room, feeling the music wrap around you like a warm blanket in autumn.

In that beautiful moment between the two of you, he doesn’t just understand dancing, he realizes, he loves it. Like, a lot. He loves this, being close to you. He loves the connection between you, and he wants to keep dancing with you all night.

He giggles, twirling you around in his arms again. On your way around, you see Carlos behind you at your table holding up his phone, a smile on his face. You’re glad he seems okay; Seb still hasn’t shown up and everyone’s been worried about both of them. A split second later, you’re back in Ricky’s arms, and your heart soars at the smile on his face. You’d been hoping dancing together at homecoming might help him in rehearsals. Based on how well he’s doing - and how much fun he seems to be having - you can tell your hunch was correct.

After a few more songs, you begin to make your way back to your table. Ricky’s hand settles on your back, guiding you through the crowd. Two more people are seated there than when you left, and your eyes widen.

“Oh my god.” you say quietly, “Gina and EJ came together?”

Ricky glances up, gaze almost immediately turning back to you as you get closer.

“Oh, they did? I didn’t notice.”

Fighting to maintain her poker face, Gina’s stomach drops at his words. Her eyes dart between you and Ricky, the way he’s looking at you. She grips her clutch tighter. This is really, really bad for her. Gina barely had a plan for making Ricky jealous and freaked out so he’d quit the show to begin with. She definitely did not plan on you waltzing into the picture - literally - and stealing away all of his attention. He can’t get jealous if all of his focus is on you. A sinking feeling begins to invade the pit of her stomach.

Ricky’s phone buzzes with a text from his dad.

“Hey,” he says, showing you the screen, “which shirt do you like better?”

He’s been filling you in on his dad’s hot date he has tonight, and you’re both very relieved to see that he’s doing okay, putting himself out there. You look at the pictures, and consider.

“Hmm… the second one.” you conclude.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought too,” he agrees easily. He loves how you always seem to be on the same page.

“Wow,” comes EJ’s voice from across the table. He sounds really stiff. “I had no idea you were each other’s dates to homecoming.” He states, sharing a quick look with Gina he hopes no one notices.

“Yeah, we are,” Ricky smiles, “we’re each other’s dates.” He doesn’t think it would be too far fetched to say you’re… dating.

“Yep, partners in crime.” You smile, showing off your plastic ring. Ricky holds up his, kept on a chain, sitting right over his heart.

“Aw,” Carlos says, an almost bittersweet undercurrent to his voice, “you guys are so cute.” He gestures for you to lean closer to each other. “Let me get a pic for my story!”

Ricky does not need to be told twice. He throws his arms around you, pressing a kiss to your cheek as you hold his arm and giggle. It’s the perfect shot, the sincerity of the fun you’re having evident in the photo.

Gina runs her tongue over her teeth. She really does not like that.

Across town, sitting at a table in a shitty karaoke spot, Nina scrolls through instagram while Kourtney rants about the bitch who criticized her costume suggestions. Something about a lime green sweater? She’s not really paying attention, she’s too distracted by the hideous dress that Gina’s wearing. And the fact that she went to hoco with Nina’s ex boyfriend.

“Look at this,” she says, showing Kourtney her phone. “She looks like she’s wearing a bedazzled tablecloth.” Kourtney looks at her phone, disapproval written all over her face.

“And,” Nina says, gearing up to point out the obvious jab at her, “she’s with EJ.”

Kourtney knows where this is going. Before Nini can go off about how obviously Gina has it out for her, she takes a sip of her drink.

“Is there anything on their stories?”

She taps EJ’s story and it’s just a boomerang of the food.

“No, just-” Carlos’s story plays next and Nina almost pukes. Right there on her screen is Ricky, kissing your cheek, leaning into you like a cat. You’re in an unfortunately gorgeous dress, grinning so sincerely, your nose effortlessly scrunched. Next is a video of you two dancing. Like, really, properly dancing. She can’t believe you got him to dance - he doesn’t even dance in rehearsal when he’s supposed to! She watches the two of you ballroom dancing around the gym, breath speeding up slightly at the realization that he’s actually good. The sick pit forming in her stomach grows as she rewatches the video again. She wants to know why, after all the practice, all the failed attempts and his reluctance, why it works when you do it? Why isn’t she good enough? She dwells in the feeling for a few minutes. She scrolls through a few more hoco posts before finding one that has your account tagged. It’s private.

“Kourt,” she says, showing her her phone, “you need to follow her.”

“Why?” Kourtney asks.

“So I can see what’s on her instagram.” Nina says. She can’t let you know she’s lurking, so the obvious solution is to lurk through Kourtney’s account. Kourtney sighs. She requests to follow you.

A few feet away from your table, Ashlyn gives you a look, gesturing subtly to Carlos, then to the hallway. Seb still isn’t here.

“Hey,” you say quietly to Ricky, “I’ll be right back.” you smile, eyes flicking over to Ashlyn and Carlos.

“Yeah, sure,” he says, watching you leave with them to give Carlos a pep talk. A soft smile kisses the corners of Ricky’s mouth, watching you in utter adoration. He lets out a small sigh, gaze lingering on where you stood even after you’re out of sight.

Gina watches him watch you, his dark auburn hair glowing in the warm twinkle lights strung up throughout the gym. His eyes seem to sparkle with joy when he finally tears his gaze away, staring absentmindedly at the table.

“EJ,” she says, “could you get me some punch, babe?”

“Uh,” he says, clearly unused to the term of endearment, “sure… babe.” He heads over to the drinks, the tension between them thinly veiled. This seems to snap Ricky out of whatever his train of thought was, and he scoots closer to Gina. She watches him lean closer to her and begin speaking in a low, almost strangely intimate tone of voice.

"Hey, you know EJ went through Nini’s phone before they broke up, right?”

She raises her eyebrows.

“Just… you know, be a little careful around him.”

“I can take care of myself, Ricky.” She states incredulously.

“Yeah, of course you can.” he says, head tilted to the side with a little smile, like it should be obvious, “You’re so talented and ambitious, and - honestly, way too good for him.” He mutters the last part, but she definitely hears it.

“You’re way too cool to get your heart broken by a guy who plays water polo.” He says, drawing a reflexive laugh out of her.

“Just… take care of yourself.” he concludes, locking eyes with her before moving back to his seat. It’s only for a moment, but long enough for her to commit the color to memory.

“Right.” she says, working harder than she usually has to to keep her expression neutral.

Later, between dances, you and Ricky catch your breath at the snack table. You take a sip of your drink, eyes landing on Gina and EJ, who are very obviously arguing. You nudge Ricky, motioning over to them.

“What are they saying? Wrong answers only.”

He considers, then begins to narrate in his best EJ impression.

“Ugh, Gina! Stop moving! I haven’t posted on instagram in 35 seconds and blurry so doesn’t fit my theme.”

You try to stifle the loud, beautiful laugh that brings warmth to his cheeks and a smile to his lips as your eyes lock, sharing a look so close he never wants to look away.

“I said wrong answers only…” you say through muffled giggles. He stares at you, fixated. He’s blinded by your warmth, your beauty, and he can’t look away from you. His attention is snapped back to where it had been when you gasp dramatically, shock written all over your face. He follows your gaze to EJ, who’s dripping with punch, and Gina, who’s storming away from him.

“...Oh my god.” you say, already dissolving into laughter again, Ricky following suit.

Soon you’re dancing again, pressed up against each other, swaying gently to the oldies playing softly over the speakers. Ricky can feel your body heat, smell your shampoo, and the way it mixes with your sweet peachy perfume. You smell so good, he thinks he could probably get high off you alone. His hand rests firmly on your back, holding you close to him, and his fingertips brush over the exposed skin peeking out over the straps of your dress. He traces your shoulder blades, your spine, feeling how close together your hearts are beating. One of your arms is wrapped around him, your head resting on his shoulder. Both your free hands are intertwined, and he loves the feeling of your fingers intertwining with his. He’s steeped in a hazy sort of ecstasy, spurred further on by your warm little breaths tickling his neck.

He lets out a soft sigh, more content than he’s probably ever been. He feels you smile against his blazer when he traces the outline of the back of your dress. You hum softly to the music, singing along to a few of the words. He’s not surprised that you know this song, of course you would know a song this pretty and romantic. He hopes he’ll remember to ask you the name of it later. Dancing, he realizes, isn’t just fun - it’s amazing. He loves dancing. He loves dancing with you. After a few moments, he realizes there’s not many people on the dance floor. He doesn’t get why so many guys don’t like slow dancing; when you really love someone, isn’t any reason to hold them close to you a good one? He thinks it is. His heart flutters when you let out a breathy sigh against his skin.

You adjust your head on Ricky’s shoulder, watching Carlos across the room. He looks so… melancholic. You should go check on him. And Gina. And probably EJ. Christ, tonight has been a lot. You adjust your head again, facing towards him.

“We should check on Gina,” you say reluctantly, murmuring into his ear, sending a shiver down his spine. He loves when you do that, loves how you know when people are hurting and what to do about it. But right now, he really, really does not want to let go of you for anyone or anything. Maybe it’s selfish, he thinks, maybe it’s selfish for wanting you all to himself like this, but he just can’t bring himself to let go of you yet. Maybe he deserves to be a little selfish sometimes. Maybe he should just give himself permission to do whatever makes him feel better. He holds you tighter, face burying into your neck.

“After this song,” he breathes, eyes fluttering closed in your embrace. You nod gently.

“Okay,” you agree, voice so low he can barely hear it.

Eventually the final piano chords sound, and he holds you tight as the last few, painfully bittersweet notes reverberate through the room. The song ends, and he lets go of you slower and more reluctantly than he’s done anything.

You sigh, tracing your hands on his shoulders, slowly coming out of that cozy trance like state you’ve been in together.

“Okay,” you start, “let’s split up. I’ll check on Carlos, you can check on Gina, and I’ll have Ashlyn check on EJ cause they’re cousins.”

He agrees, hit with a sudden wave of nerves about the confrontation. You can sense his hesitation.

“What should I say?” he asks, with a chuckle. He’d told you about how he warned Gina about EJ earlier in the evening, which you had agreed was totally the right move. He told you how she seemed irritable after the interaction, and wondered if he’d done anything wrong, if he could have handled it better. “I don’t think so”, you had said with a sad shrug, “some people just refuse to acknowledge the person they’re dating is kind of shitty.”

You’re right, he realized, now ready to approach this with more compassion and less confrontation. You think for a second, then reply.

“You can apologize if what you said before came off wrong, that you didn’t mean anything bad by it.”

“Okay,” he nods.

“And try to relate to her - you’re new to theatre, she’s new to east high, you gotta stick together, you know?”

“Right.”

You send him a thumbs up as you part ways, looking for Carlos. After chatting with Carlos, he left to get some water. You see Ricky approaching you through the crowd, and stand up from your table, meeting him halfway.

“How’d it go?” you ask. He seems hesitant.

“She asked for a ride home.” Your eyes go wide with understanding. He knew you’d get what’s going on, you always know just what to do.

“Oh, dude, the last thing she probably wants right now is to get in a car with EJ.” Ricky thinks that’s the last thing anyone would want. “If you want you can give her a ride, then come back and we can keep dancing.” He smiles, and agrees. Any plan that ends with dancing with you more sounds like a good plan to him. You quickly fill him in on how things are going with the Carlos/Seb situation in spite of its anticlimactic nature - no one can get a hold of Seb, and Carlos is really, really regretting this whole thing. You and Ashlyn are going to try and hype him up and turn the night around for him so it’s not a totally horrible memory to look back on, and Ricky agrees that’s a good plan.

“I’ll be back really soon so I can help you guys out,” he says, hoping to extend the conversation a little, to stand close to you and talk confidentially with you just a little more. You smile, looking relieved at his support, and it makes his heart flutter. You touch his arm, sending him a knowing look.

“We need all the help we can get, so thank you.” you state with a chuckle. He tries not to be obvious, but he knows he can’t hide his flushed cheeks and dilated pupils. He hopes you don’t notice.

You really didn’t expect to be the glue holding everyone together tonight, but you love your friends, so you’re not complaining. After a lengthy conversation with Carlos about how amazing he is regardless of who he is or isn’t seeing, and that there will be so many guys throwing themselves at him after high school, you finally get him out of his funk a little. You were about to go dance together and have a good time, because he shouldn’t let anything ruin his homecoming, when Natalie scurried over to you holding the side of her dress.

“It snagged on the back of a chair and my whole leg is out, Angelina Jolie style.” She says in a rush, clearly getting more freaked out. You and Carlos share a look.

“It’s okay,” you say gently, “I have a sewing kit in my bag and I can have you fixed up in two minutes flat.” You look over at Carlos again, making sure he’ll be okay. He confirms silently, nudging you two towards the doors.

“You go fix this wardrobe malfunction,” he says, already trying to pull out of the funk he’d been stuck in all night, “I’m going to warm up the dance floor. When you get back, get ready to dance your heart out.”

He’s not all the way there, but he’s trying. You both agree, and you send him one last encouraging look before moving carefully to the hallway, trying not to let Natalie’s dress rip any more than it already is. You look back one last time as you pass through the doors, and finally, Carlos is out on the dance floor. You smile, excited to dance with him once you get back.

“God, I wish I had my hamster right now…” Natalie mutters, and you know if she needs her emotional support hamster, it’s pretty bad.

A few minutes later, you have your sewing kit and Natalie’s dress is back to its former glory. She has on a fresh coat of lip gloss, just finished showing you pictures of her hamster, and is ready to head back out. You stay behind to touch up your makeup a little, telling her you’ll be right behind her. As you’re walking back out, someone turns the corner at the other end of the hallway. You freeze in place, eyes growing wide as they land on none other than Seb. He smiles nervously, raising a hand to wave at you. Before he can, you let out a shocked squeak, scurrying back into the gym. His heart sinks. He hopes you don’t hate him, and he’s really worried Carlos is going to.

When you enter, you see Carlos dancing his heart out. You don’t have time to be relieved, weaving your way through the crowd to Mr. Mazzara. You slam your hands on the table, avoiding the sound and light equipment he’s managing.

“Mr. Mazzara!” He looks up at you, startled, as you begin to explain in a rush. He looks at you, a pleading puppy dog look written on your face, and sighs.

“I suppose that’s fine…” he says, making a few adjustments to the switch board in front of him.

“Thank you!” you say quietly, before running onto the dance floor. Carlos is finally in his element. He dances beautifully to the music, free and expressive. Right when the beat drops, a circle of spotlights go up. One lands on him, the other lands across the room on Seb, and they lock eyes in a moment that can only be described as magical. Ashlyn looks at the scene, straight out of a movie, then over to you. You high five her.

“Nice!” she whispers. You can see it between them, the energy, the chemistry, the electricity. You look at Ashlyn, nodding toward your table. You both sit down, giving them some time to talk and catch up. You try to be subtle as you watch them talk, not close enough to eavesdrop, but watching their expressions, gaging how it's going. They're smiling, then they're laughing, and soon they're dancing together. It's going well, you think. You can't wait for Carlos to fill you in later.

Sitting in Gina's driveway, a surprisingly more comfortable energy in the air than either of them had expected, Ricky tries to think of how to say what he wants to say.

"Not quite the evil mansion with wrought-iron and gargoyles you were picturing?" She asks, a hopeful playfulness to her voice. She almost sounds nervous.

"What? No…" he says. The comment takes him by surprise, snapping him back to attention. "...Well maybe some gargoyles." His joking tone and comforting energy has her giggling. She doesn't remember the last time she giggled. She feels his eyes on her, and tries not to look over at him. She does anyway.

"You're not that bad, you know." He muses. She tries to control her breathing. She doesn't say anything.

"Also," he continues, looking back over at the windshield, "I should thank you for that night at the skatepark, keeping me in the show. It means a lot, it's… a really big deal to me." He looks up and left at the top of the car window, mind already wandering about how if he had quit, he never would have gotten close to you like this, never would have fallen in… your arms the way he had that night. He can't imagine you not being in his life, and he has Gina to thank in part for that. He feels a sense of gratitude blooming for her. They talk a little more, and the feeling grows; Gina really is not that bad. He can feel a friendly bond growing between them, a sense of comradery.

"So… now is probably a good time to ask about the whole drink thing," he starts with a chuckle. She ducks her head, equal parts embarrassed at her actions, and that he saw her at such a low moment. She lets out a sigh. The gesture reminds him of something you might do. He thinks you two would be good friends. He’s already imagining what you’ll say when he fills you in on all this, he’s excited to get your opinion.

“...My mom moves around a lot for work. Like, a lot…”

Once she starts, she can’t stop, and it’s not long before she’s unintentionally spilled her guts and her life story to him. She wishes she could stop talking, but it’s like she totally lost her filter with him. She’s always been so reserved, so calculated, and now she doesn’t even have time to think before the words are already spilling out. It’s a new feeling, being so candid with someone, and an unsettling one.

She risks a glance over at Ricky, who’s just… listening to her. Taking in what she says. That somehow makes her more nervous than if he’d just ignored her or told her to shut up already. She wishes someone would tell her to shut up, she wishes she could. She finally gets to the end of her never ending stream of consciousness, and she’s stunned as they sit in the silence, Ricky really absorbing her words, her feelings. He reaches over and grabs her hand, giving it an encouraging squeeze before letting go - a mannerism he picked up from you. Heat floods her chest, prickly and almost painful, hyper aware of where his skin just touched hers.

“You know, you-” She’ll never know what he was going to say, his words are cut short by the porch lights flashing through the windshield. Gina’s stomach sinks. She doesn’t want to go inside yet. She doesn’t want this moment to be over, but she has to listen to her mom. She reaches for the door, then hesitates. She turns back to Ricky, desperate to try one more time, to put herself out there, to plant some roots.

“I meant what I said at the skate park… about you having your own style.”

He smiles, looking down with a breathy chuckle. His leg is bouncing slightly, he can’t wait to get back to school and dance with you more, spend the rest of this magical night with you.

“Thank you, that’s-” He’s cut off again, this time by the kiss Gina presses to his cheek. She’s out of the car and inside before he can look at her face. She holds her coat tight around her against the chilly rain beginning to drizzle down, and a second later, the front door closes and she’s inside.He lets out another chuckle, different this time. ‘That was weird.’ He thinks. He barely has the thought before his stomach drops, a sick, cold fear clutching him. What if you find out Gina kissed him? What if you find out and you hate him, what if he breaks your heart into a million pieces without trying? Or worse, what if you lose interest in him because you think he likes Gina? He can feel himself panicking at the idea, unable to stop the onslaught of all too real feeling anxieties wracking his mind, creating a pit in his stomach as he peels out of the driveway and makes his way back to school.

No, no, that’s not going to happen. He’s not going to lose you because he’s not able to express how much he cares about you. He’s not going to let that happen. Trying to hold this panic at bay, he pulls out his phone as he walks through the parking lot towards the school again. How to show someone you love them. He types the words into google, skimming article titles, reddit threads, quora responses, until he finds himself at the gym doors. He sees you across the room, dancing in a group with Carlos, Ashlyn, Natalie, and Seb. ‘Oh, Seb’s here. That’s good,’ he thinks, a momentary relief that at least one or two fires had been put out tonight. He spots Big Red on the opposite side of the room, and makes his way over to him carefully, trying not to be seen by you. He can’t be around you until he figures this out, he can’t hurt you like this.

Ricky approaches Big Red with an intense energy he has trouble reading, before Ricky starts to speak.

“Dude,” he says, voice intense and hushed, “Gina kissed me on the cheek.”

“That’s great!”

“No, it’s not!” Ricky says, clearly very frazzled. Okay, that’s where this is going.

“That’s awful!” Red course corrects as Ricky fills him in on the car ride with Gina. As he tells Red everything that happened, Ricky finds himself kind of hating Gina right now. Why would she do this to him, why would she put him in this position? Does she hate him or something? He thinks she must, there’s no other reason for her to sabotage his relationship with you like this. She must hate him if she’s trying to ruin the most important thing in his life.

“Listen, I really, really like her…” his eyes keep flicking over to you, gaze magnetized by your presence, “like, a lot. How can I make sure I don’t fuck this up? Because I can not fuck up with her.”

“Woah, man,” Red starts, trying to help Ricky ground himself a little, “chill out. In all fairness, cheek kisses can be platonic.”

“Right,” Ricky nods, starting to feel assured, and Red continues.

“So, if Gina wants to date you when you’re… kind of seeing someone, she has to make that more clear to you.”

“Right.” Ricky states, agreeing. He really hopes she doesn’t.

“I think you’re okay,” Red says, sensing his energy changing already, “just make sure she knows how much you like her. Make it really, objectively obvious.”

Yeah. He just has to make it obvious.

“Yeah, you’re right,” he says to Red, his eyes locked on you as you laugh at something Carlos says, making his stomach twist and tingle, “I just have to make sure she knows how much… I like her.”

Red watches him make his way over to you, a spring in his step and a plan in his mind. Thank god for Dr. Phil, Red thinks, or else there’s no way he’d be able to help his friends navigate all their drama. He chuckles at the thought, watching Ashlyn fix the strap of your dress.

Ricky checks his phone one more time on the way over, looking over a chart of love languages one more time. He’s not sure what your love language is, so he’ll just have to try all of them and see what you seem to like best. Gift giving and acts of service aren’t really options right now, so tonight he’ll focus on words of affirmation, physical touch, and quality time. If he has to drown you in all five love languages at once to make sure you know how he feels about you, he will.

“Hey,” he starts, watching your reaction nervously, scared you somehow already hate him. You turn around at the sound of his voice, eyes lighting up.

“Hey!” you smile, “You’re back!” you grab his arm, pulling him in closer to the group.

“Seb’s here,” you say, and he smiles, relieved at your reaction.

“Hey, man,” he smiles.

“Fill me in later,” you say quietly, referring to giving Gina a ride, and he nods, a little bit ready to forget the whole thing.

Now that all the drama, wardrobe malfunctions, and late entrances are out of the way, you and what remains of your friends spend the rest of the night like you intended; dancing, laughing, and taking great pictures together. Later on into the night, everyone’s just about had their fill of fun and the party starts winding down. You split up, most of your friends piling into the Salt Lake slices delivery van so Red can drop them off. After some more hugs and laughs, you finally part ways, climbing into the passenger seat of his orange Volkswagen Beetle.

His heart is thumping as you grab his hand and squeeze it a little once you’re on your way back to his house, causing a fresh wave of heat to rise to his face, and god he's nervous right now. His mind is still screaming at him that you're going to hate him, that he has to prove his feelings to you. He lets out a small little laugh at the gesture.

“Well,” you start, tired from the night, but thriving off the energy between you, “that could have gone way worse…”

“Yeah,” he laughs, nodding in agreement. You talk for the whole drive back to his place. You’d planned on staying over tonight since Ricky was driving and you figured it would be late, plus your mom’s car is at the mechanic so she’s using yours until some time tomorrow. You exchange sleepy chuckles as he parks. He checks his phone one more time as you leave the car, opening an article of women submitting stories about how they knew a guy loved them in a new tab. He sees a text from his dad - the date went well, he hopes Ricky and you had a good time at homecoming, and he’s going to bed so try to keep the noise down when you get back.

“My dad’s asleep,” he says softly, unlocking the door. He guides you inside, hand resting low on your back, and closes the door quietly behind him. Walking quietly from his foyer to his room shouldn’t have been a problem, but standing in the darkness with Ricky, you both suddenly find it hard not to start giggling. Hushing each other, you quickly sneak up the stairs past Mr. Bowen’s room, down the hall to Ricky’s room. He barely closes the door and flicks the lock closed before dissolving into giggles. You kick off your heels, glad to finally take them off, and grab a makeup wipe from your bag. He digs through his clothes for a second before handing you a big t-shirt to sleep in.

“Thanks,” you say, throwing away the makeup wipes. He gazes at you, watching you transition from formal and made up to casual and comfortable, your beauty unwavering. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen anyone as pretty as you before. You watch him take off his jacket and tie, and undo the first button or two of his shirt. The action sends butterflies to your stomach and heat to your core. You glance away. You stand up, seeing if you can reach the zipper of your dress. Before you can ask, you feel Ricky behind you.

“Need some help with that?” He asks, closer to your ear than you’d expected and resting his hands on your waist. You both chuckle.

“Yeah,” you state, voice low and soft. He moves slowly, unzipping the back of your dress, careful not to snag the delicate fabric. You feel the bodice loosen around you, the end of the zipper stopping at the small of your back. He doesn’t move away. You can feel his breath fan over your shoulder, hand still resting on your waist.

His face is so close to yours, and he mutters your name softly before pressing a kiss to your jawline, then another and another. He moves down, burying his face in your neck as he continues to press hot, open mouthed kisses against your skin. He breathes in your perfume, peachy and sweet and intoxicating. He nips at your neck causing you to gasp, his hands moving below the draping fabric and directly onto your warm skin. You sigh at the contact. He pulls you closer to him, holding you tight as he sucks on your neck. Your dress is slipping off your shoulders, barely on at all anymore, as he begins to feel you up, touching you and caressing you so tenderly.

“Ricky,” you sigh. Your voice sounds so pretty when you’re like this.

“God, I-” he breathes, barely catching the words before they’re out. He lets out a nervous laugh, causing you to giggle in his grasp. He shushes you through his own laughter, his hands never ceasing the way they rome over your body.

"We have to be quiet," he says, turning you around in his arms, pressing himself up against you, trying so, so hard not to kiss you yet.

"I can be quiet…" you state, a jokingly incredulous tone in your voice. You stare each other down, and he tries not to break first, tries not to smile or laugh, but god, it’s impossible not to smile when he looks at you. Before he can crack, before he loses all composure and bares his soul for you, places his heart eternally in your hands to do as you please with, he pivots.

