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writingforfishes · 11 days

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Otto and Atticus Lore 1: Mark's Hangover

The inspiration for this story came at the most inconvenient time. I was at work and as the images and sounds came to me, I had to fight hard to make it appear like I was actually present. The drive home was only successful because I had taken the way home so many times before as I was still stuck in the headspace. I mad-dashed this story when I got to my computer and ended up staying awake way too long to complete it. I edited it and changed it this morning.

This was NOT the story I was intending to create next! I hope it holds up tomorrow when I read over it after I've posted it!

I was also not intending on making a separate series on the lore of these two characters, but the asks in my inbox made me think about their pasts and inspired some deeper consideration on the plots and thoughts I already had in mind.

Disclaimers: This is a work of FANTASY. Otto and Atticus are such a good couple because I need them to be a good couple. This is not, for the most part, realistic. (Also, I don't even have a tambour style mantel clock, nor did anyone in my family.)

I don't know anyone who has a kink specifically for watching someone get aroused. If that kink does exist (or is just a normal way of people reacting), I'm completely unfamiliar with it and have created a possible fictional representation of a kink. Thus, any of Otto's thoughts are extrapolated from ideas I thought would be plausible. (I am very asexual.)

If anyone is familiar with the series Otto's character was based on, this is basically a rewrite of similar character dynamics. I give real-world reasons for the fantasy content in the series to have happened. I know nothing of police procedure or detective procedure.

I do not have alcoholism. I know a few people who are alcoholics, but I don't have personal experience with the feeling of being an alcoholic and the emotions that surround the disease. If I'm misrepresenting something here, I apologize.

CW (there will probably be quite a few in this one):

Representation of a hangover from an emotional drinking binge.

Allusion to Otto's past as an alcoholic and reflection as a recovering alcoholic.

Allusion to Otto's falling off the wagon at one point. (very brief)

Mention of Jana's addiction to prescription drugs and alcohol.

Mention of Jana and Mark's break up.

Uncomfortable hiccups that concern Otto.

Mention of throwing up and retching.

Hiccups that Otto thinks are suggestive of needing to throw up.

No depiction of emeto. Discussion of previous purge (very brief).

Verbal description of the sound of Mark's hiccups by Otto to Atticus.

Verbal description of Otto's hiccups from Atticus to Otto.

Arousal mention.

Arousal and follow through implication.

A small hiccup battle.

Otto being extremely patient and understanding.

Otto also being the Felix to Mark's Oscar.

I STG, children, just look up The Odd Couple.

Atticus being embarrassed.

Mark being embarrassed.

Otto being a well-adjusted bi.

Mark being a disaster straight.

Jana is not a bad person. I intend to prove this in future stories.

Alice is also not a bad person. Etc. Etc.

Realizing how much I do lean heavily in a masc cast. I don't know why that is. Ah well, it's my fantasy anyway.

Mention of Atticus' parents both no longer existing.

Long moments in the story where no hiccups occur.

Lots of exposition surrounding past events. (I know, I know. Show, don't tell. But I had a need to write it out.

Um, if there's other stuff please tell me?

Finally! The story!

It was 6:30am and Otto was just about to have his first cup of coffee for the day when he heard the stairs from the loft bed creaking with heavy, ambling footsteps. Otto watched with attentive curiosity as Mark lumbered into the kitchen in boxers and a white shirt.

“Hey HNGK’UH!…” the younger man muttered as he sat down heavily across from Otto and shielded his eyes from the lights.

Otto wordlessly got up, sitting his unsipped coffee on the table, and turned off the overhead light while drawing the shades of the small window over the sink to let in a softer natural light into the kitchen.

“HUNGK!”

Poor guy had a wicked case of hiccups, it sounded like, and Otto knew a bad case of hiccups. A few weeks ago, Mark had been on the witnessing side of a 5-hour case of hiccups to which Otto had been victim.

