#YOUR boyfriend has been lying for months but THIS is what shows bad character???? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lerokpaw · 3 months

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🐉Dragon grass 🐉

You lit incense, but you didn't even think what it would lead to

!!!nsfw !!! !!! 18+ !!!

! All characters 18+!

Female reader

Sorry english don't my first language. But I hope you enjoy it 🐉

Status : Couple Y/N - Perfect (The head of a dilapidated dormitory)

A small heat source in the form of a green firefly lit the way for one of the most mysterious people in Twisted Wonderland or for you Tsunagotaro/Mal Mal/Malleus. His task at the moment was to see your face, or rather a smile on it. But first of all, to invite you on a little evening date. You and the future king of the Valley of Thorns have been dating for about six months and one of his favorite pleasures was to see you in a good mood, and if his favorite combo in the form of you, gargoyles, your love and beautiful art, which he saw in all of the above, were collected in one place and at one time, then Malleus was literally melting with love. And in the sky you could see how the stars were shining brighter. Wandering in his thoughts, the Dragon discovered that he nuzzled your door, while accidentally touching the bell with his horn, and he notified the resident of the Dilapidated dormitory of his majesty's presence. Hearing rapid footsteps on the stairs, the so-called Tsunagotaro moved away from the door and waited for your face to appear in its crack.

-Hello, Mal Mal! -"Greetings, my dear," horned smiled with his trademark gentle smile.

-Oh, listen - She slightly covered the already small gap as if to show that he does not have to see what is behind it. But now Malleus' interest has only grown.

-Yes, honey?

-I understand that you probably came for me on a date, but I'm a little unprepared… And could we sit here in the dorm today?

-I dare not refuse my dear couple this request, - he bowed familiarly You laughed a little

-Then come on in, I'm sorry, I'm a little at home.. I'm going to run to the kitchen for ice cream and return it, go to my room for now.

-Ice cream? Won't you need any help? - he already imagined how his favorite dish would be on his tongue.

-It's not worth it! Come into the room! - I was already shouting from the kitchen. The old wooden floorboards and stairs creaked under your boyfriend's feet. He was slowly moving deeper into the dorm when he felt a pleasant and sweet smell in his nose. Approaching your room, he realized that this fragrance was coming from there. When he entered, he saw Grim, who also exchanged a glance, but no longer friendly

-"Henchman, you brought that Tsunagotaro again without my knowledge! Malleus just narrowed his eyes and smiled at the furry creature.

-Don't go make-up, please, if something doesn't suit you, then go downstairs - she shouted through the whole dorm

-I'll actually go to the Adeuce duo then! At that moment, the monster ran out the door and pointedly slammed it -Sorry, Small, for this performance - she said calmly as she approached the room

-It's okay, I understand, my dear

-Your ice cream

-Thank you very much

Sit on the bed Have you started noticing how your boyfriend's pale face is starting to turn purple?

-Honey, are you hot?

-what? Oh, I'm sorry, I don't quite understand what's going on.. Am I just not used to it?

-Hmm, do you have an allergy to herbs?

-As far as I know, no, why? - now he was interested in what was happening to his body.

-Well, I just lit incense.. And I thought maybe they made you feel bad.

he approached you slowly and carefully, trying not to scare you off

- Can I smell you? -N-an unexpected offer- you blushed slightly - but I don't mind - you pushed the hair that was lying on your neck to the side, as if trying to tie it into a bunch

-Thank you - Mal said almost in a whisper and approached your neck inhaling the armat and now his previous sensations have doubled. As if waking up, he jumped back.

-I just don't know… It seems to me… - after these words, he attacked you with a sensual kiss. You've kissed before, but this… It was something that foreshadowed something more. After you stopped getting enough air.

-As if I want all of you - finally the thought was complete.

-What!? I'm sorry!? He abruptly leaned back from you

-Oh, I'm sorry.. I just.. I don't know what came over me Malleus rubbed the back of his head confused

-No! It's not that I'm against ours.. Continuations.. You started gesturing actively

-It's just me.. I didn't expect you to. Similar actions

-Hmm really? Malleus said, approaching you with a slightly mischievous smile and half-open eyes.

-Y-Yes! I am.. Sorry. I'm a little nervous.

-Maybe then you're not ready? I'll understand.. I won't insist - he gently took your hand and kissed it gently

-I didn't say that! It's just… this.. Nervous

-Are you afraid of me? -No! I love you very much! And as you can see, when you're so close to me, I don't push you away. Because I'm not afraid..

-Then I'll try to be gentle... Malleus smiled at you tenderly and ran his hand over your cheek You're blushing

- You always know how to embarrass me. Tsunagotaro gently ran his hand down your neck and ran his fingers a little over the top of your pajamas. He pressed his nose against your shoulder and inhaled the fragrance, his pupils sharply narrowed

-Darling? - He said in a slightly trembling voice

-What is it?

-Are you sure you agree to what happens next? I won't be able to restrain myself..

-Yes.. Just be gentle to start with You felt his smile appearing on your skin. It was important for him to hear the permission from your mouth. Now small spikes and a tail began to show on his back. Although it wasn't visible through his clothes yet

-Good...- he slowly began to take off your shirt. After he took it off, he said

-Darling.. I didn't think your kind had such cute gadgets..

He pointed to his chest and gently kneaded it with his hands

-Tell me if it hurts you. even in his lust-intoxicated state, he tried to take care of you. -M?!

She turned her head away, blushing

-Except yours.. Is there no view of them?

-There is, but I never paid attention to it…

He leaned against the chest area with a languid look and began to kiss her slowly and sensually.

-Mm.. The taste is as incredible as the smell ~

After his words, you whimpered softly while he kissed you and smiled, and his hands slowly made their way to the area below your stomach. Now Malleus was slowly sliding towards your stomach and was already kissing you there.

-Mm~ My rose.. Will you let me go on?

-Yes.. Oh sure The horned fairy grinned and his hands pulled the elastic of your night pants a little, gently pulling them off you. After that, your underwear became his barrier to your wonderful taste, he puffed up a little from this fact. But he continued to slowly spend his hands removing this obstacle, while feeling like you were already wet. Pushing your legs apart a little, the scent of your arousal hit him right in the nose and the smell of incense gave him even more strength to continue.

-It really looks like rose petals.. - he said, spreading your vulva

-Mm!? Where.. How? Where did you find this comparison? - She said, looking at him with one raised eyebrow

-Well.. He massaged it a little with his fingers and looked down intently.

-It's a little awkward..

-What could be more embarrassing than my position in front of you?

-Hehe, you're a darling.. Once.. When I was younger, I became interested in the topic.. Mating. And I asked Lilia what it was like.. Well, he told me that "everything is so beautiful for women that I look like rose petals" Frankly, I did not believe him, and I did not quite understand what he was talking about. But now that I see it all in person.. His words make sense

-Well, that's an interesting comparison..

-Do you think so?~ - he said in a seductive tone when his face was between your legs, where he slowly ran his tongue between the folds -Mh!? - you jumped a little out of surprise, thereby hitting him a little in the nose with your hips

-Honey, calm down.. Otherwise, I'll go crazy before I give us pleasure~ I'm already holding on with all my strength so as not to eat you.. That smell.. Intoxicating~ - Malleus tightened his grip on your legs, scratching them a little with his claws, starting to run his tongue up and down.

-Mmm~

-That's what I wanted to hear, my rose ~ -

He mimicked the movements of his tongue in your petals. Quickly finding the middle, he rushed there. Each time, his movements became more violent, as he quickly began to lose his composure. Listening to your moans, he couldn't hold back his own mooing, thereby sending you impulses that didn't help you not melt in his grip.

-Ah! - From his accidental sharp thrust, you moaned and mechanically moved your hands to his horns. With these actions, you finally pulled the trigger from the dragon, who was now furiously beating his tongue at you and your petals

Driving in like that for a couple more minutes, you felt a wave of pleasure begin to catch up with you. Malleus felt your back begin to arch and your legs to shake.

-Mm~ Have you already?

-Don't talk.. Ah! Go on..

-Hehe - you felt his smile tremble in you

-Mmm~Ah! - when he hit you with his tongue the last time, you sprayed him in the face, squeezing between his legs. The dragon rose slowly, carefully releasing your legs. His eyes were sparkling with a green light, and his whole face was in your netar. He licked his face and approached your already breathless face.

-Malleus.. phew..

-Yes, my rose ~ before you say it, I want to say that you are magnificent both in taste and aroma, as befits a flower ~

-You.. The dragon is too greedy..

-Naturally ~ - he gently tucked your hair behind your ear.

-Phew..

-Are you ready to continue? ~ - Malleus is clearly pissed off after your taste

-WHAT!? We just did..

-Hehe, this is just the beginning, I want to feel your nectar not only on my lips ~

-You.. You're vulgar! - you got up and hit him with a pillow

Ahaha, darling, but you like it ~ He stopped you by grabbing your hand - And since you're already so active, I can continue~

The incense finally burned out.. But the smell of "Dragon Grass" has long filled the whole room..

#twst #twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland malleus draconia #twisted wonderland x reader #malleus draconia x reader #Malleus draconia #twisted wonderland smut #twst smut #malleus draconia smut #malleus #twst malleus x reader #twst x reader #twst malleus

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suddencolds · 11 months

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Foreign Home | [1/1]

hello!! I am back after 8 months of not-really-writing with an 8k word fic (which I cut down from 9k words). this is another OC fic w/ Vincent and Yves, who were introduced here!

anyways, this is very character-centric and establishes some things I wanted to establish about them / their world... I hope the little detour into character-development territory is okay.

Summary: Yves has told all of his friends that he's dating Vincent, so it's going to look increasingly suspicious if Vincent never shows up. Good thing Vincent is compellingly good at lying. Anyways, what could go wrong at a housewarming party? (ft. banter, fake dating, cat allergies)

—

Yves spends three weeks turning down invitations.

It’s lucky, he thinks, that he’s been able to stay in contact with so many friends from university—that so many of them have settled here, in New York. It’s less lucky considering his current circumstances:

Out of the people who made it to Margot’s New Year’s party, almost all of them remember Vincent. And—even more inconveniently—many of them seem set on inviting Yves and Vincent places.

Yves thinks up a dozen excuses. No, Vincent can’t join on our coffee outing—he’s got an important, un-reschedulable meeting with a client that Saturday. Sunday? His Sunday’s booked through until 5pm. I know, busy season is the worst to plan around. Or, I think Vincent’s going to be out for a business conference that weekend. The 22nd? I can check with him, but he’s taking a redeye flight the night before—I think he’ll be jet lagged.

The number of excuses he is capable of coming up with is unfortunately finite. Perhaps sorry, I think Vincent has an optometrist’s appointment that afternoon isn’t Yves’s best work, but he has to say something.

Really, it’s just more work to invite Vincent elsewhere—to explain that they’ve played their role as a couple a little too convincingly. That his friends all want to meet Vincent, now.

Back during his days of rowing crew, Yves has given out his fair share of relationship advice to the underclassmen, which has unfortunately—according to Margot—“cultivated an air of mystery about his personal love life.” It was always him and Erika, until it wasn’t. (Ex-matchmaker Yves and his mysterious, highly coveted new boyfriend, Leon says, when Yves complains, which is how Yves decides he will no longer be consulting Leon on the matter.)

“My friends really like you,” Yves says to Vincent, offhandedly, when he runs into him on the way back from lunch.

Vincent blinks at him.

“You’re saying that like it’s a bad thing.”

“They really like you,” Yves says. “They want to meet you. They think we’re an interesting couple, and they keep pestering me for double dates and inviting you out to a whole bunch of events. I’m running out of excuses as to why you can’t come.”

“Oh,” Vincent says, deadpan, but there’s a slight twitch to his lips, as if he’s trying not to laugh.

“I’m dead serious,” Yves says. “I told Nora that you couldn’t make it to dinner because of an eye appointment. Now if I want to keep this up I’ll need to photoshop you with new glasses.”

“I am a little overdue for new glasses,” Vincent says.

“Not the point. Regardless, I need to keep this up until we stage a breakup.”

“A breakup?”

“A fake breakup. To our fake relationship.”

“Is there someone else you’re interested in?”

“No,” Yves says. “But I’m preemptively saving you the stress.”

“The stress of playing your boyfriend?” Vincent says. “Last time, that just entailed going to a well-organized New Year’s party. I wouldn’t consider that exceptionally stressful.”

“That’s just the beginning. Don’t tell me you want to be dragged along to every dinner party and every downtown outing and every birthday I go to in the foreseeable future,” Yves says. “On top of working 60 hours a week, you’ll have to say goodbye to your weekends.”

“So that’s why you’re plotting our breakup.”

“Yes,” Yves says. “I’d need to explain to everyone how I dropped the ball.”

“I’m sure those new glasses must’ve been the dealbreaker.”

Yves laughs. Truthfully, Vincent could wear the most terrible, unflattering glasses in the world and still manage to look like someone whom Yves wouldn’t bat an eye at upon spotting at a photoshoot. The fact that his current glasses actually complement him very well, and the fact that he knows how to dress himself is just salt to the wound. “Yes, that’s the entire reason why I dated you in the first place. The glasses.”

“If you wanted to keep our false relationship up for a couple months,” Vincent says, “I wouldn’t mind.”

Yves—who, until now, has been walking in the opposite direction of the floor on which he works—stops walking. “Pardon?”

“I like your friends,” Vincent says. “And more importantly, I don’t think it proves a point to Erika if you’ve just gotten into a relationship you couldn’t keep. So if you wanted to keep this arrangement for a little longer, I would be fine with it.”

Yves considers this.

He’s asked more than enough of Vincent already. But Vincent is right. He’s sure Erika must have her fair share of doubts about all of this—about Vincent, about their fake relationship, about its longevity. She seemed skeptical, when he’d last seen her, that Yves could’ve moved on so quickly. The worst thing about it is that he can’t blame her for that doubt. The worst thing about it is that he’d spent so much time accounting for his future with Erika that he hadn’t seen her start to slip away, hadn’t noticed the first sign of inadequacy, the first time her gaze lingered on someone else, the first time he ceased to be all that she wanted. He hadn’t steeled himself for a future without her, and now, half the time, it feels like he’s still playing catch-up.

If he wants to commit to this fake relationship, he’ll need more than one outing to show for it.

And, despite all odds, Vincent is offering just that.

“Okay,” Yves says, before he can think about how bad of an idea this is. It is really, really inadvisable. He’s sure if he weighs his options for more than a few seconds, he will come to the conclusion that he should be shutting his mouth. “If you’re sure—and only if you’re actually sure—what are your plans after work next Tuesday evening?”

“Nothing as of now,” Vincent says.

“Great. If you can make it, there’s a potluck. Joel’s hosting. He recently finished moving into a new apartment, so I think it’s something of a housewarming party. He lives a little North, past the stadium, so I think I’ll head there right after work—I can drive you.”

“That works,” Vincent says. “What kind of food does he like?”

“I’m not actually too sure,” Yves says. “I think he’s a fan of spicy food. But honestly, I think he’ll be grateful if you bring anything at all—which you don’t have to, by the way. You’re the esteemed guest, here.”

“I’m sure Joel’s new apartment is technically the esteemed guest,” Vincent says. “But I’ll be there.”

“Okay,” Yves says. “It’s a date. I’ll make it up to you in any way you want, by the way—if there’s ever an instance where you need me to lie for you, I’ll do it.”

“Duly noted,” Vincent says. For what Vincent would ever have to lie about, Yves can’t guess.

More importantly, he has a date for next Tuesday. Something about it is more exciting, even in its dishonesty, than it has any right to be.

—

It’s only a few moments after Yves presses the doorbell that Vincent emerges, holding a couple plates covered meticulously with aluminum foil.

“I haven’t cooked for anyone in awhile,” he says, a little sheepishly. “I hope this doesn’t make a bad impression on your friends.” “Are you kidding? It smells really good,” Yves says, and it does—from the doorway, he can make out the scent of sesame oil, roasted garlic, ginger. “They’ll definitely like it.”

Vincent looks off to the side. “We’ll see.” It takes a moment for Yves to properly parse his expression for what it is.

It never occurred to Yves that Vincent might actually be nervous. At work, it’s rare to see Vincent even remotely out of his element—he always volunteers to take on their more difficult clients, and even on the rare occasion that something falls out of his expertise, he picks things up quickly. Yves has seen him give presentations at conferences without a sweat, articulate as ever.

If Vincent had been nervous, those times—over prestigious conferences, over negotiations with major clients, over other difficult points of contention—it hadn’t shown. Either he wasn’t nervous at all, or he was just good at hiding it. But he’s nervous now, Yves realizes, which means—

Vincent wants to make a good impression on his friends. It won’t be his first time meeting Joel, but it’ll be his first time talking to Cherie, Joel’s fiancé, or Giselle, one of Cherie’s friends from work. Mikhail and Nora will be there too. All in all, it’s a decently sized group, but Vincent has talked to larger groups of people before without so much as a shaky voice.

Something about it—about the seriousness with which Vincent regards this whole arrangement—is strangely endearing.

“You have nothing to worry about,” Yves says, and means it in more ways than one.

—

Joel’s new apartment, as it turns out, is already decently furnished, even though Joel had sent out the invitation with the disclaimer that everything is a mess, please bear with us.