"Yeah?" He asks, and you feel the energy change, growing electric between you. "Is that a challenge?"

His tone is dangerous and he watches your eyes get wide. A second later he has you pinned against his mattress, pressing playful nips and kisses against your skin as muffled giggles and sighs escape your pretty mouth. His hands move down, grabbing your exposed skin as he kisses you harder and harder, riling the both of you up. You tear off the little remaining clothes either of you has on and he begins to roll his hips against you, grinding his hot, throbbing member against your heat. You let out a breathy moan, louder than before, as he continues to rock his hips against yours.

“That wasn’t very quiet,” he murmurs into your ear between kisses to your cheek and jawline. Your chest vibrates against his, and a wave of relief washes through him. You don’t hate him. He loves that feeling he gets when he makes you laugh, he wants to make you do it again.

“I can stay quiet,” you insist, already swept away by his touch, distracted by the warm kisses and bites he’s planting on your neck and chest. You’re even more distracted by the feeling of his fingers making their way down, brushing against your clit as they come into contact with the arousal dripping down your folds. He smiles, realizing if he can get you this turned on, this touchy, you must like him. He pushes his fingers in, finally met again with the cathartic feeling of your cushy, bumpy walls squeezing and folding around him. Arousal gushes, dripping down his fingers as he begins to stimulate the tight, sensitive muscles stretching around his fingers. He dwells on the feeling for a moment, maybe two, before you’re moaning again. It makes him laugh.

“I sure hope you can,” he says, another dangerously playful look on his face, “cause if you get too loud…” He watches you for a split second, hanging on his words, anticipation written across your face, “I’m gonna stop.”

Your stomach flip flops, exploding with butterflies at his words. Before you can look at his face, before you can gauge how serious he is about following through on his threat, his lips are on yours again. He kisses you, mouth open, tongue already prodding into your mouth. You’re lucky, you think, that he’s unintentionally muffling your noises with his mouth. You’re really lucky, because he quickly finds your g-spot, and there are a couple moans you couldn’t hold back if your life depended on it.

Every sigh, every gasp, every beautiful heart pounding moan Ricky elicits from you sends a fresh wave of relief and reassurance through him. You don’t hate him, and you’re not going to. You could never when he’s this good, this devoted to you. It’s impossible for him not to be when you’re so good to him. You’re so responsive to his touch, you’re totally on the same wavelength.

You must know what he’s telling you through his actions, through the way he looks at you, the words he’s had to bite back from spilling out more than once. You wouldn’t be dripping down his fingers and moaning into his mouth and grabbing at him like this, you wouldn’t be in his bed if you didn’t feel the way he does about you - or even something close to it. He’ll happily take whatever you want to give him. Of course he wants it all, he wants to completely take over your heart, but just a little bit will keep him happy until he can.

“Right there,” you whine against his lips, “fuck, just like that… feels so good…” you mutter.

‘See?’ he thinks, ‘You don’t say stuff like that if you don’t like someone a lot, much less moan it…’

It’s working. His plan to not lose you is working, he just has to make you cum so hard you can’t think straight, as many times as possible. And he’s going to, because there’s no way he can risk losing you. So he brings up his thumb, rubbing it over your clit as he curls his fingers against your gummy walls. It’s euphoric and overwhelming, and you barely have time to tug his hair before you’re cumming and pulsing around his fingers.

You squeeze and clamp tight around him, and he can’t resist anymore. He needs his tongue inside you, he needs to taste you, feel you squeeze his tongue and cream into his mouth. So he pulls away, already missing the feeling of your mouths against each other, and gazes at you, breath fanning across your cheeks, eyes locked. He takes you in, thumb caressing your cheek while the other continues to fondle your clit. After a moment he’s able to break his gaze away, and he moves down, pushing your legs open. You heart thumps in your chest in anticipation as he begins to lick and suck on your heat, tongue flicking into your drippy hole.

As soon as he gets a taste, he wants more. He stretches out his tongue, going to town on your cunt. Every sigh and tug of his hair, every attempt to muffle your moans makes him more eager to have you gush your sweet sticky cum all over him. This time he has some experience, and he’s making the most of it. He finds those spots inside you that make your eyes roll back, switching between them, bumping his nose against your clit, drawing stifled moan after stifled moan from you. One slips out, for real this time, and he pauses. It takes all his willpower; your scent is intoxicating and your taste is addictive, but the look on your face when you realize he’s standing by what he said is totally worth it.

“I told you,” he murmurs against your core, the vibrations and tone of his voice sending electricity through you, “we have to be quiet…” Your hand is clamped over your mouth, and you nod. Your timing couldn’t be better, because you don’t have time to finish the gesture before he dives back in. After that, it doesn’t take much to send you over the edge.

You give him everything he’s wanted all night, squeezing and gushing all over him while he laps up everything, holding down your hips while he shoves his tongue deeper inside you. It’s always surprising how far inside you he’s able to get it. You whine and moan, choking out praise as he already begins building up another high. He’s throbbing, desperate for anything you’ll give him, and he wants to make you say more shit like that. He wants to be good for you.

“Oh god- fuck, Ricky!” you choke out in a whisper, one hand tangled in his hair, the other clamped over your mouth. You’re already close again, he can feel it. He knew this would work. He knew he could prove to you how much you mean to him. He doubles his efforts, squeezing your thighs and grinding his face against your pussy, still dripping from the last times he made you cum. His eyes are half lidded and locked on you, watching your face, the way you squirm below his touch, the way your tits bounce with every movement. You’re not sure how long it is until he has you absolutely gushing and convulsing around his tongue again, but every moment is filled with ecstasy.

“Fuck you’re good at that…” you murmur, hand now playing with his hair instead of pulling it. “You’re one of the good ones, huh?”

You probably could have knocked him out with a feather. Your words reverberate in his mind, and his cheeks flush. One of the good ones. Yeah.

He’s throbbing harder than before, almost painfully turned on. He climbs back up over you, but before he can reach into his nightstand for a condom, you flip him over, straddling him. You look down at him with those beautiful eyes that hold every star in the night sky, biting your lip in that endearing way of yours. Your hands are warm on his shoulders, and he’s stunned at the suddenness of your action, and really eager to see where you’re going with this. He could watch you like this for hours, freezing this moment in time forever, eternally content with you, the way you touch him and look at him. You lean down closer to him, breath tickling his cheeks.

“My turn.”

You smile, the words coming out in a hushed giggle. Before he can blink, you’re grabbing his rock hard cock, squeezing it in your hands and teasing the tip as you spread around the precum already dripping down the side. He watches you, eyes wide and excited as you open your mouth, wrapping your lips around him. Your mouth is velvety soft, warm and wet, and he has to try not to cum on the spot. You pump the base of his cock, taking more of him in your mouth, and he tries not to buck his hips. He tries so hard not to move at all, tries to be good for you while you work your magic on him. He lets out a long, low moan. Suddenly you freeze, popping your lips off with a small wet noise as you look up at him.

“Stay quiet or I stop…” you tease, throwing his own conditions back at him. He nods, panting at your words. “Good boy.” You murmur under your breath, but he definitely hears. Good boy. He can feel the oxytocin flooding his brain, and you barely get your lips around him and start bobbing your head before he feels it.

“I’m close,” he chokes out, and you look up at him. He watches a smirk appear at the corners of your eyes before you drag your tongue along the bottom of his cock. It’s more than enough, and he watches in utter awe as he shoots his load into your mouth, and you swallow all of it. The sight is enough to have him throbbing again. He bites back more moans, desperate for you to keep going, for you to call him a good boy again. You bob your head along his length, tongue dragging along the vein on the underside of his cock.

One hand comes down to fondle his balls, and a choked moan slips out. He never knew he could feel this good. He never knew one person could make him like this. You continue to lick and suck, squeeze and pump and rub, and soon he’s fighting another orgasm, hoping to bask in the feeling of your mouth around him for just a little longer. His prayers are in vain, he realizes, as he shoots another load of sticky, salty cum into your mouth. You have no trouble taking this one either. You continue to suck and lick, riding out the last of his high, before finally releasing him with a soft pop.

Thoroughly fucked out, he watches you climb up next to him, awestruck. You grab a blanket, pulling it over the both of you, and moving his face to press a few more kisses to his lips. Your tastes mingle as your tongues connect, and Ricky doesn’t think he’s ever tasted something that delicious. He wants more of it. It’s only when you eventually pull away that your eyes land on the clock behind him.

“Christ, it’s late,” you murmur. You blink heavily, Ricky mirroring the action, and you trace your thumb over his cheek, just looking at him a little longer. You tug the blanket up a little higher, snuggling up next to him. He holds you close on instinct, still trying to process everything that happened tonight in spite of how exhausted he is. It hits him suddenly, and he struggles to stay awake so he can appreciate the kiss you press to his jaw, the warm feeling of your hand on his chest.

He tries so hard to stay awake, to look at you for a little while, because no amount of time with you feels like enough. He refuses to acknowledge the heavy way he blinks and squeezes his eyes, trying to force them to focus on you, but he can feel himself losing the fight against the deep sleep he’s about to slip into. This night was a success, he thinks. He did a good job.

Late morning sunlight streams through his window, finally dragging Ricky back into the waking world. He looks over, missing your presence, and finds his bed empty. As he rolls over, he’s struck by the sweet, intoxicating scent of your peachy perfume. It’s all over his pillow, his sheets, his blankets. His whole room smells faintly of your scent. He buries his nose in the pillow where you’d slept, breathing it in, taking him right back to last night.

Eventually, he checks his phone. It’s later than he’d expected, but he’s greeted with a text from you, bringing an immediate, even bigger smile to his face.

He sighs, lovestruck. He doesn’t want to get out of bed, doesn’t want the scent of your perfume to fade. He just wants to bask in it.

#ricky bowen smut #hsmtmts ricky #ricky bowen x reader #ricky bowen imagine #ricky hsmtmts #ricky bowen #hsmtmts imagine #hsmtmts smut #hsmtmts #rocks at your window #also your moms pfp is lorelai gilmore cause shes cool not bc its a face claim or smth #yk

405 notes · View notes

genmakesmedia · 1 year

Text

re-learning html without the pressure of a project deadline

When practicing HTML again, I worked through a PowerPoint presentation given to us by my lecturer Phil. It went a lot smoother than expected, and actually was a lot simpler than I thought it would be. I decided to document my process of going through it:

To start off with I created a NotePad file and saved it on my desktop under the name "index.html" as the tutorial advised. I have also experimented with other coding software - such as Adobe Dreamweaver and Visual Studio Code - but this was my first time coding without any of the helpful autofill suggestions and colour-coding both of these applications offer.

Next, I set up the basics of the HTML page, including its document type and title. Then I added my first heading and paragraph. I decided to keep my text pretty clear and to the point so that I wouldn't get mixed up looking through the code.

After this I experimented with lists! We didn't really need anything like this when coding our Narrative Project, so it was nice to just have fun and explore the many possibilities HTML has to offer.

As I have had experience coding images from the previous project, I decided to skip these for now and focus my learning on things which I didn't know.

The next thing I decided to try was "inline frame" or <iframe> tags. The presentation I worked through describes inline frames as "An HTML document embedded inside another... Typically, MS Stream or YouTube videos." To play with this, I tried to link a YouTube video (to make myself chuckle, I decided on this video posted by the account Rat. However, even though my code was correct, YouTube wouldn't show the video on the page, so I ended up scrapping this feature.

So that the Horizontally Spinning Rat video still got a feature on the page, my next experiment was with hyperlinks! I tried this a couple of different ways, first of all by leaving it as just a generic hyperlink that opens in lieu of whatever webpage you're on, but - once again, supported by the tutorial provided - was able to change it so that the video opened in a new tab when clicked.

The last thing I wanted to experiment with was adding boxes and borders and I did this by attempting to use the CSS box model. I learned the base code for this from this W3Schools tutorial, and used it to essentially add a pink border around all of my <div> code (which essentially gives some really clean line breaks).

All in all, I really enjoyed this exercise. Admittedly the code I produced here is nothing special, and the web file is quite plain to look at, but as I have already used a lot of style functions for other projects I wanted to focus purely on things which were new to me. Coding in NotePad wasn't as hard as I was worried it would be, either, though it was frustrating having to comb through personally to figure out what wasn't working each time I made a mistake (I decided to leave those moments out of my walkthrough as there would have been many.) In the future, when I have more time, I would love to explore creating my own websites in this way, and giving them more interactivity.

My newfound interest in interactive websites I owe almost entirely to the ARG Welcome Home, created by Tumblr user partycoffin. ARG stands for Alternate Reality Game, and essentially these games use real world mediums like websites and social media to tell a story (. I feel particularly inspired by Clown's website as it is of the psychological horror genre, and utilises a lot of hidden/floating text elements to tell its story. I would love to have the ability to create something like it one day, I just think it's so cool.

Bibliography:

Clown. (2023) Welcome Home. Available at: https://www.clownillustration.com/welcomehomeyou (Accessed: 17 April 2023).

Rat (2022) 'Horizontally Spinning Rat for 10 Hours' [YouTube] 15 May. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXm9qeq1_eE (Accessed: 17 April 2023).

Richardson, P. (2023) 'Into Web Design'. MD4004: Digital Media Foundations. Kingston University London. Unpublished.

w3schools (2023) CSS Box Model. Available at: https://www.w3schools.com/css/css_boxmodel.asp (Accessed:17 April 2023).

0 notes

innuendostudios · 3 years

Text

youtube

I was invited to give a talk on GamerGate over Zoom in early 2021. I've long been frustrated that there isn't a good timeline of GG and its origins on YouTube. When people ask "what the hell was GG anyway?" they often get referred to my or Dan Olson's videos on the subject, but both of them were made while GG was ongoing, and presumed a degree of familiarity on the part of the audience. There was just too much to say about what was already happening to spend time getting the audience up to speed, and it was safe to assume our audiences had enough context to follow along. But time moves fast on the internet, and many people who now care about such things weren't there while it was happening, and are lacking the necessary context to follow the better videos. For a long time, I've only been able to direct them to RationalWiki's timeline, which is excellent but so exhaustively comprehensive that it's likely to scare off first-timers.

I realize an hourlong lecture isn't necessarily helping matters, but the first 20-or-so minutes of this video are my attempt at streamlining the timeline such that people can be up to speed on the most important stuff fairly quickly. The rest is talking about what it all meant, how it prefigured the Alt-Right, and using it to better understand digital radicalization.

This video was made with the help of Magdalen Rose, who edited the slides to the audio while I was laid up with a back injury. Go sub to her channel! And please back me on Patreon.

Transcript below the cut.

FUCKING VIDEO GAMES? FUCKING VIDEO GAMES. THEY MADE DOZENS OF PEOPLE MISERABLE FOR YEARS OVER VIDEO GAMES! NOT EVEN FUCKING VIDEO GAMES, FUCKING ARTICLES ABOUT FUCKING VIDEO GAMES. THIS IS WHAT PASSES FOR LEGITIMATE GRIEVANCE. ARE YOU KIDDING ME WITH THIS SHIT??

Hi! My name is Ian Danskin. I’m a video essayist and media artist. I run the YouTube channel Innuendo Studios, please like share and subscribe.

I’m here to talk to you about GamerGate, and I needed to get all that out of the way. I’m going to talk about what GamerGate was and how it prefigured The Alt-Right, and there are gonna be moments where you’re nodding along with me, going, “yeah, yeah I get it,” and then the sun’s gonna break through a crack in the wall and you’ll suddenly remember that all this is happening because some folks - mostly ladies - said some stuff - provably true stuff, I might add - about video games and a bunch of guys didn’t like it, and you’re gonna want to rip your hair out. By the end of this, you will have a better understanding of what happened, but it will never not be bullshit.

Also, oh my god, content warning. Racism, sexism, antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia, rape threats, threats of violence, domestic abuse - I’m not going to depict or describe at length any of the worst stuff, but it’s all in the mix. So if at any point you need to switch me off or mute me, you have my blessing.

Brace yourselves.

Some quick prehistory:

In 2012, feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian ran a Kickstarter campaign for a YouTube series on sexist tropes in video games. And, partway through the campaign, 4chan found it and said “let’s ruin her life.” And a lot of the male general gaming public joined in. And by “ruin her life” I’m not talking 150 angry tweets including dozens of rape and death threats per week, though that was a thing. I’m talking bomb threats. I’m talking canceled speaking engagements because someone threatened to shoot up a school. I’m talking FBI investigation. The harassers faced no meaningful repercussions.

And in 2013, Zoe Quinn released Depression Quest, a free text game about living with depression. They received harassment off and on for the next year, most pointedly from an incel forum called Wizardchan that doxxed their phone number and made harassing phone calls telling them to kill themself. The harassers faced no meaningful repercussions.

(Also, quick note: Zoe Quinn is nonbinary and has come out since the events in question. When I call Zoe’s harassment misogynist, understand I am not calling Zoe a woman, but they were attacked by people who hate women because that’s how they were perceived. Had they been out at the time things probably would’ve gone down similarly, but on top of misogyny I’d be talking about nonbinary erasure and transphobia.)

Okay. Our story begins in August 2014. The August that never ended.

Depression Quest, after a prolonged period on Greenlight, finally releases on Steam as a free download with the option to pay what you want. In the days that follow, Zoe’s ex-boyfriend, Eron Gjoni, writes a nearly 10,000-word blog called The Zoe Post, in which he claims Quinn had been a shitty and unfaithful partner. (For reference, 10,000 words is long enough that the Hugos would consider it a novelette.) This is posted to forums on Penny Arcade and Something Awful, both of which immediately take it down, finding it, at best, a lot of toxic hearsay and, at worse, an invitation to harassment. So Gjoni workshops the post, adds a bunch of edgelord humor (and I am using the word “humor” very generously), and reposts it to three different subforums on 4chan.

We’re not going to litigate whether Zoe Quinn was a good partner. I don’t know or care. I don’t think anyone on this call is trying to date them so I’m not sure that’s our business. What is known is that the relationship lasted five months, and, after it ended, Gjoni began stalking Quinn. Gjoni has, in fact, laid out how he stalked Quinn in meticulous detail to interviewers and why he feels it was justified. It’s also been corroborated by a friend that Quinn briefly considered taking him back at a games conference in San Francisco, but he became violent during sex and Quinn left the apartment in the middle of the night with visible bruises.

Off of the abusive ex-boyfriend’s post, 4chan decides it’s going to make Zoe Quinn one of their next targets, and starts a private IRC channel to plan the campaign. The channel is called #BurgersAndFries, a reference to Gjoni claiming Quinn had cheated on him with five guys. A couple sentences in The Zoe Post - which Gjoni would later claim were a typo - imply that one of the five guys was games journalist Nathan Grayson and that Quinn had slept with him in exchange for a good review of Depression Quest. Given the anger that they’d seen drummed up against women in games with the previous Anita Sarkeesian hate mob, #BurgersAndFries decides to focus on this breach of “ethics in games journalism” as a cover story, many of them howling with laughter at the thought that male gamers would probably buy it. This way, destroying Quinn’s life and career and turning their community against them would appear an unfortunate byproduct of a legitimate consumer revolt; criticism of the harassment could even be framed as a distraction from the bigger issue. Gjoni himself is in the IRC channel telling them that this was the best hand to play.

The stated aim of many on #BurgersAndFries was to convince Quinn to commit suicide.

Two regulars in the IRC, YouTubers MundaneMatt and Internet Aristocrat, make videos about The Zoe Post. Incidentally, both these men had already made a lot of money off videos about Anita Sarkeesian. Matt’s is swiftly taken down with a DMCA claim, and he says that Quinn filed the claim themself. (For the record, in those days, YouTube didn’t tell you who filed DMCA claims against you.) Members of the IRC also reach out to YouTuber TotalBiscuit, who had been critical of Sarkeesian and dismissive of her harassment, and he tweets the story to his 350,000 followers, saying a game developer trading sex for a good review might not prove true, but was certainly plausible.

This is where GamerGate begins to get public traction.

Zoe Quinn is very swiftly doxxed, with their phone number, home address, nudes, and names and numbers of their family collected. Gjoni himself leaks their birth name. The Zoe Post, and the movement against Quinn - now dubbed “The Quinnspiracy” - make it to The Escapist and Reddit, which mods will have little luck removing. The Quinnspiracy declares war on any site that does take their threads down, most vehemently NeoGAF. People who defend Zoe against the harassment start getting doxxed themselves - Fez developer Phil Fish is doxxed so thoroughly, hackers get access to the root folder of his website.

In what I’m going to call This Should Have Been The End, Part 1, Stephen Totilo, Editor-in-Chief at Kotaku where Nathan Grayson worked, in response to pressure not just from The Quinnspiracy but an increasing number of angry gamers buying The Quinnspiracy’s narrative, publishes a story. In it he verifies that Quinn and Grayson did date for several months, and that not only is there no review of Depression Quest anywhere on Kotaku, not by Grayson nor anyone else, but that Grayson did not write a single word about Quinn the entire time they were dating.

In response, The Quinnspiracy declares war on Kotaku. r/KotakuinAction is formed, which will become the primary site of organization outside of chanboards. The fact that their entire “movement” is based on a review that does not exist changes next to nothing.

Some people start to see The Quinnspiracy as potentially profitable. The Fine Young Capitalists get involved, a group ostensibly working to get women into video games but who have a Byzantine plan to do so wherein they crowdfund the budget and the woman who wins a competition gets to storyboard a game, but another company will make and she will get 8% of the profits, the rest going to a charity chosen by the top donor. 4chan becomes the top donor. They like TFYC because the head of the company has a vendetta against Zoe Quinn, who had previously called them out for their transphobic submission policy, and he falsely accused Quinn of having once doxxed him. 4chan feels backing an ostensibly feminist effort will be good PR, but can’t resist selecting a colon cancer charity because, they say, feminism is cancer and they want to be the cure to butthurt. They also get to design a character for the game, and so they create Vivian James, who will become the GamerGate mascot.

Manosphere YouTubers Jordan Owen and Davis Aurini launch a Patreon campaign for their antifeminist documentary The Sarkeesian Effect and come to The Quinnspiracy looking for $15,000 a month for an indefinite period to make it, which they get.

In what will prove genuinely awful timing, Anita Sarkeesian releases the second episode of Tropes vs. Women in Video Games, and, despite not being a games journalist and having nothing to do with Quinn or Grayson, she is immediately roped into the narrative about how feminists are ruining games culture and becomes the second major target of harassment. Both she and Quinn soon have to leave their houses after having receiving dozens and dozens of death threats that include their home addresses.

After being courted by members of the IRC channel, Firefly star Adam Baldwin tweets a link to one of the Quinnspiracy videos and coins the hashtag #GamerGate. This is swiftly adopted by all involved.

In response to all this, Leigh Alexander writes a piece for Gamasutra arguing that the identity that these men are flocking to the “ethics in games journalism” narrative to defend no longer matters as a marketing demographic. Gaming and games culture is so large and so varied, and the “core gamer” audience of 18-34 white bros growing smaller and septic, that there was no reason, neither morally nor financially, to treat them as the primary audience anymore. Love of gaming is eternal, but, she declared, “gamers,” as an identity, “are over.” Eight more articles contextualizing GamerGate alongside misogyny and the gatekeeping of games culture come out across several websites in the following days. GamerGate frames these as a clear sign of [deep sigh] collusion to oppress gamers, proving that ethics in games journalism is, indeed, broken, and Leigh Alexander becomes the third major target of harassment. These become known as the “gamers are dead” articles - a phrase not one of them uses - and they make “get Leigh Alexander fired from Gamasutra” one of their primary goals.

Something I need you to understand is that it has, at this point, been two weeks.

Highlights from the next little bit: Alex Macris, a higher up at The Escapist’s parent company, expresses support for GamerGate; he will go on to write the first positive coverage at a major publication and cement The Escapist as GamerGate-friendly. Mike Cernovich, aka “Based Lawyer,” gets GamerGate’s attention by mocking Anita Sarkeesian; he will go on to hire a private investigator to stalk Zoe Quinn. GamerGate launches Operation Disrespectful Nod, an email campaign pressuring companies to pull advertising from websites that have criticized them. They leverage their POC members, getting them, any time someone points out the rampant racism and antisemitism among GamerGaters, to say “I am a person of color and I am #NotYourShield”; most of these “POC members” are fake accounts left over from a previous, racist disinformation campaign. Milo Yiannapoulos gets involved, writing positive coverage of GG despite having mocked gamers for precisely this behavior in the past, and gets so much traffic it pulls Breitbart News out of obscurity and makes it a significant player in modern conservative news media.

[Hey! Ian from the future here. This talk mostly addresses how GamerGate prefigured the Alt-Right strategically and philosophically, but if you want a more explicit, material connection: Breitbart News took its newfound notoriety to become, as its Executive Chair phrased it in 2016, "a platform for the Alt-Right." That Executive Chair was Steve Bannon, who threw the website's weight behind The Future President Who Shall Not Be Named, and, upon getting his attention, would then go on to become his campaign strategist and work in his Administration. So, if you're wondering how one of the central figures of the Alt-Right ended up in the White House, the answer is literally "GamerGate." Back to you, Ian from the past!]

In what I’m calling This Should Have Been The End, Part 2, Zoe Quinn announces that they have been lurking the #BurgersAndFries IRC channel since the beginning and releases dozens of screenshots showing harassment being planned and the selection of “ethics in games journalism” as a cover. #BurgersAndFries has a meltdown, everyone turns on each other, and the channel is abandoned. And they then start another IRC and things proceed.

