#and then. after that. if i havent keeled over from stress. i also have like 4 ppl whose text messages i need to reply to

[elftwink]

every few months or so i have to reach out to someone i inexplicably stopped speaking to for literally no reason at all and in my mind this doesn't impact the nature of our relationship in the slightest (i think ive seen a post floating around on here that phrases this like "i don't have a friendship decay mechanic" and thats pretty accurate to me as well) but it is literally so scary because other people definitely can feel negatively about this complete gap in interaction and read into it my intentions (or worse when its due to memory issues do that thing where theyre like "if it was important you would remember ergo i am not important to you") and its like idk how explain that life is just moving to damn fast like to me we may as well have been talking yesterday... makes me very sad because on the one hand people have a right to feel that way and i understand that it can feel like your time is being wasted or that the other person doesn't respect you enough to get back to you (because also. some people do deliberately ignore messages for these reasons unfortunately)

but on the other hand. for me i feel like im always on the back foot because i just dont have the capacity to actually keep up with everyone, and i barely have the capacity to do the apology rounds every few months. also i hate the apology rounds because even if i have every intention of keeping up with people it always slips. i dont think i was meant to live in a world with instant messaging i think we should go back to snail mail. i would also be bad at replying to people with it but at least i would have a better excuse

also sometimes im just like i must be inventing problems when i write replies to people like an email on average takes me 4 hours or so to compose if given my own time. for time sensitive work emails it's still at least half an hour to an hour, which is also about the time it takes me to compose a text message to someone (unless i see it right away and stream of consciousness my answer without thinking then i can do it in 2 minutes but if i dont do this at the exact moment i see the text i cannot do it at a later time). during this process it feels impossible to speed up but its obviously ridiculous for two emails to take the time of an entire work day. also i have to take a break after sending an email or text like it is genuinely really draining and there is just no way it takes this much time or energy for anyone else because if it did we would have made texting illegal by now. but at the same time no single component of writing an email/text is that obviously difficult or energy intensive so im like sweating blood for hours to produce something that looks like it took 3 1/2 minutes maximum like what is wrong with meeeeeee

also no i didnt send my email yet im procrastinating by writing this post. perhaps this is also contributing to my extremely long composition times :/ ok bye everyone if i post again in the next hour and it does say "yay i sent my email" or something of the like please yell at me

[kyanmaaaa]

i told my bro abt this dream and hes just like why are your dreams so dark (so like, tw for this one)

but honestly i didnt really consider this dark it was oddly beautiful if scary. im going to fill in parts with what i think could have happened there but im also not going to include the details for what the room looked like in every scene besides whats neccassary, cause this was so vivid i could try to describe to you what each PERSON looked like and people usually dont even have faces in my dreams!

its still long so heres a read more

beginning of the dream im walking home at dusk and im coming from a direction i almost nvr walk, except for when its halloween. so it may have been halloween in my dream, the sunset is a beautiful BRIGHT orange and its on the side of my house rather than behind like it usually is but thats a minor detail.

cause around the house behind mine theres a very strange cloud formation, much lower than i usually see clouds and its not foggy but its just, theres clouds wrapped around the house except for the front and the wall just goes up and up and up to the top and slightly past the house. paired with the sunset i think thats really beautiful so i take some pics with my phone and go closer just to see how close i can get before the clouds disappear and then i’ll go home

i didnt get to go home, the clouds wrapped fully around the house and a strong, something, stopped me from leaving. also there was like an evil to/riel so she mighta been the one doing that

next part of the dream kinda jumps around so ill have to infer some parts but essentially the house changes from the building ive seen there for you know, my entire life, to a small dark wooden mansion. also muffet is there and guess what she ALSO sucks. and then theres this bitch blond haired human pony tail man and hes dumb and i dont like him. im not allowed to leave and im kinda enslaved i guess (my bro called me a prisoner with a job when i told him and it was stupid funny). muffets off on a job after i get settled in there and i dont know what happens to make me so submissive considering the next part of the dream focuses on another servant but whatever they did was REALLY REALLY BAD cause at every point after this im terrified of fucking up and ive pretty much given up on getting out.