“When you said everything would be a mess,” Yves says, leaving his shoes in a line at the door, “I thought your apartment would actually be something other than spotlessly clean and well arranged.”

“It’s easy to make things look neat if you move all of the clutter into the closets,” Joel says.

“It’s just a few boxes,” Cherie says. “But it was tricky to figure out how to place things. It’s a lot more spacious than the apartment we had in college.”

“No kidding,” Yves says. “It’s a seriously nice place.” Back in their last two years of university, Joel and Cherie had gotten an apartment just a few buildings down from the apartment which Yves picked out with Mikhail—they had similar floor plans. Yves distinctly remembers the space: creaky floorboards, space heaters lined up against the walls to last them the winter; decent natural lighting, and never enough kitchen space.

Back then, he and Mikhail had had separate rooms, so their apartment became a spot in which Erika became a frequent visitor, and then, at one point, stopped visiting at all.

But that’s not the point. The point is, the apartment Joel and Cherie have picked out is much nicer than the one they’d had in college—for one, it’s more spacious, and the entire building has nice facilities and looks newer—and Cherie’s eye for interior design has only helped their cause.

“I’m glad you were able to come!” Cherie says, turning to Vincent. “Yves is always telling me about how busy you are with work.”

“He’s the one putting out all the fires,” Yves says.

Vincent smiles, extending a hand for her to shake. “Cherie, right? It’s nice to meet you. And you’re—” He turns to Joel, with a slight sniffle. “Joel. I think we met last time.”

Cherie squeezes his hand. Joel laughs and says, “I’m surprised you remember my name.”

“He’s good with names,” Yves says. An acquired skill from all the hours of networking, probably.

“That’s a useful skill to have, especially if you’re dating Yves,” Joel says. “I swear he knows everyone.” He goes on to tell a story about how, back in university, Yves almost accidentally got elected as vice president for a business club he’d only shown up to once.

At some point into the conversation, Yves ducks into the kitchen to help with setup. He sets out the dish he’s brought—salmon sliders with mango salsa—and the beef skewers that Vincent made earlier (he’s not sure why Vincent was worried in the first place, because the skewers look very competently made). After that, he busies himself with finding a way to keep everything temporarily covered until they eat.

Something soft and fuzzy winds around his ankles.

He looks down, and the soft and fuzzy thing looks back at him with pointy triangular ears. This is news to Yves.

“You guys have a cat?!” He shouts from the kitchen, vaguely in the direction where Joel and Cherie should still be standing. “Since when?”

“Since a month ago,” Joel shouts back.

“Her name is Gingersnap,” Cherie adds. “Gin for short.”

“Oh,” Yves says, kneeling down to scratch her behind the ears. His hands are a little calloused from all the snow he’s been shoveling lately, but Gingersnap purrs anyways, evidently unbothered. “What the hell, guys, now I’m never going to be able to leave your apartment. Consider me a permanent resident.”

“Don’t threaten me with a good time,” Cherie says.

At some point, Gingersnap gets up, mewing, and heads out of the kitchen, and Yves resumes life as an active contributor to the potluck’s success. When he finishes reheating everything up, setting the table, arranging the dishes, and filling up two pitchers with iced water, he wanders back out into the living room. Vincent is there, alone, except he’s not really alone, because…

Oh.

God.

He’s kneeling down, unmoving, speaking to Gingersnap in a soft, low voice, holding out a hand for her.

She approaches him, a little tentatively, and then nuzzles her orange head into the crook of his hand. Vincent smiles—a soft, private smile. “Hi, Gin,” he says.

There’s the low, lawnmower hum of a purr as Gingersnap rolls onto the ground to let Vincent continue petting her. It’s a heartwarming sight—Vincent, from the office, crouched down to pet a cat that’s smaller than his hand. Yves thinks he might cry.

Then Vincent withdraws his hand, reaches up with an arm to swipe at his eyes. Something jolts through his shoulders, a tremor so slight that Yves wouldn’t have noticed it if he hadn’t already been watching—

“—nGkt-!”

Gingersnap mews at him, perplexed but undeterred. “Sorry,” Vincent says to her, quietly, “I’m not trying— to—” It’s all he can get out before he’s veering away again, this time with both hands tightly steepled over his nose for—

“hhIH’—GKKtt-!”

He sniffles softly, though the sniffle is immediately followed by a small, quiet cough. He reaches up with one hand to rub his nose. Yves watches his expression draw uneven, his eyebrows furrowing.

“hhIH…”

Whatever sneeze he’s fighting seems terribly indecisive—but terribly irritating—for the way he rubs his nose again, his eyes squeezing shut in ticklish anticipation.

“HhIH… hh… HH-hhH-hHIHh—”

He cups a hand over his mouth to muffle the sound, and not a moment too early—

“—hIHh’iiIKKTSHh-!”His shoulders jolt forwards with the force of it, though it gives him barely a moment’s reprieve before his breath hitches again, sharply, urgently. “IiI’DSZCHuuhh-!”

“Bless you,” Yves says.

Vincent turns to blink at him. His eyes are a little red-rimmed and watering. There’s a thin flush over the bridge of his nose.

“You didn’t tell me you were allergic to cats,” Yves says, rounding the corner to close the distance between them.

“Slightly allergic,” Vincent admits, turning aside with a liquid sniffle. “It’s ndot - hhIHH-! - a big deal.”

“I didn’t know Joel and Cherie had a cat,” Yves says. “I’m sorry. I would’ve told you if they did.”

“It’s fine,” Vincent says, with a laugh. “I like her.”

“You might like her, but your body doesn’t seem to be a fan.”

“It’s a good thing that I have a consciousness, so I can codtinue petting her.” Vincent sniffles again, lifting one hand to rub his nose with his index finger. Yves does not know how to even begin to tell him what an inadvisable idea that is, but either way, he doesn’t have a chance to before Vincent’s eyes graze shut, and he turns to face away from Gingersnap before he jerks forward, catching a muffled - “Hh’GKK-t!” - into a clenched fist.

“Bless you,” Yves says. “You know, you’re really not going to make the situation any better if you keep on—”

“nNGKT-!!”

“—bless you!”

“hh—hHhih’iiKKsHHhUH!” The last sneeze is noticeably harsher than the others—it sounds loud enough to scrape against his throat, which seems to be further evidenced by the small cough that succeeds it.

“I’ll ask Joel if he has any antihistamines,” Yves says.

“It’s fide,” Vincent says.

“If you insist on spending time with Gingersnap, wouldn’t it be better to spend it without having to sneeze?”

“I would still have to sdeeze,” Vincent says, as if he’s already experienced in the matter—briefly, Yves wonders how many cats he inadvisably plays with on a frequent basis. “Just less.”

“That would be an improvement.”

Vincent looks away. “Antihistamines mbake me tired,” he says, after a little hesitation.

“It’s a good time to be tired,” Yves says. “It’s not like you have any pressing work to get done.”

“I want to make a good ibpression on your friends,” Vincent says, wiping at his eyes with the edge of his sleeve. “That’s ndot going to happen if I fall asleep halfway through dinner.”

“If you did, I’m sure no one would fault you for it.”

“I’ll take something after we finish eating,” Vincent says. “If things haved’t improved by then. ”

“Okay,” Yves relents, and—since it doesn’t seem like Vincent is leaving anytime soon—takes a seat next to him on the rug. It’s a compromise he can accept.

—

Nora gets there next, followed by Mikhail and then Giselle. It’s Yves’s first time formally meeting Giselle, who turns out to be very tall and a little intimidating—she’s come straight from work, so she’s dressed accordingly, and she talks with the sort of quiet authority that Yves knows is usually indicative of years of experience. Right before they sit down for dinner, Vincent ducks out into the bathroom—‘I need to look at least marginally presentable,’ he’d said, seeming like he was in a rush—so Yves saves him a seat at the table.

“Yves,” Giselle says, taking another salmon slider. “You made these entirely from scratch? This is delicious.”

“Thanks,” Yves says. “To be honest, it was a bit of a gamble. I wasn’t sure if the sauce was going to pair well with it.”

“Yves is really good at cooking,” Mikhail says. “That’s half the reason why I roomed with him in college.”

“So what’s the other half?” Cherie says.

“The other half is that he lets me eat his food,” Mikhail says.

Yves laughs. “For a second, I thought you’d have something nice to say about my personality.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Mikhail says.

“Yves is very good at cooking,” Vincent says, emerging from the hallway. Yves blinks at him. Whatever he’d done in the bathroom has done wonders—he looks remarkably put together. Not a strand of his hair is out of place. His eyes are dry, not red, not teary, not irritated, his collar crisply upright, his voice devoid of congestion. The only telltale sign about his ailment is the slight bit of redness to his nose, but it’s winter—that could easily be chalked up to the cold.

He slips easily into the seat next to Yves, his posture impeccable. Yves does everything in his power not to stare.

“I think he’s responsible for some of the best hot chocolate I’ve had,” Vincent continues. That remark is surprising, too—repurposed from a memory as it is, it seems almost like something that could be genuine.

But Yves remembers how easily Vincent had lied, back on New Year’s—how easily he’d drawn the fictitious threads between them, almost thoughtlessly, as if they had always existed.

I could make better hot chocolate, Yves thinks, before he can stop himself. I could really make the best hot chocolate you’ve ever tasted, if I just had time. It’s an absurd thought, and one that he doesn’t have much grounds for. He had been pressed for time, back then—he hadn’t known when Vincent’s ride was going to be arriving—but even if he’d really, properly tried, even if he’d succeeded in making the best hot chocolate he’s capable of making, there’s no guarantee that Vincent would’ve liked it.

He’s surprised by the pang in his chest, now, the desire to make true something that he knows to be false, to be worthy of the compliments that Vincent’s so easily spoken about.

“That’s definitely an exaggeration,” Yves says. “Technically, Mikhail didn’t even know that I knew how to cook when we signed the lease. The real reason why we roomed together is much more interesting.”

It’s a story he’s told before, though Cherie and Giselle haven’t heard it before. It’s easy to fall into it again: Mikhail and Yves met in their first year, over a group project in an intro to finance class. The two other members of their team had been dead weight, and at the time, Yves had thought—incorrectly—that Mikhail was just as bad as the rest of them.

It’s practically a comedy of errors—a series of miscommunications had led them to each finish the project independently. Yves remembers the all-nighters he’d pulled for that, nervous and over-caffeinated, until the day before the presentation, where he found that Mikhail had not—unlike the other members of their group—spent the last few weeks slacking off.

Beside him, Vincent goes still.

When Yves chances a quick look at him, he sees: a slight, almost imperceptible ripple to his expression, before it smooths out again.

He nearly backtracks—his first thought is that perhaps something he’s said is the source of Vincent’s irritation—but then Vincent turns his face away. There’s the slightest disturbance to the line of his shoulders, and then—

“—gkT-!”

The sneeze is barely audible, stifled as it is into a half-closed palm, though the gesture is subtle, too—easily mistaken as Vincent simply looking away, resting his chin on his hand.

“I can’t believe you guys are still friends after all of that,” Nora says.

“Right,” Yves says. “I was so ready to never talk to him again. But obviously, we still had to give the presentation.”

He talks about how, in a half-asleep effort to salvage the project work, he and Mikhail had found some way to relate their findings to each other, to loosely bind the disparate subjects into a coherent thesis. Mikhail talks, too, about how they’d manipulated their presentation to get their combined work to seem sufficiently on topic.

Mikhail is halfway through his story when Yves sees Vincent jolt forward beside him.

He looks up just in time to catch the tail end of a sneeze—expertly stifled, just like the others—into a clenched fist. This one’s a little more forceful, even in its quietness—it leaves Vincent hunched over for just a moment, his shoulders slightly slumped, before he straightens again, covertly lowering his hand.

There’s a slightly hazy, distant look to his features, as if whatever’s been bothering him hasn’t begun to let up yet.

Yves nudges him with his arm. Vincent doesn’t exactly jump at the contact, but he does freeze, his shoulders stiffening.

“Hey,” Yves says, quietly enough that he doesn’t think anyone else should be able to hear. “You okay?”

Vincent nods.

“You sure you don’t want to take anything?”

Another nod.

“I can’t tell you how little either of us proofread that paper,” Mikhail is saying.

“I reread it three months later,” Yves admits. “And he’s right. We really didn’t proofread it.”

But it was a winning proposal, even though they’d both been too tired to realize it then. And still, Mikhail had still managed to hold a grudge against him for two long months. And then Mikhail had run into last-minute problems with his upcoming lease arrangement, and Yves had happened to find a decently priced two-bedroom apartment with no roommate, and he’d reached out half as a joke.

“You know those friends who say they can never room together?” Mikhail is saying. “Like, they hang out all the time, or they’ve been friends for years, or they trust each other with their lives, or whatever. But the second you put their living habits in close proximity, everything goes to shit? I think we were the opposite.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t just because you two never had a good enough relationship to ruin in the first place?” Nora says jokingly.

She has a point. Yves is starting to think that all of the formative relationships in his life have all happened by accident.

—

Vincent and Giselle get along very well, Yves notes, listening to the two of them talk. Halfway through dinner, they get into a heated discussion about the more outward-facing expectations at work, as Joel and Cherie exchange knowing glances. Giselle talks about feeling accountable for the team she manages—for knowing that if they don’t perform, she’ll take the fall for them; for being careful not to disperse the stress from higher ups unevenly, for constantly feeling her way through how much work is reasonable to expect of them. Vincent talks about the stress of apportioning work to others—the knowledge in his own competence and the knowledge gap when it comes to how others will handle things, the desire to take on more work alone to make sure everything is accounted for.

Nora, who’d had an internship at a different firm after each year in college, weighs in too on the management styles she’d been under, to what extent the expectations from leadership affected the dynamic between her coworkers.

It’s interesting, Yves thinks, that they all have their own subset of worries, even when they come across as people who are so certain of themselves.

As the others speak, Vincent stops periodically to rub his nose with the knuckle of his index finger—an action that always seems to keep the irritation at bay, but never seems to mitigate it entirely. For a moment, his expression goes hazy, his eyes watering ever so slightly, but it always lasts only a moment.

When Mikhail cracks a joke that has the entire table laughing, Vincent takes the opportunity to cough quietly into an upheld fist. When Cherie talks about her and Joel’s extremely mathematical efforts to fit everything into the car before moving, Vincent turns aside, raising a napkin to his face with a quiet, well-contained sniffle.

It’s difficult to tell, at first. But his attempts to keep quiet, to succumb to his symptoms as inconspicuously as possible, take their toll on him. Every time he jerks forward with a near-silent stifle, Yves can tell, by Vincent’s expression when he emerges, that it’s just short of relieving. Every sniffle seems to only add on to the mounting congestion, in the long run. It’s a slow, almost imperceptible unraveling.

And yet, when Yves asks about it—when he offers to ask the others for antihistamines, or when he offers to make the drive to a convenience store himself; when he suggests that they go out to get some fresh air—he’s always faced with the same nonanswer, the same dismissive, I’ll be fine. The same persistent, Don’t worry about it.

So Yves doesn’t worry about it, for now—at least, not outwardly.

—

At some point after dinner, they disperse. Yves talks to Joel and Cherie about the apartment, about the pains of moving in, about the other places they’d considered and about why this one had been at the top of the list. Then about the cat— “we had been talking about getting one,” Cherie says. “And then one day Joel was wandering around downtown, and one of the pet shops there was holding an adoption event, and then when I got home there was a cat in the living room.”

“He didn’t call you to come pick out a cat with him?”

“Have you ever heard of ‘ask for forgiveness, not permission?’” Joel says.

“He texted me before he brought her home,” Cherie says, and scrolls through her phone until she finds a text that says: Would you kill me if I brought home a cat. Just asking for a friend. And hypothetically if we extended this thought experiment it would be an orange cat that’s 2 months old.

“That sounds like a text from someone who’s absolutely decided already,” Yves says. “Ask for forgiveness, huh? So how’s the forgiveness going?”

“I let her name her,” Joel says.

“He’s on litter box duty for the next six months,” Cherie says.

On the other side of the room, Mikhail and Vincent are having a conversation—it could be because Vincent is the person in the room that Mikhail has talked to least, to date, but Yves has a feeling that it’s so that Mikhail can gain embarrassing intel on what Yves has been doing for the past few months.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Vincent turn away, his eyebrows drawing together, raising both his hands to his face to catch a sneeze into steepled hands. Then, not a moment later, his shoulders shudder forward with another.

“Totally off topic,” Yves says, to Joel and Cherie. “Do you guys have any antihistamines?”

“I think we have some Benadryl,” Cherie says. “It should be in the bathroom cabinet, behind the mirror.”

He does find it there, eventually—next to a box of band-aids and a small cylindrical container of cotton swabs. Perhaps he’ll hand it to Vincent, discreetly, when he’s done talking to Mikhail. Vincent had said antihistamines made him tired, but now that dinner is over, it shouldn’t be an issue—Yves suspects people will start heading out soon, and he’ll be the one driving, anyways.

When he steps out into the hallway, Mikhail and Vincent are in the middle of a conversation. It’s a conversation Yves has every intention of interrupting, and no intention of eavesdropping on, until he overhears—

“So,” Mikhail says, “When you first started dating Yves, what was it that you saw in him?”

Yves winces. That’s certainly not an easy question to answer—he and Vincent don’t know each other all that well, and any planning they have done on the basis of their fake relationship has been almost entirely centered around logistics—events, important dates, flagship moments in the relationship, trivia-worthy personal details. Not… this.