But Otto knew good and well this wasn’t just about a case of the hiccups. The hiccups were a consequence of Mark’s actions. Mark’s actions were a consequence of an exorbitant amount of alcohol had the night before at a bar after work. The alcohol binge was a consequence of the fact that the future life he’d been planning with Jana had been crumbling slowly around him after a whole bunch of unpleasantness and drama that proceeded the breakup.

Mark had been staying with Otto for a few months as Jana and his relationship started to disintegrate. Yesterday Mark had told Otto that Jana had come by the police station, where he worked, to retrieve the spare key to their previously shared house from him and give him some stuff that he’d found of his that she thought he might want back.

Otto figured the finality of it all probably hit Mark pretty hard when he got a call at around 1am. Mark was slurring into his phone so much Otto could barely understand him. He had Mark hand the phone to the bartender, and he was able to get the address and head over to retrieve the wayward detective. The bartender, consequentially, was Margie.

Margie did a very good job of taking care of Mark before Otto arrived. Otto was very appreciative of the gesture. She kept his friend safe. The next week he’d visit the bar again during the daytime and would be lucky enough for her to be working so he could give her more thanks. They would start to talk, and a friendship would form quickly, thereafter.

Like clockwork, a customary pun for a clock maker, Otto awoke at 6am despite the late night. He didn’t expect Mark to be awake until much later that day.

“Didn’t think you’d be up this early,” Otto said. He kept his voice soft and tried to minimize the sounds of his shuffling through cabinets. “How’re you holding up?”

“HNGK! I’m okay. Hiccups woke me. Could-HINGK!-couldn’t get back to sleep,” Mark replied in a hoarse voice just above a whisper.

Mark lifted his hand away from his face a little when he realized the lights weren’t as bright as they had seemed before. He squinted his dark blue eyes in Otto’s direction as he watched the taller man walk back and forth. He had to look away when he found himself getting dizzy while trying to follow Otto’s path. The dull ache of pain behind his eyes and sinuses made him squeeze his eyes and pinch the bridge of his nose with his fingers.

Mark wondered if Ralph would’ve been as respectful of his current condition as Otto seemed. Ralph would have, no doubt, treated his hangover with some humor. Maybe he would’ve spoken a little loud or turned on all the lights. Ralph might’ve been sensitive later to Mark’s plight, but his friend and work partner seemed the type to shock someone in his sad, hungover state with tough love.

Mark wondered if Otto might have had a little more experience with being in the detective’s similar situation than Ralph. Mark was not wrong in his thought process, impressive as it for his brain to have formed the thought in such a dehydrated and painful state.

Otto had taken the time, when he’d settled his friend down enough that he knew he wouldn’t wake and was safe from further purging, to silence all of the chimes and striking clocks he owned. Otto had, indeed, been in Mark’s shoes and physical state more times and to a greater degree than it was likely Mark had. One thing Otto remembered viscerally about those times is that he could’ve done with a little understanding and kindness despite the bad decisions that lead him to the consequences of his self-destructive behavior.

“Here,” Otto said as he sat a glass of orange-hued liquid beside Mark’s elbow. “It’s Emergen-C. Electrolytes and vitamins. You’re really dehydrated, man, and this is a quicker way to replenish that. Tastes like orange. This,” Otto held up a small pocket of wax paper folded over a small amount of powder, “is BC powder. Powdered Aspirin and caffeine. Quickest way to get some pain relief from that headache. You gonna puke? Those hiccups sound suspicious…”

Mark took a while to respond, his brain working on reserves with all of the pressure and pounding in his head. Right. The hiccups.

“Naw. Did all of that HNK!-that last night. HMGK! I always get these after a nigh-HNGK’M!-night like...like last night. Usually takes a HNK-UH! a while to stop. Nothing helps. Kinda like you-HNGK!-yours. Thanks,” Mark said as he took a swig of the glass. The Emergen-C’s light fizz felt refreshing even though the artificialness of the orange flavor was a little offensive.