this next part was more of a flashback sequance that happened later but for ease of reading im going to add it here instead. first other servant i meet is a beautiful large green shiny beetle man, seriously hes gorgeous and so well spoken and kind. when he was brought into the house he was introduced as just a regular human man, still as beautiful as ever tho, was hired to play piano for a party. as hes fiddling away with the keys though if you looked around you could see bright shiny green and gold strings just, laying flat against the wall, piano, his suit, etc. turns out those were his beetle wings but stretched out and distorted and at this point hes discovered cause to the untrained eye those look like decorations, but its how his kind disguises themselves. cause he can change his entire appearance except for his wings, so they have to try and hide their wings in the environment around them.

they didnt like him lying but it was calm at first. muffet invites him to a small welcoming dinner, just for a chat. they share a platter of food on one plate, partly meat, but most of whats facing him is just a lot of rice packed into a line. he slowly pecks away at that as he carries a polite conversation with muffet, but nvr touches the other side of the food. after hes abt halfway through it she asks “Why aren’t you trying the other food deary?” and he responds “I wasn’t sure if I was allowed to Miss.” and has a bite.

after whatevers in that food kicks in he keels over in pain and she makes it very clear how things go in this house. he listens, he does not act without being told to, and if he ever tries to pull a stunt like that again he’ll be dead. “Am I clear deary?”

since he was there before i was some times passed since that happened. hes currently being punished by mr asshole blond ponytail man and his punishment is all of his meals are very plain. just rice and unseasoned meat. the chef clearly put effort into each platter tho as theyve been shaped into increasingly elaborate shapes the longer the punishment lasts. im not quite sure why this is a punishment? maybe beetle man isnt getting all the nutrients he needs and thats harder for his kind, perhaps he has a taste for good food and this is just the most the ponytail dude can get away with as a punishment since muffets in charge of the house, or maybe its meant to bring up bad memories of when he first came here.

this next parts, really foggy

back to me and muffets talking to someone through a large portal in the room? plans are made abt making humans lose hope and wiping out humanity. the vegan next to me is very excited abt this and comments on it and im just like, bro, that would be super bad for the earth and also immoral? and shes like oh right. at some point i befriend a guy even tho we hated each other at first but he’s moved elsewhere after some time

time skip to muffet informing me that due to my most recent mistake my family is going to be killed. at this point im just sick of it i’ve been here for months im miserable im lonely, i miss my family im just kinda, unstable