But Vincent just laughs, seemingly unfazed. “Honestly, if I told you everything I liked about Yves, you’d want to date him too.”

“That’s a tall claim,” Mikhail says. Yves is positively certain that no permutation of words in the universe could make Mikhail want to date him. “You can’t just say that and not give any examples.”

“I guess Yves is a very considerate person,” Vincent says, with a sniffle. “It actually confused me, at first. When I was growing up, after I moved here from Korea, I was brought up in the sort of environment where there was always an expectation for self-sufficiency. It didn’t matter how young I was, I guess—there were certain things I was expected to know, and certain things I was expected to teach myself.”

Something about his expression looks wistful, if not a little sad. But perhaps this is a trick of the light; perhaps his eyes are just watering from earlier. “My parents trusted me with a lot of things, but it was the kind of trust where they weren’t planning on filling in the gaps for me if I fell short.”

“I know what you mean,” Mikhail says. “That must’ve been difficult.”

“It wasn’t easy,” Vincent says. “But I’m not telling you this because it was a burden to me, or anything. Back then, it was all that I had ever known. It was normal to me, then, because it was inevitable.”

“Yves is a very different person than I am,” Vincent says. “At times, when I was growing up, it felt like kindness was always something that had to be calculated.”

He pauses, sniffling again, before he raises his arm to his face with a forceful—

“hIhh’GKT-! Hh… hh-HHih’NGKktshH!”

“Bless you,” Mikhail says reflexively.

“Thadk you,” Vincent says, sniffling. He lowers his arm. “I was always taught that if you lend a hand to someone else, you have to make sure their success is not the thing that robs you of your spot—that sort of thing. But Yves is kind even without thinking about it. He’s kind even when there’s nothing in it for him.”

“So that was what made you develop feelings for him?” Mikhail asks.

“Eventually, yes,” Vincent says. “At first, I thought that we were irreconcilably different.”

“What changed?”

“Yves is an easy person to like, romantically or otherwise,” Vincent says. “It’s a little disarming to be on the receiving end of his type of kindness. And I think that’s ultimately what made me start liking him. He’s just the sort of selfless person you can’t help but admire, if that makes sense. It’s like—when someone does so much for you out of sheer selflessness, at some point, you start wanting to be a part of their happiness too.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Yves sees a small orange blur—mostly fluff, on four short white legs, with two pointy ears—bound from the kitchen into the living room.

“I get it,” Mikhail says. “That’s an interesting answer. It makes me hopeful that Yves might’ve stumbled into a relationship that will be very good for him.”

That’s a statement he’ll have to revise, Yves thinks wryly, in a few months, whenever it stops being practical for Vincent to keep up this act.

“Oh,” Vincent says, blinking. “What makes you say that?”

“When he and Erika broke up, he was—” Mikhail pauses, briefly, and Yves is thinking about the many embarrassing—but completely, verifiably true—ways he could finish off that sentence. “—he was pretty upset,” Mikhail says, instead, which Yves decides is suitably merciful.

“Look, what’s between them is between them—I’m not going to claim I know all the ins and outs of their relationship. But given that Yves was living with me for much of the time that he and Erika were dating, I’ve seen them interact more times than I can count.”

“I don’t think Erika is a bad person,” he continues. “She’s very ambitious, which I think was good for Yves back when they first started dating. But I don’t think she recognized those things about him—how much he cares for others, how much he gives people the benefit of the doubt, how much he… well, frankly, how much bullshit he’s willing to endure on his end. I think she took his kindness for granted, a little bit, and she certainly didn’t go out of her way to reciprocate.”

“What I’m saying is, I’m glad he met you,” Mikhail says. Beside him, something small and orange hops onto the couch they’re standing next to. “I can tell that what you said was sincere.”

If even Mikhail thought he was being sincere, perhaps Vincent is a little too good of an actor.

“Obviously, it’s early for me to be saying this, so you can take it with a grain of salt,” Mikhail continues. “But I think you could be kind to him in the way he deserves.”

The sentence feels like a punch to the stomach.

And—well.

I’m glad he met you. I think you could be kind to him in the way he deserves.

Yves has really dug himself into this hole, hasn’t he?

Mikhail thinks that Vincent is good for him—Mikhail, one of Yves’s closest friends, someone who is by no means quick to express his approval over whoever Yves is seeing—which means that when they inevitably stage their breakup, Yves is never going to hear the end of it.

Is it cruel to be taking Vincent to all of these events, to be introducing him to all of his friends, when—after the impending breakup—Vincent might never see any of them again? Is it cruel that Mikhail likes Vincent enough to be hopeful that this is going to last?

Yves doesn’t have time to contemplate it more when three things happen.

One—Gingersnap, who is still perched at the very top of the couch, nudges her face against Vincent’s arm and mews softly at him.

Two—Vincent stops what he’s doing to reach out slowly, cautiously, to scratch gently at the fur under her chin. Gingersnap purrs, leaning her head into his hand.

Three—Vincent withdraws his hand, suddenly, as if he’s been burned, twisting away reflexively. He lifts his hand—the same hand he’s been petting Gingersnap with (probably inadvisably) to his face, to cover a resounding—

“hh—hiHH-hHihh’iIZSChHH-uhh! snf-!”

The sneeze sounds ticklish and barely relieving, as if he’s been holding it in all afternoon.

It’s only a few moments later that Vincent’s jerking forward with another ticklish, wrenching, “hh… hhiHH… NgKT-!—hh’hiiIIIK’TSCHhuhH! snf-! hiIh… hIIIH-IITSCHh’yyue!”

“Oh,” Mikhail says, finally comprehending. “You’re allergic to cats?”

“Just slightly— hIh… hH- Hiih—hhH’nNGkT-!” Vincent sniffles wetly, rubbing his nose with the back of his hand. “Sorry to - hh-! - cut our codversatiod short - hH… I… hhiHh’IiKSHhuh! Excuse mbe… hH… Hhh-! I’mb going to rund to the bathroom… hh… hhiIh… hh-HIih’iiIK’SHhUHhh!”

Yves ducks out into the kitchen before Vincent has a chance to head his way. He busies himself with removing a glass from the cabinet and filling it with water, Somewhere behind him, he hears the bathroom door click shut, hears the slightly muffled sound of a sneeze, then another.

He shuts his eyes.

Vincent had said that it was fine. Should Yves have insisted? It’s Yves’s fault, again, that Vincent is in this situation, but then again, he couldn’t have known—both that Joel and Cherie would have a cat, and that Vincent would like her so much. Either way, Yves can’t help but feel partially responsible.

But would it be strange, now, to offer Vincent something to take for it, to openly acknowledge his affliction? Should he have done something earlier? Or should he wait to acknowledge it after they leave?

Against all doubt, he finds himself outside of the bathroom door.

Yves knocks.

There’s the sound of water running, inside, and then the sound of the faucet being turned to shut. Then there’s a brief pause. Yves is contemplating knocking again when the door opens just a crack.

There, Vincent stands, his eyes a little watery still, his nose just slightly redder than usual, his hair slightly out of place—he’s just washed his face, then.

“Yves,” Vincent says.

“Um,” Yves says, holding out the glass of water and, next to it, the bottle of Benadryl. “Thought you could use these.”

Vincent takes the cup, a little hesitantly, and sets it on the bathroom counter. Then he takes the bottle of allergy medicine, unscrews the cap, and removes two small pink pills.

“Thank you,” he says. Yves thinks he’s about to take a sip when he twists to the side suddenly, his eyes squeezing shut, snapping forward with a loud—

“hIIH’IIKKSHh’hUh!”

The hand he’s holding the cup with trembles a bit with the action, but the water inside doesn’t spill.

“Bless you,” Yves says, taking the cup from him, before—

“hIHH… hh-Hhih’iISCHhh’Uhh!”

“Bless you!”

The only acknowledgment Vincent gives him is to take the cup back from him, sniffling, and down the pills in one quick, decisive sip.

“They’ll take some time to take effect,” Yves says, though he’s sure that Vincent knows that already, for the way he knew to take two, even without reading the label on the bottle. “Are you okay?”

“It’s been awhile since my last edcounter with a cat,” Vincent says, sniffling.

“You forgot how bad it was?”

“It gets better with exposure,” he says. And worse without.

Yves says, “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I really didn’t know they’d have a cat.”

“Even if you’d known, I ndever told you I was allergic,” Vincent says. “It’s fine.”

“I should’ve thought to check. Seriously, a housewarming party—”

“I told you, snf, I like cats,” Vincent says, clearing his throat. “So it’s fine.”

Yves looks around—at the bathroom, which looks just as pristine as he’d left it earlier, except that the tissue box on the bathroom counter is a little askew. At the slight tiredness to Vincent’s posture, even as he looks off to the side, tilting his glasses up to his forehead to swipe at his eyes with his sleeve.

“Do you want to get out of here?“ Yves says.

“I cad stay,” Vincent says, as if he really is willing to, despite the side effects. “Do you want to stay longer?”

I want you to be comfortable, Yves wants to say.

Instead, he says, “I think I’ve just about caught up with everyone. Besides, we have work tomorrow, and I think Cherie and Joel do too, so I don’t want to stay too late, you know?”

“Okay,” Vincent says.

“I’m happy you came,” Yves says, stepping past Vincent to put the bottle of Benadryl back into its original spot, where he found it. He snags the glass from the counter on his way out.

“Your friends are a fun crowd,” Vincent says, following him out.

Yves laughs. “I think just between you and me, Mikhail has been dying to interrogate you about this relationship.”

“He did idterrogate me,” Vincent says. “How much of it did you overhear?”

“What?”

“When you were standing out in the hallway.”

Oh. Well, perhaps he hadn’t been as discreet about eavesdropping as he’d thought. Yves says, “Okay, you got me. I heard a good amount.”

“I don’t think Mikhail noticed you there, if you’re worried,” Vincent says. “In any case, it doesd’t matter if you overheard. It was just the same story.”

They step out into the hallway. Giselle has left, already, to be home in time for a cross-timezone call with a team that works somewhere halfway across the world. Yves bids everyone else a goodbye (Cherie and Joel thank him for coming, and Cherie hugs him and Vincent both on the way out; Nora asks Vincent to send her a recipe to his beef skewers, to which Vincent admits sheepishly that he stole from a cookbook, to which Nora says “making it successfully is half the work;” Mikhail says, “If you and Vincent get a place too, I want to be invited to your housewarming party.”)

On the way out, Yves grabs both of their coats off from where they’re hanging in a closet next to the front door, and hands Vincent’s coat to him. There’s never much street parking by the apartment, so the car is parked a couple blocks down, and it’s cold enough to be worth bundling up.

“You’re very good at lying,” Yves says, when he’s sure that the door is shut behind them.

Outside, it’s snowing just a little. Snow falls from the sky in thick white flakes. Vincent pulls his hood over his shoulders, sniffling a little—though whether that’s from the cold or from the allergies, Yves can’t be sure. “Is that a compliment or an insult?”

“Definitely a compliment. I just mean, you play the part really well.”

“So instead of being a good boyfriend, I’m a good fake boyfriend,” Vincent says, lifting his sleeve to his face to muffle a cough into it. “Somehow, that seems much less impressive.”

“It’s arguably more impressive,” Yves says. “It definitely requires a different subset of skills.”

Vincent is quiet for a moment. When Yves looks over, he sees Vincent raise both hands to his face, steepling them over his nose, his eyes fluttering shut.

“hHh… hHh’iiiIKKSshh’uhh!”

“Bless you,” Yves says.

“Ndot— hh… hHh… done — hH-hhIh’nGKKTsHuuh! hHh-hH’IIZSCHHhhuh!”

“Bless you! Cats, huh?”

Vincent hums. It’s snowed all through dinner—the snow under their feet coats the sidewalk, powdery and untouched. Their shoes sink into it while they walk.

“I didn’t know you used to live in Korea,” Yves says.

“It’s not a secret, snf-!,” Vincent says. “But I ndever found an occasion to bring it up.”

Yves can think of a hundred things to say—how it’s strange only learning this information secondhand; it’s strange to play the part of someone who knows Vincent and knows him intimately, and to know so little about him, at the core of it. Isn’t it like that, with coworkers? The only window he has to Vincent’s life is made up of the things Vincent has chosen to share with him—over small talk in the break room, or conversationally over their outings, or during longer drives.

He knows an assortment of trivia, like Vincent’s favorite color (green) or Vincent’s birthday (March 15th) or the number of siblings Vincent has (one), or when he had his first kiss (during his first year in university) or his least favorite chore (vacuuming) or how he spends his weekends (generally at the library downtown, catching up on work or working on his personal projects). But even that was only for the sake of having something to say if his friends asked him—of having a basic understanding of his supposed partner that Vincent could later corroborate.

“Was it very different there?”

“I moved here when I was pretty young,” Vincent says. “But it was very different.”

When Yves looks over, there’s something complicated to Vincent’s expression that gives him pause. “Back then, I was young enough that everything was new to me. So the cultural shift wasn’t as pronounced for me as it was for the rest of the family. I think that’s why they moved back, eventually.”

“Did that happen recently?”

“They moved back just six years after we came here,” he says. “I was in high school at the time, so I stayed with my aunt to continue my education here.”

“Was it difficult living here on your own?”

“Is this useful to you?”

Yves blinks, taken aback. “Sorry?”

“Is this information useful to you?” Vincent says, looking over at him. His glasses have fogged up a little in the cold. “Do you think your friends are going to ask about it?”

“It’s—not exactly useful in that sense,” Yves says, backtracking. “I just wanted to know. But you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

That’s right, he reminds himself—he and Vincent are only doing this for appearances’ sake.

“I got used to it,” Vincent says, finally, which isn’t exactly an answer. “It’s hard to say if—hold on, I— hh-!”

Yves sees him duck off to the side, raising his arm to his face.

“Bless you—!”

“hh-Hhiih’IIZSCHh’uhH!”

The sneeze is muffled slightly into his sleeve. Vincent sniffles, keeping his arm clamped to his face for a moment, in trepidation, before dropping it to his side.

“Apologies, snf-!,” he says, as if he has anything to apologize for. “It’s hard to say if things would’ve been better if I’d gone back with them to Korea. I just know things would’ve been different.”

Yves doesn’t know what to say to that. It feels like something that Vincent has thought about for years, something that Yves couldn’t even begin to comprehend—growing up here, alone. Away from his family, in a country foreign to him, with his family all the way on the other side of the Pacific ocean; staying with a stranger. To say that it had to have been difficult would be a vast understatement.

Had he doubted himself, then? Had it been his idea to stay here, in the States? Had his parents told him it was for the best? Had he argued with them on the subject? Had they listened?

“Do you think you’re happy enough now to justify that decision?” Yves asks.

Vincent is quiet for a bit. Around them, the snow continues to fall, silent and slow, listing upwards on every updrift. “Sometimes,” he says.

—

When they get back to the car, Vincent is quiet. The car is frigid, the window panes cold enough to fog up when Yves puts his hand on them—he puts the heaters on to the highest setting. If anything, being out of the cold seems to make Vincent’s nose run even more—a fact which he carefully obscures, resting his face on the palm of his hand with a few muffled sniffles.

“Thanks again for coming,” Yves says. “I know I—and everyone else—already said that to you like a hundred times. But I mean it.”

“It’s ndo problem, snf,” Vincent says. “I’ll be sure to avoid putting you into contact with cats in the future,” Yves says.

“There’s ndo need for that.”

“While we’re at it, is there anything else you’re allergic to?”

“Not much,” Vincent says. “Unless you pland on getting rid of the entire season of spring.”

“That’s secretly why you chose an office job,” Yves says. “So you could avoid all the pollen by staying inside all day.”

“Busy season was - snf-! - idvented solely for that purpose,” Vincent says.

It’s barely a couple minutes into the drive when Vincent stifles a yawn into his fist.

“Are you tired?” Yves asks. “I mean, you did say that thing about antihistamines making you tired.”

“Wide awake,” Vincent says, before—moments later—hiding another yawn behind a cupped hand.

“Evidently,” Yves says, which earns him a quiet laugh.

“Tell me if you ndeed me,” Vincent says, leaning his head lightly on the passenger seat window. As if this is work, or something. As if Yves could have any conceivable reason to need him during the drive home.

“Not at all,” Yves says. “As a matter of fact, it’d probably be a good thing if you close your eyes. You wouldn’t have to look at all this traffic.” It’s a little past rush hour, but traffic is only just starting to clear up, and driving in the city at any hour has never been a particularly pleasant experience.

Vincent opens his eyes. “Do you wadt me to help navigate?”

“I want you to sleep,” Yves says. “I’m an expert at handling traffic.”

It’s as if all this time, Vincent was merely waiting for permission. Yves isn’t certain if he’s asleep, but he certainly looks to be—when Yves sneaks a glance at him, his eyes are shut, his shoulders slack, and his breathing has evened out. It’s an image Yves wants to thoroughly take in—the slow rise of his chest, his eyelashes fanned out over his cheeks.

Instead, he drives. Instead, he stares hard at the rows and rows of cars before him, at every traffic light, and tries not to think about—

Vincent, at the housewarming party, kneeling down to pet a cat smaller than his hand, despite being well aware of the consequences.