Mark felt Otto’s warm hand on his shoulder before the older man crossed back to where he was sitting before.

Otto sat down and observed his friend’s pallor and slow movements. He had memories of his own struggles with hangovers. He also had memories of squelching those hangovers with more drinking. It was less ‘hair of the dog’ and more the whole damn canine. To be fair, it was an effective method for a while. Not really something that, Otto discovered, was sustainable.

“Yeah, just pour that powder in your mouth and wash it down really quick with the water. Trust me, you don’t want that taste to linger any longer than it has to,” Otto said as he watched Mark’s cautious handling of the wax paper.

Otto watched him make a face from the bitterness of the powder before the detective quickly gulped the Emergen-C flavored water as a chaser. Otto couldn’t help but give a little chuckle.

“You good?” the clock maker asked.

“Y-HUNGK!-Yeah. Ugh!” Mark exclaimed, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“It’ll help, I promise. I know you feel like crap right now. No real shortcut to a hangover, man, but you can treat the symptoms. If you’re feeling like it, I can fix us both some breakfast after I finish my coffee,” Otto said.

“Thanks. That might b-HINGK!-might be good,” Mark said sheepishly. He jerked with another hiccup and tossed his head to clear his dark hair from in front of his eyes. He regretted the motion almost immediately as he winced.

Just as Otto was finally starting to take a sip of his still steaming coffee, Mark spoke up again and Otto met his tired eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Otto lowered the mug again, shaking his head.

“Dude, you don’t have anything to be sorry for,” he said with a sad smile. “Listen, man, you are going through some tough shit right now. I mean, I’m really glad Jana’s finally getting the treatment she needs. And you were a big part of that. And, well, you know, the whole malpractice lawsuit with that bitch blonde lawyer, Alice...whatshername moved that recovery along legally, but you were a part of it, too!”

Mark snorted at the cavalier summation Otto gave of his ex’s journey from addiction to almost losing her veterinarian license, to starting in a recovery program, to Jana realizing that she couldn’t hold up a relationship with Mark and recover at the same time. While he knew it wasn’t a personal attack, Mark couldn’t help but feel supreme grief in knowing that the person he fell in love with was going through something that, not only could he not help with, but that he was a hindrance in overcoming.

Not to mention he had purchased an engagement ring he had planned on unveiling at the right moment, which seemed perpetually postponed by upticks in crime and cases he couldn’t ignore. So, did he really blame her for not feeling safe in the relationship?

Otto was speaking again, and Mark looked up from his thoughts to listen. His body jolted again, and he was reminded that his hangover was still actively punishing him for his choices. The hiccups didn’t hurt, per se, but they were definitely hard, loud, and sounded pretty terrible.

“I mean, you know I’ve been in your place before. I mean, not exactly, but similar. No one would blame you for having a little self-destructive pity party. Just...not too many of them. Cause then you end up in the hospital 15-some-odd years later being told that your pancreas is on its last legs and one more drink could send you into a fatal situation. That’s...obviously specific to my experience, but you get it. Anyway, you got wasted cause you were grieving, and you asked your amazing friend who came to pick you up if he thought you were good-looking because for some reason none of the girls at the bar wanted to go home with the shit-faced drunk guy.

“And I meant what I said. You’re extremely hot and it’s so depressing that you’re completely so heterosexual. Like...painfully straight. Ugh!” Otto said, rolling his eyes dramatically.

Mark’s eyes had gotten so comically wide that Otto could see the bloodshot veins in the whites of them and the pink inflammation lining his eyelids.

“I HNGK-KUH!-I didn’t say all that, did I? HU’NGK!” Mark asked aghast as he rubbed his chest.

“You really did. Then you suggested we try being in a relationship because, and I quote, ‘you do guys sometimes, right?’ As if I haven’t explicitly told you my preferences. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m flattered. But I just don’t think we’d make a good match.