really unstable

im shouting at her if shes going to off my family she has to kill me too cause i cant live knowing theyre dead because of me or live without them, just sobbing, kill me, please just kill me i cant stay here anymore she sends me to my room and i pass by my beetle friend but neither of us says anything, also passed by some buff monster but its irrelevant. i dont go to my room instead im just looking through hallway after hallway, opening a storage closet and just trying to find SOMETHING to work with because yeah im miserable, yeah this is probably going to backfire but you do NOT. FUCK. WITH MY FAMILY! so i have to leave. i dont care if this might kill me i have to get out of there with whatever the hell i can find. what i find is two deflated balloons with little plastic bits inside that when u press a button they light up and im like OKAY maybe i, maybe me and beetle man can use this to signal to each other! thats great i can do this i can. i think i may have been crying and laughing here after my exploring Im hiding behind a sofa in a room in the furthest corner of the house cradling my little weird balloon bundle, just trying to find space to think. im safe because u cant see me from the door and the blinds on the window are drawn already. it feels like i havent seen the outside in a while remember how i said i was really unstable? this felt completely real in the dream so maybe it was real due to dream logic, but it feels like desperation in hindsight. i clicked both of the balloon lights on and realized i could use it as a phone! i need to call mom i miss her so much. so i do and she goes honey where are you? and im just crying and saying i love you, i love you so much im okay mom, its okay, and shes like are you at school??? and i just turn into a mess. at this point i look through the sheer curtains on the window and notice my brother driving a really tall truck moving some construction supplies. it sucks that hes here too but im just so happy to see him even if i know i cant talk to him. maybe if they dont find out we’re related he’ll be okay and then i leave the mansion, and i run. nothing here is familiar. im somewhere in the woods. i try to run to the front and see all of the construction workers there making something, but besides all the people somehow the dirt is just, this sheer cliff up up and up in front of the place. so i run to the back and try to get through the barrier around the place. i think i do but its not exactly easy. i fought off a possessed wild boar, but it was the size you think a pig would be, so like a medium sized dog, it just tried to bite me and while it hurt i just hit it til it stayed down long enough for me to bolt after im some distance away, further into the forest on a wide path i meet a human whos instantly on guard to fight me. i spray paint in his eyes and then run on i meet a strange human on the same path and he smirks at me and puts paper in front of his eyes to stop my tactic. i go hey fuck it maybe the fumes will disorient him and spray and his magic stops the paint in mid air and im like dude that is SICK, before he flings it back at me

i dont know how but i beat him too but the next part of the dream im finally somewhere residential, houses along the water, its a warm but not too warm day, light breeze, so all in and beautiful. i feel like im seeing and breathing freely and clearly for the first time in, i dont even know how long. its bright and while i know i have to run im just going to keep running, im free for now.

i use my little balloon contraption and call up my mom again now that im somewhere im positive no one will hear me. i tell her im sorry but i cant go home, that this is likely goodbye, and i cant guarantee ill get out of this alive but it’s okay. i love you so much. and she has to leave too. i stress this. she has to leave, cut all ties, cut all things that could trace you and get out of there. 

and then my alarm woke me up

its hard to explain why some sections of this dream were so scary, just the feeling of wrongness, isolation, powerlessness, and just some distant pain that i dont know what it was. it felt like the longer i was there the more my world was ending

[lionbarrage-a]

itachi

make me write about this au | accepting always 

wow we really just are… diving right in aren’t we??? in all seriousness, thank you chai, for both forcing me to write this headcanon / meta that i’ve been avoiding doing for like a week now and for walking me through itachi’s role in it. this will contain major, MAJOR developments for my au and how it effects shippuden so please read it! 

warning under the cut for mention of death, eye trauma, etc – you know, standard uchiha bullshit :))))))

let me begin with this, as i haven’t yet spoken in detail about it: but a major, major focal point in not letting hatred —- or the curse mark — consume him is letting go of, not what happened to him, but his revenge path. this does not happen over night. 

sasuke has years, years, and years of anger built up inside him, an obsessively one track mind, and a deep ache for power that, if you ask me, started before the massacre. no doubt is the massacre what sets his tunnel vision, but he’s shown to be obsessively training even before that in order to gain approval of his clan ( specifically, fugaku, which, by the way, fuck that guy ) and ‘catch up’ to his prodigy of a brother who is, frankly, out of sasuke’s reach. sasuke, in canon, still doesn’t graduate from the academy until he’s twelve, despite genius like abilities and endless work on his part to reach unattainable status as per what’s possible for himself. 

don’t think for a second he ever forgets about how far behind itachi is from the get go, and his inability to stop comparing himself to his older brother is absolutely what holds him back for so long. my point comes back to that while the catalyst of his tunnel vision - like obsession begins with the massacre, he already was halfway there. it really comes as no surprise to me that he turned out the way he did in canon, but i rest my case on this part. 

in my au, and i’ll give this a proper spiel in another meme ask i need to answer, his path is set by a very small margin, by the doubt that is shown at the valley of the end. he stops fighting, he comes back. he spends the following years regaining trust among the village, with his superiors and peers alike, and manages to rise in the ranks pretty fast as a result of both his abilities and his emotional growth. i can’t stress enough how far he comes, and how much it takes out of him to get to that point. like, it’s the only way this au can work. 