Vincent, calling Yves kind even without thinking about it, talking about him—about his best qualities—with near-artful dishonesty.

Vincent, walking beside him in the snow, talking candidly about growing up here; the unspoken understanding between them about how much he must’ve given up.

That Vincent, the same Vincent from work, asleep in Yves’s passenger seat, while Yves drives him home.

Yves can’t help but think that if he caught feelings for someone like Vincent, Erika would be the least of his problems.

#sneeze fic #snz fic #sneeze kink #snz kink #snz #probably one of the longest oneshots i've posted here #i'm sorry if this is not like #as... snz-driven as usual? it's a little more mellow and i really hope that doesn't make it a boring read #i promise i am in the middle of writing something spicier 😭#my fic #also thank you to everyone who has left comments/come talk to me about fool me twice 🥹 it makes me really happy to know that there are #people out there who like reading these two #yvverse #(<- new tag for them)

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jamneuromain · 2 years

Text

Evaluating Your Work

Andy Barber x You / Reader

Warning: Smut, Fluff and Smut, Alternate Universe - College / University, thigh riding, Teacher-Student Relationship, Professor!Andy Barber, Student!Reader, Roleplay, Sexual Roleplay, Student!You, Clit Stimulation, Pet Names (Angel, baby), Explicit Sexual Content, Explicit Language, Warning: Reading Smut, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot

Word count: 1k

Summary: You return home with Andy reading your... stuff.

Dancing in the Daydream M. List

It’s a bad idea to start a relationship with a professor who taught your class. It’s a worse idea to start a relationship with a professor who has a doctorate in English Literature. It’s an insanely terrible idea when the said professor enjoys your writing and when your fanfic works are lying around with zero protection on the internet.

To Andy, your works are just waiting to be exploited.

He can’t help but smirk when you return home. (Yes, you live together for a couple of months now.)

“Hey Andy – what’s with that look?” You eye him suspiciously, snuggling right next to him on the couch. Inhaling his woody cologne on his button-down shirt, this day couldn’t have been better.

“Just something you wrote.” His smirk grows wider. His arm holds your waist, so you can see what is on his phone.

You groan at the sight of your fanfic. “Really?” You whine, burying your head in his chest, not looking at his phone anymore. Knowing the answer to your upcoming question but you have to ask anyway, “please tell me it wasn’t the smutty one-shot I wrote for the College AU.”

“Yup.” Andy pops the "p" with his sinful red lips, and chuckles softly, “I’m loving how your main character gets her extra credit.”

You let out a sound mixing frustration and whining, “it’s not funny.”

“It’s not.” He clears his throat and calls your name in the sultriest tone he could manage, “we could work out your extra credit if you … were up for it.”

Damn him when his sound does things to your pussy.

And why the fuck him reading your smutty fiction turns you on even more?

You sit on his thick thigh, slowly grinding yourself on his dress pants. Your ridiculously short skirt is rucked up to your waist, your cotton panties by your ankle, while he palms your waist and the curve of your ass and not giving you an ounce of help. Your hands are tied behind you, as Andy forbids you from using your hand to move yourself on his thigh.

His other hand is holding that damn phone, reading the next sentence. “C’mon, Angel, show me some effort.”

You gasp when your clit rolls on the rough patch of fabric, the patch that your juice hasn’t soaked through completely, arching your waist even more to get some friction. You cannot get anymore. His trousers are coated with your slick, and your clit isn’t stimulated enough to be swollen to the size where it could get caught up between your pussy lips and his thigh.

Andy intertwines his fingers with yours, nudging your spine lightly, encouraging you to say your shameful line.

Embarrassment and arousal hit you at the same time. “Sorr-Sorry, Professor, oh God,” You moan when his thigh tenses unexpectedly under your pussy, “I need your help.”

He darts his tongue to wet his lips, which are begging to be kissed. “Poor girl, can’t even do the simplest task I gave you.” Andy flexes his thigh experimentally, “better?”

Your thighs nearly crush his when he sits up, his knees higher than before, pressing your body to slide down his thigh. The coil in your stomach tightens. Your forehead on his shoulder, your heart pounding by your ears, your thighs and calves sore, panting like you are having cardio instead of riding your boyfriend slash professor’s thigh.

You know what comes next. You know that in your fiction, “you” cum on his thigh and make a mess.

But real life is no fiction.

You can’t cum like this. Not when you soak his thigh already and still don’t have enough stimulation.

“Andy please.” You murmur to his shoulder, “help me.”

He kisses the top of your head, “of course, I’ll do anything for you … Angel.”

He unties your wrists, to which you respond by hugging his neck the second you are set free. He drops his phone and grabs your waist to move you on his thigh. He tightens his thigh so you can get more friction. Your pussy lips dig down harder and faster, more than you could ever manage by yourself. Your pussy lips rubbed raw, your clit swollen, your coil pulsing along every friction he gives you.

He captures your lips, teasing, sucking, nipping your lower lip and your jawline, chafing your cheeks with his trimmed beard.

You moan into his mouth, clawing his back, whimpering.

“Look at you,” he whispers, “fucking yourself on my thigh,” leaving teeth marks and bruises on your neck as he speaks, “begging for me to make you cum,” the exact lines, but much dirtier from a roll of his tongue, “a perfect little whore to do anything for her professor.”

“Yes yes yes.” You breathe. Your eyes shut, on the brink of an orgasm.

“Yes Sir.” He tweaks your nipple between his fingers, one hand firmly shoving your hips to his thigh, “say the words, Angel. Say the fucking words, and I’ll make you cum.”

You are lost. You don’t know what words he is referring to. You don’t know if he is still role-playing or drunk in your pleading tone. But you will do anything to cum right this second.

“Yes Sir. Please, Sir. I’ll be so good.” You babble, “please, Professor Barber. Make me cum on your thigh. I’ll be your good little slut I promise.”

“Fuck!” His fingers dig into the globe of your ass, grinding you down his thigh one last time, reaching a finger down to strum your sensitive clit.

Your orgasm explodes into millions of pieces, erupting in your belly, having you scream when his finger doesn’t slow the slightest, prolonging your white-hot pleasure as your eyes tear up.

“Fuck.” He pecks your lips when you recover from your mind-shattering orgasm, “fuck, you alright, baby?”

“I’m okay.” But also want to try it again sometime. “That was intense.” You smile to his lips, returning his kisses.

“Great. ‘Cause the next chapter is fucking you on my desk.”

#andy barber #andy barber smut #andy barber x you #andy barber x reader #andy barber x female reader #defending jacob #professor andy barber #student reader #evaluating your work #dancing in the daydream