“We have a dishwasher, Mark. We have a machine that does the dishes for us. In the kitchen. Next to the sink that has a garbage disposal. Why do we have piles of dirty dishes? Not to mention if I find your boxers in a load of my clothes one more time I...sneaky bastard. Like a thief except instead of stealing things you invade my loads of laundry, so you don’t have to do your own. Like that bird. What’s that bird? That bird who lays its eggs in the other bird’s nest and has them raise their babies, so they don’t have to? Fuck! Cuckoo bird! How the hell does a clock maker forget that?!” Otto exclaimed. “You’re like a damn laundry cuckoo bird forcing me to wash your underwear!”

Mark was having a struggle trying to coordinate his silent laughter with his forceful hiccups. His body jolted against the back of the chair again as Otto seemed to wind down.

“I swear, man H’UNGK!, I don’t remember any HNGK!-any of that. Seriously, I’m NGK!-I’m really sorry you had to deal with—ugh!” the silent hiccup thumped hard in his chest as it choked his words, “deal with me. Damn, these things are an-HNGK!-annoying!” Mark said, rubbing his chest again.

The detective did notice, though, that his headache had already started to fade. He still felt a little foggy and unsettled in his stomach, but he was already feeling better. He wasn’t sure it was Otto’s humorous distraction or the Emergen-C and BC powder. Perhaps it was a combination.

“You sure you’re good with the stomach stuff? Cause those things sound like little retches…” Otto said, still suspicious.

“Well, if you keep t-ANGK!-talking about the stomach stuff I might HNGK!-might start feeling sick, so…” Mark said, crossing his arms as he winced at another silent bodily jerk.

“Alright, alright. I’ll stop,” Otto said, holding up his hands.

“You’re not one t-HINGK!-to hiccup-shame. Mr. Five H-HUMPK!-Hours of Scary Ass Hiccups!” Mark exclaimed.

“Touché!” Otto said at the reference to the time the clock maker developed a case of hiccups that persisted for most of the day. When Mark suggested holding his breath, Otto’s body rejected the cure and gave him the fastest hiccups he’d ever had. Otto was sore for days after that night.

Otto finally touched his lips to his mug of coffee that was still quite warm. Mark chuckled before another hiccup hit him. As Otto swallowed, he gave his friend a questioning look.

“Ass hiccups,” Mark explained with a smirk. Otto would wonder later if Mark still wasn’t a little drunk.

Otto inhaled the coffee with a surprised laugh and started coughing violently. His coughing was interspersed with...well...hiccups.

“Shit! HUCK!” Otto exclaimed between coughing.

He looked up to find Mark covering his mouth, but mirth in his eyes, as he watched Otto’s struggles.

“No HNGK!-no way. Dude, do we seriously HNGKL!-have the hiccups at the same UNGK!-same time?” Mark guffawed.

“This is HULP!HMK!-this is all y-HMK!-your fault, man. HLMK! Dammit!” Otto said.

Mark just laughed again, another hard hiccup smacking into his chest and throat.

After a while, they both calmed down. For the next few minutes, it was quiet save for the call and response their hiccups played with each other. Otto continued to sip his coffee, stubborn to drink the warm beverage he was so looking forward to. Mark nursed the rest of the Emergen-C, energy that he had regained from before having dissipated as he stared into the residue on the inside of his glass.

Though Otto’s hiccups were still rapid they had decreased in strength while Mark’s stayed forceful and deep.

“HNGK!” Mark’s hiccups said.

“Hlp!Hip!” said Otto’s.

“HUNGK!…HMP’K!”

“Huck!-himp!mp!”

“HU’NGK!...UCK!...HMMNGK!”

“Huck!Huck’l!Hmpk!Mp!” Otto sighed at the fast cluster and patted his chest, muffling another hiccup behind his hand.

“Stop that!” Mark suddenly exclaimed.

Otto looked up from a paper he had begun to do the crossword on with confusion.

“You can’t t-HNGK!-tell me you’re not d-UMPK!-doing that on purpose,” Mark said.