i’ve said it before, but kakashi is a focal point in his emotional progression. in his training with him, they work out a lot of that anger and kakashi shows him sides of himself that he doesn’t really show others, shows them how alike he actually was to sasuke, and shows him that he can overcome it, even if their motives were quite different — it’s the first time someone really tries to reach sasuke deep down, and it works. in conjunction with naruto and all he’s done for him, for the experiences sasuke gains in this two year period, and his own mental legwork, he gets there. 

i should note something, though, and it’s that i don’t think sasuke can not have tunnel vision on a goal — his mindset is a set routine, it’s why he’s so stubborn, in my opinion, and it’s why he’s so (unmovable object).png. you know? so, instead of his tunnel vision focusing on killing itachi, he shifts it to re-establishing the uchiha, the uchiha name, and growing stronger without influence of his brother, on his own terms. i’d say this is firmly set in by the time he’s a chuunin, and it’s why he’s able to prove himself further, in missions, etc, as worthy of being a jounin by the time shippuden starts. 

his biggest emotional trial, or one of them, is when he runs into ‘itachi’ during the gaara rescue arc, in chapter 256, and is told by kakashi to go onward. this leaves the battle virtually unchanged, and right here, kakashi says he would send naruto onward but needs him for backup. sasuke, however, can go forward — he’s both fast enough and also, it’s the right move. a show down with itachi is the last thing he needs, and it takes all his willpower not to crumble two years of progress to go ahead and focus on the mission. he goes ahead. i haven’t worked out the exact details of his role in the rest of the mission yet, but my point is: by this time, he’s able to do something he wasn’t when he was twelve, and that was charge right at itachi, regardless of if he was ready or not. 

god… that’s just all the basics too… okay. saddle up because this is where it gets real ( yeah, i know, “reid we’re on paragraph fucking eight” but we haven’t even started on the truth and itachi, which are two whole sections frankly ) 

so… fated battle between brothers. it’s still going to happen. initially i wanted it not to, but after talking with an itachi about it, ahem, chai, we decided that itachi would absolutely create a situation closer to the end of his life to make sure it still happens —– the exact mission is up in the air until i can talk to a naruto about it, but we were thinking a diversion including him, which would be super believable given the ninetails and all. the platoon that goes out definitely includes kakashi, sakura, sasuke, and whoever else might be available. from the beginning, they know to expect itachi. this is… harrowing, to say the least, especially for sasuke who seems to have settled upon not seeking revenge, but in the event he goes up against itachi, he knows that as a leaf shinobi, it’s his duty to stop him. to save naruto. to protect naruto. to protect konoha. 

when they approach the uchiha hideout, i imagine something much different is anticipated. they’ve probably been led on a fucking wild goose chase. naruto is somewhere different entirely, and like in canon, kisame allows only sasuke to pass. sasuke goes in, like in canon. once he goes in, the game changes for the platoon, and their focus remains on recovering naruto. how exactly all that goes down is dependent on kisame’s role and naruto’s respectively so i won’t talk too much about that quite yet && i have several people i wanna consult on that matter so yeah waiting. shifting back to inside the hideout

we haven’t worked out all of the details, or done a battle breakdown, but at some point we’re planning to collab on a drabble and post that and it’ll walk through the major points. what to know for now is that the dialogue will be much different, and sasuke’s focus is completely on 1) getting information and when that inevitably fails, 2) stopping itachi, by any means necessary. 3) surviving the fight. itachi doesn’t go easy on him, and at some point, it’s not about his motive, his revenge, etc, at all anymore. it’s about getting back to the platoon. it’s about finishing the mission. the too long, didn’t read version is that itachi doesn’t let him not kill him, as he’s dying anyway, and he’ll only have it be by sasuke’s hand. remember – itachi, all along, wanted sasuke to be renowned a hero for killing him, and wanted himself reviled. 