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missmaniac25 · 9 months

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No Regrets - Choi San

Choi San x female reader (Park Seonghwa x reader); no use of y/n Word Count: 1k+ Hurt/Comfort(?); fluff a.n: Honestly, i don't know but enjoy

~~~

San realises he's made a mistake. It washes over him as he sees you bouncing around your apartment in anticipation. It grows when he sees the message pop up on your phone from Seonghwa saying that he was almost there. It reaches a climax when he hears the knock on the door and he knows that he made this happen and that there's no turning back now. He doesn't want you to go on a date with Seonghwa but there's nothing he can do about it now. He has to let you go. After all, he's the one who set you two up.

~ San continues to type away on his phone, taking notes of everything you're saying. The list of boyfriend requirements just keeps growing as he questions you more and more.

"Must he be able to cook?" He asks.

"Um..." You ponder, staring at the ceiling for inspiration. "I mean... He's got to be able to look after himself. So yeah, he must be able to cook."

Your friend makes a mental note to himself that girls like guys who can cook - he needs to take some lessons.

"Ok, I think that's good for tonight," San tells you as he looks over the list one last time. "I'll find you a boyfriend in no time, don't you worry."

You turn your head to look at him and he does the same. Neither of you can help but smile. It had been a month of Q and A, and San was yet to find anyone who met not only your list, but also his standards of who should date you.

"I'll be waiting," you tease, letting a sigh escape you. "Just like I always have been."

~ San watches as his hyung helps you to put your coat on before he plants a quick kiss to your cheek. He sees how your cheeks flush pink at the action and it makes his heart clench. But San doesn't say anything to either of you. Instead he just nods his head in your direction when you wave goodbye to him before the door is closed and he's left alone in your apartment.

'What if Seonghwa kisses her?' He asks himself, mind starting to spin. 'What if she falls for him?'

~ "Like... never ever?" San sits in front of you, stunned.

You shake your head before plonking yourself next to him on the couch, still hidden away behind your hands. You can feel his body shaking slightly as he tries to laugh quietly and it makes you even more embarrassed.

"San, stop," you beg. "You're not helping."

"I'm sorry," he says and he sounds like he means it. "I'm sorry. But I just don't believe that you've never kissed anyone before."

Upon hearing someone else say it out loud, you attempt to become one with the couch, sinking as far down as you possibly can. It had been bad enough to admit that to San but the fact that he thinks you're lying is making the experience so much worse.

"No wonder no one wants to date me," you mumble, mostly to yourself.

San hears you though. Now he's more determined than ever to find you a boyfriend. But not just any boyfriend - someone who will give you everything and be worthy of your first kiss.

He'll make sure of it.

~ The seconds tick by agonisingly slow. The characters in the tv show drawl on and on but San doesn't care anymore. He's spent the last two episodes so lost in his own thoughts that he has no idea what the characters are even arguing over anymore.

His phone screen lights up and he's ashamed of how quickly he picks it up, in hopes that it's you. Do you need him? Must he come fetch you?

Have you realised the same thing that I did just before you left? That it's you and it's always been you?

No. It's just a message from Wooyoung about something that San doesn't care about right now. He throws the phone aside and leans his head back on the couch cushions, trying to think of anything but you and Seonghwa out on the date that he planned. That he made possible.

It's late by the time you finally arrive back at your apartment, Seonghwa walking you all the way to your door to make sure that you got home safely.

"I had a good time tonight," he tells you and you can see him leaning in slightly.

'No, not with him.' Your mind makes itself up and you subtly turn your head to the side.

Luckily, he gets the hint and kisses your cheek, smiling softly as he does so.

"Me too. We'll keep in touch," you say, unlocking your door and heading inside after saying your goodbyes.

Surprise hits you when you see San still awake on the couch, his eyes looking red.

"Are you ok?" You hurry to take off your shoes and your coat. "San?"

"How was your date?"

It's all he can muster. He doesn't want you to hear the shakiness of his voice. He doesn't want you to know how he really feels.

"It was fine. San." You sit next to him, trying to look at his face but he constantly moves it to look the other way. “San, what’s wrong?”

It feels like an eternity passes by as the two of you sit there in silence. Tentatively, you place your hand on San's arm, hoping that the contact will break whatever spell he's under. At first you don't think it's worked but then he slowly looks at you solemnly. It's clear he's been crying - tear tracks run down his cheeks and his eyes are still watery.

"Please..." You try again. "How can I help you feel better if I don't know what's wrong?"

"You can't help me feel better," San quietly tells you.

His words cause your heart to shatter inside of your chest. He can't really mean that, can he?

San's eyes drop down and a tear escapes. You so desperately want to brush it away but after his words, you don't know if that's the right thing to do now.

"Did he kiss you?" He asks, voice still just barely above a whisper.

"No," you admit. "I didn't let him. Not that he isn't nice. I just... I know who I want my first kiss to be with. It's someone I trust. Someone... Someone I know will be gentle with me. Someone I have feelings for."

You hope that he catches onto your words. That he feels the same way that you feel about him and that this disguised confession doesn't get wasted.

Finally, San lifts his eyes to look at you. There's a thousand different things running through his head but one makes itself loud and clear.

'Kiss her.'

He can't hold back any longer.

San tenderly takes your face in his hands, gently drawing you closer. When he feels that you're not pulling away, he places his lips millimetres from yours, waiting for you to take the final step.

And despite the fact that your heart is pounding and your cheeks are burning, a rush of confidence fills your body and you close the space between you.

The kiss is short and sweet but it's perfect. It makes you feel at home with San in a way that you've never felt before.

When he withdraws from the kiss, San still looks worried.

"Why did you agree to the date with Seonghwa hyung?"

"I was hoping that it would help me get over you."

San rubs his thumbs lightly over your cheeks, taking in the sight of you.

"I didn't think that you'd ever see me as more than a friend," you admit. "So I was looking for a distraction. And you gave me one."

"Please don't ever go on another date with him," San basically pleads with you.

A smile graces your lips and he swears it's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen.

"I won't." Delicately, you take his hands away from your face and hold them in your own. "As long as the next date I go on is with you."

San nods quickly and you stifle a giggle at his enthusiasm.

"I'll make it the most perfect date you've ever been on," he declares.

"Well, you do have my list of boyfriend requirements."

Finally, San breaks into a smile.

"And I'm going to make sure that I live up to all your criteria." He leans in and kisses you again. "No regrets."

#as always please let me know if there's spelling or grammar errors #if i missed a warning or labelled anything wrong let know that too #choi san x reader #choi san fanfic #miss maniacs writing

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myadmiringmind · 2 years

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Red-head vs Demon | Clary Fairchild

Clary Fairchild Masterlist

Word Count: 581

Genre: Domestic-ish fluff | Action

Pairing(s): Clary Fairchild/Fray x Partner!Reader, Isabelle Lightwood x Simon Lewis, Maia x Bat

Summary: The dark skies of your morning start with demon hunting. Then, you accompany your girlfriend to her friends awful music play.

Warnings; Blood, demons, blades, mentions of anxiety, Simon and his band

Characters: Jorden Kyle, Maia Roberts, Isabelle Lightwood, Clary Fray/Fairchild, Bat

Characters mentioned; Jace Herondale, Alec Lightwood, Magnus Bane

Notes: No specific time frame in the books. Probably set after the book series. But Jordan didn’t die in CoHF.

|PICTURES ARE NOT MINE|

Clary cursed under her breath in frustration, “Where are these demons coming from?” She slashed angrily at the demon in front of her, cutting off its head and sending it back to its home.

Recently, your dear city of New York has been infested with more demons than usual. Meaning that you and the other shadowhunters were working overtime.

You came up behind Clary to slash at a Demon that was trying to bite her ankle. You turned guarding her back as she guarded yours while another demon came up in front of you. The battle was over quickly with a few cuts and bruises here and there but nothing the two of you couldn’t handle.

“Hopefully Magnus will be able to answer that question soon enough.” You mumble as you draw an iratze on Clary’s forearm. She huffed a strand of her red hair out of her face looking around at the status of the alleyway where the two of you had found a group of raveners. The black blood had been gone from the walls along with the bodies of the demons. Leaving the two of you sweaty and covered in the black blood.

The sky was black and few stars were out. You think you’d like the night a lot better if it wasn’t the only time demons came out.

“I’m sure Jace is having the time of his life.” Clary mumbled, snapping you out of your thoughts.

You smirked, “Yes, and Alec anxiety is off the racks with the amount of demons we’re hunting these days. I’d tell him to take a vacation if we didn’t need him here.”

“I think he’d be a little disappointed to miss all the excitement.” Clary said sarcastically

You nodded your head in agreement, “Shower, then breakfast?” You ask

Clary wrinkled her nose, “Simon and the bland are playing this morning.”

You shivered in mock disgust, “So breakfast, and a couple pairs of ears that need to be bleached.”

Clary nodded, “Pretty much.”

You grabbed her hand to begin your journey towards the institute.

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

You’d be lying if you said you were looking forward to the next hour. Sat on a comfortable beige couch in Java Jones with your girlfriend as you wait for Simon and his friends to start playing.

“You sure we can’t bail?” You asked

Clary, freshly showered, and in day clothes, nodded, “I said I'd be here.”

Your mouth thinned

Clary had coffee in front of her as you waited for this ‘show’ to begin. Izzy was sitting at another table, waiting patiently for the band to make their way onto the stage. Maia sat at a different table. Her and Jordan called it quits about a month ago but stayed friends. So she was here with her now boyfriend, Bat, supporting their friends.

You clapped reluctantly when the band piled onto the stage. Jordan and Simon weren’t that bad. The rest of the band though..

“What do you think Magnus would say if he were here?” You asked

Clary shrugged then grinned, “As if Magnus would ever be caught in a place like this.”

You nodded your head in agreement.

“So what do you want to do after this, train some more?” You asked

Clary shrugged, “Let's enjoy this for right now.”

Your face was masked in mock horror, “Sure...enjoy.”

Clary laughed under her breath, giving you a swift kiss on the cheek. You smiled against your will. Perhaps this hour wouldn’t be so bad.

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

edited on 05/17/2024

#clary fray x reader #clary fairchild x reader #clary fray fluff #clary x reader #clary fairchild fluff #the mortal instruments x reader #the mortal instruments fanfic #shadow hunters fanfic #shadow hunters x reader

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there-are-always-flowers · 6 months

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Keeping it light...

As shortest month, I didn't read or see too much. Do Revenge was an awesome movie that I feel flew under the radar. I love the pastel color pop throughout the film. It was perhaps too geared toward Gen Z, with it's woke notion of feminism. But it also kind of weaponized that wokeness in a way I really liked. I absolutely LOVED Camila Mendes in this. I feel there was a moment in film where any movie containing a gay character had the sole plot line of being gay or coming out. In Do Revenge there was a fair amount of gay or assumed gay characters and them being gay was just not an issue which was sooooo refreshing.

Speaking of keeping things light... The Fallout has been on my to-watch list since it came out. I watched Megan Park back when she was on Secret Life of the American Teenager. When I learned she was now writing and directing, I was curious. This film deserved all the acclaim it received. Another film that's very much geared toward Gen Z but in a very different way. I loved getting to know Jenna Ortega and Maddie Ziegler as more mature actresses. I thought they did a phenomenal job. Do Revenge and The Fallout remind me why I love young adult stories. The weight of youth can seem be insurmountable, for The Fallout it can even be deadly. And looking back from the perspective of adulthood, I'm able to send love to my younger self. It catches me in all the feels.

Chainsaw Man. I know, I know. This one doesn't seem to go with the others. I've dabbled in amine because my boyfriend enjoys it. We watch Avatar: The Last Airbender, Avatar: Legends of Korra, Attach on Titan, and Chainsaw Man is the latest in my foray. Only a few episodes long, I really liked the storytelling in the show. I struggle with anime because I can't always interpret facial expression, so watching it dubbed really helps. The main character is... funny if not incredibly "down bad." From what I can tell this show does not pass the Bechdel test. Not that it necessarily needs to, but I wonder how many anime-fans are in on how cringy some of the main characters thirst is.

all about love by bell hooks is on so many must-read list. I've heard of bell hooks as such a thought leader on modern day feminism. We read the book for book club and in all honesty. It's didn't hit. hooks says it herself: our society, and especially younger generations can't really see love as the path forward through all the bullshit our world has. It's seems like an over simplification, and I don't think this book convinced me otherwise. I feel love and empathy can go a long way, but the people who most need to feel that love and empathy are the least likely to realize they need to. I suppose change starts at home. But globally speaking, I think things will get worse still before they get better.

Finally, this month I finished 90 Day Fiancé: Season 4. This is the Anfisa season, and Nicole/Azan's first season. I really like watching this show with my boyfriend a) because it's funny, b) because you can really discuss issues that arise on the show and ask how you would navigate that. It can really be healthy in getting to know your own partner. Some general takeaways: if a couple has an arrangement of sugar baby:sugar daddy/mommy, we really have no place to judge that as long a the arrangement is clear. If someone lies about their end of that arrangement THEN we can judge them. Anfisa seemed incredibly clear about what she wanted and needed. Jorge on the other hand was the one lying about his financial capabilities. We have since started two other seasons (Before the 90 Days: Season 4; 90 Day Fiancé: Season 5)

See you next month!

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luciddreamslikeelectricity · 10 months

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Feels like mrvl doesn't even want to write Bucky even when he's (allegedly) a main character. Because after like 4ish months of nothing, first new thing is some ugly cover reveals and a preview of his 15658135th "haha what if we rip off a prosthetic arm" joke. Very original /s

Like it's the same old that, or promoting that ugly white cat with highlight moments more than the (alleged) character, or more Disney-esque "physical disability is a sign of questionable morality"-style writing and/or design changes for the millionth time.

Glorified plot vehicle at best with throwaway and one-note character writing is all this he's getting tbh, even if it's a (slight) improvement from the last decade. But it's still very washed and boring.

sorry I'm just seeing this.....did you read the first issue of thunderbolts? it was certainly......something. I think, no matter what happens, I'm going to be upset about it because the premise is literally sharon and bucky go behind steve's ("the man they both love" according to #them. gag) back and kill the red skull, which is so Bad like, I'd much rather see steve or sam fight the skull, not this fake thunderbolts team where sharon is lying to her "extremely sensitive superhero boyfriend" like,,,, he isn't a child and has been fighting nazis since before she was born :/ I can't even be too upset about the way they're writing bucky because of how they're treating steve, who I like more, tbh but I totally agree with your observation about their ableism.....honestly, I'm not sure if it's an improvement, - maybe a slight one because the bar is so low? - what they're doing with bucky. That fuck ass cat didn't show up, which is a plus, I suppose 😭 The writing is bad and their writing for sharon is, for some reason, edgy teenager-ish.....I think they should just kill every character involved in this except natasha because I don't care anymore. And yeah, their attempt to make bucky a main character is a joke because it isn't like it hasn't ever been done but I suppose they just aren't very talented.

#anonymous

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two-sides-samecoin · 1 year

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People always cry we take Robin's agency that she just be allowed to date Nancy without problems and that she shouldn't care about Steve. Like they are the ones who completely take away Robin's agency. It's clear to me that Robin values Steve's friendship so much, by not making her care about Steve's feelings you take away so much from Robin's character. I genuinely think those people had no best friends. But what can you expect from people who can't even admit that Nancy played the bigger role in the breakup with Steve. Like Steve wasn't perfect, he couldn't be there for Nancy like she wanted but then she should not have strung him along for months. I'm not villainizing her it's literally in the show. She admits it herself and then doesn't take any accountability for it. Like I believe if Stancy talked it out, from Steve's side he would want to make it work. Nancy wasn't 100% in it from the beginning. Which is fine she doesn't have to love him just be honest with him. If Steve would have fucked the person Nancy was worried about two days after a huge fight, people would see it as cheating on his behalf. Like what is worse lying to your boyfriend that you love him since the beginning or not completely understanding your girlfriend's trauma because you deal with your own?

Or they constantly bring up his past mistakes that he's a bad person so Robin would have no problems leaving him. Like they argue Steve left Nancy wasted at the party when the subtext suggests he didn't because why should Jonathan lie about it. He loved Nancy and hated Steve why should he make him look better, plus he knew Steve was upset so it seems to me they had a little talk and Steve asked him to take her home. It would have been ooc for Steve to leave her there given he is a protective person, he would make sure she got home safely. This is the guy who doesn't want her to blow up the lab because it's dangerous if you think he would abandon her in that situation with no one to keep her safe you don't get his character. He just couldn't be with her because she hurt him. And it would have been ooc for Jonathan to lie about this. Jonathan is a no bullshit person he told Nancy what he thinks in s1 why not in that instance?

Or people still think Steve is homophobic because of s1, when he really owned up to everything. He literally exepted Robin with no problems. Or on the topic of slutshaming, he never expected Nancy to forgive him he wanted to make it up to her. She also took a month to overthink and then gave him a chance. If she can forgive Jonathan why is Steve the exeption? And to use this as a reason for the breakup is just arguing in bad faith. Like why would she date him if she can't forgive him?

Or they use Robin as a person who hated Steve in highschool for his ways when in reality she only disliked him because she was jealous. There was no indication he was a bully to her. Stop using Robin for anti Steve agenda she will pick him over everything. If you want Steve people stop talking about Nancy maybe don't make her fuck his best friend??? Again I hated my best friend's exes for less. Even if my bff made mistakes I still hated the exes for theirs and Nancy made mistakes so big in that relationship Robin wouldn't be cool.

okay so gonna put some of this under read more cuz it’s kind of long

please the amount of times i’ve seen them completely just throw robin’s absence away is insane like idk they’re all crazy about us doing it when honestly we’re the ones to constantly give robin her own storyline and give her deeper thought about her family and actually give her a family who does love her no matter what. god yeah people who think that robin just is going to say ‘fuck steve’ just don’t understand her character at all. also she has a deep connection with steve and this friendship is still relatively new (people forget that they’ve only actually been friends for not even a year - they started being friends in july and then in march of the next year they are still close) so idk why people just want robin to betray steve and then make everything okay. it’s just weird. god everything in this paragraph is a fucking banger.

honestly people who are still bitter about steve in season 1 just are projecting their own experiences with their bullies and making steve seem like a bigger bully then what we actually see in canon which is him just living in his own bubble and reacting to the things around him. like people can’t understand this but steve in season 1 is just reacting to the events that are going on around him and that’s honestly it. steve isn’t going out of his way to target nancy or jonathan - he’s just reacting to the possibility that nancy cheated on him with jonathan (which is wild how canon just did this anyway and then made it seem like steve should just lie down on the floor and take it). i didn’t even think about that but yeah it would have been soo OOC for jonathan to lie about it especially about steve who he admitted in season 1 that he didn’t like steve. genuinely why would he lie for steve?

i fucking hate everyone being like ‘he’s homophobic’ because the thing is was he really? he just said one word that people just threw around back then - not saying that it’s right. but people use that one like to say steve is homophobic but we never actually get an opinion on what he believes. also like hopper has said worse shit than steve and hopper is seen as this amazing alley to byler (which ironically bylers are always the ones to say this sjit about steve) but yeah like it’s insane that they clutch onto that one line vs steve in season 3 and 4 bejng the most welcoming person to robin and encouraging her to pursue someone when they both think vickie is a safe person to be open and have a crush on. honestly yeah about the nancy forgave him like she had to do that on her own. do i think it’s wild she got together with him after that? yes! but also she does that in canon. also my two cents but sometimes people get caught up on this slut shaming for no reason cuz nancy fr slutshames other women and it’s no big deal to anyone.