Otto frowned, head jerking in more hiccups.

“You’re out hi-HILMK!-out hiccuping me. You’re doing one-HNGK!-one more hiccup each time,” Mark complained, grumpily sipping the last of his enhanced water. Most of it was, of course, put on. But he had genuinely wondered if somehow Otto was doing it on purpose, too.

Otto, for his part, had been oblivious to the hiccup war that Mark had been forging. But he smiled now, taking a haughty tone.

“Well…I am the hmpk!hip!-the sup—superior hic-hu’up!-hiccuper,” he said, battling through another cluster and putting a fist over his mouth as three more hit him in a row.

A beat past before they both erupted into giggling laughter at the ridiculousness. The laughter ended in both of them letting out a hiccup simultaneously, Mark’s “HINGK!” to Otto’s “Hi’ilp!” which sent them into another roll of laughter that perpetuated itself for a while before they both got tired and winded.

Otto’s hiccups ended before Mark’s and the detective ended up hiccuping for about an hour in total which left him feeling sore and tired. But Otto’s breakfast and subsequent lunch and pressuring his friend to drink more water helped Mark feel much better by the end of the day.

***

To be honest, Otto had been terrified that night when he got the call from Mark. Mark was a rational person who didn’t often let vices lead his actions. He had a very clear and logical leaning and seeing the man so out of character and destroyed shook Otto’s core. In addition, having to enter a bar again and seeing representations of himself in his worst times all around him being unnerving and unsettling in and of itself.

The main reason Mark and him had become the unlikely friends they were was due to a case of mistaken identity where Otto lived one street away from a man guilty of kidnapping and murder. Otto also fit the physical description of the man in question, which wasn’t much: a tall man with a beard and wild curly hair.

After Otto’s innocence was proven, he was still getting harassed by his neighbors who hadn’t gotten the news that the actual murderer had been caught and was being prosecuted. Otto had stormed into the police station with the dark-haired, blue-eyed detective in his sights. Before the police there could usher him out (forcefully) Mark stopped them and let Otto have his say.

Otto demanded that some representative of the police go around his neighborhood and clarify that Otto was, in fact, innocent. Additionally, someone had thrown a brick through his window, and he held Mark personally responsible for paying for said window’s replacement. Also, he hadn’t spent this many years getting his life back together as a recovering alcoholic to now be chased out of his home because of a crime he actually didn’t commit!

To Otto’s surprise, it was the lead detectives, Mark and his partner Ralph themselves who went around to every one of his neighbors and explained Otto’s innocence. They ended at Otto’s door with sincere apologies, especially Mark. He was, after all, the one who had tackled Otto to the front steps of his own house in the first place.

He was further surprised to see Mark at his door again a few days later. He gave him a check to reimburse the window and had another request for Otto. His girlfriend, he suspected, was abusing her prescription drugs and alcohol and did Otto know of any programs that could be of use. And could Otto, perhaps, be willing to help Mark understand some of what she was going through from a place of having gone through something similar? Mark didn’t understand addiction from a personal standpoint, and it was causing a rift between he and Jana that he feared was irreparable.

The request was incredibly personal and bordered on inappropriate and offensive, but something about Mark’s countenance endeared him to Otto. Otto could tell Mark was coming from a place of wanting to learn and though it was a heavy burden to share his vulnerability with a man who accused him from murder, he felt compelled to try and help.

So, Otto, who had been living a pretty secluded life up until that point, reticently decided to be of service to Mark’s questions. The friendship ended up being mutually beneficial. Otto hadn’t realized how his reclusive life had been gnawing at his mental health. It had gotten to the point where he was scared to do anything social for fear of losing control of his desires. Mark ended up being the soft introduction to an unexpectedly functional, safe friendship. It was something he’d never experienced before.