in a real, real fucked up way, he gets that. 

side note: we still havent worked out every detail but i also just noticed itachi gets rid of sasukes curse mark here :)))))))))))))

sasuke passes out at the end of their battle, and itachi does his thing with the fucking goddamn eyes and putting them in sasukes head before keeling over and fucking dying. he wakes up with tobi, as in canon. i can’t say this exchange is much different from canon, aside from sasuke being less reactionary? he’s already feeling really… i don’t know what the word is. killing him is all he wanted, for so fucking long, but there’s nothing satisfying about what he’s done here. he sees it as a means to an end on a fucked up chapter of his life. however, he does still panic at the initial speech by tobi, learning all this shit about a coup, it’d be too much for him – he still passes out, unable to process everything he’s being told. he wakes up again, probably tied up this time, and listens to the rest. 

so, where it gets different is chapter .. 401 / 402. he has his moment of grief before recollecting himself and leaving tobi / ‘madara uchiha’ and, even with all that he’s learned, and in his less than healthy state, he focuses once again on regrouping with the platoon, and ensuring that the original mission has been completed. little does he know, its been about a day, and they surely found itachi’s dead body, but no sign of him. it’s very likely they’re searching the surrounding area for him when he rejoins them, looking… well. calm, but carrying an air about him that is definitely out of character. 

he tells naruto that he’s glad to see him, and there’s a few others he may speak to before they get home, but… he otherwise doesn’t say much. there isn’t much he can say in this state. he doesn’t know what he believes – outside of the fact that if itachi wanted him dead, he would be dead. it’s this thought process that leads him to believe that the coup did in fact form. he has a lot of doubts about the man who introduced himself as madara uchiha, at this point in this au, he is after all a leaf shinobi??? and… i think he would, honestly, privately report ( the only one i can see being present for this is kakashi, if anyone ) what he was told to tsunade herself, who would not be aware of the truth. i read that only danzo, the third, and two others were. what the two of them do with this information is beyond me and i’d hoooonestly need a tsunade to work it out with. he’s probably pretty forward in saying he doesn’t know how much of this intelligence can be trusted, but if nothing else, someone claiming to be madara uchiha is a huge fucking red flag, and regardless of how he feels about the coup / konoha’s dealing with it, his loyalty is already where it is. 

whiiiiiich brings me to that next point… where he is with it. again, he doesn’t know how much he can trust from ‘tobi / madara / obito’, but if anything, i feel like his image of his clan is very twisted and uncertain from that point on. he definitely feels distrust in the elders mentioned for forcing itachi to do what he did, but not the entire village. in the end, he pays a lot of attention to the part of what was said about itachi wanting him to be renowned a hero for coming back to konoha and being able to say he killed a vicious, serial murderer, missing nin. 

so, if it’ll give itachi some peace, he does that. he comes back with his platoon, reports him dead, and what happens, happens. by no means does he consider himself a hero, though, and there’s forever an ache in him that things happened the way they did. however, holding a grudge now would backtrack him too far in his progress, and he’s… brutally aware of his own mindset, his own tendency to tunnel vision. so, once again, he redirects it.

he redirects his will to re-establishing his family name, to bringing peace in whatever way he can, and moving forward. at a later time, probably post - war, his efforts will go towards doing something about that police force. i noticed in the explanation that it was sort of konoha’s way of… making the uchiha think they had some kind of pull in the village but actually keeping an eye on them, and sasuke’s intention would more so be to establish an actual force within the village to protect it’s own. to protect konoha. you know, like itachi tried to. 

as he grows older, sasuke accepts what happened for what it is, and he finds most of his anger and sadness directing to one simple fact: that he and his brother were robbed, by circumstance, of having so many years together that they could have been happy in. 

that’s all i got for now.