legit robin would hate the fact that people use this as anti steve slander. like you said robin only really hated steve because of her own shit and she was jealous. like steve doesn’t know robin exists - why do people think he would know she exists prior canon (unless it’s for an au or just a slight mention of robin where steve forgets who she is)? honestly it’s just so frustrating how people can see stobin’s friendship and then be like ‘okay i’m going to destroy everything about this friendship but the people who like stobin go to far because they lost this friendship’. legit people be like why you talking about steve but then immediately give robin his ex and think they’re being progressive or some shit. also like i don’t even think ronance would make it work by themselves, steve is just the cherry on top of why i don’t think they would romantically be together so it’s not even like i just hate them cuz of the ex thing - i just don’t think their personalities work well at all. also nancy is legit kn a relationship with jonathan and does not at all have a queer plot line in canon (that’s all fanon).

#answered asks #stranger things #thanks

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virginmiri99 · 1 year

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What’s the deal with Tommy and his girlfriend? Straightbaiting or true love?

Despite knowing next to nothing on Tommy’s girlfriend, we’ve come together as a group to ask one simple question: is knowing of her presence a good or bad thing? Critblr consensus is this reveal was a BAD IDEA.

While we can’t be sure when Tommy began to date his girlfriend, the general idea is it must’ve been around August-October. Tommy’s tweet on Oct. 12th was most likely about people coming up to him while he was out with her, which makes him revealing her in November even stranger. Even if they’ve known each other for a better part of the year—it’s still only been months, and he’s put her on blast to his main channel viewers. Hell, Tubbo’s boyfriends name has never even officially been “revealed” and they have been dating for a year.

So why does Tommy reveal to millions he’s dating someone after months of knowing her and everyone telling him not to?

My personal theory is he’s in his honeymoon phase; full of love and wanting to scream it from the rooftops because he’s an excitable person. But, his impulsivity clouded his thinking here, paired with his content-driven brain, it’s almost like he sees his girlfriend as a character in the TommyInnit show. I certainly don’t believe Tommy is like that 100% of his time—clearly not, she’s close enough to him to hang out with his friends one on one—but he’s always had a problem of seeing people in his life as Characters when a camera is rolling: Wilbur, the brother. Tubbo, the sidekick. Ranboo, the love interest. Phil, the dad. And now… his girlfriend—it’s content. It’s always content. What’s most interesting about the reveal is he admits he stretched the truth in his “story” of how he met her, which shows he at least is somewhat conscious of how he treated the situation and I’m glad that video was never released. The reveal video still pisses me off, though. What good came of making such a big deal about this situation? A few laughs on a stream? The newest bit to the TommyInnit show? Tommy admits himself people told him not to do this and he did it anyway. Here is a girl whom doesn’t want to be seen in any content, something Tommy has reiterated, and yet he uses her as content. I can’t be 100% sure about their relationship as I am some bitch on tumblr, but if I was in that situation I’d feel at least… uncomfortable. Looking at the way Tubbo treats his boyfriend, a non streamer, it’s wildly different to how Tommy treats his girlfriend. When the camera is rolling she’s not a person to him—she’s just content.

Theory 2: he revealed his girlfriend to “jump ahead of the situation.” This one is far fetched, but almost believable. It’s far fetched, because literally no one had any idea about her. So what exactly is he “jumping ahead” of? Fans coming up to him in public like “TOMMYINNIT IS THAT YOUR GIRLFRIEND?!?” very few people are that rude. It wasn’t an immediate need, he clearly spent a long time making the dreaded “first kiss” video that has luckily since been scrapped, so this is very far fetched. But still possible. He said he wanted “to be honest” with fans, but that is a complete and utter lie. Tommy lies all the time, and he continues to lie and stretch the truth. He admitted to lying in his scrapped video!!! Why did he say that?!

Theory 3: Straightbating. Tommy began to grow weary of being a very strange bisexual man off addaerall and wished to prove he was straight. I do believe he likes his girlfriend, and do we really need to go over it? You are not normal. I hope ur girlfriend is a fujoshi bc ur behavior towards Ranboo and Tubbo is CAPITAL W W-E-I-R-D! You know that tiktok that’s like “why do guys as so gay around the dudes?” and a guy stitched it with “what you need to be asking is why do guy act so straight around the girls?” that’s their relationship. What’s to even say?

Conclusión: The year is young, many thing happen in a year, true love can be found, people can move away, find new friends… it’s all about where time will take you. But… what’s most shocking to me about the girlfriend reveal is that no matter where in the timeline you place the point where they started dating… it’s still no time at all. It’s an impulsive decision. Let’s say something beautiful and true. Maybe their love will last an eternity and they are so happy together and Tommy loves her so much he wants to scream it from the roof tops! They will stay together happily! ^_^ yayyyyy!!!! ^-^ Now, let’s say something wicked and ironic. The case of matter is: relationships when you’re 18 don’t always work out. Sometimes they do, but it’s rare. It takes maturity and certain circumstances… and sometimes you still have growing to do and you may not be able to do that with your partner. It’s tragic, that’s the beauty of life and love. People come and go from your life—but when you’re a celebrity with millions of eyes on you, those relationships become apart of history. If Tommy’s current behavior is any clue, I don’t imagine things always being greener on the other side of the camera. If the way he treats his girlfriend right now continues, or even worsens, I don’t see such a private person being cool with it. If they breakup Tommy’s past content suddenly becomes very awkward. His girlfriend is clearly has befriended many of Tommy’s friends, which would make the situation all the more awkward. If they breakup will it be heinous and awful? Or quick and amicable? Will she still hangout with people like Ranboo and Beky? Will Tommy be cool with that? Who knows, these are all questions that influence a relationship or someone who may not be completely happy in a relationship.

All in all, Tommy’s decision to reveal his girlfriend the way he did was a BAD IDEA. Not only does it make fans see her as a Character in the TommyInnit show, but it makes Tommy see her that way too. Which is like… not cool! Take a page out of Tubbo’s book! She’s a person, Tom! She’s not a stinger on a stream, and with his current persona, no matter how he tries to weave her in, it all comes off as exploitation. I hope they’re both having a wonderful day right now, though! Peace and Love and let’s see where the earths rotation takes us this year 🫶🏻

#tommy is the problem #FROM:jan 17th #this is still very good

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whimsicaldragonette · 2 years

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ARC Review: Paris Daillencourt is About to Crumble by Alexis Hall

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Publication Date: November 1, 2022

Synopsis:

From the bestselling author of Boyfriend Material comes a sweet and scrumptious romantic comedy about facing your insecurities, finding love, and baking it off, no matter what people say. Paris Daillencourt is a recipe for disaster. Despite his passion for baking, his cat, and his classics degree, constant self-doubt and second-guessing have left him a curdled, directionless mess. So when his roommate enters him in Bake Expectations, the nation’s favourite baking show, Paris is sure he’ll be the first one sent home. But not only does he win week one’s challenge—he meets fellow contestant Tariq Hassan. Sure, he’s the competition, but he’s also cute and kind, with more confidence than Paris could ever hope to have. Still, neither his growing romance with Tariq nor his own impressive bakes can keep Paris’s fear of failure from spoiling his happiness. And when the show’s vicious fanbase confirms his worst anxieties, Paris’s confidence is torn apart quicker than tear-and-share bread. But if Paris can find the strength to face his past, his future, and the chorus of hecklers that live in his brain, he’ll realize it’s the sweet things in life that he really deserves.

My Rating: ★★★★★

*My Review below the cut.

My Review:

This book took me longer to finish than any book (that I was actively reading) in recent memory. I started and finished several others before managing to finish this one and that is because it was incredibly emotionally difficult for me to read. I related to Paris too hard, you see, and so I spent most of the book cringing hard out of second-hand embarrassment.

This book is an incredibly accurate portrayal of mental illness - specifically anxiety that gets so bad it runs your life before you realize it. I've been there. Anxiety isn't my only mental illness, but it has loomed very large in my life and so I felt everything Paris was feeling on a very visceral level.

Case-in-point: even though it was a struggle for me to read, I was wracked with anxiety and guilt the entire time because I love this author and I really did enjoy this book and had intended to finish and review it before publication and… well, it's a month past publication date now so you can see how that's going.

My thoughts at 50%: "I am making such painfully slow progress through this book and I feel so guilty about it because I'd meant to finish and review it, gods, weeks ago now. And the thing is, it's not that I'm not enjoying it or something. It's so so good. It's funny and relatable and secondhand-embarassment-inducing because gods Paris is basically me. And it's painful to see the worst of yourself in print. I love it."

I am SO glad that Paris learned strategies to cope with his anxiety, as well as started medication for it. It's so clear that he is so much better by the end. Still dealing with it, but actually dealing with it rather than flailing about and crying about everything and being terrified of everything and feeling guilty about everything. I also loved the group therapy sessions and the way Paris implements all the strategies for coping with his anxiety.

Tariq is adorable and while he certainly wasn't perfect in their relationship I am glad for the way the book ended. They have the potential to be really, really good together, now that they both know where they stand and can really see each other.

I really enjoyed the reality baking show framework, and the other contestants were great. And the Daves. And Morag. Really, all the characters were such… individuals. They were 100% themselves and that is my favorite kind of character.

In some ways, I think it was good for me to read this. Because I can look back on my former (un-medicated and un-therapied) self and really see what went wrong in my relationships as I was growing up and all the ways my brain lied to me. Which is why it was SO important to see Paris getting better at realizing when his brain is lying and how to deal with it. We see his thoughts and the anxiety trying to take over and the way he can combat that (with effort).

I had no idea how much this book would affect me emotionally. I mean, intellectually I knew it involved anxiety, but I underestimated how difficult it would be. I have struggled with anxiety my whole life but have spent the last 15 years coming to terms with it and learning to manage it. My husband has only recently really begun that journey, as has my kid. Anxiety is practically another member of my family, in other words. And sometimes it's hard to see something that is such a big part of your existence.

It's had to see it, as in it's almost invisible it's so prevalent. But also hard to see it, as in it physically hurts to watch it play out and recognize how prevalent it is. Watching Paris apologize incessantly about things he really didn't need to apologize for was a lot. I saw myself, and my husband, and my kid in that. Again the second-hand embarrassment was intense.

Even though this book was very much about Paris' anxiety, it was also a funny story about a baking competition, and a relationship that had problems and obstacles but was also so incredibly sweet. I love Alexis Hall's way with words, and his ability to create touching but also hilarious moments. His characters always feel so well-developed and real that they try to jump off the page, and this was no exception. I loved them all. (Except Catherine Parr and maybe Gretchen.)

I haven't read the previous Bake Expectations book yet, but it didn't impede my enjoyment of this story. I hope to get to it soon (and hope it's not quite so emotionally difficult to read).

*Thanks to NetGalley and Forever for providing an early copy for review.

#paris daillencourt is about to crumble #winner bakes all #alexis hall #queer romance #anxiety rep #seriously #so much anxiety rep #arc review #shilo reads #netgalley #book review #forever

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rek1s-headband · 4 years

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Hi! May I please request random bf headcanons for cherry? Ty!

➯A/N: Hi!! Thanks for the request! Hope you enjoy, and have a lovely day!

➯ Random boyfriend headcannons

➯ Characters: Kaoru Sakurayashiki x gn! reader

➯ Warnings: none:)

If yall met when you were still in high school, he would’ve tried to convince you at least once to let him pierce you or give you a tattoo.

That’s how you would’ve gotten together initially too. His face inches from yours, sticking his tongue out in concentration as he pulls the needle through your lip. Adjusting a piece of jewellery on your lip to match his, he’d gently wipe a stray drop of blood away from your lips with his thumb

You found you couldn’t pull away as you stared into his eyes, slowly closing them as he pulled you in for a gentle kiss. It was quick, but as soon as you pulled away he was pulling you back in for another, and another. The light throbbing in your lip was the least of your worries

He would’ve been so protective of you when he’d go with Adam and Joe to those underground skate meet-ups. Of course, he’s only gotten worse, now he refuses to leave your side at S for fear of some creep trying to hit on you

You have the most unnecessary beef with Carla. You know its a joke of course, but since Carla is, well, a robot, she’s not too knowledgeable about teasing. You’d ask her a load of random, strange questions she couldn’t possibly answer, or you’ll tell her how Kaoru is all yours and she’ll start overheating. Now any time you try to ask her a question she literally just. refuses to answer you

“Master, please tell y/n I dont want to speak to them.” “Oh I’ll show you master-”

Kaoru is indifferent to PDA. He doesn’t hate it, he just doesn’t think others deserve to see you like that. Hell give you the occasional forehead kiss, but even so his arm is constantly glued to you in some way

Behind closed doors though, he cant seem to get enough of you. He loves having you in his lap, his head on your shoulder while you watch TV. If you play with his hair he’s like putty in your hands, leaning into your touch with closed eyes and almost a purr. Loves when you drag your fingertips along his arms and his back, its a comfort to him

You and him will constantly gang up on Joe and absolutely violate the man. It’s already bad with just Kaoru, now imagine the poor guy having to deal with both of you

You’ll hide in the crowd during his exhibitions, occasionally shouting out praise trying to throw him off.

Or worse, you’ll just silently stand there, watching him look around suspiciously, knowing you’re hiding somewhere even if you hadn’t explicitly specified you’d be there. When he finally locks eyes with you, he has to try extremely hard not to laugh as he watches you stare him down, a small grin creeping over your face

You’ll go on dates to Joe’s restaurant just to annoy the shit out of him. You’ll act extra lovey-dovey just to make him uncomfortable, and the pair of you will fake a proposal at least once a month to get free cake(its always one of those shitty plastic rings you get from the dollar store too)

You dyed your hair pink to match with him once, and he absolutely loved it. The two of you would style your hair and clothes to match, and you were quite the sight to see at S

Slow dancing in the kitchen while you make dinner is a regular thing for the two of you. You’ll be idly stirring the pot when one of your songs come on, and suddenly Kaoru is pulling you away from the stove, twirling you around the kitchen and humming in your ear. More often than not you’ll get carried away and burn the dinner.

Who cares, takeout tastes good too

He’s awful at tying his hair up properly, and gets you to tie it for him before an exhibition or a race

You’ve curled his hair before while he slept, and he was insanely fascinated by it. He spent at least an hour shaking his head in front of the mirror, raking is hands through the wavy locks. He kept it curled when you tied it up before S, and it was a big hit during his race. Suddenly he was asking you to curl his hair more often

During the colder months, you and Kaoru will sleep impossibly close, a mess of tangled limbs while Carla quietly plays lullabies in the background. In the warmer months though, you couldn’t be further apart. Lying above the covers in minimal clothing, you’ll both hang off either side of the bed, hissing at each other to not come closer to them while you sweat like pigs. Hey, sometimes romance is keeping your distance

It’s a regular thing for the two of you to get wine drunk and whip out some old board games, yelling at each other when you get put in jail in Monopoly, flipping the Scrabble board when Kaoru insists that “milf” is not a word you’re allowed to use

“ITS AN ACRONYM” “YOURE AN ACRONYM” “WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT EVEN MEAN”

Reki and Langa love you. Miya took a bit of warming up to you, but as soon as he saw you bullying Joe with Cherry he adored you

If you can skate, you would constantly race against Kaoru just to see if you could beat him. However, with his fancy ass board that already hated you and his insane skills, losses were much more common than wins

He can never get any work done with you around him. You’ll lie your head in his lap while he tries to write, drawing smiley faces in the corners of his paper. He literally has to carry you out of the room just so he can get a bit of peace

Loves conspiracy theories. He’ll shake you awake at four in the morning, rambling about the new video he just watched about McDonald’s actually being run by a cult of clowns

*episode 9 spoilers* after Ad*m gave him a slap of his skateboard, you’d help him wash his hair in the shower, wrapping plastic bags around his casts and making jokes

*washing his back* “don’t make it gay Kaoru” “I DIDNT EVEN SAY ANYTHING”

#kaoru sakurayashiki headcanons #kaoru sakurayashiki #kaoru sakurayashiki x reader #cherry blossom #cherry blossom headcanons #cherry blossom x reader #sk8 the infinity x reader #sk∞#sk8 the infinity #sk8 x reader #sk8 cherry blossom #sk8 kaoru

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crazycookiecrumbles · 3 years

Text

Scream For Me (4)

A/N: 4th part after Scream For Me (3)

Would totally appreciate some feedback and comments on this series, that way I know to continue it if people actually like it, lol.

Masterlist

Pairings/ Characters: Shang-Chi x Avenger!Reader (Shaun x Reader, takes place before events of Shang-Chi movie), Katy Chen, Xu Xialing, Wenwu

Warnings: fighting, angst, spoilers from the movie

Summary: In your fit of rage you decided to beat Shaun (Shangqi) to his sister’s side. You bond with Xialing, and then you find yourself pulled into the whole mess that is his traumatic superhero origin story.

WC: 5,960

You weren’t sure what to expect by coming to see Xialing early, nor did you have any idea what you were going to do for these two days. At first, in your anger, showing up to see her before Shangqi was a great idea. Now that you’re actually here with your boyfriend’s little — if he even was still that to you — sister was making you a little nervous. You knew nothing about her and had no way to prepare yourself to meet her, but, to your surprise, this wasn’t so bad.

“Have you ever been to China before?” Xialing asked you that evening as you both left the club.

“Once, I was 16. I came on a mission,” you explained to her as you two walked down the street.

“Wow. You started after my brother.”

“That’s just when I came here, I was working before then,” you explained. “ I started training at around 11, first mission was at 12. Nothing crazy, but what else is there to do with a kid that has unexplainable powers?”

Xialing shook her head, “Another child without a childhood. And what of your parents?”

You hummed to yourself as you thought about it, “Honestly? It’s a little fuzzy. I can’t remember.”

She raised an eyebrow, “Nothing at all? You don’t remember your life before age 11?”

You shrugged, “That’s totally normal. Trauma makes you repress stuff, right?”

“I don’t think it should repress 11 years of your life,” Xialing stared at you in shock. “How do you even know if your parents are dead? Is that what SHIELD told you? An organization that was muddled with Hydra? They could’ve been lying to you this entire time.”

You laughed for a few seconds before realizing that she could absolutely be right. You would be none the wiser to anything being different because you, truthfully, had no idea. It made you wonder if you were even Inhuman like they told you. Were you human at all? Well, now that was just silly. You knew part of you had to be. Hell, Bucky’s blood (and in the past, Steve’s or Natasha’s) worked on you because they all had a super soldier serum (whether American-made or a Soviet Specialty) embedded in their DNA. The alterations to their blood was the only way you could accept someone else’s blood.

Oh, god. Xialing made a point that you had never once questioned in your life. And what did you have to show for it? No understanding of who you truly were or where you came from, just a lifetime of murder and mayhem and secrets that never benefitted anyone in the long run.

“It’s okay,” Xialing said quietly. “You were a child, none the wiser. Now you know.”

“I, I guess I do,” you mumbled to yourself. “Well, that’s going to keep me up for a month. Uh, where are we going?”

“To eat. We are going to eat, then you will stay with me. I have space.”

“Oh, I’m not trying to impose on you. I can get a hotel — “

“Well, if I am in danger of my father and you are as heroic as you claim to be, don’t you think staying with me would make your job easier?” She raised a perfect eyebrow in your direction. “Not that I need anyone’s protection. I can handle myself, but it seems counterproductive to be away from me.”

You pursed your lips and nodded, “You’re absolutely correct. Okay, then.”

“You did not bring clothes.”

“Did not think that far ahead,” you admitted.

She nodded her head once, “We will shop tomorrow.”

You thought about this briefly, “I could do with some retail therapy.”

“And I suspect I’m going to need retail therapy soon as well, so we’ll get it done tomorrow,” Xialing told you as she opened the door to the restaurant, “Right now, we eat. We’ll tell teach other stories. I’ll fill you in on my life and you can tell me about that cool scar on your neck.”

Your hand instinctively went up to your neck and you chuckled, “Oh, you know, the usual. Just someone trying to assassinate me.”

“How fun.”

—~*~—

You learned that after their mother’s death, which led to you expressing your sincere apologies to Xialing and prompting you to make a mental note to speak to Shangqi about that as well, that Shangqi was raised as the favored son. He was the one being groomed to take over their father’s legacy, who was doted on and trained night and day, while Xialing was left feeling incredibly alone.

It explained a lot about him, now that you thought about it.

It also explained his relationship with Katy. He had abandoned his little sister, but the way Shangqi and Katy were together, well, he was like her big brother with the way he cared for her and how they bonded so well together. It also explained why he was usually so docile. That night outside the bar, you distinctly remember him saying that he didn’t want any trouble.

That figured. Someone raised to kill a man in every way possible and ran from that life, the last thing he’d want to do was be forced to fight someone. It also explained the look in his eyes when you refused to tell him who was behind the hit on you, which went to your next point that you did not share with Xialing.