It took a while for Otto not to see Mark as some twenty-something cop made detective before they were mature enough to handle it when he couldn’t even handle his private life. And the clock maker was more than full of opinions about those facts that he didn’t at all hide from the detective during their friendship. But Otto’s gruffness was chipped away by Mark’s eagerness to learn and try to help his girlfriend, Jana. And perhaps if Mark had been more forward with Jana about that learning process and his intentions things might’ve ended differently. Finding out your boyfriend was talking about your most intimate personal struggles with a stranger was distressing and Jana was quickly losing trust in Mark and their relationship.

All said, Jana still remained part of their social circle throughout her recovery. And, of course, the story of the lawyer who led Jana’s prosecution which almost led to her losing her license and livelihood was a whole other story. Alice and Mark together. No one saw that coming.

***

Atticus continued to stroke and massage Otto’s scalp as he finished the recollection. Somehow, the clock maker’s head had ended up on Atticus’ lap while they both reclined in bed as he spoke. The writer often wondered if Otto was part dog with the way he’d flop on them at times and how much he appreciated his head massaged.

The story had started only because Atticus mentioned how they had a fantasy of Otto and another one of their friends having hiccups simultaneously. But, they were quick to caveat, if that actually happened, they wouldn’t know how they’d contain themselves. The fantasy was still a thought that gave them some arousal, though.

The fantasy reminded Otto of the one time both he and Mark had them simultaneously and his mouth ran away with the story.

“Wow. That definitely helps fill some gaps,” Atticus said. Learning more about the history of Otto’s friendships was enlightening.

Jana had moved a few hours away by the time Atticus had met Otto. She stopped by every now and then to reconnect, but Atty hadn’t been available for those sessions. After all this time, they still hadn’t met the person who’d, in many ways, triggered the events that led Otto to meeting them.

If Otto hadn’t been such good friends with Mark, and if Atticus hadn’t been a victim of a serial robbery in their old apartment complex, then Mark wouldn’t have known to suggest Otto to them after the thief had knocked an old clock Atticus had inherited from its shelf. That clock still existed and ran perfectly after Otto had repaired it. It was in the loft bedroom where Atty found themselves often to write or decompress. It was a tambour style mantel clock. Atty had it in their house growing up. Atticus didn’t even know which side of the family it was from. With both of their parents gone, they probably never would.

Clocks aside, Mark needing Otto’s guidance on Jana, in some twisted way, made it possible for Atticus and Otto to find each other. So, Atticus might owe Jana as much gratitude for them being together as Mark.

“Yeah, I forget you don’t know all of this stuff,” Otto admitted. Atticus seemed so integrated into his life that it didn’t occur to him to tell them how everyone connected.

All of Atticus’ friends were in their home state (or were relationships they’d made online). Once they’d moved, they had to make new connections. It just so happened, timewise, that Otto was one of those first connections.

“Mark was lucky to have you,” Atty said.

“Yeah, well, he saw me a lot worse than that later that year when I fell off the whole sobriety wagon. So…” Otto trailed off and seemed to snuggle his head further into the softness of Atticus’ thighs.

Atticus sighed. That story they’d heard. It wasn’t a pleasant one.

“You don’t have to do that,” they said. “Qualify your good deeds with having been more of a challenge to deal with at some other point in time. You’re a good person and you’re good at taking care of people. It’s okay to admit that.” Atticus scratched their short nails along the back of Otto’s head when they felt his neck tense.

“I know,” he finally said, breathing warmth onto Atticus’ legs in a huff. “I just wasn’t for so long...but...yeah, I know.”

“All I know is who I see, and who I see is amazing,” Atty said. They smiled as Otto turned on his back to look at them.

“Yeah, well, you’re pretty amazing, too,” Otto said, lips pulling back in a smile showing just a little bit of teeth, but it was a smile that met his eyes. “And that thing you said about not qualifying your positive traits? You’re gonna, like, do that too, right? Maybe give that one a place in the old self-talk dialogue?”

Otto’s finger reached up to tap Atticus’ temple as the writer glared at him.