[mildlymaddy]

Ask and you shall receive I guess. ;)

Lilo future!fic, in which both are single, Liam’s got two kids, and I end up calling Liam’s first-born “James” because the fucker still hasn’t shared his actual baby’s name with us.

Liam was in over his head. He knew it, and it only served to annoy him further. This was stupid. He was a grown-ass man. He had kids for Christ’s sake!

 There was absolutely no reason for him to angst over the meaning of a bloody text message.

 Especially not one that said, Im not gonna comment until Ive tried it myself.

 Louis had added the sunglasses emoji at the end, which was nice but didn’t help Liam figure out whether he was serious or not.

 And knowing whether Louis was serious or not felt quite bloody important, considering the message Liam had sent him right before had been: Then she said i was lousy in bed, like, can you believe?!

 Liam took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

The thing was, lately, there’d been quite a few of these messages from Louis. Like, Liam didn’t want to jump to conclusions or anything, but ever since Louis had come back to L.A., single and determined to take over the world with Liam (there’d never been any question of whether Liam might have other plans, but then again he’d only been too happy to join in. Endless touring was less appealing at 38 than it had been at 23, and writing for others with Louis had always been part of his dreams), they'd gotten… close.

 And they'd always been close, obviously, even once time and distance had made their friendship more quiet and soft, had turned cuddles and pranks into yearly birthday messages and dinners that had to be planned months in advance, but even in their hay days it had never been… it’d never been like this.

 Or maybe Liam was just too old to remember exactly how flirty Louis used to be. But he'd watched some old 1d interviews, just to see, and while Louis teased him a lot and touched him even more… it just wasn't the same. Liam was sure of it.

 Except, of course, for all the moments when he wasn't.

 He started typing a reply, then deleted it, staring at the blinking cursor on his screen with increasing desperation. It had been 10 minutes since Louis had sent his message and the longer Liam waited, the more awkward his reply would be, no matter what.

 “Daaad, can you stop jiggling your leg? I’m trying to watch my show!”

 Liam looked up from his phone to find his daughter glaring at him from behind her fringe, earbuds plugged firmly in her ears to listen to whatever she was watching on her phone, curled up on the other side of the couch. He wasn’t sure how him jiggling his leg two seats over was disrupting her focus, but clearly it was, and she huffed again before turning her attention back to her show, mumbling something Liam couldn’t make out but which was most probably along the lines of “grown-ups suck.”

 He’d never realized, back when he’d started a family, that that meant dealing with moody teenagers down the line, and not just adorable babies and cute 8-year-old kids. The wake-up call had been brutal (and his mother’s amused look the first time he’d complained to her about the ungratefulness of teens a little uncalled for). The fact that he only had them one month out of two since his divorce didn’t help things any.

 “Sorry, sorry,” he mumbled, leaving the living room to go lock himself in the first floor bathroom, phone clutched in one sweaty hand.

 He sat on the edge of the bathtub, legs resuming their nervous jiggling, and felt his heart doing a sickly somersault when he saw the notifications telling him Louis had sent another string of messages. That was it; he’d missed his shot by waiting too long. Louis had moved on to another subject and-

 That was a comeon, in case you cant tell.

I mean unles you CAN tell and yure not interested.

Which wouls explain why you havent written in 15mn i guess i should take the hint

Fuck thiss awkward forget i said anything.

 Liam read the words over and over again, just in case they’d morph into some inane discussion about playing dog sitter for Louis or setting up a writing session, but they remained the same.

 Louis had been hitting on him?

 Louis had been hitting on him.

 ...

 For all that Liam had been convinced something was going on, getting actual confirmation of it felt like taking a deep breath under water.

 “Fuck,” he muttered, desperately trying to keep his breathing under control.

 It wasn't until moving dots popped up on his screen to show Louis was writing yet another message that Liam finally sprung to action, clumsily typing his reply and sending it before he could second-guess himself, typos and all.