It goes on like this. I’m not gonna cover everything. This is just the first month. It should be clear by now that this thing is kind of unkillable. And I worry I haven’t made it obvious that this is not just a chanboard and an IRC. Thousands of regular, every day gamers were buying the story and joining in. They were angry, and no amount of evidence that their anger was unfounded was going to change that. You could not mention or even allude to GamerGate and not get flooded with dozens, even hundreds of furious replies. These replies always included the hashtag so everyone monitoring it could join in, so all attempts at real conversation devolved into a hundred forking threads where some people expected you to talk to them while others hurled insults and slurs. And always the possibility that, if any one of them didn’t like what you said, you’d be the next target.

To combat this, some progressives offered up the hashtag #GameEthics to the people getting swept up in GamerGate, saying, “look, we get that you’re angry, and if you want to talk about ethics in games journalism, we can totally do that, but using your hashtag is literally putting us in danger; they calling the police on people saying there’s a hostage situation at their home addresses so they get sent armed SWAT teams, and if you’ll just use this other hashtag we can have the conversation you say you want to have in safety.” And I will ever stop being salty about what happened.

They refused. They wouldn’t cede any ground to what they saw as their opposition. It was so important to have the conversation on their terms that not only did they refuse to use #GameEthics, they spammed it with furry porn so no one could use it.

A few major events on the timeline before we move on: Christina Hoff Sommers, the Republican Party’s resident “feminist,” comes out criticizing Anita Sarkeesian and becomes a major GG figurehead, earning the title Based Mom. Zoe Quinn gets a restraining order against Eron Gjoni, which he repeatedly violates, to no consequence; GG will later crowdfund his legal fees. There’s this listserv called GameJournoPros where game journalists would talk about their jobs, and many are discussing their concerns over GamerGate, so Milo Yiannopoulos leaks it and this is framed as further “proof of collusion.” 4chan finally starts enforcing its “no dox” rules and shuts GamerGate threads down, so they migrate to 8chan, a site famous for hosting like a lot of child porn. Indie game developer Brianna Wu makes a passing joke about GamerGate on Twitter and they decide, seemingly on a whim, to make her one of the biggest targets in the entire movement; she soon has to leave her home as well. GamerGate gets endorsements from WikiLeaks, Infowars, white nationalist sites Stormfront and The Daily Stormer, and professional rapist RooshV. And hundreds of people get doxxed; an 8chan subforum called Baphomet is created primarily to host dox of GamerGate’s critics.

But by November, GamerGate popularity was cresting, as more and more mainstream media covered it negatively. Their last, big spike in popularity came when Anita Sarkeesian went on The Colbert Report and Stephen made fun of the movement. Their numbers never recovered after that.

Which is not to say GamerGate ended. It slowed down. The period of confusion where the mainstream world couldn’t tell whether it was a legitimate movement or not passed. But, again, most harassers faced no meaningful repercussions. Gamers who bought the lie about “ethics in games journalism” stayed mad that no one had ever taken them seriously, and harassers continued to grief their targets for years. The full timeline of GamerGate is an constant cycle of lies, harassment, operations, grift, and doxxing. Dead-enders are to this day still using the hashtag. And remember how Anita had nothing to do with ethics in games journalism or Zoe Quinn, and they just roped her in because they’d enjoyed harassing her before so why not? Every one of GamerGate’s targets knows that they may get dragged into some future harassment campaign just because. It’s already happened to several of them. They’re marked.

(sigh) Let’s take a breath.

Now that we know what GamerGate was, let’s talk about why it worked.

In the thick of GamerGate, I started compiling a list of tactics I saw them using. I wanted to make a video essay that was one part discussion of antifeminist backlash, and one part list of techniques these people use so we can better recognize and anticipate their behavior. That first part became six parts and the second part went on a back burner. It would eventually become my series, The Alt-Right Playbook. GamerGate is illustrative because most of what would become The Alt-Right Playbook was in use.

Two foundational principles of The Alt-Right Playbook are Control the Conversation and Never Play Defense. Make sure people are talking about what you want them to talk about, and take an aggressive posture so you look dominant even when you’re not making sense. For instance: once Zoe leaked the IRC chatlogs, a reasonable person could tell the average gater, “the originators of GamerGate were planning harassment from the very beginning.” But the gater would say, “you’re cherry-picking; not everyone was a harasser.”

Now, this is a bad argument - that’s not how you use “cherry-picking” - and it’s being framed as an accusation - you’re not just wrong, you’re dishonest - which makes you wanna defend yourself. But, if you do - if you tell them why that argument is crap - you’ve let the conversation move from “did the IRC plan harassment?” - a question of fact - to “are the harassers representative of the movement?” - a question of ethics. Like, yes, they are, but only within a certain moral framework. An ethics question has no provable answer, especially if people are willing to make a lot of terrible arguments. It is their goal to move any question with a definitive answer to a question of philosophy, to turn an argument they can’t win into an argument nobody can win.

The trick is to treat the question you asked like it’s already been answered and bait you into addressing the next question. By arguing about whether you’re cherry-picking, you’re accepting the premise that whether you’re cherry-picking is even relevant. Any time this happens, it’s good to pause and ask, “what did we just skip over?” Because that will tell you a lot.

What you skipped over is their admission that, yes, the IRC did plan harassment, but that’s only on them if most of the movement was in on it. Which is a load of crap - the rest of the IRC saw it happening, let it happen, it’s not like anybody warned Zoe, and shit, I’m having the cherry-picking argument! They got me! You see how tempting it is? But presumably the reason you brought the harassment up is because you want them to do something about it. At the very least, leave the movement, but ideally try and stop it. They don’t, strictly speaking, need to feel personally responsible to do that. And you might be thinking, well, maybe if I can get them take responsibility then they’ll do something, but you’d be falling for a different technique I call I Hate Mondays.

This is where people will acknowledge a terrible thing is happening, maybe even agree it’s bad, but they don’t believe anything can be done about it. They also don’t believe you believe anything can be done about it. Mondays suck, but they come around every week. This is never stated outright, but it’s why you’re arguing past each other. To them, the only reason to talk about the bad thing is to assign blame. Whose turn is it to get shit on for the unsolvable problem? Their argument about cherry-picking amounts to “1-2-3 not it.” And they are furious with you for trying to make them responsible for harassment they didn’t participate in.

The unspoken argument is that harassment is part of being on the internet. Every public figure deals with it. This ignores any concept of scale - why does one person get harassed more than another? - but you can’t argue with someone who views it as a binary: harassment either happens or it doesn’t, and, if it does, it’s a fact of life, and, if it happens to everyone, it’s not gendered. And this is not a strongly-held belief they’ve come to after years of soul-searching - this is what they’ve just decided they believe. They want to participate in GamerGate despite knowing its purpose, and this is what would need to be true for that to be ok.

Or maybe they’re just fucking with you! Maybe you can’t tell. Maybe they can’t tell, either. I call this one The Card Says Moops, where people say whatever they feel will score points in an argument and are so irony-poisoned they have no idea whether they actually believe it. A very useful trick if the thing you appear to believe is unconscionable. You can’t take what people like that say at face value; you can only intuit their beliefs from their actions. They say they believe this one minute and that another, but their behavior is always in accordance with that, not this.

In the negative space, their belief is, “The harassment of these women is okay. My anger about video games is more important. I may not be harassing them myself, but they do kind of deserve it.” They will never say this out loud in a serious conversation, though many will say it in an anonymous or irreverent space where they can later deny they meant it. But, whatever they say they believe, this is the worldview they are operating under.

Obscuring this means flipping through a lot of contradictory arguments. The harassment is being faked, or it’s not being faked but it’s being exaggerated, or it’s not being exaggerated but the target is provoking it to get attention, which means GamerGate harassers simultaneously don’t exist, exist in small numbers, and exist in such large numbers someone can build a career out of relying on them! It can be kind of fun to take all these arguments made in isolation and try to string together an actual position. Like, GamerGate would argue that Nathan Grayson having previously mentioned Zoe Quinn in an article about a canceled reality show counts as positive coverage, and since Grayson reached out to Quinn for comment it’s reasonable to assume they started dating before the article was published (which is earlier than they claim), and positive coverage did lead to greater popularity for Depression Quest. But if you untangle that, it’s like… okay, you’re saying Zoe Quinn slept with a journalist in exchange for four nonconsecutive sentences that said no more than “Zoe Quinn exists and made a game,” and the price of those four sentences was to date the journalist for months, all to get rich off a game that didn’t cost any money. That’s your movement?

And some, if cornered, would say, “yes, we believe women are just that shitty, that one would fuck a guy for months if it made them the tiniest bit more famous.” But they won’t lead with that. Because they know it won’t convince the normies, even the ones who want to be convinced. So they use a process I call The Ship of Theseus to, piece by piece, turn that sentence into “slept with a journalist in exchange for a good review” and argue that each part of the sentence is technically accurate. It’s trying to lie without lying. And, provided all the pieces of this sentence are discussed separately, and only in the context of how they justify this sentence, you can trick yourself into believing this sentence is mostly true.

So, like, why? This is clearly motivated reasoning; what’s the motivation? What was this going to accomplish?

The answer is nothing. Nothing, by design. GamerGate’s “official” channels - the subreddit and the handful of forums that didn’t shut them down - were rigidly opposed to any action more organized than an email campaign. They had a tiny handful of tangible demands - they wanted gaming websites to post public ethics policies and had a list of people they wanted fired - but their larger aim was the sea change in how games journalism operated, which nothing they were asking for could possibly give them. The kind of anger that convinces you this is a true statement is not going to be addressed by a few paragraphs about ethics and Leigh Alexander getting a new job. They wanted gaming sites to stop catering to women and “SJWs” - who were a sizable and growing source of traffic - and to get out of the pockets of companies that advertised on their websites - which was their primary source of income. So all Kotaku had to do to make them happy was solve capitalism!

Meanwhile, the unofficial channels, like 8chan and Baphomet, were planning op after op to get private information, spread lies with fake accounts, get disinformation trending, make people quit jobs, cancel gigs, and flee their homes. Concrete goals with clear results. All you had to do to feel productive was go rogue. In my video,

How to Radicalize a Normie, I describe how the Alt-Right encourages lone wolf behavior by whipping people up into a rage and then refusing to give them anything to do, while surrounding them with examples of people taking matters into their own hands. The same mechanism is in play here: the public-facing channels don’t condone harassment but also refuse to fight it, the private channels commit it under cover of anonymity, and there is a free flow of traffic between them for when the official channels’ impotence becomes unbearable.

What I hope I’m illustrating is how these techniques play off of each other, how they create a closed ecosystem that rational thought cannot enter. There’s a phrase we use on the internet that got thrown around a lot at the time:

you can’t logic someone out of a position they didn’t logic themselves into.

Now, there are a few other big topics I think are relevant here, so I want to go through them one by one.

MEMEIFICATION

So a lot of interactions with GamerGate would involve a very insular knowledge base.

Like, you’d say something benign but progressive on Twitter.

A gater would show up in your mentions and say something aggressive and false.

You’d correct them. But then they’d come back and hit you with -

ah shit, sorry, this is a Loss meme.

If I were in front of a classroom I’d ask, show of hands, how many of you got that? I had to ask Twitter recently, does Gen Z know about Loss?!

If you don’t know what Loss is I’m not sure I can explain it to you. It’s this old, bad webcomic that was parodied so, so, so many times

that it was reduced to its barest essentials, to the point where any four panels with shapes in this arrangement is a Loss meme. For those of you in the know, you will recognize this anywhere, but have you ever tried to explain to someone who wasn’t in the know why this is really fuckin’ funny?

So, now… by the same process that this is a comics joke,

this is a rape joke.

I’m not gonna show the original image, but, once upon a time, someone made an animated GIF of the character Piccolo from Dragon Ball Z graphically raping Vegeta. 4chan loved it so much that it got posted daily, became known as the “daily dose,” until mods started deleting every incident of it. So they uploaded slightly edited version of it. Then they started uploading other images that had been edited with Piccolo’s color scheme. It got so abstracted that eventually any collection of purple and green pixels would be recognized as Piccolo Dick.

Apropos of nothing, GamerGate is a movement that insists it is not sexist in nature and it does not condone threats of rape against the women they don’t like. And this is their logo. This is their mascot.

If you’re familiar with the Daily Dose, the idea that GamerGate would never support Eron Gjoni if they believed he was a sexual abuser is so blatantly insincere it’s insulting… but imagine trying to explain to someone who’s not on 4chan how this sweater is a rape joke. Imagine having to explain it to a journalist. Imagine having to explain it to the judge enforcing your abuser’s restraining order.

Reactionaries use meme culture not just because they’re terminally online but also because it makes their behavior seem either benign or just confusing to outsiders. They find it hilarious that they can be really explicit and still fly under the radar. The Alt-Right did this with Pepe the Frog, the OK sign, even the milk glass emoji for a hot minute. The more inexplicable the meme, the better. You get the point where Stephen Miller is flashing Nazi signs from the White House and the Presidential re-eletion campaign is releasing 88 ads of exactly 14 words and there’s still a debate about whether the administration is racist. Because journalists aren’t going to get their heads around that. You tell them “1488 is a Nazi number,” it’s gonna seem a lot more plausible that you’re making shit up.

MOVE FAST AND BREAK THINGS

Online movements like GamerGate move at a speed and mutation rate too high for the mainstream world to keep up. And not just that they don’t understand the memes - they don’t understand the infrastructure.

In an attempt to cover GamerGate evenhandedly, George Wiedman of Super Bunnyhop interviewed a lawyer who specializes in journalistic ethics. He meant well; I really wish he hadn’t. You can see him trying to fit something like GamerGate into terms this silver-haired man who works in copyright law can understand. At one point he asks if it’s okay to fund the creative project of a potential journalistic source, to which the guy understandably says “no.”

What he’s alluding to here is the harassment of Jenn Frank. A few weeks into GamerGate, Jenn Frank writes a piece in The Guardian about sexism in tech that mentions Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn. In another case of “here’s a strongly-held belief I just decided I have,” GamerGate says this is a breach of journalistic ethics because Frank backs Quinn on Patreon. They harass her so intensely she not only has to quit her job at The Guardian, for several months she quits journalism entirely.

Off the bat, calling a public figure central to a major event in the field a “journalistic source” is flatly wrong-headed. Quinn was not interviewed or even contacted for the article, they were in no way a “source”; they were a subject. But I want to talk about this phrase, “fund a creative project.” Patreon is functionally a subscription; it’s a way of buying things. It’s technically accurate that Frank is funding Quinn’s creative project, but only in the sense that you are funding Bob Dylan’s creative project if you listen to his music. And saying Frank therefore can’t write about Quinn is like saying a music journalist can’t cover a Bob Dylan concert if they’ve ever bought his albums.

And we could talk about the ways that Patreon, as compared with other funding models, can create a greater sense of intimacy, and we also could comment that, well, that’s how an increasing number of people consume media now, so that perspective should be present in journalism. But maybe it means we should cover that perspective differently? I don’t know. It’s an interesting subject. But none of that’s going on in this conversation because this guy doesn’t know what Patreon is. It was only a year old at this point. Patreon’s been a primary source of my income for 5 years and my parents still don’t know what it is. (I think they think I’m a freelancer?) This guy hears “funding a creative project” and he’s thinking an investor, someone who makes a profit off the source’s success.

The language of straight society hasn’t caught up with what’s happening, and that works in GamerGate’s favor.

In the years since GamerGate we have dozens of stories of people trying to explain Twitter harassment to a legal system that’s never heard of Twitter. People trying to explain death threats to cops whose only relationship to the internet is checking email, confusedly asking, “Why don’t you just not go online?” Like, yeah, release your text game about depression at GameStop for the PS3 and get it reviewed in the Boston Globe, problem solved.

You see this in the slowness of mainstream journalists to condemn the harassment - hell, even games journalists at first. Because what if it is a legitimate movement? What if the harassers are just a fringe element? What if there was misconduct? The people in a position to stop GamerGate don’t have to be convinced of their legitimacy, they just have to hesitate. They just have to be unsure. Remember how much happened in just the first two weeks, how it took only a month to become unkillable.

It’s the same hesitance that makes mainstream media, online platforms, and law enforcement underestimate The Alt-Right. They’re terrified of condemning a group as white nationalist terrorists because they’re confused, and what if they’re wrong? Or, in most cases, not even afraid they’re wrong, but afraid of the PR disaster if too much of the world thinks they’re wrong.

ACCOUNTABILITY AND CONTROL

A thing I’ve talked about in The Alt-Right Playbook is how these decentralized, ostensibly leaderless movements insulate themselves from responsibility. Harassment is never the movement’s fault because they never told anyone to harass and you can’t prove the harassers are legitimate members of the movement. The Alt-Right does this too - one of their catchphrases is “I disavow.” Since there are no formalized rules for membership, they can redraw boundaries on the fly; they can take credit for any successes and deny responsibility for any wrongdoing. Public membership is granted or revoked based on a person’s moment-to-moment utility.

It’s almost like… they’re cherry-picking.

The flipside of this is a lack of control. Since they never officially tell anyone to do anything but write emails, they have no means of stopping anyone from behaving counterproductively. The harassment of Jenn Frank was the first time GamerGate’s originators thought, “maybe we should ease off just to avoid bad publicity,” and they found they couldn’t. GamerGate had gotten too big, and too many people were clearly there for precisely this reason.

They also couldn’t control the infighting. When your goal is to harass women and you have all these contradictory justifications for why, you end up with a lot of competing beliefs. And, you know what? Angry white men who like harassing people don’t form healthy relationships! Several prominent members of GamerGate - including Internet Aristocrat - got driven out by factionalism; they were doxxed by their own people! Jordan Owen and Davis Aurini parted ways hating each other, with Aurini releasing chatlogs of him gaslighting Owen about accepting an endorsement from Roosh, and they released two competing edits of The Sarkeesian Effect.

I say this because it’s useful to know that these are alliances of convenience. If you know where the sore spots are, you can apply pressure to them.

LEADERS WITHOUT LEADERSHIP

One way movements like GamerGate deflect responsibility is by declaring, “We are a leaderless movement! We have no means to stop harassment.”

Which… any anarchist will tell you collective action is entirely possible without leaders. But they’ll also tell you, absent a system of distributing power equitably, you’re gonna have leaders, just not ones you elected.

A few months into GamerGate, Randi Lee Harper created the ggautoblocker. Here’s what it did: it took five prominent GamerGate figures - Adam Baldwin, Mike Cernovich, Christina Hoff Sommers, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Nick Monroe, formerly known as [sigh] PressFartToContinue - and generated a block list of everyone who followed at least two of them on Twitter. Now, this became something of an arms race; once GamerGate found out about it they made secondary accounts that followed different people, and more and more prominent figures appeared and had to get added to the list. But, when it first launched, the list generated from just these five people comprised an estimated 90-95% of GamerGate.

Hate to break it to you, guys, but if 90+ percent of your movement is following at least two of the same five people, those are your leaders. The attention economy has produced them. Power pools when left on its own.

This is another case where you have to ignore what people claim and look at what they do. The Alt-Right loves to say “we disavow Richard Spencer” and “Andrew Anglin doesn’t speak for us.”

But no matter what they say, pay attention to whom they’re taking cues from.

AD CAMPAIGN

George Lakoff has observed that one way the Left fails in opposition to the Right is that most liberal politicians and campaigners have degrees in things like law and political science, where conservative campaigners more often have degrees in advertising and communications. Liberals and leftists may have a better product to sell, but conservatives know how to sell products.

GamerGate less resembles a boots-on-the-ground political movement than an ad campaign. First they decide what their messaging strategy is going to be. Then the media arm starts publicizing it. They seek out celebrity endorsements. They get their own hashtag and mascot. They donate to charity and literally call it “public relations.” You can even see the move from The Quinnspiracy to GamerGate as a rebranding effort - when one name got too closely associated with harassment, they started insisting GamerGate was an entirely separate movement from The Quinnspiracy. I learned that trick from Stringer Bell’s economics class.

Now, we could stand to learn a thing or two from this. But I also wouldn’t want us to adopt this strategy whole hog; you should view moves like these as red flags. If you’re hesitating to condemn a movement because what if it’s legitimate, take a look at whether they’re selling ideology like it’s Pepsi.

PERCEPTION IS EVERYTHING

One reason to insist you’re a consumer revolt rather than a harassment campaign is most people who want to harass need someone to give them permission, and need someone to tell them it’s normal.

Bob Altemeyer has this survey he uses to study authoritarianism. He divides respondents into people with low, average, and high authoritarian sentiments, and then tells them what the survey has measured and asks, “what score do you think is best to have: low, average, or high?”

People with low authoritarian sentiments say it’s best to be low. People with average authoritarian sentiments also say it’s best to be low. But people with high authoritarian sentiments? They say it’s best to be average. Altemeyer finds, across all his research, that reactionaries want to aggress, but only if it is socially acceptable. They want to know they are the in-group and be told who the out-group is. They don’t particularly care who the out-group is, Altemeyer finds they’ll aggress against any group an authority figure points to, even, if they don’t notice it, a group that contains them. They just have to believe the in-group is the norm.

This is why they have to believe games journalism is corrupt because of a handful of feminist media critics with outsized influence. Legitimate failures of journalism cannot be systemic problems rooted in how digital media is funded and consumed; there cannot be a legitimate market for social justice-y media. It has to be manipulation by the few. Because, if these things are common, then, even if you don’t like them, they’re normal. They’re part of the in-group. Reactionary politics is rebellion against things they dislike getting normalized, because they know, if they are normalized, they will have to accept them. Because the thing they care about most is being normal.

This is why the echo chamber, this is why Fox News, this is why the Far Right insists they are the “silent majority.” This is why they artificially inflate their numbers. This is why they insist facts are “biased.” They have to maintain the image that what are, in material terms, fringe beliefs are, in fact, held by the majority. This is why getting mocked by Stephen Colbert was such a blow to GamerGate. It makes it harder to believe the world at large agrees with them.

This is why, if you’re trying to change the world for the better, it’s pointless to ask their permission. Because, if you change the world around them, they will adapt even faster than you will.

THE ARGUMENT ISN’T SUPPOSED TO END

Casey Explosion has this really great Twitter thread comparing the Alt-Right to Scary Terry from Rick and Morty. His catchphrase is “you can run but you can’t hide, bitch.” And Rick and Morty finally escape him by hiding. And Morty’s all, “but he said we can’t hide,” and Rick is like, “why are we taking his word on this? if we could hide, he certainly wouldn’t tell us.”

The reason to argue with a GamerGater is on the implied agreement that, if you can convince them they’re part of a hate mob, they will leave. But look at the incentives here: they want to be in GamerGate, and you want them not to be. But they’re already in GamerGate. They’re not waiting on the outcome of this argument to participate. They’ve already got what they want; they don’t need to convince you GamerGate isn’t a hate mob.

This is why all their logic and rationalizations are shit, because they don’t need to be good. They’re not trying to win an argument. They’re trying to keep the argument going.

This has been a precept of conservative political strategy for decades. “You haven’t convinced us climate change is real and man-made, you need to do more studies.” They’re not pausing the use of fossil fuels until the results come in. “You haven’t convinced us there are no WMDs in Iraq, you need to collect more evidence.” They’re not suspending the war until you get back to them. “You haven’t convinced us that Reaganomic tax policy causes recessions, let’s just do it for another forty years and see what happens.” And when the proof comes in, they send us out for more, and we keep going.

The biggest indicator you can’t win a debate with a reactionary is they keep telling you you can. The biggest indicator protest and deplatforming works is they keep telling you in plays into their hands. The biggest indicator that you shouldn’t compromise with Republicans is they keep saying doing otherwise is stooping to their level. They’re not going to walk into the room and say, “Hi, my one weakness is reasoned argument, let’s pick a time and place to hash this out.”

And we fall for it because we’re trying to be decent people. Because we want to believe the truth always wins. We want to bargain in good faith, and they are weaponizing our good faith against us. Always dangling the carrot that the reason they’re like this is no one’s given them the right argument not to be. It’s all just a misunderstanding, and, really, it’s on us for not trying hard enough.

But they have no motivation to agree with us. Most of the people asking for debates have staked their careers on disagreeing with us. Conceding any point to the Left could cost them their livelihood.

WHY GAMES?

Let’s close with the big question: why games? And, honestly, the short answer is:

why not games?

Games culture has always presented itself as a hobby for young, white, middle class boys. It’s always been bigger and more diverse than that, but that’s how it was marketed, and that’s who most felt they belonged. As gaming grows bigger, there is suddenly room for those marginal voices that have always been there to make themselves heard. And, as gaming becomes more mainstream, it’s having its first brushes with serious critical analysis.

This makes the people who have long felt gaming was theirs and theirs alone anxious and a little angry. They’ve invested a lot of their identity in it and they don’t want it to change.

And what the Far Right sees in a sizable collection of aggrieved young men is an untapped market. This is why sites like Stormfront and Breitbart flocked to them. These are not liberals they have to convert, these people are, up til now, not politically engaged. The Right can be their first entry to politics.

The world was changing. Nerd properties were exploding into popular culture in tandem with media representation diversifying. And we were living with the first Black President. Any time an out-group looks like it might join the in-group, there is a self-protective backlash from the existing in-group. This had been brewing for a while, and, honestly, if it hadn’t boiled over in games, it would have boiled over somewhere else.

And, in the years since GamerGate, it has. The Far Right has tapped the comics, Star Wars, and sci-fi fandoms; they tried to get in with the furry community but failed spectacularly. They’re all over YouTube and, frankly, the atheist community was already in their pocket. Basically, if you’re in community with a bunch of young white guys who think they own the place, you might wanna have some talks with them sooner than later.

Anyway, if you want to know more about any of this stuff, RationalWiki’s timeline on GamerGate is pretty thorough. You can also watch my or Dan Olson’s videos on the subject. I’ll be putting the audio of this talk on YouTube and will put as many resources as I can in the show notes. The channel, again, is Innuendo Studios.