“See? This is why I don’t give you compliments. Always got to turn them back on me. Like weaponized kindness. Smug bastard,” Atticus muttered.

Otto laughed.

“So what did they sound like?” Atty asked sheepishly.

“What?” Otto asked with a frown as he led one of Atticus’ hands to the middle of his chest and rubbed his hand over theirs. Atty had yet to figure out why Otto preferred their hand in that spot, but they felt honored, for some reason, to be led there.

“Mark’s…” they stuttered and stopped, then they tried again, “Mark’s hiccups.”

“Oh!” Otto said in understanding. Then he scrunched his brows again while thinking. Mark’s hiccups were so distinctive, and he was trying to figure out how to word the description accurately.

“They were kind of, um, gulpy? They seemed really powerful. Like each hiccup really rocked his body back. Um. Kind of wet, too? Not sure if that’s the right way to describe it, but it was like there was wetness in the back of his throat whenever he hiccuped that sort of...sounded...I dunno…” he struggled to find the word before he gave up and shrugged “...wet!”

“You said you kind of thought he was going to throw up at first?” Atticus asked.

“Well, I mean, yeah. But he didn’t. They were just really powerful and sort of...liquidy,” Otto said, still shaking his head with the inaccurate description.

“So, wet,” Atticus confirmed lamely.

“Yeah. Like the sound of someone who just drank something when they swallow. That sticky sound in the back of their throat, you know?”

“Oh yeah! Yeah, I know what you’re talking about! Okay...wow...actually that sounds kind of hot,” Atty said.

“Yeah?” Otto asked, grinning.

“Shaddup,” they responded grumpily.

“No, I think it’s cute. What do you like about mine?” Otto fished.

“You know, I like that yours are fast. As long as they don’t bother you too much.”

“Do I have any...hot sounding hiccups?” he asked. He was rubbing Atticus’ hand again.

“It’s just the variety,” Atticus said after a while. “Each hiccup is different. Each one is a surprise. I like when you muffle them and they get louder, and harder, and longer, one after the other, until you sound hoarse and have to open your mouth to let sharper ones out. I-I like what they do to your body. Gawd, Otto, your body moves with every hiccup. Your cute, soft belly jumps and jiggles so much and you do that thing where when your head is jerked back you blink like you’re surprised. And, just, the way you react, man. How you’re so casual with them but also trying to be considerate about them with other people or when you get a little annoyed that they’re interrupting you when you’re trying to say something it’s all just so...hot. Guh…”

Atticus could feel heat crawling up their neck in both arousal and embarrassment.

“Well damn,” Otto whispered.

“Sorry.”

“No, don’t be. I mean, when you say it like that, it does sound kind of hot,” Otto admitted. He put his fingers up to his mouth and started subconsciously nibbling at his cuticles in thought. “So, it’s not just hiccups but all the stuff around hiccups. I mean obviously it’s the body movements and the sound, but it’s more. It’s how I interact with my hiccups that’s some of what turns you on. The unexpectedness of them. Is it, maybe...Is it because I’m flustered by them?”

“Sometimes,” Atty admitted.

Otto nodded, squinting in more thought.

“I think...that’s sort of why I get turned on by seeing people aroused. They aren’t completely in control, so they just react without...being able to help it. And if they’re trying to hide it and I know it? That’s so hot. Seeing them interact with people and me knowing how hard they’re trying to keep control. Not exactly something we can ever roleplay, but it doesn’t take much when I notice that anyway. My favorite part is...well...watching them relieve the feeling. The myriad of emotion. Jeez. I dunno. My body just—and nothing else really triggers that arousal for me. Doesn’t matter how attractive someone is. It’s that. And I’m there in an instant,” Otto said.

“I can definitely understand that. Damn. It’s bedtime and I am so charged right now,” Atticus admitted.

“Me, too. You...you wanna watch one of those files I made for you? While-while I watch you?” Otto asked in a small voice.

Atticus gasped.