Her father was the leader of the Ten Rings, and you knew, thanks to Sam finding a dagger that had been left behind almost like a calling card, that they were responsible for the hit. According to the work Bucky and Sam had done, the assassination attempt had sought out the Ten Rings to do the job. They had a few possible sources of who it could have been, but as of right now, none of those leads had checked out.

It bothered you very, very much, but not as much as thinking that your boyfriend’s father could’ve been behind your near death. Really, what a small world, the organization that he runs being the reason why Shangqi found out who you were, the reason why you nearly died. What a mess.

You had been enjoying your time with Xialing, at least. Watching her work was fascinating. Younger than you, but such a powerful force. You could see it. Even her walk exuded power, a presence that few people could master. You’d seen it before, Steve and Tony both had commanding presences, but both for such very different reasons. Xialing’s was different as well, when she walked, when she spoke to others, you could see ruthlessness within her, that was just what she exuded, but you could also, faintly, see a softer side to her, mercy, maybe. Perhaps the title of a merciful queen suited her on most occasions.

In the club, you were leaning against the glass wall and staring into the main area, watching the scores of people gather around and watch the fights.

“You can have a go, if you’d like,” Xialing said from behind her desk as she typed on her computer. “Any pick you’d like....after I’ve picked the contenders.”

You snorted, “As nice as that sounds, I’m going to decline.”

“Why?”

“I don’t hold back,” you explained. “Plus, it would be a shame to ruin this outfit.”

Ah, yes, the outfit. Let’s just say that you really, really envied Xialing’s sense of style, and she had rubbed off on you a little bit when you went shopping together. She was very influential, and you didn’t mind it at all.

“Right, you have to look your best for when my brother comes. Eat his own heart, no?” Xialing teased.

You snickered, “I like you, Xialing, you get me.”

“I like the taste of revenge,” she smirked and glanced at her set of monitors that held security camera footage. “Ah, I believe this is him approaching right now. The woman with long hair and the bright pants, that’s —“

“Are they parachute pants?”

“Yes.”

“Katy,” you nodded and went over to look at the feed. “That’s them.”

“Perfect,” Xialing pressed a button on her desk. The two of you watched as he signed a document without reading it at all.

“This idiot,” you sighed. “Who signs a contract without a lawyer present?”

“My brother,” Xialing sighed, already seemingly tired of this interaction she had yet to actually have.

Jon Jon entered Xialing’s office, “You rang, boss?”

Xialing smirked, “Greet my brother and his friend at the door. You pretend you don’t know my name and never heard of me. Just prepare him for my fight.”

He beamed, “You got it boss. Any chance you want in on this, Siren? Huh? Boost your brand, your street cred, make some serious money.”

“How about next time?”

“I’ll hold you to that,” He grinned and left the office.

Yeah, putting yourself on the dark web where tons of people who probably hated you and wanted to kill you could see you was probably not the brightest plan at the moment.

Xialing stood up and turned off her main computer before grabbing her cloak, “Any special requests before I go and kick my brother’s ass?”

“Testicles.”

“Done,” she giggled. “I was going to do that anyway. Coming to watch? You can stand by Jon Jon. He announces from the top. Security will let you up.”

You thought about it. Watching him get his ass kicked in person would be so nice and satisfying.

“Sure.”

You grabbed your bright red leather jacket and slipped it on. It had a grey hoodie attached to it, so you slipped the hood on over your head and followed Xialing out the door. She went to prepare for her entrance, and you went to watch the fight near Jon Jon. You could see Katy far down below nursing her drink, and part of you wished you had gone down to join her.

As the fight commenced, you relished this moment. Xialing was incredibly badass, and the way she fought against her brother was incredibly impressive. You were in awe at the way she fought, and now you wondered if you had wasted an opportunity to learn a few moves from her.

When she kicked him in the face to end the fight you found yourself cringing and holding your own face as Shangqi hit the ground. She destroyed her brother, and it was brutal to watch. You even saw blood on the glass after they took him away, and you felt a pang of guilt for enjoying his beating so much.

Jon Jon nodded to you and gestured with his chin on where to go. You walked away and went to Xialing’s private locker room. You waited a few minutes before knocking. Xialing opened the door and stared at you with a smirk on her face.

“Worth it?”

“Definitely amazing,” you agreed. “Are you okay?”

“Not a scratch. He was easy.”

“I meant emotionally,” you replied.

She stared at you for a moment. This took her by surprise. Sure, you both had trauma bonded. You both were mad at her brother, but she did not think there would be genuine care and feelings attached to this.

She was quiet as an empty stare met your eyes, and you knew she was anywhere but with you in that moment.

“I’ll be fine. I always am,” she nodded her head. “You can go to my office. I have a few things to take care of, and I will be there soon. I’m sure Shangqi will be thrilled.”

“Here’s hoping,” You snorted and left the locker room.

Walking to her office was scarier than the first time you went there. You were going to face Shangqi for the first time since you found out his secret, since you yelled at him and ran across the globe to get to his sister before he did, just to prove a point.

And what point was that? That you could be helpful too? The more you thought about it, the more you wondered if you were just being really, really stupid. Maybe he was looking out for you by not asking you to go with him to Macau. Maybe he was just trying to make sure you were safe, because he didn’t do that for you the last time you needed someone to.

But, of course, you were stubborn. More than that, you’d been raised for this life. You could handle anything that came your way.

You entered the office and saw that Shangqi still hadn’t arrived. You sat on a chair first before realizing you were too anxious to do that. You then moved over and stood by the windows and stared at the nightlife outside. With hands shoved into your pockets, you zoned out completely and wondered if you were making a stupid, childish mistake, but you had no time to change your mind.

The door opened and you heard shuffling as someone told Shangqi to sit down. You could see through the reflection that he was holding a tissue up to his face to catch the blood that his sister drew from him. He stopped walking and glanced at you, confused as to who you were for a moment before he chalked it up to you being another member of her security team in the room.

You turned around just as he was about to sit down. The action made him stumble over his two feet and nearly fall over the bench completely.

“(Y/N),” his name fell from your lips and you felt your heart ache as you stared at him. He looked you over from head to toe. He’d never seen you dress this way, and he was absolutely not expecting to see you here, not after the way you two had left things back home. “What, what are you doing here?”

“You said your sister was in danger,” you said quietly. “So I came to be of assistance.”

He sputtered, “But, but how? I mean —“

“I have great friends, Shaun,” you said. “Or should I say Shangqi?”

His chest tightened as he stared at you,” She told you.”

“Yup,” you crossed your arms over your chest and walked towards him, meeting him halfway in the middle of the room as he stepped towards you as well. You tilted your head back and stared up at him, “She told me quite a lot.”

“Babe — “

“I’m sorry for your mother, Shangqi,” you said quietly. “I’m so sorry for the life you’ve lived since that happened.”

He didn’t expect to hear this. He bowed his head slightly before nodding, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” you replied. “But I can’t believe that after all we went through together, after everything I told you, you couldn’t come clean with me.”

“I was trying to leave it behind. Like you — “

“I wasn’t trying to leave it behind or escape it,” you told him. “I was just following my heart. I made the choice to move because I wanted to be with you and see if everything I had felt over these last couple of years was real, but if I had to do my duty, if something happened, I would have. You were the one that was running, Shangqi. I was just trying to live.”

There was so much he wanted to say. He wanted to tell you that he wanted to live too. He just wanted to be away from his father, be away from that place where his mother had been murdered, be away from all those horrific memories and live a new life that he wanted to make his own, to live the way he wanted to and enjoy it.

The two of you had secrets for different reasons, but neither one of you were very different from the other. Trained as children, parental issues, made to serve a higher purpose. The only difference was that you steered into the skid. You went with it from day one, and Shangqi eventually resisted and fled the second he could.

But he thought it was so interesting to say you weren’t running away from your life as an Avenger, and you know what, maybe you weren’t, and he just never saw it. You clearly were in contact with all of them and had a good relationship with them. You never tried hiding or changing your looks at all. People came up to you for pictures and you took them. He assumed all this time it was because you sang at the club, not once did it ever occur to him it was for a different reason.

Still, though, Shangqi loved you. He knew he screwed up. He had all the time in the world to tell you who he really was, what happened to him in his life, and he waited too long to do it. But this was not what he wanted, to lose you due to this secret. He wished you’d, sort of, be like Katy and just roll with it, but he didn’t yell at Katy for hiding a secret. He didn’t think Katy was working with his father, willing to sell him out and do his bidding regardless of hurting his feelings.

At this moment, he just wanted to tell you that he loved you, that he wanted to be with you, and that he wanted to work this out. He didn’t know where the two of you stood, and he didn’t want that to be left up in the air, but before he could say anything, Xialing was strolling through her office doors and smirking at the two of you.

“It was a pleasure to meet your girlfriend, Shangqi. She’s a delight. We had fun talking about you,” Xialing said.

“Great,” he muttered under his breath. He said something to her Mandarin which prompted a response from her rather quickly that made his face change in an instant. You, naturally, had no idea what it was, and part of you wished you did just to really understand the look on his face.

Katy entered after while stuffing money into her fanny pack. You snorted at the sight as Shangqi questioned where she got the money from, “Did you bet against me?”

“No,” she lied and looked to Xialing.” Hi, Xialing. I’m Katy. You’re, like, such a badass. Everything that you do is, like, so cool. That was really cool.” she gushed.

Xialing smiled, ”I like your pants.”

“Thank you, thanks. Yeah.” There was a genuine grin on Katy’s face as she spoke to her, and the two women could not stop smiling at one another. It had you raising an eyebrow and wondering if this was a side plot you could possibly embark on: get Xialing and Katy to romance one another.

It was at this moment Katy spotted you after she smoothed down her pants. She gasped and pointed at you, “No freaking way! How did you get here?”

“Wong. Portal. We’re friends,” you explained quickly.

Katy sighed happily, “I am so glad to see you. This guy would not shut the fuck up about you on the plane. I mean, really. He was just so melancholic and — “

“Can we not?” Shangqi interrupted Katy. “We don’t have time for that right now.”

Xialing cut right to the chase, “Fine. What do you want?” She asked as she returned to her business.

As Shangqi launched into the conversation with Xialing and Katy listened intently, you zoned out. You knew where this was going, This was something between the two of them that they needed to discuss. You stood up and excused yourself from the area, from Shangqi’s side, and went to gaze out the window. You caught part of their conversation as you looked around, that their pendant was stolen for some reason, and that their father was coming for hers.

It was when Xialing confessed that she never sent that postcard that made the hair on the back of your neck stand up. Just as you spun around to say something, an explosion went off and a hand tugged on your arm.

You were led right to a back exit while Shaun was looking around. You glanced outward and saw Katy staring at you with a look of betrayal while Shanqi was screaming at you all. Jon Jon gave him the middle finger, for what reason you had no idea, and Xialing was dragging you.

“How could you leave them?” You snapped. “I’m going back —“

Xialing whipped around and faced you, “You were an agent, right? This is strategy — and I want to scare him and have him know what it feels like to be left for dead. We will circle back. We are getting them out first,” Xialing said, gesturing to Jon Jon and a few others of her team. “They will be killed without prejudice. I won’t let that happen.”

Okay. A mission. You understood that.

You and Xialing escorted the rest of her team to safety and made sure they were free to leave. As you were heading back you could hear screaming. You were able to look through the many windows and see Katy screaming for help.

“How good’s your balance?” You asked quickly.

Xialing understood, “I’ll get Katy.”

“I’ll take the stairs and handle them from inside,” you said. “They can’t keep meeting you on the scaffolding if they never make it.”

Xialing nodded to you and went for the first window she could to break it open and head out to save Katy. You ran towards the stairs and started running up, taking them two or three at a time until you found a group of henchmen dart into a room. You quickly ran into that room as well and saw them heading towards the window to climb up and attack. Quickly, you ran forward and screamed at them. They grabbed their heads and doubled over in agony, and the force of your scream sent them out the window, too far to be able to grab a bamboo pole and hang on.

You then ran to another floor and another, fighting any man you saw that could go out there and hurt Xialing, Katy, Shangqi. The last thing you wanted was for something to happen to any of them. They’d been through enough and, quite frankly, if someone hurt Katy, you were going to murder them.

An explosion went off that had you stumbling. You quickly ran to a window and stuck your head out to see your boyfriend racing inside to chase someone. You looked around until you spotted Katy and Xialing with each other.

“Are you okay?” You shouted.

“We’re fine! Go to Shaun!” Katy shouted. “He’s chasing that creepy guy!”

You had no idea what she meant by “creepy guy,” but you were going to find out soon, you assumed. You told them to be careful and spun around to find out where Shangqi had run off to. All you had to do was listen in closely to the sound of fighting, especially since you had already counted how many floors up Shangqi was from you.

Another explosion went off, and you knew that you were still a little ways off, you just hoped that you weren’t going to be too late — but you saw something else on the way that made you stop. You could see the backs of more men and quickly realized by the brightly colored pants in the forefront that Katy and Xialing had been caught.

Since you were behind them, you knew you had to do something. You just couldn’t use your full powers at the moment. You didn’t want to risk hurting their ears. Maybe now would be a good time to try something new?

Rather than your loud shriek, you did as Jemma once told you to do. You lowered your voice, picked a target. With your mouth in the form of an ‘o’, you released a low, quiet noise that had one of the men grabbing his skull and dropping to the ground. It surprised you for only a second, before you started to pick up your speed. You did it again and dropped another. This time his fall was noticed, but by the time they looked up to see what caused it, you were running knee-first into one of them and hearing a satisfying crunch as a result of it.

You landed on the ground and reached up to grab one of their weapons, your fist jabbing into his ribs before you struck the side of his knee, then swept his leg out from under him.

“(Y/N), don’t!” Xialing shouted, and you had no idea why she wanted you to stop.

You ignored her and kept fighting. That massive, hulking man you saw from the bus video stood in front of you, who you’d later learn to be Razor Fist, and you smirked as you realized that you finally had a real challenge in front of you.

Before you could strike him, a blue light and a series of rings struck you like a whip on your rib cage. You slammed into the dry wall hard, the wall indenting from the sheer impact. As you fell to the ground, someone stood before you saying, “Enough.” You first noticed the sandals and wondered who wore sandals to an ambush like this.

You were then grabbed by two pairs of arms and lifted to your feet. You came face to face with an older man, perfectly poised and clean-shaven, and he wore ten rings on his arms. Oh. This was their father.

“Don’t,” Xialing said quietly. You weren’t sure who it was directed to, her father, who probably felt like he had no reason to keep you alive, or you, who had the ability to scream in her father’s face right now and end it all.

This was their father, though. Even you wouldn’t cross that line.

“Bring her, too,” was all he said as he eyed your face for a moment. You weren’t sure if he was just taking in your features to remember who he was going to kill or if he realized that you were a job of his.

When you finally got to see Shangqi again, it was because his father had just ripped him off of someone with the same motion he used to slam you into a wall. As he was greeting his son, curiosity got the better of you. You glanced over to see who Shangqi was about to kill, and you suddenly felt sick to your stomach as the air rushed out of you.

Flashback:

You were so exhausted. You shoved the keys into the lock of your apartment door and pushed it open with the barest amount of effort you could spare. You were so tired, and sad, and stressed out from the night you had. You just wanted to go to bed, pretend you were fine, and deal with everything the following afternoon. You had lazily shut the door behind you and walked inside to drop your bag down. You realized you never fully shut your door, and so you spin around to do so.

That’s where you saw him. Death Dealer was right in front of you the second you turned around and it scared the shit out of you. That mask in the darkness was terrifying. You were so tired, so unaware, you didn’t see this coming. Even you didn’t piece together this happening after taking out two ambushes that night. You’d been living so carefree the last few months, you’d let yourself become a little too vulnerable.

You dodged a stab to the guts, then another, and another before your arm was grabbed and you were twisted around. You wriggled away, the two of you grappling with one another before you opened your mouth to scream. You were so tired, you just wanted to get this over with.

The second your mouth opened you felt a sharp pain on your neck. You saw blood shoot out and splatter across Death Dealer’s mask, suit, and your living room furniture. You screamed in pain, your scream taking out your back wall, some of your kitchen and living room, and sending Death Dealer out through the new opening of your apartment.

You held on to your neck but nothing was helping you as blood poured from your wound. You pulled your phone out of your pocket with the intent to call for help, but you felt so woozy. You collapsed on the ground, your phone clattering just a few feet away from you. Laying on your back, you stared up at your ceiling as you felt the life drain out of you, your grip on your neck becoming looser as you lost your strength. You could do nothing but lay there and try to hang on as you heard your phone start vibrating against the floor. Was this how your life ended? Alone, choking on your own blood in your living room? Who would find you? When? What would Shaun do when he found out? Would he mourn you, or find some bitter pleasure in it because you were a liar and you betrayed him?

End Flashback

A hand grabbed your shoulder to move you along. You flinched out of your flashback after the memory of an event you couldn’t remember suddenly found its way to the front of your mind. Your shoulder was grabbed tighter and you were shoved forward, the sudden movement making you stumble forward.

Another hand grabbed you, this time around your bicep as you were yanked backwards. You looked up to see the giant man from before glaring at you and raising his hand to strike. Your eyes narrowed, ready to get a second chance at fighting him, but Shangqi pulled you into his side.

“Don’t touch her,” he snarled as he glared up at him. “Don’t lay a single finger on her.”

Razor First smirked in amusement and lifted his other arm with a sword attached to it, “Well, how about this?”

“Enough,” Wenwu said as he placed his hand between the both of them. “Let him keep his toy, for now. Come, we’re going home.”

You glanced up at Shangqi. You expected anger on his face. Rage for having to be near his father again, for being caught by him, stopped for killing one of his men, but this was surprising. The way he looked at you reminded you of when you had been attacked, of when you were in the hospital. He looked scared, he looked worried, concerned, and it was directed at you.

“Are you okay?” He whispered.

You nodded, “I’m fine, yeah. I’m fine.”

“I’m right here,” he whispered, hand slipping down your bicep to slip his fingers through yours and hold your hand tightly. “I won’t let him hurt you. You have my word.”

Wow. And to think you purposely wanted to make Shangqi feel like shit the way you had felt, and here he was supporting you, holding your hand, looking after you. All the while, his father watched this interaction silently behind the both of you.

What an interesting sight for him to see. At first he didn’t recognize you. There was something familiar about your face, but he couldn’t quite place it because your hair was different today, as was your makeup and clothing choice. You looked different than usual, than what he had been given at first, but his son helped him figure out who you were.

It was an easy tell. With the way Shangqi looked at you, he knew immediately who you were. The way Shangqi looked at you reminded him of how he looked at his mother, which could only mean one thing, You were the girl he’d been obsessed over for years after he ran away from the Compound. You were the girl who had his son wrapped around his finger, who turned Shangqi into a hopeless romantic with a feral tendency to protect someone, a trait that reminded him of himself.

Yet, most importantly, you were the distraction in his son’s life, and you were the woman that Death Dealer failed to kill, it seems. My, my, how life took such an interesting turn.

~*~

During the helicopter ride, you sat between Wenwu and Razor Fist.

Such a dumb name.

While you could’ve reach across to hold Shangqi’s hand to support him as you noticed how he stared at his former home, you decided you were going to slip your foot across and tap his. It seemed the more subtle thing to do, what with his father right next to you and likely not enjoying your presence. Shangqi glanced at you, and you offered a soft smile and a nod. He nodded as well, and ignored the fact that his father was staring hard at him.

Upon landing, you all stepped out, and it was obvious that Wenwu praised his son with how he announced his arrival, ignoring Xialing in the background who stayed with Katy. Even you stood back as Wenwu had guided his son forward and away from them.

Wenwu waved his hand dismissively, “Take the girls to their room,” he said. But when you started walking away with them, Shanqi protested.

“She’s coming with me,” he said.