Sorry this was such a bummer.

Thank you for your time.

#video essay #alt-right playbook #Youtube

379 notes · View notes

feelingofcontent · 3 years

Text

DNP Rewatch: SERIOUS BUSINESS

Date video was published: 02/27/2010 (X)

DNP Main Channel Rewatch: 61

This is the longest video of this re-watch so far! (Also LMAO at the video description: “sorry for the 4 week gap! (fail) THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN ever.” 🤣🤣🤣)

For some reason, Dan looks slightly older/more like his current self in this video to me, than in the previous ones. Maybe his hair is styled a bit differently?

0:10 - camera quality is so much better!! and the audio too!

0:19 - Dan has really big eyes too

0:23 - “left my weekend job” I think he got fired from Asda around that point, right? But he doesn’t talk about that until a couple years later.

0:29 - “get birthday presents” in January, for Phil, obviously 🥺

0:38 - you can almost tell from his expression in this one frame how much he did not actually enjoy that work experience

1:20 - he looks so dressed up-ish and with the coffee and everything. awww.

1:31 - lol at this coffee tutorial insert

2:17 - I desperately want to know what these business people thought of him walking around with a camera all day if they noticed. I don’t think he was very subtle, haha

2:39 - scripting his New Years Resolution Fail video, apparently?! Seems like he has an actual full script

2:44 - fringe check!

3:36 - you can tell he knows the law degree is a bad idea but he still tries to do it anyway. poor Dan. 😕

3:54 - second channel talk! Also, he’s done the “:D” at the start of the text like he does when he signs things!

4:09 - “Phil spitting into a sink”...I don’t remember this clip at all! lol at the contrast with what he said right before this, but also awwww at them just filming each other randomly all the time. 🥺 (Also, the “FIT.” text on screen...what.)

4:20 - and a shower clip. The end of this video is something else.

4:44 - ah, no wonder the background looks so bright and nice. Didn’t realize he filmed most of this while he was in India.

4:57 - we did not get an India vlog 😢

soft smile!

5:11 - blowing kisses too. awww

This video took Dan a long time to edit, according to his Twitter. Thinking Phil probably helped him a bit when he was up north a few days ahead of this one being posted. 😊

I like this one a lot! Soft young Dan is adorable.

#dan and phil #dnp #dnpRewatch #daniel howell #danisnotonfire #dan howell #daniel howell videos #SERIOUS BUSINESS

13 notes · View notes

blissedoutphil · 4 years

Text

Cool Down

Never thought I’d be writing a prompt from the man himself in the year he’s barely around. Also anon’s idea is A+ thank you for that, I hope you enjoy!

The (**) leads to a nsfw link so be careful if you wanna click it!

3019 words of ice play, Top!Phil, bottom!dan, ice play, blowjob, smut

or read on ao3!

Dan groaned at the sound of the doorbell. Phil and his damn packages. It was so hot that he'd decided to spend the day not moving at all from the spot on the couch near the fan, but Phil was busy filming so he had no choice.

He reluctantly stepped away from the fan and went to answer the door. He didn’t bother putting a shirt on and was just in his shorts, because who needs a layer over their sticky skin in fucking 34ºC weather.

He was too hot to even feel conscious about being topless when facing the cute deliveryman. The guy didn’t look fazed either, probably most people he delivered packages to were wearing as little clothing as possible on this sweltering day. He dumped Phil’s packages on the kitchen table and went back to his spot.

A few hours later Phil walked in, in just shorts too.

“Whew, I’m glad filming’s finally done. Couldn’t wait to take off my shirt the entire time,” he complained, plopping down between Dan and the fan.

“Hey! Stop blocking the fan,” Dan toed at Phil’s side to get him to move, “go get your packages on the kitchen table.”

“Oh, they’re here already?” Phil got up immediately, looking quite excited that his order had arrived.

“You making a Wish video again or something?” Dan asked from where he was still lounging.

“No, just got some things I thought were cool.”

“Phil, we’ve got enough useless things lying around here, you gotta stop falling for the ads” Dan rolled his eyes.

“Uh, I beg to differ, you loved that Nic Cage pillow cover,” Phil said indignantly, “plus I got something that’s definitely useful for you right now.”

That piqued Dan’s interest, and he quirked an eyebrow at Phil, “If it’s not another fan or a portable A/C then I don’t agree with you.”

“It’s better than that, trust me,” Phil had that glint in his eye that Dan knew meant he was planning something good.

But he was also being sneaky about it, refusing to tell Dan what he got and telling him he’s got to wait a few hours.

So they spent the rest of the warm day lazily lounging about and trying but failing to pay attention to the tv since their brains felt melted from the heat. Phil had eaten 2 ice lollies, and made huge glasses of iced coffee for both of them, but they still felt warm as soon as their cold treats were gone.

"If whatever you bought is better than a fan then can we please use it now?!” Dan said exasperatedly, wiping sweat off his brow.

“So impatient,” Phil chided, but he got up to retrieve the item.

“Actually,” Phil continued as he walked over to the kitchen, “I got this idea after I saw your tweet.”

Dan craned his neck to look over at his boyfriend, squinting his eyes suspiciously.

“You gonna help me stick some ice up my ass?” he joked, but stopped chuckling when he realised Phil wasn’t laughing along with him.

“I mean,” Phil shrugged, looking into the freezer, “you could’ve just texted that to me.”

Dan’s breath hitched as it dawned on him that Phil was dead serious about following through with his joke tweet.

“It’s too hot for sex right now, Phil,” he griped.

“Not as hot as your idea. Hey, describing ice play as hot is kinda ironic,” Phil grinned.

Dan rolled his eyes fondly. “What does my tweet have anything to do with your Wish purchase anyway?”

“It’s like Wish knew what you tweeted, I think they’re spying on us.”

“Spit it out, Lester, what did you get? A dick-shaped ice tray or something?”

Phil peeked out from the freezer door. “That does sound like something Wish probably has.”

Dan barked out a laugh. The ridiculousness of the idea based on his joke coupled with the determination on Phil’s face resulted in him doubled over from laughter.

Dan pressed his hand over his chest at an attempt to calm down to talk, “Don’t tell me you actually!”

Phil shrugged nonchalantly, “your wish is my command, who else was gonna fulfil your requests on twitter?”

Dan shook his head slightly at his ridiculous boyfriend. He heard the freezer shut and Phil beckoned him over to the kitchen, so he lazily got up and padded over to where his boyfriend was in front of the counter.

The moment he stepped close enough for Phil to reach out for him, Phil grabbed him and pinned him against the counter. He grunted as Phil turned them so his back hit against the counter, barely having time to register what was happening.

Phil had a smirk as he held Dan in place by his hips. He headed straight for Dan’s lips, and Dan happily welcomed the kiss. But Dan’s eyes widened and he moaned in surprise when he opened his mouth and a small ice cube was pushed into his mouth. The ice cube quickly melted between their tongues, and Phil only broke the kiss when it was completely gone.

Dan gasped out a surprised laugh. He already had an idea of what Phil was up to yet somehow he still did not see that coming.

Phil winked in that endearing way where it almost counted as blinking instead, and reached for something on the counter behind him. He gently pushed Dan’s head down to his neck and Dan got the hint, starting to mouth along his neck to his shoulder.

Dan had barely started on sucking a hickey when Phil gripped his hair and yanked him back up to kiss him again. Dan still moaned in surprise when he felt another ice cube being pushed into his mouth again.

Dan noted that the ice wasn’t exactly cube shaped as it got passed between them. Phil rubbed it on Dan’s tongue with his own, feeling it melt.

Their lips felt cold but their bodies grew warmer, sticky against each other as their chests pressed together. Phil placed a hand on Dan’s chest to balance himself and also have some space between them so that their body heat wouldn’t be too uncomfortably hot. He could feel Dan’s heart beating faster against his palm.

Once again, Phil looked over Dan’s shoulder to pop another ice into his mouth after the previous one completely melted. This time, he stuck his tongue out to show Dan the ice.

“Oh,” was all Dan could manage before he broke out into laughter.

Phil couldn’t help but giggle too, taking the dick-shaped ice from his tongue and holding it out for Dan to take a proper look.

“Cute innit, you guessed right. I think Wish can actually grant any wish we have,” Phil beamed at his own dumb joke.

Dan looked behind him and saw a big glass on their table top full of small ice that were shaped simply like bananas with two circles at the end.

“Not what I thought of at all when I tweeted that,” Dan laughed.

He turned back to Phil when he felt Phil place the ice on his chest. He watched as Phil traced the ice along his chest, watched as the dick shrank quickly until all of it turned to water trailing down his stomach. How was playing with ice so hot?

“Don’t think these tiny things in my ass would be satisfying enough, though,” he smirked.

“Oh, I know,” Phil squeezed Dan’s ass, “this is just one of the things in my Wish package.”

Dan didn’t have time to ask anything because Phil was already pressing an ice-dick to his lips, and he opened his mouth to accept it, Phil’s lips following immediately after.

A strangled whimper escaped Dan’s mouth when a sudden cold bit at his nipple. He gripped Phil’s upper arm for purchase, but Phil wasn’t letting up on their kiss or the sliding of the ice across his chest.

The ice was circled around his nipple, going over it until it hardened. Dan shivered a little, but Phil only broke the kiss to pop another ice into their mouths and press another against his other nipple, repeating until it was equally numb and hard.

Dan shuddered, swallowing the melted ice. He was definitely starting to cool down, feeling the cold water run down his chest. Phil was still tracing another ice slowly, from his clavicles to his chest to his tummy - like he didn’t want to miss a spot.

They were both already hard, and with his free hand, Phil began palming Dan through his shorts. Dan whined into Phil’s mouth, canting his hips into Phil’s hand.

Phil pressed an ice below Dan’s collarbone using his lips. He slowly traced it down Dan’s body, and Dan held onto his shoulders as he went down. The ice melted completely by the time it reached Dan’s bellybutton, but Phil continued kissing his way down, until he was properly on his knees.

Above him, he heard Dan’s breaths coming out ragged. He licked a drop of water that was trickling down Dan’s happy trail to the waistband of his shorts, then started mouthing Dan’s dick through the shorts. He could feel Dan’s dick twitch, straining against the shorts.

Dan moaned, tugging at Phil’s hair to move him away just long enough for him to remove the only piece of cloth on him. He hastily pulled his shorts down, and Phil helped him step out of it completely.

Dan shivered involuntarily as Phil started licking along his shaft. Phil’s tongue felt cold on him, but he felt himself heating up from the way Phil was staring up at him while swirling his tongue on his slit.

“My god,” Dan moaned when Phil went down on him proper, a cool sensation in contrast to the usual warmth of his mouth.

But the cold didn’t last long of course, as Phil started bobbing his head in earnest. Dan’s balls met Phil’s chin with each time Phil went down on him.

“Phil,” Dan moaned, trying to catch his breath to speak, “Phil I won’t last before seeing your other - oh- your other purchase.”

At that, Phil kneeled up and slowed his movements. His free hand snaked up to reach the glass on the edge of the table. The dick-shaped ice left in there had melted some, and he dipped his fingers in to wet them.

Dan was still too caught up in the blowjob to notice what Phil was doing, so he let out a small surprised yelp when Phil’s cold fingers pressed against his hole. He spread his legs a little, relaxing to let Phil finger him.

A strained whimper escaped Dan, starting to feel overwhelmed from Phil’s mouth still on him and now his fingers in him too. Phil began to pump his finger in and out, adding a second finger soon after. He looked up at Dan, gauging how he was holding up so that he knew to pace himself and not let Dan come before he could move on to the next part. Dan was gazing down at him, panting and looking flushed despite all the ice rubbed on him.

Phil moved off of Dan’s dick with a pop when he was done fingering him. He stood up and gently manoeuvred Dan to turn around and bend over on the counter top.

“I don’t think you’ve cooled down enough,” Phil said nonchalantly, tapping Dan’s ass.

Dan folded his arms and rested his cheek against them, humming in agreement with Phil.

“Gimme more ice dicks,” he chuckled and wiggled his butt, “you still haven’t fulfilled my twitter wish.”

“Once again,” Phil smacked Dan’s ass playfully, “so impatient.”

Phil took some ice that hasn’t yet melted in the glass and placed them neatly in a line down Dan’s back along his spine, from the bottom of his neck right to the spot between his back dimples. Dan could count 6, and could feel the coldness spread from each of them through his skin. He was then ordered to keep still so the ice wouldn’t fall off.

“Actually,” Phil went to open the freezer, “I don’t think I can fulfil your twitter wish exactly.”

Dan made a questioning noise, confused. But he couldn’t turn to look at Phil.

“You asked for a cube, but that’s not what I have,” Phil took out his next item from the freezer and finally showed it to Dan.

“Oh. My. God,” Dan uttered in a mix of shock and amazement, “fucking Wish!”

Phil giggled. He opened the dick mould (**) to reveal the ice in the shape of a very realistic penis, complete with the balls and head and veiny shaft. It was rather large too, Dan reckoned, almost as big as him.

Dan could feel the tiny ice dicks melting on his back, the water dripping down his sides as his body thrummed in excitement to try out the new toy.

“Ready?” Phil asked, taking out the ice from the mould and rubbing it along Dan’s crack.

Dan shivered at the contact, it was fucking cold. But he didn’t want to waste anymore time and cause the ice to melt before they could even start.

“Yesss,” he keened, sticking his ass up a bit more.

Phil took Dan’s arm and brought it behind him, a silent order that Dan understood immediately. He spread his asscheeks with both hands, his face planted against the table as he looked on at Phil expectantly.

Phil quickly pressed the head of the ice-dick into Dan’s hole, and Dan hissed at the coldness penetrating him. The balls part of the ice was already starting to melt in Phil’s hand, but he took his time pushing it into Dan, letting Dan adjust to the intrusion. He knew Dan could take the size since it was smaller than him, although only by a bit, but he wasn’t sure how it would feel to have a frozen item entering him.

“Oh my god,” Dan mumbled. He could feel the cold spread inside him, a much more intense sensation than at the start of their play when the tiny ice was just spreading a bit of cold on his skin.

“How does it feel?” Phil asked as he slowly pushed another inch in, a steady hand on Dan’s lower back.

“Fucking cold,” Dan grit out, “strange but. Good. Keep going.”

“Good,” Phil repeated, and kept going like Dan requested until the ice balls were pressed against Dan’s ass, a little out of shape from having melted slightly.

“So weird, I can like, feel it melting inside me,” Dan commented, swaying his hips a bit.

Phil grabbed the ice balls and slowly dragged it out a bit, noting that the ice already lost its veiny details, now looking like a really long and thick ice pop. He then pushed it back in and repeated, fucking Dan with the ice and watching as it grew smaller in size.

Water was trickling out of Dan’s ass and down his legs, and now he really felt cool all over. Phil let go of the ice and kept it in Dan, reaching under Dan and placing his cold hand on Dan’s hard dick. Dan jerked at the touch, and moaned when Phil started stroking him.

Dan felt like his ass was going numb from the cold, not really able to clench around the shrinking ice. He was able to feel Phil sliding his own dick along his crack, though. He wiggled his ass and stuck it out more, encouraging Phil.

“All the cold water’s being wasted,” Phil noted as more melted ice trickled down Dan’s thighs, “here, let me help you keep it in.”

With that, Phil pulled his own shorts off and thrusted into Dan, eliciting a loud moan from Dan. The small length of ice that hasn’t melted was pushed further into him, and Dan could feel the cold piercing his insides.

“Oh,” Phil moaned, totally not used to fucking into a cold hole.

He began to fuck Dan faster, and the ice definitely melted faster with the movement and their combined body heat. Dan held onto the edge of the table, bracing himself against it as he was fucked. He tried to clench around Phil but still felt too numb to work his muscles there.

Phil’s hand moved back to jerking Dan off, wanting him to come at the same time. Dan was moaning expletives, his hips colliding against the table with every hard thrust from Phil.

The glass of tiny ice-dicks was completely melted, and Phil poured some of the cold water on Dan’s back, spreading it around with his hand. Dan squealed, warning Phil that he was close. It only made Phil speed up both his thrusts and strokes, until Dan wasn’t able to form any words anymore.

Soon enough, Dan came with a high pitched moan, feeling warmth rise in his groin despite all the cold water in and on him. Phil followed almost immediately after, filling Dan with his come. He stayed inside Dan until he fully calmed down from his high.

Dan was lying pliant on the table when Phil pulled out. He realised that the numbness was finally gone, and he clenched his ass to keep the mix of come and melted ice in him for just a bit longer. Phil laid on top of Dan, pressing his body against Dan’s back, and Dan finally felt a bit of warmth again.

“So how was that? Was it everything you wished for when typing that tweet?” Phil murmured in between soft, lazy kisses on the back of Dan’s neck and shoulders, smirking against Dan's damp skin.

“Hmm,” Dan pondered, “not exactly. You didn’t shove it in me like I tweeted.”

Phil huffed, pushing off of Dan and smacking his ass, “you clean this mess.”

Dan merely laughed. He turned around as soon as Phil was off him and pulled Phil into a hug before Phil could get too far.

“Okay okay, I loved it. And I’ll clean up here, only if you promise to try the ice dick too.”

--------------------------------------

smh at the way I kept referencing Wish but only found the mould on etsy. also 'cold' doesn't look like a proper word anymore. Anyway, hope all of your summer’s been good (as good as it can get in this pandemic...)

#Phanfic #phansmut #smut #phan #my fic #Cool Down #dan and phil #phan fic #phan smut

56 notes · View notes

quercussp · 4 years

Text

Sunshine and daisies

Rating: G

Word count: 1.3k

Summary: Phil goes for a walk.

Authors note: This is a fic written for @velvetnautilus as part of the blm fundraiser, hope you like it!

Thank you to @det395, @alittledizzy and @insectbah for the help!

Warnings: mention of covid

[read on ao3]

Walking down the street felt very weird after weeks and weeks of being at home. And sure, it was weird to see people in masks and signs to keep your distance in every shop, but at least he was out on the sunny street with people around. It felt like the weather was celebrating the end of the lockdown with everyone. The clear blue sky made the world feel happy and big. There was a pleasant cool breeze rustling the leaves on the trees, there were colorful flowers planted along the sidewalk, and the air felt fresh and rejuvenating.

As Phil turned the corner, he saw the familiar logo of a Starbucks. When he left for a walk this morning, leaving Dan to brainstorm on the next chapter, he didn’t have a real goal in mind, but getting a fancy ice coffee felt like a really good idea.

He adjusted his face mask (with a corgi pattern, of course) and took his place in line (6 feet behind the previous person, of course). Taking out his phone, he considered texting Dan and asking if he wanted something but then decided against it. Dan was working and pulling him out of his focus for coffee didn’t seem worth it, especially since Phil was fairly confident he could guess what Dan would prefer. Instead, he opened twitter and scrolled through his feed.

The line looked long, but it took only 10 minutes for Phil to get to the register and order his Caramel Ribbon Crunch frappuccino (the name itself made Phil’s teeth ache in anticipation of all the sugar) and an Iced Matcha for Dan. He also ordered a cake pop for himself (he was an adult, no one could tell him what to do) and an almond croissant for Dan.

Phil left the coffee shop and slowly walked down the street towards the apartment, drinks in both hands and the pastries under his arm. A woman with a baby stroller walked past him, talking on the phone with someone. A young man in a mask jogged past him and Phil had to actively stop himself from doing a double-take (he had quite nice shoulders). Phil felt as though his breaths were deeper and almost sweeter than usual. It felt good. Life felt good.

He was passing the little flower shop that Dan liked to frequent and suddenly felt the urge to go in. Dan was the one who loved to buy flowers. Every now and then he would come home from a walk with a large bouquet. Sometimes he would say that they were for Phil and blush a little. Sometimes he would just put them on his desk and not mention it. And sometimes Phil would kiss him on the cheek and say “Such pretty flowers, Danny.”

Phil walked inside the store and breathed in the smell of the flowers. He walked around the different displays, looking at the different plants, trying to decide what to get for Dan.

“Sir, can I help you?” A voice interrupted Phil’s thoughts. He was so startled that he almost dropped one of the coffees to the floor, but caught it just in time. The bag with the pastries, however, fell down.

“Sorry, sorry! I didn’t mean to startle you!” The young sales assistant rushed to pick up the slightly beaten bag and handed it to Phil.

“No, no, it’s all fine! I just didn’t see you there!” Phil put down the cups on the counter, adjusted his facemask, and shoved the bag back under his armpit.

“Is there anything I can help you with, sir?” the girl asked again, in a quieter voice.

“Um…yeah, I wanted to buy some flowers…” Phil trailed off. There was an awkward pause.

“Well, this is the place for it! What kind of flowers are you looking for?”

“They’re for…a friend. A boyfriend.” It was still weird to be able to say it out loud.

It’s been a year since I could first say it on the street, Phil thought to himself. How has the time flown by?

“Oh, ok! What kind of flowers are you thinking? What does he like?” She started walking around the shop pointing at different flowers. “Lilies? Or maybe some roses, is he a roses guy?”

“What about these?” Phil pointed at a bucket. “They’re daisies, right?”

“Yes, those are a great choice! Did you know that in the language of flowers daisies mean ‘I love you truly’? How many do you want?”

“All of them,” said Phil before he could stop himself.

If the sales assistant was surprised, she didn’t show it. “Ok, great!” she said and started wrapping the giant bunch up into fancy paper. Phil felt a little silly watching her wrap up what must have been several dozen of the white flowers, but said nothing and just awkwardly stepped from foot to foot.

“There you go, that will be 94.60!”

After paying, Phil tried to arrange all the packages in his arms without dropping the coffee, but nearly tumbled over.

“Here! Let me help!” exclaimed the flower girl and carefully handed Phil the cups after placing the bouquet under his free arm. “I’m sure your boyfriend is gonna love them! Have a nice day, stay safe!” She opened the door for him.

The walk home, while still quite pleasant, was definitely a little tricky. As was opening the door and pressing the buttons in the lift. And he didn’t even attempt to unlock the front door, and just banged on it with his foot until Dan opened.

“What’s all this?!” Dan looked rumpled and a tiny bit annoyed, although his face quickly turned to surprise and his ‘Phil what are you doing but also you’re so cute’ expression.

Phil handed Dan the (very much melted) matcha and the pastry bag. “For you,” he said, walking into the apartment and placing his cup on the table. After tearing off his mask, he gave Dan a quick peck on the lips and stepped out of his trainers.

“Daisies?” Dan asked, looking at the giant bouquet.

“Also for you.” For some reason, Phil felt a little hesitant now. They were a little ridiculous. They probably wouldn’t fit into any vase they had.

Dan looked into Phil’s eyes for a bit and then proceeded to give him a slow kiss. “Thank you. I love them,” he said and took the flowers out of Phil’s arms. “Now go wash your hands, mister, don’t want any of that virus on my furniture.”

When Phil came back after washing up and changing into his pajamas, Dan had assembled the daisies into smaller bouquets, placing them in 5 separate vases, and was now arranging them all across the flat.

“They’re a bit ridiculous, I know.”

“Hey, don’t say shit about my flowers!” Dan countered. “But what did you do, buy the whole stock?”

When Phil didn’t answer, Dan started laughing and kissed Phil on the side of the head. “They’re beautiful, Phil, and now I have enough to put into every room.”

They ended up finishing up their drinks and pastries while sitting on the sofa, legs tangled together. Dan told Phil about his progress (or lack of it) on his book, and Phil told him about what specials were at Starbucks. They watched a couple of YouTube videos and at some point, Dan stood up to continue working.

“They mean I love you,” Phil blurted out before Dan had a chance to leave the room. “The daisies. The store woman said that they mean ‘I love you deeply’ or something like that.” He trailed off, a little embarrassed.

Dan turned around and walked back up to Phil. He pulled him up from the sofa and wrapped himself around Phil and squeezed. “Oh, Phil, you spork,” he whispered into Phil’s hair and kissed him on the temple. They stood wrapped up together for a minute or two, until Dan untangled himself, gave Phil a last kiss on the lips, and went up to his office. He took the biggest vase with him.

#phan #phanfiction #my fic #charity fic

52 notes · View notes

promptbomb · 4 years

Text

Ink and Paint : Chapter 4

Pairing: Ryan Haywood x Reader Previous Chapters: One // Two // Three Word Count: 1,865 Prompt: You came to Los Santos to pursue a dream of becoming a tattoo artist. Things haven’t quite worked out as you planned and now you find yourself working a graveyard shift at Pandemonium Ink. Things are typically quiet, that is until one of the cities most infamous criminals come through the door.

A surge of adrenaline snaps you awake when you see Bruno’s name on your caller id. You ignore the cascade of papers that fall from the shifting of your blankets as you sit up, double-checking the time through a blurred gaze before you answer. You couldn’t possibly begin to guess why he’s calling you at nine in the morning but your instincts tell you that it’s probably not to deliver any good news. He all but confirms that when he tells you that you need to come in. Right now. And that the cops were there, asking questions.

Shit.

You scurry to make yourself look presentable and spring for a cab to get down there as quickly as possible, finding the street outside Pandemonium peppered with squad cars when you arrive. At the far end of the block, you see a couple of news trucks behind a guarded barricade while several officers stand outside the shop, talking to a few of the dayshift artists and their friends that typically hang around. Next door the dry cleaner is taped off and you see some detectives coming in and out, one of them talking casually to Phil who had no sense of a poker face in dealing with people interrupting his own flow of business.

It seemed your long-standing suspicions about the dry cleaner being involved in some sort of shady business were spot on and whatever evidence the cops had gathered in the last few days on stakeout had garnered enough warrant to bust in and do a search. Now the investigators were starting to take depositions from the locals and, since you were the only one that worked nights, they were extremely interested in what you may have seen or heard. Which, honestly, was a whole lot of nothing. Sure, you had seen a van pulled up to the back a few times, but outside color and size there wasn’t much else to recall.