 I wqsnt sure yu were skirting

 He blinked at his screen. Fuck. Stupid predictive text. When had he even ever written the word “skirting”?!

 I meant flirtng*

flirting*

Fuck

 Liam groaned. Maybe if he chucked his phone into the toilets he could pretend that those last messages had been a bug.

 He'd always thought this kind of thing would get easier with age (well mostly he'd thought he would get married and live happily ever after...), but if anything, this felt worse than he remembered. How did anyone ever hook up with anyone without keeling over from the stress of it all?!

 The cheerful “blip!” of a new message brought his attention back to the screen.

 Does that mean you dont midn?

 Liam swallowed around the lump in his throat. He was pretty sure he was supposed to feel relief but for some reason all he could feel right now was rising panic. Surely this was a mistake, his brain pointed out. This was all a misunderstanding. He was getting Louis’s meaning completely wrong.

 Still, he made himself write back, I def dont mind. Imall for flirting.

 Dots came and went on Louis's side of the chat for quite a long time after that, leaving Liam ample time to worry about the ways in which he could have misunderstood Louis's messages (admittedly, he couldn't think of one, but that's how it worked, right? That’s the reason people felt so mortified afterwards), until finally Louis's answer popped up on his screen.

 Im gonna be horribly blunt here im sorry but i wanna make sure. So if i drop by your house tonight with two bottles of wine and push you against tye wall and snog you senseless youre ok with that right?

 The relieved laughter that burst out of Liam’s mouth surprised even him, and he let himself slide to the tiled ground, his heartbeat going wild with happiness as he tremblingly typed back, ive got the kids so might be best not to but i woudlnr say no to some snogging on the weekend?

 He pressed Send and rested his chin on his bent knees, staring at his phone like a lovesick teenager, which is exactly how he felt right now. This was ridiculous. It was also the best Liam had felt in months.

 A shriek coming from the ground floor dragged him out of his bubble and he struggled back to his feet, frowning, but the stomping of feet on the stairs and the vengeful “Emma I'll punch your teeth in!!” made him reconsider. Possibly staying in the bathroom was safest for now.

 A door slammed down the corridor, then he heard Emma yelling back, “I'll fucking tell mum, you tosser!” before another door slammed shut, a little closer.

 He really wished she’d stop using the mum card. First because that was unfair for Cheryl, and second because… well, he could be fearsome too, damnit. He wasn’t just the “hot, goofy dad” (as amusing as having Emma’s friends mooning at him was, mostly because his 20-year-old self had forever been preserved online).

 He had to go talk to them both, but a glance at his phone showed him Louis had sent another message.

 I dont know if ill still want to snog you then, payno. 3 days is a long time.

 Liam grinned. Far away from fighting teenagers, something warm was unfurling in his veins, spreading through his body, carrying with it a faint thrilling note, just enough to make his heartbeat a little irregular in the nicest of ways.

 Ill make it worth the wait, he typed back, biting his bottom lip around a smile. His heart was heavy with happiness in his chest and he never wanted the feeling to go away again.

 He’d never considered the possibility of falling for someone he’d known since he was a teenager, but now that he was, he was starting to wonder how it hadn’t happened earlier. How he’d gone without.

 I expect you to, Louis sent back.

 Count on it.

 There was renewed stomping in the corridor, then the noise of a door banging open and a shout. Liam sighed.

 Gotta mke sure the kids dont kill each othr. Talk later?

 He stared at the dots as Louis typed his answer, unwilling to get out into the fray just yet, unwilling to let go of his own slice of teenagehood. He couldn’t make out the words that were being yelled down in James’s room, but they clearly weren’t anything he could tolerate. He really needed to step in.

 Anytime.

…

<3

Oh god pretend i dind’t sent that.

You know what screw it.

<333

Liam beamed down at his phone, sent a heart back (or ten), and stepped out of the bathroom.