He’d ordinarily feel fine with you going with his sister and Katy. He’d prefer it, actually, but there was something about the way he caught his father looking at you that made him feel afraid, and he did not want you out of his sight.

“Actually, my son,” Wenwu approached you as two men stood at your sides in case you tried to make a run for it or attack him. Wenwu stood before you, a cold smile on his face as he reached up and pushed your hair back behind your ear. You turned your head away from him, but his other hand came up to grab your jaw and force you to look at him. Shangqi shouted at him not to do that, but his father snapped and told him to relax.

“I just want to see something,” Wenwu said, pushing your hair back again. His eyes locked in on your neck, and you felt one of his fingers trail across your scar. Your eyes looked over his shoulder at Shangqi, who was a mix between horrified and curious. “Such a pretty, pretty girl with such a big, ugly, scar.”

Big, ugly scar? Well, that’s just rude. It wasn’t that big and ugly, that was the entire point of SHIELD tech, you know, the superhero life-saving shit? Now this man was just being rude.

You scoffed, “You should’ve seen the wound,” you remarked. “I’m surprised you haven’t actually. What, no photo evidence?”

Shangqi was confused, but Wenwu wasn’t. He knew that you knew, and he smirked. Well, at least his son wasn’t consorting with a slow one.

“Take her to my study. We have something to discuss.”

Shangqi protested, pushing through the two guards blocking him as he charged at is father, “She’s not going anywhere alone with you!”

Wenwu flipped him far too easily. With Shangqi on the ground, you glanced down and held your hand up, not wanting him to start a fight and risk him getting hurt, you said, “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry. I can handle myself.”

“Yes, Shangqi. Apparently, she is a big girl. She can handle herself,” Wenwu said mockingly.

Shangqi glared up at him, “If you hurt her —“

“What? You’ll kill me? He laughed. “You will try, my son. Come, now. Go to your room. She and I have much to discuss.”

#shang-chi x reader #shang chi x reader #shang chi and the legend of the ten rings #shang-chi x avenger!reader #shang-chi imagine #crazycookiecrumbles #scream for me #thot squad #katy chen #xu xialing #xu wenwu #xu shang chi #shang chi imagines #shang chi fanfiction #shang-chi #marvel fic #angst #shang-chi and the ten rings

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hello-nichya-here · 3 years

Text

How NOT to write romance - How I Met Your Mother edition

Warning: long-ass post and lots of bitterness over a TV show that ended nearly eight years ago.

Basics for story-telling

If the romance you want to write is dysfunctional, fucking embrace it and have fun with the concept instead of pretending the bad shit the characters do is okay because “it’s true love”

Acknowledgde that your main character has flaws instead of acting like he is a saint who can do no wrong for no reason other than “he is the main character. Definitively don’t make him do, of his own free will, the exact exact same things the supposedly “selfish and cruel” womanizer does and then excuse it as him having “succumbed to/been tricked by a bad influece” like he’s child who doesn’t know any better instead of being a grown ass adult.

Don’t make your characters be annoying, entitled fuckers who think they have the right to judge others for wanting different things out of a relationship/not wanting a relationship at all. Don’t act like monogamy, double dates with other couples, marriage and children are something EVERYONE secretly wants deep down.

Don’t demonize the “evil” character of the group and act like the “heroes” being appalled by the shit he does is anything other than hypocricy. There’s literally nothing forcing them to be friends with him, so they’re obviously not as horrified at bad shit he does as they say they are, otherwise they would have ditched him a long time ago.

Don’t have the “heartless womanizer”, who we later find out is the ex-husband of the girl the lead wanted for himself, be shown to us exclusively through the eyes of the an unreliable narrator who had motivation to make him see worse than he is likely to be (get his kids to want him to get the girl instead of the “douchebag”). Also, don’t make his schemes to trick women into sleeping with them so completely absurd and ridiculous that the audience is pretty sure that 70% of the women he banged were completely aware he just wanted a quick fuck and went along with it anyway because they wanted some dick (and because the character is played by Neil Patric Harris, who is incapable of not being charismatic)

Fucking let you characters (especially the supposed hero we’re supposed to think is the best boyfriend ever) grow instead of making them constantly repeat the same mistakes

Lily and Marshall

Don’t make one of the characters hide something very important from their partner, and then have the audacity to be mad at them for “just not understanding” as if they were given any reason to understand what the problem even is

Don’t act like someone being heartbroken that their partner lied to them and practically made a plan to “escape” being married to them means they’re not being “supportive” of said partners dream - you should especially not do that after we were shown that they took a job they didn’t like just to make sure they’d have a secure future that would allow said partner to follow their dream.

Don’t have the character who was obviously in the wrong need to be convinced to get their shit together and apologize to their ex.

If a character forgave the ex who wronged them and even got back together with them, don’t have them constantly hold their past mistakes over their head like it that problem has not already been solved - you especially not make them do that on what was supposed to be their wedding day. They can either forgive their partner or not, they can’t keep going back and forth.

Don’t have them constantly hide important shit from each other (having a huge financial debt, getting a job, etc)

DO NOT have the character who fucked up years prior suddenly be willing to do the same shit again for the EXACT same reason (”I think our relationship is in the way of my dreams and I’m now completely isolated because I refuse to talk things out with you”) and then expect the audience to sympathize with them.

Ted and Robin

Unless you’re writing a Disney/Disney-esque romance, don’t have your lead just look at someone across the room, decide they’re “The one”, imagine their life together and full on say “I’m love with you” AND “I love you” on the first goddamn date.

Don’t have the lead stalk his love interest, and throw three parties in a row just to have an excuse to get close to her now that she made it clear she is not interested in having a relationship with him.

Don’t have the “hero” lie about having broken up with his girlfriend so the girl he wants to be with will sleep with him, and then have him blame his actions on time. “Nothing good happens after 2 a.m.” Grow a pair of balls, Ted!

If one of the characters says “You’re going too fast on the whole ‘love’ thing. Can’t we just go on a few dates and see what happens instead of already starting to plan our lives together?” and the others throws a fit, that is called “being incompatible” and “damn, this dude doesn’t respect boundaries”, not “Wow, she’s so afraid of commitment”

If you want the audience to believe the main character’s feelings are not one-sided, don’t make the fact that said feelings ARE unrequited a running joke, and don’t have the girl only accept giving him a chance after having to deal with the fucker whining “But I love you” for months and/or after going through bad break ups. Also, if you have to retcon half the fucking show to “proove” that “she DOES love him”, that pairing fucking sucks.

Don’t compare the couple you want the audience to root for to the main character’s divorced, dysfunctional parents, and don’t have flashbacks showing that the lead had no clue what his girlfriend actually liked in bed AND that she literally covered up his face so she could pretend she was fucking someone else.

DON’T MAKE HER GET RID OF HER DOGS, YOU FUCKING MONSTER!

If your lead character is still jealous/possessive of his ex, thinks he still has a chance even after she told him to his face that she didn’t love him, and acts like she and her fiance (who he says is his friend) being happy is somehow them being selfish and cruel, your lead character is a loser AND an asshole.

Don’t throw away the entire premise of the show (Ted finding the REAL love of his life) just to force a bad pairing down the audience’s throat

Ted Mosby in general

Don’t have your “romantic, sensitive hero” break up with a girl on her birthday through an answering machine, come back into her life without warning years later because he’s afraid he’ll die alone, and find out that she never heard the message but was actually told about it by her friends and family who were at her apartment preparing a surprise party for her. You should especially not make his first reaction to this new be being mad that he was not invited to the party, and for the love of God, don’t make him break up with her on her birthday AGAIN.

Don’t have the “hero” cheat on his girlfriend and excuse it with bullshit like “Nothing good happens 2 a.m.” and “But I genuinely love Robin so it’s okay that I’m lying to both of them”. Do not, I repeat, do NOT have him blame it on his girlfriend being distant when she didn’t pick up the phone one night and then called back the second she was free to do so, while he was enjoying the gifts she sent him and LIED to her about having sent her some as well.

Don’t fucking make an entire episode with the premise of him turning a no into a yes - and telling that story to his children like it’s romantic.

Don’t have his fiance, who he knows has a rocky relationship with the father of her daughter, tell him she is uncomfortable with him inviting his ex to their wedding and then have him decide “This means I should invite her ex as well”. Also don’t expect me to feel bad for him when she runs off with said ex.

Don’t have him spend YEARS waiting for one of the hundreds of girls he thinks is “the one” to be single and even ask her neighbour to spy on her and let him know when/if she breaks up with her boyfriend - again, for YEARS.

Don’t have the lead say he’s gonna tell their kids about his love story with their DECEASED mother, only for it to secretly be an excuse for him to go “By the way, I’m still in love with aunt Robin despite her having rejected me for 25 years, can I go screw her?”

Don’t act like making the characters reverse back into who they were at the beginning at the story means they’re gonna make things work this time when the whole point of their break up in the beginning on the story was the fact that they’re just not right for each other.

Robin and Kevin

A therapist who was supposed to help their patient move on after a bad break up that messed them up, dating said patient is a major red flag. It is also a bad sign that, when she cheats on him and wants to break up, he realized what she was doing to used his job as “evidence” that he knew better and that she should NOT tell her partner how she felt/what she actually wanted.

Do NOT have said therapist date yet ANOTHER patient that asked him help to move on from a bad break up. Seriously, Kevin was a creep, stop acting like he was some angel who “deserved better than Robin.”

BONUS: How NOT to break up a couple - Barney and Robin edition

Don’t act like their relationship falling appart after their friends kept meddling, and even kept them locked in a room against their will until they labeled their relationship as something they aproved of, is somehow “proof” that they’re not good for each other.

Don’t retcon their relationship to force a break up (seriously, Barney was super supportive of Robin long before he even fell in love with her, but I’m supposed to believe he’d be a bad boyfriend who is never there for her? And he loved advantures and always said “challenge accepted”, but was suddenly miserable travelling the world with her and couldn’t deal with not having wi-fi at the hotel? Fuck off)

Don’t spend an entire season focusing on their wedding, have them get married and then divorce THE NEXT FUCKING EPISODE! Why do you hate your audience? Even people who don’t want them together can see this a terrible idea.

And most important of all, when people question what the fuck were you thinking, don’t have a meltdown on twitter and say that people who think Barney can change are responsible for Donald Trump being elected, you fucking weirdo, go see a therapist (that isn’t like Kevin)

#how i met your mother #himym finale #swarkles #anti ted and robin #fuck ted mosby #worst finale ever #barney stinson #barney deserved better #robin deserved better #they deserved better #i deserved better

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plus-size-reader · 3 years

Text

Feelings

Jace Herondale x Plus size!reader

Word Count: 2213 words

Warnings: none

Summary: The reader is a vampire who owns the hardtail bar, who has quite the past with Jace Herondale which they never really addressed to begin with

—————————————————————————————————

Owning a downworlder bar was hardly the cakewalk it made itself out to be.

In all the years that you had owned Hardtail, you had come in contact with all sorts of colorful characters. From vampires and werewolves to demons and demon hunters, there was no telling who was going to walk through that door.

Though, no one was quite as interesting to deal with as Jace Herondale was.

He was an arrogant ass, of course, only doing things when he wanted to do them, and why. Not to mention that he was utterly ridiculous most of the time, something that made him almost impossible to deal with.

...and you would know that better than anyone, seeing as you’d done just that for quite some time.

Going out with him hadn’t been your finest moment, you could admit that.

All in all, you and Jace had nothing in common, and all you ever did was argue but no matter what you did, you always found yourself coming back to him. Without fail, you sought him out and just couldn’t cut the tie you felt to him.

It was impossible.

He just kept coming back, and it wasn’t as if you had it in you to turn him away at the door.

Though, today was the first time he’d ever come in here with someone else in tow, not to mention a woman. She was pretty with fiery red hair and no doubt a personality to match, if you knew him well.

That must have been what had taken him so long.

Normally Jace would stop by every few weeks, just to make sure that none of the downworlders were starting trouble for you, but he hadn’t been here in months now. Clearly, it wasn’t all that big of a deal what happened here, unless of course he needed your help with someone.

Then you were good enough to visit.

“What can I get for you?” you asked, quite similarly to how you would greet any other customer, your eyes staying on the girl at his side rather than looking Jace in the eye.

Whatever it was he needed, you were sure that he’d get to it before you had to do too much more of this, or so you hoped.

You had other customers after all, and most of them didn’t take too kindly to being ignored.

“I’m actually not here to drink. I’m here for you” he grinned, resting as casually as he could against the bar, as if he had any right to do that. Though, it wasn’t as if you were going to throw him out just for that.

At the very least, you knew that you had to hear him out.

“You mean, you are” you clarified, gesturing to the redhead at his side, who you still had no idea about. You had never seen her before, in all your escapades with shadowhunters, and it wasn’t exactly like they were a vast breed.

Whoever she was, it was news to you.

“Right, Y/N this is Clary” he shrugged, plopping down on the barstool across from where you were standing, filling up a glass of bourbon. You had no idea what was going on, or why you cared, but you smiled anyway.

Whatever this girl, Clary, was doing here, you were sure it had nothing to do with whatever it was you and Jace had been doing for the last few years.

She nodded in acknowledgment of you before turning her attention back to Jace, who hadn’t explained anything about this place to her before they showed up.

“What are we doing here?” she muttered, her words little more than a whisper in his direction which you caught easily due to your superhuman hearing. Usually, nothing of value happened here but usually, Jace wasn’t here.

Not like he was today.

“If anyone knows where those vamps are keeping Simon, it’s Y/N. Nothing happens in the downworld without her hearing about it” he shrugged, helping himself to the glass you’d poured, shooting a wink in your direction as he did so.

It was true.

This was a pretty popular hangout spot for all the vampires in the downworld, and as they drank, the more their conquests bubbled to the surface. It was hardly your fault if you paid attention.

“You're more than welcome to ask around, I haven’t heard that name in here before” you shrugged, filling your own glass from another tap, specifically for the vampires like you that frequented this place.

Alcohol didn’t do nearly as much for you as some good O negative did.

Clary nodded, heading off in the direction of where you’d gestured, clearly more determined to find her friend than Jace was. He didn’t seem to care all that much about anything at all.

...but at least that hadn’t changed.

“I had no idea you were seeing someone new” you hummed, not bothering to meet his eyes as you focused all your attention on the stout in front of you. Now that the two of you were alone, it was different.

There was nothing else for you to focus on, and at this point, anything would have been better than dealing with this.

After all, you had no right to be jealous.

You and Jace hadn’t been an item in a few years, and whatever he wanted to do, that was his business. You weren’t going to get involved, just like you should have done from the start.

It would be easier that way.

You didn’t want to deal with this any more than he did, but even with how awkward this was, Jace looked like he was having a great time. This was fun for him, because of course it was.

Everything was fun for Jace, because he always thought he was one step ahead of everyone else.

“I’m not necessarily seeing someone else” he shrugged, taking a long, heavy sip of the glass you’d put in front of him before moving on to anything else behind the bar that would be easier to deal with than him, your jaw tight.

You were avoiding him.

...And frankly, he couldn’t blame you.

The two of you’d had a long, sorted history, and this was hardly the first time you’d seen something like this from him. Really, he was surprised you even cared at all because of how commonplace it was.

It was just the kind of person he was.

Still, he hadn’t brought her here to hurt you. He needed your help, because if anyone knew what to do about their little vampire problem, it was you.

“Besides, this isn’t about her” he sighed, standing from the barstool he’d set himself down on when he arrived to try and get your attention. You were angry with him, and he couldn’t blame you for that, but he couldn’t avoid this.

It was important.

“I don’t think she knows that” you countered, pouring another shot for yourself which you downed casually before finally meeting his burning gaze. Whatever it was that he wanted, you both knew that you would help.

Because of the two of you, Jace was the selfish one. He did what he wanted without thinking about the consequences but you had never been like that.

Even now, he was sure that he could come here after months of not seeing you and ask a huge favor, and you wouldn’t hesitate to do as he asked. It was just the way you were and nothing was going to change that.

It was just who you were, and while he should have probably felt bad about knowing that and never trying to change it, there were too many other things he had to deal with.

Besides, if he was going to be a good boyfriend, he should have been that when you two were actually dating.

Worrying about it now wasn’t going to do either of you any good.

“Would you stop worrying about Clary for a second? We have things to do” he scoffed, snapping at you in a way that forced you to do as he said, if for nothing more than a second. You had no idea what was going on, but it was much more important than some new girl.

You just weren’t sure why yet.

“Simon’s at Hotel Dumort, I spoke to Raphael Santiago about him. Now would you get out of my bar” you sighed, desperately hoping that now that you’d given him what he wanted, he would go away.

Lying to them before hadn’t been your finest decision, but you couldn’t help it. You didn’t want to do this anymore, not with him.

The two of you had gone your separate ways for a reason, and you weren't really in the mood to rehash it all with him right now. It would be better for both of you if he just went away.

“I could, but I don’t really think you want that” Jace shrugged, that sly smirk on his face as he sat back down, still sure that this whole thing was just another game like you were so used to playing.

You didn’t get your feelings hurt.

That was what you always told him.

That you had lived too many lifetimes to ever get too attached to anything, or anyone. That you would be perfectly fine if he fell off the face of the earth one day and never came back. It would be so much easier that way, if you actually believed it.

You loved him.

Of course you did, but there was nothing you could do about it now. You and Jace had tried this whole thing and it didn’t work. You knew that if you gave it another shot, it would end just as badly as the first time.

It always went badly with the two of you.

“I really do, you shouldn't have come here” you allowed, taking his glass from the counter and setting it behind the bar before going for the backroom. You had no idea what was happening with you right now, or why you felt like this, but it didn’t really matter.

All you could think about in this second was getting away from him.

Not that Jace was going to let that happen.

Clearly, he had pushed you too far and this wasn’t the lighthearted tormenting you two usually got up to. You were upset, which was new for him because you were normally so hard to rattle.

He’d never gotten such a rise out of you before.

“Hey, hold on. Where are you going?” he asked, shooting Clary one last glance before following you.

The action caught the attention of several of the patrons he passed, but not one of them moved to interfere. After all your years of running this place, they knew well that you could handle yourself.

Even against a shadowhunter.

“Go help Clary find her friend, Jace. I’ll be here” you shrugged, bearing down on your teeth as you tried your best to shut down all the emotion bubbling up inside you. You didn’t want to feel it, didn’t want to care, and that wasn’t going to change.

Jace wasn’t yours anymore.

It was true.

You were always going to be here, and he knew that.

That was why it didn’t matter if months passed by before he came back or if he brought beautiful girls with him to meet you. No matter what he did, you were always going to be waiting for him and maybe that was the problem.

Maybe that was why you hadn’t worked in the first place. You were too available, too happy to help him when Jace was only concerned about himself.

“Will you?”

It was rich, especially coming from him. Acting as if you hadn't been there for him whenever he needed you even after you should have turned your back on him.

Of the two of you, he shouldn't have been the one worried about being alone.

“I get it. Vampires don’t have feelings right? We’re just monsters, and you kill monsters. I was an idiot to think that would ever change” you sighed, doing your best to ignore the anger bubbling up in your belly.

You just felt like such an idiot.

How could he have actually thought this whole thing was going to be a good idea? After all this time, it was almost as if he didn’t know you at all.

“I loved you, more than anything” he tried, not understanding how you’d managed to go from what you’d been like fifteen minutes ago to this. Fighting wasn’t new for the two of you, but this was.

Something about this was different.

This wasn’t fighting for the sake of it, knowing that you would find a way to make up when it was all over. It actually felt like you didn’t think he cared about you, which couldn't have been farther from the truth.

When you two were together, he’d never once doubted the way he felt for you. Though, you weren’t sure that you could be so convinced, because whether he believed it or not, you knew Jace better than he knew himself.

“I wish I could believe that”

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