They take down your information and ask you to stay even after they finish questioning you. All in all, it takes about two hours until you were finally released to go back home, armed now with a card that put you in direct contact with one of the lead investigators should you remember anything else. Phil reimburses you for the cab fare and even pays for your ride home, telling you to try and rest up before you have to work that evening. Right, like you were going to be able to sleep after all that. On the way home though you being to think about how lucky Ryan was that the cops didn’t notice him last night. His pedestrian look seemed to be well tested.

But he was supposed to come back tonight to start his tattoo.

You begin to chew on your bottom lip, your gaze turning to look out at the city skyline hazed in afternoon heat. With all the cops swarming the area maybe it wasn’t such a good idea for him to come. It probably wouldn’t be as bad during the evening but there’s no doubt that the area was going to be heavily patrolled just in case. You did have his number and he did say to call only if it was important. Keeping him from potentially being busted seemed important enough. Still, calling to warn him about the cops, if he didn’t think you knew who he was before that would certainly reveal just that. You begin to weigh which might be more dangerous; having the Vagabond know that you know who he is or knowingly letting him walk into a police heavy area.

Screw it.

When you arrive home you flipped through your sketchbook, finding his scrawled number and giving him a call. You’re not the least bit surprised when you’re met with the standard answering message. This was probably some protective line, used for business and nothing more. “Hey...Ryan. Uh, listen. I know you told me not to call unless it was important but...well I think you should stay clear of Pandemonium for a while. The place next door got busted for drugs or something and the entire block has been crawling with cops all day. I just think...you know...it might be safer for you not to come tonight. We can reschedule your tattoo when things clear up. Ok? Right. Ok. Bye.” Your cheeks begin to flush with heat as you end the call, mentally replaying your words over and over again.

You keep your phone handy though, expecting him to call or text some sort of reply. In the meantime, since you’re resigned to staying up, you begin to further your own investigation into the Vagabond of Los Santos. There’s a plentiful amount of information about the Fake AH Crew online in way of news reports. Robbery, illegal gambling and street racings, prison breaks, even petty crimes such as shoplifting or vandalism. They were dangerous, there was no doubt about that, but it was more like a lot of jackassery then the criminal masterminds the media made them out to be. An hour passes before you look at your phone, making sure you hadn't missed a call or text while watching some amateur video of the Crew leader pissing on a cop car before one of the other boys tossed a grenade into its open window. No reply as of yet.

You take a nap and check your phone again when you wake up. Still nothing. A seed of anxiety begins to take root as your day plays out quietly with no response from the Vagabond. By the time you make it into work, your stomach had worked itself into a knot. Just as you had expected, sitting right outside of Pandemonium, a pair of police officers nod to you from their patrol car as you enter the shop. You touch base with Bruno, who spends a solid five minutes complaining about how dead the shop had been thanks in part to the police presence outside and how Phil thought it might carry on for a few days. The old man was too salty to close up though and Bruno wished you luck on staving off boredom as he left for the evening. As soon as he’s out the door you fish your phone from your pocket and check for any notifications.

Nothing.

The night continues on. You anxiously watch the door, your mind working a thousand miles a minute, constructing a dozen different scenarios. What if he hadn’t got the message? If he were to walk up and see the patrol car would he think you were trying to set him up? You recall that first evening you had met the Vagabond, how cold his eyes had been, the aura of danger that had exuded from him. A shiver trails down your spine and you close your eyes for a moment, holding a breath before exhaling gently. You had done the right thing and, as the night crawled to a close it came without incident and without Ryan making an appearance. You feel a sense of relief thinking that, if anything, at least he received and heeded your message.

You check your phone once more before going to bed and again when you first wake up. Still nothing. The lack of response almost seems to haunt your morning routine as you occasionally shoot a glance towards your silent phone while brushing your teeth. You nearly drop your coffee cup when it chimes suddenly, sending you into a scramble to fumble with the lock screen only to see a message from Ruth asking if you were free to pick up an afternoon shift today. Your head suddenly feels like it weighs fifty pounds as it hangs low and you can’t help but chuckle. This was ridiculous. You needed to get your mind on something else and dealing with a hungry crowd at lunch was just the thing to give you a little reprieve.

Ruth is already in the middle of prepping when you arrive and after a short exchange of friendly banter, you take charge at the register just as the first customer walks up. The first thing you notice about the woman on the other side of the counter is that she seems incredibly out of place from the typical scene that usually patronizes Ruth’s eatery. Sleek auburn hair framed a pretty face half concealed by a pair of what you could only guess were high end, name brand sunglasses. Her black suit was fitted and was something you would have guessed would have been on display in a Ponsonbys’ storefront on Portola Drive, a far cry from the beach bums that usually sauntered up for a hot ham and cheese. “Hi!” You greet her in full customer service mode, ticket book in hand. “Welcome to Ruth’s. What can I get you?”

“I’ll take an iced tea.” Her reply comes with a surprisingly friendly tone, not what you would have expected from someone looking so posh, and the warmth of her smile makes you almost feel guilty for having assumed otherwise. You service her drink and she pays with a twenty, dunking the change into the tip jar without a second thought before thanking you and moving to sit at one of the far tables, the tip of the straw disappearing between the pucker of her ruby red lips. You wonder briefly if maybe she was meeting someone here; local property was always being snatched up for regentrification and she seemed to be the type of person flushed with cash and ready to invest. As the lunch rush begins to kick up you loose focus on the woman and fall into the grind, it only when things slow down and Ruth asks you to bust the tables that you notice she’s still there.

Well, if she was waiting for someone they had yet to show, but, whether it was paranoia or your own active imagination, you feel as if she had been here watching you the entire time. You decide to slake your curiosity by approaching her, armed only with your customer service smile. “Is there anything else I can get for you today? Maybe a refill?” You motion to her empty cup which had begun pooling at the base from condensation.

“Oh no, I’m ok.” She seems to pause for a moment and extends a finger to idly flick the tip of her straw. “Actually, I wonder if you and I could have a brief conversation.” You blink, the enigma of this woman becoming more and more complex. When you fail to respond she offers you a laugh and tilts her head just enough so that she can peer at you over the frame of her sunglasses. “You and I have a mutual friend.”

“We do?” You quirk a brow, mentally going through the shortlist of people you knew in the city well enough to call a friend.

Your bewilderment pulls her smile further across her face, almost endearingly, and she reaches to take hold of your hand to give it a firm shake. “My name is Lindsay Jones, I’m a member of the Fakes.”

#ryan haywood x reader #fake ah crew #achievement hunter ff

13 notes · View notes

dvp95 · 5 years

Text

quiet on widow’s peak (1)

pairing: dan howell/phil lester, pj liguori/sophie newton/chris kendall rating: teen & up tags: paranormal investigator, youtuber phil lester, dan howell is not a youtuber, online friendship, slow burn, strangers to lovers, nonbinary character, background poly, phil does some buzzfeed unsolved shit and dan is a fan word count: 3.2k (this chapter & total) summary: Phil's got a list of paranormal experiences a mile long that he likes to share with the world. Abandoned buildings, cemeteries, and ghost stories have always called his name, and a particular fan of his has a really, really good ghost story. Bingo squares: met on tumblr

new wip? NEW WIP.

read this chapter on ao3 or here!

The wind is loud in this one. That's frustrating, and it makes Phil's job a lot harder, but he can't control the weather. Be cool if he could. He does his best to level out his voice and the background noise of Mother Nature before he settles in with his good headphones and really cranks the volume.

It's even more annoying to listen to the alternating crackle and whistle right in his ears. Phil has dealt with worse during this whole process, though, so he finds the strength to power through it. He listens to the full thing three times, scribbling a few timestamps down on a Post-It pad as he does. He takes a break after that, does some stretches around his tiny bedroom and tiptoes out to get a snack without waking the whole damn house, and then he's right back in his apparently ergonomic office chair to subject his ears to more of this nonsense.

Wind, wind, and more wind. And sometimes just Phil's own voice. Nothing of note.

Phil is about to give this video up as a loss altogether when he hits one of the final timestamps and... can't figure out what that noise is.

For the first time since he opened this file, Phil grins. He exports the clip and plays around with it in Audacity. Some videos are always more fun than others, and Phil had felt like he was slogging through this one until now.

"Do you hear that, Theodore?" Phil murmurs. The tiny cactus on his desk, thankfully, does not respond.

It sounds like a person. It sounds like a person, whispering, and it definitely isn't the wind, and it isn't Phil's own voice, because he's in the middle of a question in this clip.

Phil might just be going crazy from sleep deprivation or wishful thinking, though. He pulls out his phone and texts the only group chat that doesn't cause him anxiety, which is comprised of the housemates that he actually gets along with. Anyone up? he asks, adding a single eye emoji for good measure.

Even though it's gone two in the morning, he gets immediate responses from all of them. A string of vaguely dirty emojis from Chris, a simple yeah from Sophie, and a cheerfully morbid did you know that insomnia leads to an early death? from PJ.

Wanna listen to a noise for me?

Within three minutes, Phil's bedroom is full of people in various states of sleepiness. All of them are in ridiculous pyjamas - including Phil - and PJ's hair in particular has taken on a mind of its own. Phil's room isn't really big enough for all of them, so there's some awkward shuffling before PJ claims the office chair. Phil sits at the foot of his bed with Sophie and Chris on either side of him, pressed close against each other's shoulders. It's a good thing he likes these people.

"I mean, it isn't the wind," is PJ's confident opinion. "Did you have anyone with you?"

"No, it's just me and my camera against the world," says Phil.

"No need to be a twat," Chris informs him. He taps at PJ's upper arm, impatient. "Let me have a go, then, if there's something there."

Chris is famously bad at hearing things in white noise, but PJ acquiesces the seat easily enough. Phil laughs, watching them do a weird step dance around each other in the small space between Phil's bed and desk.

"I can't hear any specific words," PJ says as he flops down across Phil's pillows, making himself comfortable. Phil just nods, because neither can he.

"How d'you know it's a person, then?" Sophie asks. Her voice is probably the only one soft enough for the hour. Their other housemates hate them for their frequent all-nighters, but Sophie is kind and quiet enough that she slips under the radar.

"You'll see for yourself."

When Sophie goes to respond, Chris interrupts in a hilariously loud voice, as if he's forgotten that having headphones on doesn't mean they can't hear him. "It's some kind of ghoulie or ghostie! I can barely fucking hear it, Philly, why didn't you mic it?"

"Why didn't I mic the ghost?" Phil asks, bewildered. Naturally, Chris doesn't hear him.

Sophie taps Chris on the shoulder and stands, leaning over his shoulder as she takes her turn listening to the sound clip over and over. Chris spins in the chair a few times and gives Phil an unhinged sort of grin.

"You got something this time," says Chris. He sounds like he's having just as much fun as Phil is, now that there's actually a thing to listen to besides his own voice and the loud, loud wind.

"I think so," says Phil. "Why didn't I mic the ghost?"

"I'm saying it would make your job a lot easier if you mic the ghost, yes."

"If I could mic a ghost, I'd be a millionaire."

"Then you better get on it, eh?" Chris laughs, spinning a bit faster. Phil has never seen the man sleep. It's a little bit worrying.

"Sure," Phil says, giving up on trying to teach any logic to someone who's clearly long lost their hold on it. "Next time I spend all night in a graveyard, I'll mic any spirits that might be hanging out."

"Shut up," Sophie tells them, mild.

Chris mimes zipping his lips, wrapping an easy arm around her waist, and PJ laughs.

For the first few months they all lived together, Phil had struggled to keep up with whatever dynamics were going on between the three of them, but he's long since given it up as something he's not going to understand.

After a moment of quiet, Sophie nods. "I hear it," she tells them. Even with the headphones on, she's quiet. "It's not words, I wouldn't put any subtitles over it."

"Yeah," PJ agrees. "Just let your audience duke it out in the comments like they always do."

"Thanks, guys," Phil says, feeling a sort of warmth sink into his shoulders. He notices that Chris is pulling up another application and half-heartedly protests. "Chris, you don't need to edit this one for me. I still haven't paid you for the last video." Or the one before that. Or the three or four previous. Phil has it written down somewhere.

"Don't be stupid," Chris hums, already clicking around erratically. It makes the editor in Phil want to scream, but he has to admit that Chris manages to find more weird visual stuff to isolate than he could on his own.

"I feel bad," says Phil, chewing his lip.

"I've told you," says Chris, "you can pay me back in chores and sexual favours."

PJ's slippered foot knocks against Phil's hip, and he grins brightly when Phil turns to him. "You know, I do have a bit of a laundry backlog."

"Funny thing, that," says Sophie.

Biting back a laugh, Phil shakes his head. "Alright, alright. Everybody leave their laundry in front of my door tomorrow."

"That's a no on the beej, then?" Chris asks, raising a single eyebrow and pointing dramatically at Phil. It has been near two years of this, and Phil is still too afraid to ask if it's a joke.

It's not as if Phil's answer would change if it wasn't a joke, because he's not interested in Chris, and he's especially not interested in becoming entangled in whatever nonsense his housemates have gotten themselves into. But, still, he might be kinder about letting Chris down if he were being genuine.

"That is a no," Phil confirms. "But I will wash your pants."

"Kinky," says Chris. He turns back to the screen and makes an incomprehensible hand gesture. "This is pretty shit. You know that, right?"

Yeah. Phil does know that. It's getting harder and harder to have the same optimism in every video that he'd had when he first started recording his wanderings around the supposedly-haunted places of Rossendale. He'd brought the camera with him when he left, but might have left that optimism behind. Phil only kind of believes in supernatural things - the way he only kind of believes in giraffes or true love - but it's been more fun than anything else to pick up a camera and try to find some evidence.

He's been doing this since he was nineteen, though, and he's getting a little bored by the formula of it all. Go into a haunted place, try to communicate with the spirits, pick up some garbled words or creepy noises, highlight visual oddities like orbs, and let the internet tear it all to shreds. Honestly, he'd have more fun making proper horror at this point in his life.

Phil shrugs and pulls his knees up to his chest. He wants to hide away from the sympathy in Sophie's eyes, from Chris' blunt words. "Yeah. I'm getting kind of... I don't know. Restless."

"Maybe you should ask people to submit things again," PJ suggests. "That went well last time."

It had, actually. Phil had needed to sort through a lot more ridiculous stories and obvious hoaxes than usual, but he'd found some nuggets of gold in all that hay. Or however that saying goes.

"People did like having their stories read out," Phil says slowly. "I'd just need to be extra sure that nobody's, like..."

"Ripping off r/NoSleep," says PJ.

"Yeah, exactly."

"We can help," Sophie says, and Phil could cry at how easily PJ and Chris agree with her.

He really doesn't deserve to have such great people around him. They've got work and lives of their own, but they're always happy to spend time crowded around Phil's computer listening to weird noises together. Phil sometimes wonders what they get out of it. Do they just like helping him, the way he has fun holding the boom for PJ's films or testing Sophie's concoctions? Or are they just as fascinated as Phil by the weirdness of it all? Do they want to see the cool instances of paranormal activity, too? At this point it feels nearly impossible to ask.

"That's going to be a lot of washing pants for me," Phil sighs. He doesn't know how to thank them, not when they always just wave it off.

"Sure is," says PJ. "But you should... ask the audience!"

"Your Chris Tarrant is pretty good," says Phil, only a little surprised by it. PJ's voice is as much of a tool to him as the rest of his body, and it's one he's always been skilled with. The impressions still tend to catch Phil off guard sometimes.

PJ tips an invisible hat. "Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week."

At his friends' not so gentle encouragement, Phil makes a few posts on his socials to ask his followers for new creepy things to explore. It might be the middle of the night in Brighton, but he has a feeling that Chris isn't leaving his desk until he's found every instance of an orb or strange shadow in the fifty minutes of currently uncut footage.

It seems like Sophie is on the same page, because she excuses herself to make tea for everyone. PJ leans over Chris' shoulder and watches the clips without sound, his lips moving as if he's murmuring to himself.

Sometimes this feels more like a group effort than Phil is comfortable with. He's never been very good at asking for help. As grateful as he is, he still itches with the need to take back control of the situation. He uses the slow trickle of fan submissions to distract him from that feeling, because all three of them do make his videos better when he stops being so possessive over his footage. Phil flops onto his back and scrolls through the incoming emails, tweets, and Tumblr messages to see if there's anything promising.

For the most part, the answer is a resounding no. Some things are blatant lies - there are countless ripoffs of films or novels that Phil happens to be familiar with, a few things swiped from creepypasta or subreddits, and his usual amount of conspiracy theorist fans insisting that some high profile person or other is a lizard - but most of it, to Phil's dismay, just doesn't grab his attention the way he wants it to.

Sophie comes back with tea and snacks. She leans her head against Phil's shoulder and watches him cycle through his apps, fact-checking idly and sighing every time something easily proves to be a hoax. Her hair smells like coconut and she makes a soft humming noise every time she lifts the mug to her lips. Her presence alone, small and warm and supportive, is enough to keep Phil from throwing his phone across the room and having a right sulk about how his career is in a tailspin because nobody makes ghosts like they used to. At some point in the night, Sophie's breathing evens out to the point that Phil thinks she's asleep, but then she reaches out to tap a tiny finger to his screen.

"What's this, then?" she murmurs.

Phil has been zoned out entirely for at least fifteen, and he blinks back into reality. There's a new message in his Tumblr inbox, one that seems like it must be over the character limit for asks. He must have submissions turned on or something, that's the only possible explanation for an actual essay being sent to him. It's barely broken into paragraphs with very little punctuation and no capitalization, and Phil has been staring at screens for far too long to try and parse this on his own.

"Can you please make sure this isn't, like, the entire Bee Movie," Phil asks, handing Sophie his phone with only a slight twinge of anxiety. He trusts her not to go snooping, but. Still. "I need to pee."

"Mhm," Sophie hums, already apparently lost in whatever stream-of-consciousness has been dropped into Phil's inbox.

The floorboards in this old Brighton house creak, and Phil has always envied some of his housemates for being able to sidestep the noises. It doesn't seem to matter how long he lives here, how much he tries to avoid making any noise, it's like the floorboards are determined to creak under Phil's weight. He winces as he passes two bedrooms whose occupants surely don't appreciate creaking outside their doors at such an ungodly hour.

At least he doesn't run into any walls this time. The nightlight in the bathroom at the end of the hall is the only thing lighting Phil's way, and he tends to stub his toes on absolutely nothing in this kind of semi-darkness.

When he makes his - very, very creaky - way back to his own room, he's bewildered by the scene that greets him. PJ and Chris have joined Sophie on his bed, and all three of them are poring over Phil's phone as though they're looking at a map to the Holy Grail.

"Hello," Phil says slowly, closing the door behind him. It creaks, too. "You aren't going through my pictures, are you?"

"No," Sophie and PJ chorus without looking up.

"You got nudes on here or something?" Chris asks with a mild sort of interest, clearly also too engaged in Phil's phone to put his all into the flirting.

"I don't," says Phil. It doesn't sound convincing, even though it's true, and he waits for Chris to tease him about it some more. When he doesn't, Phil has to admit that he's curious. "So I guess it isn't a meme or something?"

That makes them look up, in almost comedic synchronicity. Sophie blinks a few times, as if she's coming back to herself. She holds out Phil's phone and shakes her head.

"It's not a meme," she says. "And near as we can tell, it's genuine."

Phil joins them and takes his phone back, adjusting his glasses. His bed really wasn't made for four people, but his housemates have never had any personal space amongst themselves, and Phil isn't one to say no to human contact when he isn't getting it anywhere else.

The message is just as hard to read as it was at first glance, but Phil puts his brain to work. If his friends are reacting like this, it usually means he's in for something good.

hi ok so the thing is that this is completely ridiculous and i dont think its what youre looking for at all but theres a building near my uni thats got a ton of stories around it and it only started happening like this year like it isnt an old obviously haunted type of place but theres a lot of weird shit that goes down there so i found all the references to it online that i could and ive summarized them here (w/ sources ofc im not a dick) and its all just this side of strange so it seems like the sort of thing you might be interested in ok here we go SO

And it goes on like that. Phil feels his eyebrows raising as he clicks the provided links in the following walls of text, which are exactly what they're advertised as. Not a single rickroll in there. Just a handful of posts on Reddit and Facebook and independent blogs about various experiences people have had with a particular abandoned building in -

"I know this place," Phil says, surprised. He looks up at PJ's grin, Sophie's wide eyes, Chris' palms rubbing together in exaggerated interest. "I've been to parties here. Well, okay," he corrects himself before his friends can do it for him, "I've gone with Martyn to parties here and left early."

"Yeah, it isn't far out of Manchester," PJ hums. He bounces in place a bit, like he's suddenly energized enough to go jump on the soonest train up north.

"It didn't seem that weird," says Phil. "It's been a few years, I guess, but it wasn't even that scary."

"Sounds like it's only just started, though," Chris pipes up.

Phil isn't sure how much he likes that. The idea of a place he's been a few times, half an hour from his childhood home, being so suddenly full of haunted activity feels... weird. Still, it's catching his interest in a way that nothing else has in months, so.

"I'll look into it some more tomorrow," he decides, glancing at the time. His brother is probably still awake, to be honest, but Phil doesn't want to be that guy asking 'hey, do you remember the Wilkins place?' before dawn has even broken. Again. He has definitely done that sort of thing in the past. "I'll have plenty of time while I do, what, seventeen loads of laundry?"

"Something like that," PJ laughs. "Want us to clear out?"

As nice as the company and help has been, Phil still feels a rush of relief at the concept of being left alone again. He nods, still scrolling idly through the Wilkins place submission.

It hits him, very literally, too close to home to ignore. He wonders if his fan knows that, if this is somehow an elaborate prank that will end up just wasting Phil's time, but he's too curious to leave it alone. He'll just have to ask around, see if anyone else has heard these murmurings.

Til then, maybe he ought to try and get some sleep. Phil's computer, still open on the editing software, tempts him.

Well. What's another couple hours at this point?

#phanfic #phanfiction #dnp fic #words words words #qowp..... mayhaps i made a mistake w this title......#quiet on widow's peak #YES it's another marianas title what are you the marianas title police?#bingo

43 notes · View notes

allthephils · 5 years

Text

Beneficial

A week without posting, she comes back with a fic. Yeah. Hi guys. I’m back.

Word count: 2707 Rated M (Non-explicit sexual content, dick talk :), bants and fluff, strangers to lovers)

This was written for @phandomficfests Bingo to fulfill my mistaken identity and sharing a bed squares.

Read on AO3

Phil likes the finer things. He can definitely afford to stay in a well appointed hotel with soft linens and big windows and views of the city. There are, however, a few things that Phil appreciates more than luxury. A real home, lived in and loved, is one of them, a beautiful man who is just as generous with his body as he is with his living space is another. Anthony is just a friend, a friend with a very nice little home in Los Angeles who welcomes Phil to stay whenever he’s in town. In fact, he welcomes him right into his bed. Waking up naked and wrapped in muscular arms beats room service breakfast any day.

When Anthony texted the door code, he’d added, not sure I’ll be there but make yourself at home. It usually goes this way, Anthony pretending he’s got plans, that he isn’t looking forward to the particular benefits their friendship affords, emphasizing the casual nature of it all. Phil comes in with no expectations and it’s been Anthony that moves first every time, inching closer on the sofa, leaning in. The last time, he’d pulled his shirt off before Phil even had the door closed behind him.

The flight into LAX landed around ten so it’s nearly midnight when Phil arrives at Anthony’s place. It’s well into morning in London and Phil is feeling every minute of it as he squints through dry contacts to punch the code into the number pad on the door. The house is dark and quiet. Anthony would have left a light on if he were gone. Phil assumes he’s sleeping and quietly ducks into the guest bathroom to take out his contacts, brush his teeth, and strip down to his pants. Funny how he almost always wears pajamas at home but not here. It’s warm in LA and there’s no need for modesty. Why hide what’s on offer?

Shuffling his feet in hopes of alerting himself to obstacles before tumbling over them, Phil makes his way, nearly blind in the dark. The bedroom door is open. The sound of soft, even breaths moves through the silence. Anthony faces the other way but those curly locks on the pillow are so familiar, even through Phil’s blurry eyes. There’s something incredibly intimate about standing near someone while they sleep, knowing he was invited, that he’s trusted enough to be in this vulnerable place.

Carefully, Phil pulls back the duvet and lays himself down. He drags a finger over the floof of curly hair on the pillow next to his. He’d love to move his body closer, to press his chest to Anthony’s back, wrap his arm around his waist, tuck a leg between his strong thighs. His body is unreal. The thought of pressing himself up against that taut little bum has Phil’s body responding in ways he thought he was way too tired for. He is, however, definitely too tired to act on any of those biological impulses. Even if he weren’t, he wouldn’t assert himself in that way. And so, with hopeful anticipation for what the morning may bring, the boundaries stay firmly in place and within minutes, he’s asleep.

Morning comes but the room is still dark, blackout shades pulled down to keep the hot Los Angeles sun from streaming in. Phil is just emerging from a lovely dream involving Chris Hemsworth and a strawberry cheesecake when he feels a hand on his hip. He hums his approval just as the hand slips forward, finding Phil’s dick and squeezing him gently through his pants. He can feel breath on the back of his neck and the firm ridge of Anthony’s erection against his ass. This is bold, even for Anthony and it feels so good. Phil grabs the hand on his dick and pushes it under the waistband of his pants. Long fingers curl around him and he rocks his hips forward, seeing no reason to hold back.

There’s a breathy chuckle behind Phil’s ear. “Wow,” Anthony says in a terrible, posh British accent. He sounds ridiculous. “have you been taking supplements?”

Phil just sort of grunts with a question mark, his brain is admittedly a little foggy.

“Maybe my memory is bad but you weren’t this big before?” He’s still stroking and he’s still making fun of Phil’s accent. “Did you buy vitamins off of Facebook or something?” Anthony laughs and Phil wonders if he has a cold, he sounds a little stuffed up.

“Ditch the accent, you sound like Christopher Robin.” Phil giggles but the laughter stops abruptly when the hand on his dick stills. His hips rock on their own, chasing that delicious stroke and he whines. “Why’d you stop? You ok?”

The next sound is a whisper, “you aren’t Anthony.” The words come out slowly.

“I’m not,” Phil says. He takes a moment to talk himself out of the absolute panic telling him to grab the bedside lamp and smash it over the head of whoever is behind him. This person knows Anthony well enough to be sleeping in his bed. If Anthony trusts him, Phil can trust him, he probably isn’t going to murder him and wear his skin. Probably.

Phil clears his throat, “um, I’m gonna turn around, ok?”

The man with the skilled hands answers with an affirmative squeak. To be clear, his own hard dick is still pressed between Phil’s ass cheeks and his hand hasn’t moved.

“Sorry, but, um, your hand is still on my dick,” Phil says, speaking slowly and quietly. He’s not sure why he’s using his dog and child voice, it just seems like a delicate moment.

Before the last syllable is uttered, the hand is pulled back and every point of contact between them is broken.

Phil reaches over to turn on the lamp before taking a deep breath, and carefully turning over to see who’s hand he was just fucking himself into.

“Please tell me you aren’t Anthony’s boyfriend,” he says as he turns.

“I’m not Anthony’s...Phil?”

Even in the blur, Phil can tell he’s good looking. “Well good, I’m not Anthony’s Phil either.” Phil laughs, nerves settling a bit in light of the pretty brown eyes looking back at him.

“No, no. You’re Phil. You’re AmazingPhil.”

“Oh!” Phil says, “Yeah I am.”

“Ok, makes sense.”

“What makes sense?” Phil scrambles to the foot of the bed where he’d discard his backpack last night and digs out his glasses. Previous events notwithstanding, he’s feeling quite naked in front of this stranger and gets himself back under the covers as quickly as he can.

“You know, YouTubers, I imagine there are loads of messy relationships among you lot.”

“Oh yeah, bunch of awkward nerds who never leave the house. We’re wild!” Phil giggles before clarifying, “Anthony is just a friend.”

“A friend you climb into bed with, in the middle of the night, in your underwear?”

Phil is sitting up against the headboard. His new friend is still laying down, giving Phil a lovely view, now that he’s wearing his glasses. His skin is gorgeous, just dewy and beautiful even first thing in the morning. It makes Phil equal parts jealous and thirsty.

“Ok, judgey McJudgerston. I seem to remember a certain strong hand on your not boyfriend’s cock not too long ago.”

A rosy bloom appears on the man’s cheek, highlighting two dark brown freckles, so perfectly placed. “Strong hand, huh?” He smirks, pushing a dimple right into the center of the arrangement on his cheek. It’s like a little work of art and Phil stares for perhaps a bit too long.

“Sorry I made fun of your accent.”

He looks up at Phil and shrugs, “it’s ok. I do sound like Christopher Robin.” There’s a beat of silence before he adds, “Sorry for wanking you.”

Phil opens his mouth to speak but he just can’t, laughter bubbles up instead, Christopher Robin follows suit and it takes a good while for them both to gather themselves.

“Hi,” the guy is sitting up now, thrusting his hand out ceremoniously for a handshake, “I’m Dan.”

Phil looks down at the hand in front of him, “knowing where that hand has been, I think we are past formalities.” He grins, “I’m Phil. But you know that. You know this is a first for me?”

“What is? Getting a handjob from a stranger?”

“Oh no, not that.” Phil is laughing again, he can feel it taking over, heat rushing to his cheeks. He’s giddy but he tries his best to steel himself. “You’re the first fan I’ve ever been in bed with.”

“Who says I’m a fan?”

With one eyebrow raised, Phil says, “Well if you weren’t before…”

Dan shakes his head, and gives Phil’s shoulder a gentle shove. He leans back on the headboard next to Phil. There’s lots of room in this big king sized bed, he doesn’t have to sit so close but he does and their arms vie for space.

“I guess your pretty disappointed that Anthony’s not here?” Dan says.

“Not really.” Phil turns his head to look at Dan. “He said he might not be. We really are just friends. I crash here when I’m in LA, and sometimes we hook up.”

“How very modern.”

“I totally thought you were him, I’m so blind without my glasses, and you really do look alike.”

“Oh sure, all you’d have to do is touch literally any part of my body. I’m a fair bit more, uh, fluffy, than Anthony.”

Phil’s hand has come to rest on Dan’s thigh. “Well you were all pressed up against me earlier and you felt great to me.”

“I mean,” Dan says, “I’m no Anthony but I guess I’m not completely hideous.”

“Not completely hideous? Not to overstep any boundaries, but you’re hot, Dan. Way better than I expected when I turned around.”

“Yeah? Thanks.”

“What did you think when I turned around?”

“I thought, oh my god, its AmazingPhil, he’s even hotter in person, oh my god.”

Phil laughs, “Thought you weren’t a fan.”

“I may have seen a few videos.” He finally looks at Phil. “I’ve always wanted to be the kind of person who makes videos.”

“So what’s stopping you?”

“Bit old now.”

“Oh yeah, for sure Dan. No one could possibly relate to you at the ripe old age of, what? 24?”

“27.”

“27!? Wow. I’m surprised you can still get it up. I really admire your active senior lifestyle. Do you need me to get your walker so you can make it to the bathroom? Or…” Phil covers his mouth with his fingers. “Is that a sore subject? Are you wearing a diaper under there?” He lifts the blanket to peek at Dan and the mirth drops away.

The reality is, Dan is definitely wearing only boxer briefs and his legs are long and thick and really lovely, pressed up against Phil’s. The reality is that they are both ‘friends’ with Anthony but Phil would really like to see what benefits Dan has to offer right now.

Dan had folded his arms to wait out the ridicule but now he wears a very particular expression. It’s an expression that says he knows he has the upper hand here, it says he knows Phil wants him. Phil should probably say something but his brain is too busy conjuring images of those legs in all sorts of filthy configurations.

“What’s on your mind there, Phil?”

Phil wants to wipe the smirk off Dan’s face. What he wants more is to lay down and pull Dan on top of him, he wants to feel that body again. He can’t do that though, not in Anthony’s bed. That would be wrong. He repeats it like a mantra in his head. I will not fuck Anthony’s other hook up in his bed. I will not fuck Anthony’s other hook up in his bed.

“I don’t wanna talk about work,” Phil says. He looks Dan in the eye and grins. “Let’s talk about how my dick is bigger than Anthony’s.”

“Something tells me you already knew that.” There’s laughter in Dan’s voice.

“Still liked hearing you say it.”

“I mean, it’s a good dick. I didn’t want to let go.” Dan shifts, angling his body so he’s facing Phil. “Please don’t tell him I said that. Actually, let’s not tell him about any of this.”

“Deal.”

Dan is just looking at him now and Phil squirms under the attention.

“You look cute like this,” Dan says after a few moments have passed, “with the glasses and your hair all messed up.” On those last words, he reaches up and rakes his fingers through Phil’s droopy quiff.

It’s nothing, just a moment of eye contact and little touch, a little touch from long fingers that were wrapped around Phil’s cock not long ago. He feels it happening and he knows he shouldn’t let it. He’s such a sucker for a sweet man and this one is beautiful and tall and his skin is soft. His gaze dances from Dan’s eyes to his lips to his smooth chest and back again. The hand in his hair slips behind his head and he sees Dan smile as he pulls him in.

“Promise you aren’t dating Anthony?” Phil whispers, though he’s already tipping his head to one side and closing his eyes.

“I promise.”

Phil’s mind goes blank, there’s nothing but soft lips and strong hands and now Dan’s on his lap and Phil’s hands are down the back of his pants, pulling him down, rocking them together.

Dan nips at Phil’s bottom lip as he pulls away. “No offense but your breath is horrendous.”

“None taken,” Phil says, squeezing his handfuls of flesh hard, “yours is too.” He ducks his head to kiss up the side of Dan’s neck. It earns him the sexiest little grunt so keeps going, adding a well placed suck every now and again.

Dan is proper grinding now, panting and rolling his hips. “I wanna make out,” he says, “let’s go brush our teeth then you can fuck me in the shower.”

So much for sweet. Phil pulls his hands from the fun they’re having and pushes Dan away gently. “Alright, fuck, we have to...You need to get off.”

“I’m trying.” Dan bends forward till his lips are dangerously close to Phil’s nipple.

“No, off of me. Come on Dan, you know we can’t do this.”

Dan flops down next to Phil, catching his breath, looking dejected.

“We have no idea where Anthony is or when he’s coming home. And I don’t know the rules. For like, friends with benefits and their other friends with other benefits and whether we’re allowed to like benefit from each other.” Phil takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes.

“I think we’re adults and we can do whatever the fuck we want.”

“I don’t know,” Phil says, “In his house? It seems like bad manners.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re right. Sorry.” Dan stands and starts to gather his things. “Can I give you my number? Maybe we can…”

“No.” Phil says and Dan freezes for a moment before picking up his pace. “Don’t leave. I like you. And I need coffee. Let’s get coffee and then, maybe you could show me your place?”

Dan turns to face Phil with the most gorgeous smile on his face. “So you wanna fuck me in my shower?”

“I want to buy you coffee and a croissant and hear all about you.” Phil stands up and walks to Dan. He wraps his arms around his waist. They make such a match like this. They just fit, chest to chest, eye to eye, cock to cock. That’s gotta be some kind of fate or maybe Anthony just has a type. Phil chooses to believe it’s fate.

Dan lets Phil hold him there. It’s the kind of moment that usually comes steps before laying in bed half naked and kissing with morning breath. Their noses bump, and Dan’s smile softens into something sweet again. “You wanna buy me coffee?”

Phil nods.

“And then fuck me in my shower?”

Laughing, Phil smacks Dan’s ass. “Get dressed you perv. We’ve got a date.”

#my fic #phanfic #pff bingo 2019

29 notes · View notes

itsmyusualphannie · 5 years

Text

you had me at hydrangea

Chapter 4/6 - hey how’s it growing

“I want him to see the flowers in my eyes and hear the songs in my hands.” ― Francesca Lia Block, Dangerous Angels

a phan flower shop/video editor au

(read on ao3) - start from the beginning!

previous chapter | next chapter

~~~

“Don’t be weird,” Dan told himself. He sucked in a lungful of air and raised his hand to knock. He rapped a few times and winced at the echoing sounds that ricocheted in the narrow hallway. His stomach was tight with anticipation, and he was nervous enough that sweat beaded on his forehead. He didn’t know what to expect - what did mostly-friends do on a video game and pizza night? Or...date? He still wasn’t sure about that. Phil’s brief text yesterday that had contained his address hadn’t been very informative.

There was a thud somewhere in the flat and frantic running, then the door was hauled open. “Hi!” said Phil. “Um.” He looked like he wanted to slam the door back in Dan’s face. “Er, sorry. I’ll...gimme a second. Wait, no, come in.”

Dan’s mouth had gone dry. He stepped inside, sweeping his tongue across his parched lips subconsciously. Phil was wearing nothing but a pair of low-cut jeans and colourful socks, his naked chest gleaming in the light from the hallway.

“Sorry!” said Phil again, closing the door and locking it. He looked adorably flustered. “I was - I forgot what time it was. I was trying to do laundry. Sorry. Hold on.” He scurried toward an open door near the back of the flat. Dan stared unapologetically at the ripples of his bare back. “Make yourself at home!” Phil called back as he vanished into the room.

Dan blinked rapidly to try to clear his thoughts. He’d wanted to bite. He wondered if Phil regularly wandered about his flat in nothing but trousers and socks when he was doing laundry.

“What do you like on your pizza?” Phil called. There was a crash from the room. “I’m fine!”

“Uh…” said Dan. “Anything, I guess.” He glanced around the living room, taking in the slumped sofa and matching ottoman that stood in front of Phil’s wide television set. There were a dining table and chairs between the sofa and the kitchen counter, which was open and visible from the front door. Houseplants, stuffed plushies, video game and movie posters, and candles were everywhere. It all seemed undeniably...Phil.

Phil came out of the bedroom, fighting his shirt as he tried to fit both of his arms through it at once. “Goddamnit,” he said. His head finally poked through and his hair looked wild. “Sorry, again,” he repeated for probably the fifth time. “I thought it was like an hour earlier than it is. I was trying to wash my bedsheets.”

“Why’s that?” Dan said. He winked and immediately regretted it.

A red tint was climbing Phil’s cheeks. He nudged a floor plant that was reaching for his legs with long leaves. “Uh, actually...I spilt milk on them. Like half of a cupful.”

“How?” Dan asked, disbelieving. It would have been a preposterous lie. He desperately wanted to make a joke about ‘cream,’ but resisted.

Phil waved a hand. “It involved a carbonating machine. Don’t ask.”

That just made Dan want to know even more, but he changed the subject and said instead, “So, pizza? Was there something that you don’t like on it?”

“Not too much cheese,” Phil said. “But I like all pizzas. Ooh, especially the Sizzler.”

“That was discontinued,” Dan pointed out.

Phil looked grumpy. “Yeah, I know. I’ve emailed them like fifty times. It’s my favourite.”

“Well,” said Dan, barely resisting a smile, “we could create a pizza.”

Nodding very seriously, Phil agreed, “We could. We will. But how hungry are you right now? We could play some Mario first before ordering. Since it’s only six.”

“Not very hungry,” Dan admitted. He couldn’t tear his gaze away from the shirt that clung tantalizingly to Phil’s chest. It looked like it was much too tight, but Dan certainly wasn’t going to complain. “What about you?”

“Not very,” Phil echoed. He headed for the kitchen, yanking open various drawers and looking hilariously confused at the contents of each. “Do you like Ribena?” he asked.

Dan had followed him and he leaned against the bar between the dining area and the kitchen. “Yeah, of course.”

“Good!” said Phil. “Because I don’t have anything else except water.”

Dan snorted a laugh. He watched Phil as he moved around the kitchen and prepared two glasses of Ribena. “So,” Dan said, for once feeling like a conversation might come relatively easily to him, “how did the meeting with your supervisor go? Also, how was your trip to visit your parents this last weekend? I forgot to ask while you were in the shop on Thursday.” It helped that he genuinely wanted to know and wasn’t just trying to make small-talk.

Phil took a careful sip out of one of the glasses and apparently deemed it worthy, as he offered the other glass to Dan. Taking it, Dan followed him back over to the living and sat down on one end of the sofa, avoiding the tiny cactus on the side table.

Phil hadn’t answered him the entire time, but he did now as he set down his drink on the side table that was on the other end of the sofa. “The meeting was...a meeting,” he said reluctantly. “I hadn’t finished my project in time so I had to ask for an extension. But that’s only because the client had requested more work and I didn’t have nearly enough time to do it.”

Dan nodded understandingly, taking a sip of his Ribena. “Yeah, that makes sense.”

“Anyway, totally exciting,” Phil said, rolling his eyes. He moved to the TV and began setting up the game. Dan watched him unashamedly, enjoying the sliver of skin that appeared between Phil’s shirt and pants as he bent over.

“But!” said Phil. “Visiting my parents was loads of fun. My brother and his girlfriend were there, as I think I mentioned, so we all spent time together and it was great. We played Monopoly and I won.” He looked pleased with that declaration. “I don’t win very often. My parents usually control the entire board and crush all of us, but this time my dad was trying to cook something in the kitchen so Martyn and I kept my mom in jail most of the time.”

Dan couldn’t fight the grin that had inhabited his face. “That does sound like fun.” He wished his family visits were like that. They weren’t bad, just quiet and familiar, with nothing exciting like board games or friendly competition, or just hanging out for the sake of being together.

“It was.” Phil nodded. He stood, stretched, and then yawned before settling onto the sofa beside Dan. “But what did you do while I was gone? Anything super exciting?”

Dan had to regather his thoughts. They’d scattered when Phil’s knee had pressed against his own. He absent-mindedly accepted the controller that Phil handed him. “Er...I mean, not really. Just work. And on the weekends I usually just sit around at my flat to play games and be lazy all day.” He mused internally, considering if that made him seem pathetic and lonely, and decided that it might, so he added, “And I went out with Louise.” He felt an urge to tell Phil about his attempts at writing an actual piece of music, but couldn’t make himself bring it up.

“Fun!” said Phil, when Dan said nothing else. He’d powered on the game and the familiar sounds of Mario Kart were chirping at them. Shifting in his seat, his leg fell away from Dan’s. Dan missed it immediately. He wondered if Phil had done it on purpose. “Okay!” Phil said. “Best of three?”

Dan narrowed his eyes at him, the thrill of competition surging in him. “You’re on, mate.”

~~~

They played for a solid hour, banter and threats flying, before Phil let out a loud whine of defeat, biting his controller as he threw himself sideways across the couch. “Why?” he moaned.

Dan let out a cackle of triumph, his arms high above his head. He stretched casually, smirking down at Phil’s posture of despair. “I am the Mario Kart champion!” he declared.

Phil was still angrily chewing on the corner of his controller. At least Dan knew where the teeth prints had come from that were on his own. “You didn’t tell me you were an expert,” he accused.

“I give my prey very little warning before I completely obliterate them,” Dan told him. “But that was pretty pathetic. Best out of twenty, and you still only won three.”

Phil sulked at him, a frankly adorable frown tugging at his mouth. He’d thrown his feet up onto the couch when he fell sideways and his toes were digging into Dan’s thighs. Even rumpled in casual clothes and teeth clenched tight on the plastic of his controller, he still looked unbearably attractive. Dan wondered if he could convince Phil to bite him instead of the controller.

“I hate you,” Phil confidently told Dan.

Dan just laughed and poked his toes. Phil screeched and yanked them away, and Dan filed that reaction away into the rapidly-filling ‘Phil’ box in his mind. “Sure you do. Best out of thirty?”

“No.” Phil looked disgruntled. “I’m ordering pizza. Then we can play something I’m good at. Like Mortal Kombat.”

Dan decided not to tell Phil the hundreds of hours he’d spent playing that game in his room as a teenager. There was no need to spoil the surprise of Phil’s imminent destruction. He stood, collecting the long-empty glasses on the side tables. “Fine. I’ll get more Ribena. Order the pizza. I like barbecue or the chicken bacon ranch pizza. Get it half-and-half with whatever you want.”

Phil had fallen back fully against the couch armrest, sprawling his legs across the still-warm seat Dan had vacated and pulling out his phone to tap at it. Dan pulled his gaze away from Phil’s impossibly long legs and headed to the kitchen. He found the Ribena, but almost collided with the still-open cabinet doors. He cursed colourfully when his shin banged into a drawer that was hanging out. He hadn’t even seen Phil open this one earlier. He considered reprimanding Phil for it but decided they weren’t yet at that point in their...relationship. Friendship. Whatever this was.

Dan was filled with a sudden resolve to figure out just what it was, so he hurriedly filled the glasses with a Ribena-water mixture and went back into the lounge. Phil was still stretched across the sofa, his legs taking up an intolerable amount of space. Dan reluctantly shoved at them instead of giving in to the temptation of just sitting on Phil.

Phil pulled his knees up against his chest in place of letting them fall off the couch. He squinted as his phone. “Okay,” he said. “It’s half barbecue and half Hawaiian. Do you like jalepeños?”

“Yep. In moderation.” Dan settled himself into his seat. He put one of the Ribena glasses down onto the side table and took a sip from the other, musing over how to actually bring up the subject of...this. Did he just come right out and ask if it was a date? Phil hadn’t exactly made it clear. And he hadn’t made any moves unless bumping into him and then quickly shuffling away counted as a move.

“It should be here in about thirty minutes!” Phil announced.

Dan considered that, maybe, he should just wait and see how the night went. Surely Phil would give him a signal soon.

Phil snatched the controller from where it’d fallen beside him and he shook it threateningly at Dan. “Time for battle, mate.”

“Oh, you’re on,” Dan assured him. He abandoned his Ribena and they were right back at it again.

~~~

It was a good two hours later. Dan was slumped across the side of the sofa, still feeling unbelievably stuffed full of pizza. His legs were tucked under him and he watched Phil half-heartedly direct his character through Skyrim. Dan didn’t understand the comfort level he had after so little time spent with Phil. Was it weird to feel so utterly relaxed after barely three hours spent in his company? They’d sort of gotten to know each other for the past three months, sure, but this was the first time Dan had felt like he was spending real time with him. He wanted to know everything about Phil. Maybe that’s what was weird.

“Ugh,” said Phil. He had just died on-screen. “Stupid wolves.” He paused the game and dropped the controller, falling sideways across his own side of the sofa and clutching his stomach with a groan. “I never want to move again.”

“We ate far too much,” Dan agreed. He couldn’t look away from the length of Phil’s neck as he stared aimlessly up at the ceiling.

“Hey, Dan,” said Phil, not looking over at him.

“Hmm?”

Dan could see the corners of Phil’s lips tugging up. “What does a flower therapist ask her patients?”

“Please don’t,” said Dan.

“Are you feeling bouquet?” Phil laughed before Dan could even react, his mouth breaking in a wide grin. “Get it?”

“You’re the worst kind of person,” Dan told him.

Uncaring, Phil hauled his legs up on the sofa and stretched them out across the distance between them. He stopped just before his toes hit Dan’s thighs, gaze still affixed to the ceiling above them. Dan wanted to poke his feet again to see how he would react but was ultimately too lazy to actually reach over and do it. Once more, he wondered if this was a date. He’d never been so at ease before with someone he might be on a date with. Then again, he’d never been confused if he was on a date or not.

The dip of Phil’s collarbone taunted him.

Fuck it, Dan thought. There was no way to know unless he asked.

The moment he had decided this, his phone, abandoned on the ottoman, shrilled loudly at him. Phil’s head fell over to look at it. Dan glared at the buzzing device, willing it to shut up and give back his silent moment. It rang once, twice, three times.

“Are you going to answer that?” Phil asked. His voice sounded rough and tired. God, Dan wanted to know if this was a date.

“I guess.” Reluctantly, he leaned forward far enough to snag the phone. He scowled at the caller ID with bemusement. “What the fuck.” Louise knew perfectly well where he was tonight. There was no reason for her to be calling him. “Hello,” he answered it, no inflection in his tone whatsoever.

“Dan!” Her voice was high with nerves. “I’m so sorry!”

He sat up instantly. “What’s wrong?” Phil was watching him keenly.

“I’d never do this, you know me,” she insisted. She sounded fantastically apologetic and stressed at the same time. Something banged on her side and Dan flinched the phone away from his ear. When he brought it back, she sounded out-of-breath. “I just got a rush order for a wedding tomorrow morning! I have to make eighty different bouquets. Please, I swear I’ll make it up to you, but I need your help. They’re due at four o’clock.”

Dan glanced at the clock on his phone. It was just past nine. If he got there in the next thirty minutes, they might be able to get it done in time. There was no way she could do it by herself. “Christ, Louise.”

“I know!” she said. “I would never accept an order like this, but they’re paying like triple the normal amount since it’s an emergency and a big wedding. Their other florist dumped them because the bride’s dad tried to hook up with her or something. I dunno. Just. I’m really sorry, I know this is like your date with Phil but I really, really need help.”

Dan sighed. It was a very weighty, disgruntled sigh. “Goddamnit. Fine. You’re making this up to me.” And he would never get her flowers like Phil had gotten for his boss.

“I will!” she promised. “I promise I will. And tell Phil I’m sorry too.”

“Yeah, whatever,” he said. He hung up and let the phone dangle from limp fingers.

Phil had sat up, his legs drawn to him. “Louise?” He had a resigned look on his face that Dan hated.

“Yeah,” Dan said. “Some flower emergency. She needs my help. She’s really sorry.”

“It’s fine. I mean, we were kind of in a food coma and barely doing anything, anyway.” Phil waved a hand as if it didn’t mean anything, but his expression seemed like it did, just a little.

Dan managed to get to his feet and Phil stood with him, nudging the empty pizza box to the side. Dan made his way to the door and let Phil get ahead of him to open it, but he didn’t leave right away. He hesitated in the doorframe. A plant by the door, the first thing he’d seen besides Phil’s naked chest when he’d arrived, reached its long leaves to swipe against his face.

Phil, too close, reached up and brushed it away from Dan’s cheek. He looked fond, and Dan hoped.

“Phil,” he said. He wondered if the tone of his voice had sounded strange, but it was hard to concentrate when Phil was this near to him, undoubtedly staring at Dan’s lips.

Phil’s gaze flickered up and met Dan’s. His eyes were warm in the light from the hallway.

“Is this. Are you…” Dan didn’t know how to say it. “Are we - what.” He stopped, frustrated with himself. “What is this?” That wasn’t how he’d meant to say it. He tried to regroup his thoughts.

But Phil had glanced down at the phone still in Dan’s hand and he took a hasty step backwards. He swallowed visibly. “This was fun!” he said. “We should hang out more often. I can - I’ll text you.” He smiled, and it looked sad, but it was a real smile. “We’ll be great friends, I can tell.”

“No,” said Dan. Or at least, he thought he’d said it. Maybe he’d only thought it. There was no way Phil only wanted to be friends, Dan was sure. There was a reason for all of this waiting Dan had done, wasn’t there? There was a reason Phil had come every week to the little flower shop where Dan worked, watching him when he thought Dan wasn’t looking. There had to be a reason Phil stared at him for too long, stared at his lips.

Dan took a step forward, closing the distance Phil had made between them. “Phil,” he said, and this time he’d actually said it aloud. His voice sounded too firm, even to his own ears. “You watch me. It means something, doesn’t it?”

Phil skittered backwards. His blue, blue eyes were wide and panicked. “No!” he said. “Of course not. I’m sorry. It wasn’t supposed to mean anything. I mean, it doesn’t mean anything. Look, I wasn’t trying to…” His arms flailed. “You didn’t notice. I thought.”

Dan couldn’t make sense of anything Phil was saying. The words were scrambled together and made no sense in Dan’s head. Maybe they weren’t actually English.

“Look,” said Phil. He was still flustered. “I’ll stop.”

“Don’t!” Dan burst out. He couldn’t bear the thought of whatever Phil meant by stop. Stop coming to the flower shop? Stop talking to Dan? Stop giving him those wanting looks that Dan had evidently been misreading this entire time? “Please,” said Dan. He searched desperately for meaning in what Phil had said before. He felt unmoored, flummoxed. Nothing was going the way he’d thought it would. “You can come to the shop. Anytime. We can be friends if you want.” That must be what Phil wanted.

Phil’s face was collapsing with relief. “Okay,” he said. “Friends. Yes.”

Dan’s phone buzzed again. Louise was impatient with her urgency.

Phil shifted from foot to foot, hand on the door. “I’ll text you,” he said, casting another inscrutable glance to Dan’s phone.

“Okay,” said Dan.

The door was shut in his face, Phil’s movements hasty with his desire to get away from Dan.

Dan waited for a few very long moments. Something felt tight and wrong in his chest. This wasn’t what he’d expected. He didn’t know what he’d expected. Anything but this.

“God,” Dan said then, a curse, maybe, or a plea to some higher power to give meaning to what just occurred. Either way, no answer revealed itself. That was fine. Phil wanted to be friends. Dan could do just friends. He could do anything if it meant Phil would still be near him. So, yeah. It definitely hadn’t been a date.

“God,” Dan said again.

He left.

previous chapter | next chapter

#phan #phanfiction #phanfic au #flower shop au #pining #fluff #au #fourth chapter #this is completed #you had me at hydrangea

12 notes · View notes

ianmatteson-blog · 4 years

Text

The best apps for actually sticking to your fitness goals

The Best Fitness Apps for 2020

On the off chance that one of your objectives this year is to up your fitness game, these nonjudgmental fitness apps will bolster you (not disgrace you) to assist you with accomplishing your exercise objectives in 2019. On the off chance that you haven't yet utilized apps to help your exercise, fitness apps are turning into the new typical. Truth be told, the Worldwide Survey of Fitness Trends for 2019 noticed that apps have climbed 15 spots on the fitness pattern stepping stool. While there are a lot of free fitness apps, even the membership based apps offer direction for a small amount of the expense of setting off to the rec center, and they permit you to turn out without anyone else time and set your very own tone.

PACT

Want to make a buck from your workout? It’s easy and fun with this free app. Set your fitness or nutrition goals and when you fulfill the pact for a week, you’ll legit get paid—from other app users who didn’t stick to their promises. On the flip side, if you skip out on your healthy goals, you’ll have to dish out some dollars. If the prospect of paying up isn’t motivation enough to get to the gym, we don’t know what is.

Get it: iOS; Android

Cody

It is an app which is like the Facebook for fitness. It offers inside connections to the fitness community. Access to the such a community allows you to share workouts and fitness ideas. It also allows you to complete the exercises by following old and new friends. You can track your progress by looking at the timeline. Other users can also comment on the daily exercise activities. It is available for iOS devices and costs nothing.

Myzone

If you’ve been to one of our clubs, you know how passionate we are about our MYZONE Heart Rate Monitors. MYZONE is the most accurate and versatile wearable technology available – allowing you to track your progress in real time and push yourself to new heights. You can purchase the MYZONE belt through the website and trust me, it’s worth every penny! Download the MYZONE app to view your progress during or after your workouts, save your favorites with a name or photo, or track your friends and send them some extra motivation.

8 fit

8fit brings together on-demand workouts and meal planning. The app creates a personalized program for your diet and exercise based on the results you want to see. It's for people who like a lot of guidance, suggestions, reminders, and instructions. You choose a goal, whether it be to lose weight, get fitter, or gain muscle. Then you make your goal more specific, such as decrease body fat to 20 percent in three months. 8fit takes into consideration a lot of details about you when creating your fitness plan, such as what time of day you exercise and whether you're an ambitious cook or prefer simple meal prep. You'll see a realistic assessment of how hard or easy it will be to reach your goals. Once you embark on your fitness journey, you use the app to workout from videos, log what you eat, and create meal plans using recipes and shopping lists. It's an all-in-one fitness plan that you can customize to your tastes.

Nike Run Club

If you want to start running, there are several Couch-to-5K apps and podcasts you can harness. But I've always had a soft spot for Nike's Run Club, which works both as a coach for new runners and as a way of competing with friends. If you're starting out, you can begin with a series of guided runs, with audio coaching from Nike staffers. Once you've gained a little confidence, you can move on to more advanced workouts, like trail and endurance runs.

The app will even set you up with a dedicated coaching program that lets you program the quantity and duration of your running. If you're supremely unfit, you can begin with 10-minute runs with rest days in between, and then gradually build up to something longer.

Besides creating a schedule, though, you'll also need something to spur you on when you're not feeling your best. This is why Nike Run Club has a social component that lets you compete with your friends. You can set challenges and see how well your friends are doing or join one of the brand's global challenges, like attempting to run 50 kilometers in a month. Best of all, while there are options to buy Nike gear within the app, there's no obligation to own a pair of Phil Knight's kicks before you start using it.

Zombies Run

If you never miss an episode of The Walking Dead, and you have a goal to train for a 5K, the Zombies, Run! app was made for you. This is an app that turns running into a game so you can forget the fact that you're working out. I mean, who has time for dreading their workout when they're busy running away from zombies!? "Only a few have survived the zombie epidemic. You are a Runner en-route to one of humanity’s last remaining outposts," the app's website explained. "Walk, jog ,or run anywhere in the world. Hear your mission and music through your headphones.If you’re chased by zombies, you’ll have to speed up! You’ll automatically collect supplies to build up

Lark

Think of this free app as a friendly health coach in your pocket. It checks in with you throughout the day via text—asking questions about your activity and meals and nudging you to make healthier choices—to help hold you accountable. The company says people who chat with Lark for just a few minutes a day improve their healthy habits by 23 percent.

Hot5 Fitness

It offers high-quality workouts that are led by the best trainers. The exercises are offered step by step so that the users can easily follow them. There are so many exercises like yoga, abs, core, flexibility and everything in between in this app. There is an extensive range of five-minute video workouts in this app. There are also 45-minute long yoga videos as well. The app is very simple to use, and its interface is user-friendly. The limited use of the app is free. To get unlimited access, you will have to pay, but it is not very expensive.

fitnessRUNKEEPER

Runkeeper is a GPS fitness-tracking app for iOS and Android with over 50 million users. “Go for a run, walk, hike, or any activity really! You’ll get a clear view of your training in real time with our fitness tracker app that not only tracks activity but encourages you to get active more often. Have a race, weight, or pace in mind? Whether you’re working towards a 5K or training for a marathon, the Runkeeper running app will help you stay motivated

STRAVA RUNNING AND CYCLING GPS

If you’re a runner or cyclist, get your hands on this free app to track all your endurance data. It’ll upload your stats from every outing, via your phone or GPS watch, and let you analyze your progress. Consider yourself competitive? Use Strava to look at the performances of others who’ve biked or run the same course you’re about to cover and try to one-up them. Or just check out your previous bests and try to improve on your distance or pace.

#fitness #health #sports

1 note · View note

annieingo-blog · 4 years

Text

Goodbye, big brother

It's been awhile since we last saw each other. I wasn't able to give you a proper goodbye before your departure from this life.

You were sick. Very, very sick. I didn't take in account for how serious your health was a detriment to you. But, you were so amazing at juggling 20 things at once! You were invincible! Your day to day was waking up early at ungodly hours to do stocks.

Shortly after, you went to the place you loved being at: Your job. Your job was more than pushing buttons to make space dildos fly into the unknown. You wanted to revolutionized the world.

Then, after work, you would go home. But, before heading to "The Bakery", you went to McDonald’s on Western. LOL. You're favourite thing to order was TWO EGG MCMUFFIN SAUSAGES AND HASHBROWNS. How would I know that? Because that's typically all you ordered whenever I asked if you wanted anything from McDonald's (Sometimes you were feeling a little adventurous and ordered chicken nuggies.)

You go home, it's about 6PM or 7PM. You spend time at the gym with the boys or with your girlfie. It's 8 or 9. I'm sure you'd be stinky from all that nasty, so you shower. You're probably playing games or watching a video about SpaceX launching it's new space dildo. I always called it a space dildo and I'm sure you didn't like that, but thought it was hilarious because it is a space dildo. It's 10PM or 12AM. Rinse and repeat. Back to 3AM the next day.

You were a super hero to me. You lived a life that everyone would've wanted. It was a difficult life to live with great cost.

I remember the first time I met you at Arena. You're favourite place to get wild.

"Maybe he needs water?"

"Hi! I'm Annie! Are you okay? Would you like to drink water?"

You're answer has always been, "No. I'm good! Thank you!" with a smile on your face and continued to show off your power moves. Mating moves for the girls HAHAHHA. Slowly, our engagement from hanging out and doting you as the "Arena King" quickly shifted to "Big Brother" or "Anh Hai." Before knowing you as this super hero, you were just another guy at Arena. A hot mess, living his best life. I'm grateful to have you as my older brother.

Your house would be the pregame house. Fridays and Saturdays were for drinking and going out. To show you my courtesy, I always brought a bottle of Jameson over and brought food. I don't remember clearly of what was the catalyst of us hanging out outside of our night life, but I'm sure time was a factor. The more I came over, the more we started growing closer as two peas in a pod... With 4054398598435 because you were "Mr. Popular" or "Master Le." As it labels on your Netflix account LOL.

You're objective every time we hung out with the "Little" family was to enjoy the moment together every single Friday to Sundays. And if I got lucky, some time on the weekdays, we'd all have dinner together and watch shows.

We grew closer and closer and shared many things we've experienced in our lives before meeting each other. You shared stories of your sister. It was heart aching. No wonder why you're the way you are. You're dreams to change the world was awe inspiring. Every time you shared your dreams, you glowed with determination and enterprise.

I thought to myself for the first time that I'm so lucky to have met this person. He brought out the meaning and true definition of what a good friend everyone should be. He always provided a place to stay and food to eat. I never would've thought I'd be in a group with such amazing people that care for each other with sincerity.

I wasn't in a good friend group that provided me with the comfort of being your true self and accepted for it. As soon as I met you, I dropped my previous connections and stuck with you. You gave me a sense of what community feels like. I adored you for it.

It wasn't long until after when we first had a fight. A fight that prolonged the bitter indignation and detest for each other for months. Time apart meant, I never was able to come to you on the weekends to hang. I was never allowed to text you or call you about things I needed help with. I wasn't able to sit down in the same spot of the couch and watch TV and order Postmates or UberEats for us. I wasn't allowed to park on Wilton where the elementary school is and walk to the gates of "The Bakery". I wasn't able to hang out with you in the same group of friends in the same setting. The longer time had passed, the more I detached us because I was angry.

I was angry but still harboured so much love that it hurt me and made me miss you. I never went on a full day without thinking, "How is he doing now? Did he eat yet?" Sometimes, I would look at clock. Depending on what time it might be, I would think of how and what you're doing.

I'd see you at clubs here and there. Rather feeling angry and selfish, I would come up to you and exchange my hello in civil manner. It didn't feel right being there with you after not speaking to you for so long. I knew you were upset at me still and our engagement felt like we were strangers again. But without cordiality and good humour. I felt far but you were very close. I kept my distance to respect your notion and Juanne. My heart yearned to be friends again. I told myself, I'd wait for you whenever you're ready because I'll be ready.

Time has past and the last time we actually had a talk was probably two months ago. I saw you again at Arena. You were wearing the same blue button up that became your signature "LET'S GO OUT" outfit. Rather than having fun, you looked distraught. You wallflowered and spent time on your phone for awhile. I knew what troubled you, but didn't want to address the problem. I knew that I must be the person to let him know. "I want to be there for him." I came up to you and said

"Phil, we haven't hung out, but know I cherish you and our friendship. I'm here for you if you need it."

You almost cried and opened up to me about our fight. The fight about Juanne. You asked me when will the fighting stop. You expressed through tears and agony you missed our friendship and just wanted to be friends again. I felt guilty knowing that I didn't want to push myself in fixing this issue earlier. Without hesitation, I told you I wanted to apologise because I was never fond of you limiting yourself around me.

I wanted to be friends again too. I missed you like hell. I missed your quirky antics and "HELLO" every time I saw you. I wanted to be part of your life again even if it means putting my foot forward to apologise to you and Juanne for the mess I made. But, you stopped me from doing so and told me that I have no obligations. After that, through the frustration and stress that went on for about 45 minutes longer, I stopped. It ended with me saying, I love you and will always be here for you ready when you need it. I never went a day without thinking of you. You grinned and felt at ease. I felt at ease with the smile of comfort you gave knowing I can push another day, waiting.

I didn't realise that night at Arena was the only night I ever got to express my deepest concerns for you. A half assed apology in a setting that is hazy, full of drunk ass people, musky, nasty, loud music with the ambience being disingenuous. A half ass apology was all I got to do. And I'm sure I deserved it for putting you under the stress that shouldn't have started in the first place.

Shortly after, word got out to some about you being in the hospital. I was so angry. The same bitterness that I dropped, resurfaced. I was upset that no one wanted to bridge the gap between us. You were in the hospital? How could my friends not stickup for me knowing that I wanted to see you so bad. I couldn't even have the messenger shoot the message letting you know

"I'm here. You will get through this no matter what. I love you and believe you'll get through this."

I felt helpless, resentment, and frustration that surpassed the threshold of patience and understanding. I was only given updates by two on the status of your recovery. It wasn't enough. I wish I wasn't told so I could live a life with ignorance and having to think you're just mad at me don't want me in your life.

At the same time, I also hoped that the Sky Daddy wouldn't take you away so I can tell you that I love you and miss you and I am sorry. I waited without a day in hoping for the best of this travesty. Because you were my super hero and that can do anything, I was optimistic and certain that you'll be here running around LA painting it red wherever you go after you heal.

"I'm sure doctors at Cedars are great! They'll get my big brother out of the miserable place and have him and running again!" I thought everyday.

I waited awhile awaiting for good news. Fast forward to January 7, 2020. It was Tuesday at 8:57AM. I get a text about your passing.

"Hey Annie" "Phil passed" "Thought I should let you know"

"When did he pass" "Are you fucking for real" "You're not joking"

You passed away at 2:35AM. The same day I received the text. Once again, I was riding on the same rollercoaster of emotions. Ever go to Six Flags? My emotions were a clusterfuck of all of the rides into one. Yeah... That was it. Except, after riding 10 60ft tall slopes, the 11th was going down and it went down without stopping. My heart and body dropped to the floor. Maybe even deeper. I couldn't believe what I heard.

My big brother was gone. He left without hearing me say goodbye. I never got the chance to express how he meant to me. I want him back. "Fuck. Everyone." At this point of the day, I cried. And cried so more. And cried so much my extensions fell out. My eyelids and eyeballs began to swell and the snot from my nose dripped and soaked my shirt. I'm a mess, but are you fucking kidding me? My big brother left.

Untimed, unprepared, unexpected, and undeserving.

The future won't be the same and the chance of me seeing you again? Never.

Through this whirlwind of emotion, I blamed Juanne. But, at the same time, should I blame? You're gone and it would be such a disappointment if I still bear the same grudge. The constant push and pull between doing what is right for you and my selfishness was tearing me apart. The same day you passed, I knew I had to do the right thing. But, it was hard. I expressed a lot of my feelings towards my friends. But I only got the same shit, cliche advice and not be angry. Good intentions, but hear me out. I'm hurting and its fucking with me. Fuck you guys. I'll make it up when I'm done blaming. Selfishness. Again.

She messaged me later that night. Taken back, shocked, I had to prepare myself to read her message on Facebook. The message was full of hurt. And although I was mad, that immediately dropped and translated to hurt. I can only understand what she's feeling. She loved you as much as I did, if not more. She was your ride and die as you were mine.

Because I love you, I don't want you to pass on knowing that I haven't fixed things. We exchanged our feelings through Facebook. I was finally able to unveil how I felt about you to her with full transparency and honesty. I no longer felt abhor and was released out of my chains. Deep down, this would've been better if you were around.

I made a promise to you. What resonated in me about you was your act of selflessness without hesitation. You never asked for anything in return but respect, support, and love. I failed to provide you with that. You were such a good person to many and some undeserving.

You placed others above yours because the satisfaction of seeing others happy rewarded you. Your job, family, friends were a priority.

The responsibility of that is too much to bear for one person. I wish the others who only know you as a good time could see what I see in you. The super hero that everyone needed. If I could rewrite my 4th grade essay on what I wanted be when I grew up, it’ll be from Wonder Woman to Phil. He’s my new Wonder Woman. My promise is to be like you just without the money and the man parts.

I hope you can hear me when I say this. I always thought sorry was such a shitty word to express my regret failing to acknowledge my wrongs. I wish I communicated more. I wish I was patient and understood more. I can wish for these things, but it's meaningless without you. The future can't be the same knowing that you're not here and that's the reality of life. "Fucking. Sucks. Donkey balls." You really liked that expression. But life is unfair and choosing certain events, you need to understand repercussions. I'll never let myself live down the fact I didn't do what was suppose to be done earlier.

As much as I despise using, "sorry." I am sorry, Phil. I let things go on for too long without recognising the possibility that it'll be too late. I failed you as a friend; as a little sis. I loved you from a distance. I waited for the day where things simmered down so we can be with each other again.

Life is so funny. I always referred to it as a journey everyone rides on a train. Everyone rides in the same car, but sometimes people need to take different stops to get where they need to go and that is okay. However, you're a special case. I guess you decided to take an impromptu stop and had to take a rocket ship to explore the wonders of the unknown without letting us know. But, that’s okay too. You were an adventurous spirit ready to take on anything that comes at you.

I’ll never forget about you. I'll never forget those drunk ass night where I ordered $120 worth of tacos. How you sleep with your mouth open. I would always wake you up and comment on how you sleep. You'd wake up and smile confusingly. "What? What happened?" Sometimes, your phone calls and good morning texts. Our bird calls when we see each other and all the ‘HOIIII YEAHHHHHHHHS”. Oh, let’s not forget how we enable each other to go out..

“ARENA?”

“I’M DOWN!!! HAHAHHA”

You’ve done so much for everyone. Here I am, not recognising and giving you the appreciation you deserve. I was afraid to forget about you, but after writing all of this down, I never will. I wrote this letter because these are words I wish I said sooner. Come back, please. It’s not the same without you.

I love you. You're at ease. I miss you and it hurts like hell. I never got to say it to you. But, I hope you forgive me. I can’t ever be mad at you even when I am. Thank you for the laughs, and ugly cries we shared together. It’ll be awhile since we’ll see each other again so, save an AMF for us and some seats on your space dildo. One day, we can explore the beyond together with everyone.

Goodbye for now, my dear brother.

1 note · View note

blissedoutphil · 4 years

Text

Dan the Personal Assistant Part 12

Dan has to submit an application video to be an assistant for a company President, Mr. Lester. But what happens when he accidentally sends a wrong video?

Back within 2 months as promised! :P but wow Dan is finally more active than me now

4570 words of angst? idk

~Part 11~

or read on ao3!

Frank shook his head as he glanced at his watch again. Phil missed the meeting entirely and didn’t even bother filling him in on what he should do to cover for his absence. He took a sip of his coffee and focused back on his presentation slides for the next meeting, which should be Phil’s job but since he wasn’t around, of course it was thrown to the director.

The bell on the coffee shop door rang as a man rushed in, and Frank looked up to see the CEO hurrying to his table. Phil tried to tame his messy hair as he sat across Frank.

“Sorry.”

“It’s too late for that,” Frank huffed, typing away on his laptop.

“I didn’t mean to miss it, I really owe you one,” Phil adjusted his glasses resting crooked on his nose.

“By letting me fuck that boy of yours again?” Frank deadpanned.

“If that’s what you want.”

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, Phil, but I think what I want is him gone,” Frank had been meaning to tell Phil this for a while now.

Phil had seen that coming, but still he felt a pang of sadness.

“I thought you liked him. You agreed to the idea.”

“Yeah but that was before he was suddenly more important than this company, for fuck’s sake.”

“He isn’t,” Phil tried, but knew he wasn’t convincing anyone.

Frank sighed. “I don’t want you to have to step down, you’ve been here from the start. You built this company up to where it is now, and I’m not gonna sit here and watch it all get ruined because of an. An office whore? Do you even like him at all?”

“I-” Phil slumped back in his seat dejectedly, “I thought I did.”

“Why are you letting him control things, Phil? I thought in this kind of arrangements the Dom’s the one in control or whatever.”

Phil looked at Frank, unamused. He didn’t mean for things to have gone this far, and he didn’t know how to put at end to it. Somehow Zack has got Phil wrapped around his finger.

“Can you help me tell him?” Phil asked, hopeful.

“I thought you owe me a favour, not the other way around,” Frank retorted with an annoyed glare.

“I’ll give you a raise. Or more off days. I don’t know, anything!” Phil was getting desperate.

He knew he should end things with Zack, but he was the one who dragged the kid into this situation. To fire him and stop seeing him would be cruel, even if Zack was a terrible assistant and boyfriend. He was too much of a wimp to be the one to break it to the boy.

“Fine,” Frank sighed, unable to bear the sight of Phil in such despair any longer, “I’ll do it. For the sake of my friend.”

Phil smiled at him genuinely, vowing not to get into such a mess like this ever again.

------------

About two years later, Frank found himself in a similar situation despite Phil’s promise. The timid boy staring back at him was worlds apart from Zack, though. He looked like he was terrified that Frank was about to bite him.

He moved past the boy and invited himself into Phil’s room even though the boy told him that Phil was in the shower. Phil had replied his text saying they could meet once he reached the hotel, so technically he could be here.

He eyed the kid, who was standing awkwardly, kind of hunched in on himself. Frank was honestly surprised when he’d seen his boss and this kid in the cafe. Phil never brought Zack along on his overseas trips before. This kid must mean more to him than Zack did.

“Enjoying yourself here?” Frank asked, feeling the awkward energy radiating off of the boy making him start to feel awkward too.

Dan was bewildered that Frank was in their room. He knew that Phil wouldn’t be happy about this, and he dreaded to see Phil get into an even more foul mood. But at the same time, he can’t wait for Phil to get out of the shower and save him from this awkward situation.

“Uhh, yeah so far,” he answered after a beat.

There was no way that Frank didn’t know what he was to Phil, Dan had concluded. He was afraid that Frank would want Phil to get rid of him, especially once he remembered the conversations he’d heard between Frank and Phil months ago. What if he really was being a nuisance, a distraction from the obligations Phil had? It wouldn’t be good even if Phil wanted him here.

The boy was anxiously looking back at the shower every few seconds.

“Don’t worry, if Phil gets mad it’ll be at me, not you. How long does he take to shower, anyway? Jeez.”

Frank moved to sit at the couch, and Dan awkwardly sat at the edge of the chair at the little dining table at the far end of the room only after he sat too.

“Fancy room he got for you,” Frank noted, looking around.

“He must really like you,” he added as an afterthought, wanting to gauge Dan’s reaction.

Dan did not expect that comment, and to his mild horror, he’d started blushing. He hoped it wasn’t noticeable. Frank probably did not mean anything by his comment, but he couldn’t help overthinking it.

Frank did notice the kid looking all bashful. He almost felt bad for the kid. God, Phil better not be leading this poor kid on. He wanted to get straight to the point, but Dan looked like he was going to combust if he spoke another word to him. Zack was never shy around him like this. Even right from their first encounter Zack had always been loud and proud.

“You like being with Phil?” he asked, which he knew was a silly question; the kid wouldn’t be here if he didn’t. But he wanted to hear it from Dan.

Dan wished he’d never opened the door. How the hell was he supposed to answer that? Could he even trust this man when all he makes Phil is angry? He looked warily at the man sitting relaxed on the far end of the room. He remembered Phil telling him that the previous assistant would whore out to everyone in the office. Was Frank expecting the same from him?

If all of Phil’s coworkers were attractive like him and Frank, then Dan honestly wasn’t surprised if the old assistant readily played around with everyone. The man was probably about ten years older than Phil, his hair greying at the sides. But he was still fit for his age, body more toned than Dan’s lanky one had ever been. Dan would be lying if he said he wouldn’t want to tap that.

Not that he actually would, it felt wrong to serve anyone other than Phil.

“Yeah. I-I mean, one of the better jobs I’ve had?” he said, unsure what answer Frank expected.

“So...” the man dragged out, and Dan swallowed, nervous. He really had no clue what Frank was here for. He can’t read Frank’s expressions at all, the man’s face was so stoic. Was he here to tell Phil to get rid of him? To tell him to stop working for Phil? To get in on the action? Dan hoped he was overthinking it all and that maybe he was only here to be nothing but a busybody.

“You like Phil?”

Dan gaped, it was the last thing he’d expected Frank to ask.

Frank knew the kid would be surprised, but he had no time to beat around the bush and he needed to know how this kid felt so that he’d know what direction to lead Phil to.

“I- what?” Dan stuttered.

“I mean is this just a weird ass job or is Phil something more to you?”

Frank chuckled a bit at Dan’s startled stare,“I know I probably sound... invasive or whatever but I can help you talk to him, you know.”

Dan still didn’t know whether to trust the guy. His only memory of him was hearing his angry muffled conversations while hiding in the office months ago, and he didn’t seem keen on Phil having an assistant back then. So why is he offering Dan help now?

“I know Phil. He’s probably head over heels for you but he’s also too scared to tell you. Or me, and maybe himself too.”

“H-how’d you know that?” Dan asked, voice so quiet Frank needed him to repeat his question.

“Well, he brought you here. That’s all I needed to know. He never brought Zack anywhere, and he was on a few trips when that kid was around. Probably what made Zack even more bold to defy him and go around playing with the rest of the office, but eh what’s happened, happened.”

Frank remembered the first time Phil went on a trip without Zack. The boy had been so upset that he practically begged to get in Frank’s pants just to spite Phil. Of course Frank wouldn’t do that to his friend, but that didn’t stop Zack from advancing other staff who were more than willing to use their boss’s boy when the boss wasn’t around.

Frank did what he thought was right and told Phil about the encounter, but Phil seemingly did not mind because it was the agreement they originally had, even though Frank could clearly see that Phil wasn’t keen on that agreement anymore after they officially got together.

“Zack?”

Frank focused his gaze back on Dan, snapping out of the memories.

“Don’t tell me he never told you about the one before you,” Frank said incredulously.

“Oh, he did, but not much. I never even knew his name,” Dan relaxed a bit as Frank opened up, but sat up straight again when he felt the plug still in him. Goddamnit, he should’ve taken the toys out earlier.

“Yeah,” Frank continued, “also Phil missed the staff bonding this morning. Now that, he did a lot when he was with Zack.”

Dan started to feel a bit guilty again. His job was to help Phil relax from work, not distract him from it completely. Frank was probably here because he was done with him taking Phil away from his actual work and wanted Phil to fire him.

“I’m sorry, I’ll try not to be a distraction from his work,” Dan shifted in his seat uncomfortably.

To his surprise, Frank laughed, “Don’t worry kid it’s just a silly staff bonding. But you haven’t answered my question.”

“I... I don’t want things to end up like whatever happened with Zack,” Dan admitted.

Frank realised that Phil probably never told this kid the full story.

“Hey kid, whatever happened back then was all on Zack. Phil met him at a club or something, was taken with him from the start. But the boy was never looking for anything serious, he just wanted to fool around. So they had that whole assistant arrangement thing. I admit I’d egged Phil on to do it at the start, just so I could have in on the action. And Phil let the kid do whatever he wanted, even if he didn’t like it. Anything to make the kid stay; he was that in love.”

Frank rolled his eyes at the memory.

“I started hating the kid when I realised how unfair he was being to Phil. They actually got together as a couple, you know? I guess there were mutual feelings at one point, but he was still fucking around with the staff. Can’t blame the staff because they never knew, Zack made sure he didn’t look like he was exclusively for Phil. I could tell Phil was upset by it, but didn’t do anything because he didn’t want to lose him.”

“Eventually he came to his senses. But he asked me to end it for him,” Frank shook his head.

Dan was listening intently, head swimming with this story he’d always wanted to know.

“But Phil told me he hadn’t meant to fall for Zack? And that Zack left?”

Frank put his hand up, pausing Dan before he was bombarded with more questions. He chuckled at the boy’s curiosity.

“Phil definitely fell for that boy the moment they met. And yeah so I went to speak with Zack like Phil asked, and the boy told me that he’d been wanting to leave anyway. He’d been acting out more to reach Phil’s limits so Phil would call it quits. That scheming brat.”

“Now I don’t know what got into Phil’s head to do this whole ‘assistant’ arrangement again, or how he even found you. If he’d asked me before he did it I would’ve talked him out of it, and maybe that’s why he hid it - you - from me. At first I thought that Phil never learned but I can see that he’s being more careful this time, too careful perhaps. Plus, you’re not at all like Zack.”

Dan bit his lip, glad that it seemed that Phil never mentioned to anyone the video that got him here.

“But I know Phil’s still scared even if he has nothing to be scared of this time around. He’s been my friend long before he was my boss, and I only want to see him happy. No matter the strange things he gets himself into. So I’m asking you because he won’t - does Phil mean something more to you?”

------------------

Phil was spending ages in the shower, standing under the steady stream even though his fingers were already wrinkled. Frank had texted to meet him, and he wanted to delay that as long as he could. His friend was most likely going to give him a lecture about bringing Dan all the way to New York, and he didn’t need that headache. He also didn’t know how to face Dan who was out there waiting for him.

He knew he needed to come clean with Dan about his feelings, but he was just scared. Of what, he wasn’t even sure anymore. Dan was always so willing to do anything for him, with him. He wasn’t sure if it was because he was the boss or if Dan truly wanted to be with him.

Deep down, he knew the answer to that. He stared at the water droplets running down his arms as he finally allowed himself to admit his own feelings, and that they were actually mutual.

Dan couldn’t have been more obvious, he’d have to be blind not to see it.

Still, he didn’t know if he could admit it to the boy. They couldn’t look back if they talked it out, and everything would change. What if Dan also wasn’t prepared?

They still had 2 days left of the trip, what if he’d read all the signals wrong - how would they survive the awkwardness before going home?

He spent some more time in his head until the water flowing down his back started feeling cold. He ran through everything he’d plan to say in his head and finally turned the shower off when he felt confident enough to face Dan. It was now or never. He just couldn’t delay it anymore, he knew Dan was out there waiting for him to talk. He’d just have to face the consequences that would come out of this, whether good or bad.

Things would be awkward enough if he refused to talk about it anyway, he thought as he put on his bathrobe and finally stepped out of the bathroom. And he’d deal with Frank after Dan.

He stepped out to find his boy sitting on the edge of the bed, looking quite shook up. Almost immediately he felt his own nerves make way for worry for Dan.

Before he could ask if he’s alright, Dan spoke up first.

“Um,” Dan said rather nervously, “Frank dropped by.”

“What?” Phil responded, surprised.

“Yeah,” Dan said as he stood up and retrieved his towel, “he said he’ll wait for you by the pool.”

“Did he say anything else?” Phil narrowed his eyes suspiciously.

“No,” Dan replied, but Phil could tell he was lying by the way Dan avoided looking at him.

Dan made to walk past him to the bathroom but Phil caught his arm.

“Hey, I’m- I actually really enjoyed today and I’m sorry it kinda got ruined at the end, I’ll make it quick with whatever Frank wants and then. Can I make it up to you somehow later?”

That was not what Phil spent forty-five minutes in the shower planning, but he hated the thought of Dan being upset at him and just wanted to make him feel better.

Dan actually blinked back tears, making Phil feel worse. He had a feeling that Frank’s little visit to their room caused this. He started to regret leaving the poor boy alone for so long.

“I won’t let Frank disturb you ever,” Phil frowned.

“It’s fine,” Dan managed a small, timid smile, “I really enjoyed today, too. See you later.”

With that, Dan disappeared into the bathroom.

------------

Phil stormed quickly to the pool, wanting to know what exactly Frank said to his boy. Or was Dan really that upset at him from the cafe that he cried while he was in the shower? He couldn’t miss the way Dan’s eyes looked slightly red.

He found his colleague sitting at a small table under an umbrella, people watching.

“What did you say to Dan?” He greeted angrily.

Frank looked up at him with a hint of amusement like he was expecting the anger.

“So were you ever planning to tell me that you love him?” Frank asked calmly.

Phil took a step back in shock at Frank’s blunt statement. But the shock turned to anger in an instant.

“Fuck you!” He swore, upsetting a mother nearby who glared at him as she ushered her daughter away from them.

“Real classy, Phil,” Frank shook his head as he watched the mother hurry away with her child. His sneaky smile was still plastered on his face and Phil wanted to punch it off.

“What did you say,” Phil repeated, “that made him cry?!”

“Are we going to have this conversation properly or are you just gonna be yelling at me the whole time?” Frank asked, gesturing for Phil to sit next to him.

Phil huffed, but he sat.

“If I answer your question will you answer mine?” Frank asked expectantly.

Phil narrowed his eyes but Frank took that as a yes.

“I just asked him what you mean to him,” Frank shrugged.

“Wha-”

“Because,” Frank interrupted him, “I know you. You couldn’t ask him yourself, so I’m just helping you to get on with it. Seriously Phil, were you ever gonna do anything about it if I hadn’t seen y’all at the cafe?”

Phil wanted to blow up at Frank again but he knew Frank was right. His friend knew him all too well. He’d always chickened out and asked Frank for help, and he thought that maybe this one time he could do things on his own. Turns out Frank saw right through him. He sighed in defeat, knowing Frank was right. He never planned to talk things out with Dan if Frank hadn’t caught them.

“You know what the kid told me?”

Phil looked at Frank miserably, dreading whatever Dan possibly told him. Dan probably had had enough of the way he always avoided the elephant in their room.

“You mean everything to him, Phil. D’you know that? Everything.”

Phil felt a twinge in his chest upon hearing those words, of a pain he didn’t quite understand.

Frank sighed and leaned forward, clasping his hands on the table.

“I’m sorry for snooping. But when I first realised you were doing this assistant shit again I was honestly pissed off because I didn’t want you to get caught up in another Zack again.”

Phil looked away guiltily, they both knew he couldn’t get out of that mess without Frank’s help.

“I just had to make sure. I never expected the kid to cry in front of me, I’m sorry.”

“I guess the day was just too much for him,” Phil sighed, wanting nothing more than to go back to their room to comfort the boy.

“He was at a low point in his life when you took him in,” Frank said, “poor kid was jobless, broke and alone, having random hookups just to feel wanted. So desperate that he was willing to be your personal escort. But then you gave him something no random hook up could. Besides the money, of course.”

Phil gulped, he realised Dan never actually opened up about where he was before this job. They talked lots about their likes, dislikes. Where they wish to be in 10 or 20 years. Their childhood pets. But he never wanted to talk much about what he’d been doing after dropping out of university. Phil teased him about the video submission sometimes, but he tried asking about it properly once and Dan refused to say anything, so Phil never brought it up again.

“Apparently he’d never felt like he wanted to be with anyone as much as he does with you. But he thought you’d never feel the same. That was when the waterworks started.”

Phil was quite surprised by everything Frank’s telling him. How come Dan could easily confide in this man he just met? Then again, Frank had a way with being a listening ear and helping hand. He had many years of friendship with Frank to vouch for that.

“I didn’t know how to deal with that, I just told him to quickly wipe that off if he didn’t want you to come out of the shower seeing him crying and all,” Frank shrugged guiltily.

“But I did tell him I’ll help him talk to you. So now that I’ve answered your question, are you gonna answer mine?”

“....Was I in the shower that long?” Phil asked.

“You were,” Frank deadpanned, “but good thing you were or he wouldn’t have told me all that.”

Phil sighed and leaned back in his seat. He watched a couple kissing in the jacuzzi at the far end of the pool as he absorbed what Frank just told him.

They sat in silence for a while, Frank giving his friend time he knew he needed.

“I- I do,” Phil’s voice broke and his words came out a whisper, “love him.”

Frank looked on, letting him know he was listening.

“But I’m a fucking coward. I don’t want it to end up the way it did with Zack.”

“You do know this kid, don’t you? I only talked to him a few minutes and I know he’ll never be anything like Zack was.”

Phil blinked back tears of his own.

“I understand why you’ve been so guarded. But you can’t lead that poor kid on like this.”

“I know, but what am I supposed to do?!” Phil asked exasperatedly.

“This is the same man I’ve seen so confidently making deals with big clients and partners,” Frank rubbed his temples.

“I know how to do my job, that’s easy. This. Isn’t,” Phil flailed his hands.

“Just be sincere and tell him. You have nothing to worry about, trust me. You both now know for sure what’s going on, what’s there to lose?”

The couple Phil had been watching finally stepped out of the jacuzzi, giggling as they huddled together in a towel wrapped around both of them and headed back into the hotel.

In that moment, Phil wanted nothing more than to hold Dan close the same way. He rubbed his eyes and sat up, nodding at Frank’s reassurance.

-------------------

Back in the room, Dan was terrified of what would happen when Phil returns. He hadn’t meant to break down in front of Frank like that. He cringed at how he was so open and vulnerable to an almost stranger. He didn’t know what had gotten into him, but he’d trusted Frank to help speak to Phil. But how sure could he be that Frank wasn’t going to turn against him and inform Phil to get rid of the assistant who’d fallen for him?

He’d taken a quick shower and finally got the toys off him. It still felt weird to do it himself. He paced around a bit afterwards, wishing their room had a view of the pool so he could see Phil and Frank.

He had no idea what Frank would really tell Phil even though Frank tried assuring him that he only wanted what’s best for both him and Phil. What if ‘best’ meant making sure Phil leaves him?

The wait was excruciating and the tea he made for them did nothing to soothe his nerves. He waited until his drink finished and Phil’s had gone cold.

His mind came up with plenty of scenarios, more bad than good, but he did not know what he could say in any case. How would Phil even react to whatever Frank told him?

He reasoned with himself that Frank was on his side, after all Frank did tell him that Phil does in fact have feelings for him. He didn’t want to believe it, but the more he thought about their seven or so months together, the more he realised that it could actually be true. And maybe he’d known all along, he’d just been afraid to let himself down on the off chance that he was wrong.

Soon enough his thoughts exhausted him and he resigned to his side of the bed, curling up against the headboard. He could do nothing but wait.

---------

Phil quietly opened the door. Back at the pool Frank had given him the courage to face what was coming, but it faded with every step towards his room. He couldn’t help being nervous even though he knew he had to make things clear once and for all.

He stepped into the dark room, fumbling for the light switch. The whole suite was in darkness, could Dan have gone to sleep already?

But then a soft glow illuminated the bedroom, meaning Dan heard him enter and turned on the bedside lamp. He slowly made his way to the bedroom, feeling his heart thud faster.

Dan sat up from his curled up position when he heard Phil enter, not knowing what to do with himself. He stepped out of the bed just in time for Phil to walk into the bedroom.

There was a few seconds of stunned silence as they both just stood and stared at each other.

Dan’s heart was thumping wildly, and he wondered if Phil’s was doing the same. He broke their quiet stillness first, gesturing awkwardly to the cup of tea he’d made for Phil on the bedside table.

“I-I made-”

He didn’t get to finish his sentence as Phil had quickly strode over the space between them at the same time, and interrupted him with a crushing hug.

Dan gasped as he was squeezed in Phil’s arms wrapping around him tightly like Phil was afraid that he would disappear if he let go. The surprise dissipated soon enough and he brought his own arms around Phil.

Only then was Phil able to heave a breath of relief.

----------------------------

~Part 11~

the end is near :) and you’ll soon be free of having to wait 2 months between each update!!

#Phanfic #phan #dan the personal assistant #phan fic #My fic

20 notes · View notes

freecourses-blog · 5 years

Text

Photoshop CC for Beginners : Adobe Photoshop Course

This Adobe Photoshop CC course will teach you the basics of Photoshop for web design, graphic design, photography & more. Photoshop CC for Beginners : Adobe Photoshop Course What you’ll learn: You will have expert level knowledge of Adobe Photoshop CC in this course, whether you are a beginner, intermediate or have no previous knowledge of Photoshop. You will create a real world project to give you a general understanding of Photoshop and the different functions that you can do with it.You will be given a major overview of all of Photoshop's tools, filters, features, and workspace so that you can quickly begin working on your next project.You will achieve the experience and knowledge to take your Photoshop skills into your career, job, or freelance lifestyle at your own pace.Graphic designers, web designers, photographers, marketers, and whatever other industry you are in will be able to find useful information in this course.You will learn Photoshop's workspace and how you can edit it to your own workflow.You will learn how to work with images in Photoshop and edit them appropriately to your project.You will learn all of Photoshop's selection tools and how they can assist you as you edit.You will learn about layers and how they have revolutionized the way you can work in Photoshop.You will learn every type of tool available in Photoshop and how to use the most common tools.You will learn about type, fonts, and typography inside of Photoshop and how they function.You will learn the importance of color and even be given a brief lesson on color design theory.You will learn how to use alignment, guides, and grids inside of Photoshop.You will learn about all of Photoshop's many filters and features available to you.When you are finished, you will have a solid understanding of the Adobe Photoshop CC software. Requirements: This course is for beginners or anyone who does not have experience with Adobe Photoshop CC and wants to learn how to use the program. This course is not intended for advanced users of Photoshop, though the course can be used as a reference guide to find the exact information on any feature that you'd like.You will need to have an active Adobe CC subscription and the newest version of Photoshop installed on your computer. This course does not go over the installation of Adobe Photoshop CC. (Photoshop CC 2018 is used in the teaching of this course.)You will need to have a Mac or PC with at least the minimum requirements for Adobe Photoshop CC. Information can be found on the Adobe website.You will need to have a working keyboard, mouse, and/or tablet to use Photoshop. Touch screens and other pressure sensitive devices will work, but are not covered in this course.Project files are available for download for each lecture. Make sure you download the appropriate files if you would like to follow alongside the course. Photoshop CC for Beginners : Adobe Photoshop Course Description: Learn Adobe Photoshop CC in this New Course! Many people try to learn Photoshop but struggle because the program is so vast. Most quit before they even get started. :( That's because they've never been taught the program in a step-by-step, easy to learn manner. But that isn't you now, is it? You have found the perfect course for learning Photoshop. It doesn't matter if you have no experience at all, this course was designed to teach you Photoshop in the most effective means necessary. With over 15 hours of video and over 100 project files, this Photoshop course is JAM PACKED with information to help you learn this awesome program! The videos build on one another so that as you work through this course, you will understand more and more! Pretty sweet, huh? :) Not only that, but this course is also designed so that if you already know some Photoshop and just need help with a specific tool or feature, you can skip directly to that topic! So who can benefit from using Photoshop? Adobe Photoshop CC is useful for a lot of careers, industries, and hobbies. It doesn't matter if it's photography, graphic design, web design, social media, user interface design, advertising, painting, printing, or video/animation. This course will cover tools that can be used in any niche! Each section goes into specific detail of the feature or tool being shown so that you will feel comfortable using them on your own. This course will cover: The Basics Photoshop's Workspace Images Editing Selecting Layers Masks Tools Type Color Alignment Filters and much, much more! Don't forget all of those juicey project files! This course has over 100 project files for each individual lecture for you to use and follow along with. From the basic to the advanced, these files will at least help get you started so that as you watch each video, you can work alongside the instructor. What are OTHERS saying about this instructor's courses? "This course is amazing. Learning photoshop with this guy is easy ;-) Thank you so much. " 5/5 Stars - Robert Fersti "Great course that outlines several fundamentals of Graphic Design. Coming from a web designing background, I found a lot of the basics applied here as well. But, the course builds on that and gives you so many pointers on how to capture, guide and hold your audience's attention. I think, in addition to promotional graphics, the ideas explained can be readily applied to designing hero image layouts for landing pages of your websites as well." 5/5 Stars - Ravi KT (on Canva : Graphic Design Theory course) "This course is really informative, up to date, and engaging. Phil and Jeremy keep up to take with the posting of their students and provide reliable feedback. They have inspired me to keep pushing myself forward with my art, and graphic design. I would tell anyone (from beginner to advance) who uses photoshop / or would like to know more about it, to take this course. Its worth it!" 5/5 Stars - Betheny Powell (on Photoshop for Entrepreneurs course) People from around the world are learning valuable skills and applying them to their everyday lives. Don't be the one left out. You can absolutely learn this program and by taking this course the instructor will be with you every step of the way. Other great stuff you might want to know.. Not only will you get over 15 hours of video content and lessons, 100 project files, and a new life skill, you will also have direct communication with the instructor to help you along. This includes direct messages, discussions, and specialized projects in the course that will allow you to interact with the instructor and others. Feeling lost? Don't worry, we are here for you! As they say, "Come for the course, stay for the community." Well, that's not the exact phrase, but you get what I mean. :) What else is there to know? What else? What else?! Well there is that little 30 day money back guarantee thing. That basically means that if you don't enjoy this course for any reason at all, you can get a full refund up to thirty days since the time you purchase it. It's a win-win situation! and I applaud winners. So what are you waiting for?! The time is now to stop procrastinating and begin learning Photoshop so that you can take full advantage of everything that it has to offer! Enroll now in this course and get started! Who this course is for: This course is specifically designed for beginners or anyone else who doesn't know how to use Adobe Photoshop CC but would like to learn. This course can be viewed one video after another, or you can skip around to the sections that you need. Advanced features, special projects, and design theory WILL NOT be taught in this course. Graphic Designers Web Designers Game Designers Photographers Marketers Social Media Experts UI / UX Designers Product Designers Architects 3D Artists Beauty Artists Paint Artists Entrepreneurs and anyone else who wants to learn Photoshop. THAT'S YOU! :) Who is the target audience? This course is specifically designed for beginners or anyone else who doesn't know how to use Adobe Photoshop CC but would like to learn. This course can be viewed one video after another, or you can skip around to the sections that you need. Advanced features, special projects, and design theory WILL NOT be taught in this course.Graphic DesignersWeb DesignersGame DesignersPhotographersMarketersSocial Media ExpertsUI / UX DesignersProduct DesignersArchitects3D ArtistsBeauty ArtistsPaint ArtistsEntrepreneursand anyone else who wants to learn Photoshop. THAT'S YOU! :) Course content of Photoshop CC for Beginners : Adobe Photoshop Course: Total Lecture:140 Introduction How to Create a Polaroid Effect in Adobe Photoshop CC 2018 Upload Your Polaroid Photograph! Welcome to This Section on the Basics of Adobe Photoshop CC 2018 Getting Started with Photoshop Overview of the Photoshop Interface Changing the Photoshop Workspace Navigating the Document Window Using the Tools Panel in Photoshop Undo, Redo and the History Panel Understanding How Layers Work in Photoshop Saving Your Files in Photoshop Resizing an Image in Photoshop Making Selections with Photoshop Using Brushes inside Photoshop Creating Shapes and the Pen Tool Transforming Selections, Shapes and Images Text and Typography in Photoshop Working with Color inside Photoshop Other Cool Features of Adobe Photoshop Resources for You to Use in Your Projects Welcome to This Section on Understanding the Photoshop Workspace Resetting Photoshop to the Factory Default Setting Preferences with Photoshop Creating a Custom Workspace Starting with a New Document Using a Photoshop Template Opening Files in Photoshop Closing and Saving Files Common File Types Exporting Files from Photoshop Welcome to This Section on Working with Images in Photoshop Image Modes and Channels Changing the Image Size Adjusting the Canvas Size Cropping an Image in Photoshop How to Trim an Image with Photoshop Rotating an Image in Photoshop Straighten an Image with the Ruler Adjusting Brightness and Contrast Using Levels with Your Images How Curves Work in Photoshop Changing the Image Exposure Adding and Removing Vibrance Hue and Saturation Adjustments Having Proper Color Balance Black and White Imagery Applying Photo Filters in Photoshop Invert, Desaturate and Equalize Adjusting the Threshold of Your Image Overlaying Gradient Maps Selecting Specific Colors Working with Shadows and Highlights Replacing Colors in Photoshop Welcome to This Section on Making Edits in Photoshop Projects and Documents Fixing Mistakes in Photoshop Cut, Copy, Paste and Clear Fill and Stroke Selections Transform and Free Transform Content-Aware Scale Puppet Warp Perspective Warp Welcome to This Section on Selection Options in Adobe Photoshop CC Select All, Deselect, and Reselect Selecting the Inverse of an Image Using a Color Range for Selection Selecting by a Focus Area Subject Selecting Quick Mask Mode and Mask Selecting Modifying a Selection Saving and Loading Selections Welcome to This Section on Photoshop Layers Understanding How Layers Work in Photoshop Creating and Deleting Layers How to Select Layers in Photoshop Layer Groups and Why They Are Important Merging and Flattening Layers Adding Layer Styles in Photoshop Using Masks with Layers Clipping Masks Working with Layer Adjustments Blending Modes with Photoshop Additional Layer Options Exporting Layers in Photoshops Converting Layers to Smart Objects Artboards and Layers Welcome to This Section on the Many Adobe Photoshop Tools Working with Tools in Photoshop The Move Tool The Artboard Tool The Marquee Tools The Lasso Tools Quick Selection and the Magic Wand The Crop Tools The Slice Tools Eyedropper and Color Sampler Tools Ruler, Note, and Count Tools The Healing Brush Tools The Patch Tool The Content Aware Move Tool The Red Eye Tool The Brush Tool The Pencil Tool Color Replacement and Mixer Brush Tools The Stamp Tools The History Brush Tools The Eraser Tools The Gradient Tool The Paint Bucket Tool Blur, Sharpen, and Smudge Tools Dodge, Burn, and Sponge Tools The Pen Tool and Selection Tools The Type Tools The Shape Tools The Hand, Rotate, and Zoom Tools Welcome to This Section on Creating Typography and Using Fonts in Photoshop Using Type and Fonts in Photoshop Adding Type inside of Photoshop Working with Text Layers Characters and Fonts in Photoshop Creating Paragraphs and Content Character and Paragraph Styles Glyphs and How You Can Use Them Extruding Type to 3D Text and Work Paths Convert Text to a Shape Warping Text in Photoshop Match Fonts from Photographs Other Type Options in Photoshop Welcome to This Section on Understanding the Importance of Color Working with Color in Photoshop Color and Swatches Using Gradients inside Photoshop Adobe Color Themes A Little Bit About Color Theory 3 more sections Photoshop CC for Beginners : Adobe Photoshop Course course Read the full article

#graphicdesign #Photography #Photoshop #WebDesign #webcourses #udemyfree #udemyfreecourses

2 notes · View notes