“Oh, gawd, can we? I didn’t even...I’ll get my ear buds. You probably don’t wanna hear yourself. Gawd, I want this so much!” Atty said.

That night as Atty watched the first video where Otto made his hiccups faster by holding his breath (recommended by Otto, himself) and Otto watched Atticus, the writer couldn’t be more grateful to Jana and Mark for their involvement in getting the two of them together. Never would Atticus had ever thought that a relationship could be this symbiotic and honest, that kindness battles were the worst of their spats, and that their most serious moments came from wanting to take care of each other and expressing their gratitude for each other.

#hiccups kink #hiccup kink #minors dni #hiccups #non kink blogs do not reblog #hic fic #otto and atticus #hicfic #18+ mdni #otto and mark #margie and otto #otto lore #atticus lore #I have no idea why this story came out so easily #This is not the story I planned to write.

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ahgasegotarmy116 · 11 months

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Semantic Error | A Jeon Jungkook Series | Chapter 4

Based off of Semantic Error (bl) by J Soori Summary: Jungkook asks to spent time with y/n as friends Pairing: Techie inexperienced fem!reader x Artist fuck boy Jungkook Word Count: 1.2k~ Warnings: Nothing really, Jungkook is just being annoying and flirty a/n: This is just a tiny bite of the story since I haven't updated it in almost 5 days... oops. I'm spending time at my sister's house for the next few days but I should be able to work on posting more on Monday :) Read from the beginning

Days after my reconciliation with Jungkook I find myself thinking of the possibility of asking him if he would consider working on the game with me again but that would require me to swallow my pride. I'm not really in favor of that option so I decide to wait until he brings it up... if he brings it up.

I could always put up a flyer in the visual arts department asking if anyone would be interested in joining. I'm saying it here and now, I will never crawl back to him, if he sees that I'm still looking for a designer and ends up being interested then he can beg me to be a part of the project again.

Either way as long as I get a new one by the end of the week then I don't care who I work with. As long as they have a good work ethic and their character design doesn't suck and they can keep to deadlines and... well maybe it might be a bit harder to find someone to fit the bill than I thought it would, knowing that people tend to be very unreliable and unpredictable creatures. I don't want to go through what I went through with Hana cancelling on me again. I guess the only way to really try to find someone is let people know about it.

Calculating all the pros and cons of what the result might be depending on my methods I decide fliers with my contact information would be my best bet. I'll just place it on some sort of bulletin board and hope for the best. If that doesn't work I'll resort to some sort of digital announcement. Opening the program I plan to use I notice that I've received a friend request on sns. Pulling it up I'm greeted with a follow request from Jungkook which I find strange but I accept it nonetheless. Soon after I get a DM from him in my inbox.

'Hey pretty, I didn't realize you had social media, I guess this means we're friends now that we're following each other :)' I roll my eyes at his pathetic excuse at flirting.

'Last I checked you followed me, I haven't followed you yet' I say putting him in his place.

'Yet ;)' shit I should've just ignored him.

'Come on y/n just follow me, I promise my account isn't some narcissistic blog or anything, plus next time we see each other I want to take a picture with you and post it! I like posting pictures of my friends!' he says and I can feel his smile through the phone and I roll my eyes at the thought.

'You have to ask for my consent before posting anything' I reply ultimately giving into him since there's no harm done with clicking a single button.

'Okay I got it. Hey can we meet up in the library tomorrow? I wanted to spend some time with you. I know you end up spending a lot of time in there anyways so I just thought that maybe we could study together, especially since we taking Chinese together' he says waiting for my permission to give him another place to annoy me in.

'What makes you think I would want to study with you?' I say hoping to brush him off.

'y/n I'm your TA , I've see all of the work you've turned in' he teases.

'What's that supposed to mean?' I ask offended at what he's implying.

'It means that you write like a child. Plus your accent when you speak isn't the best either. I could tutor you if you'd like ;)' he responds, simultaneously offering his help while also insulting me.

'Pass' I say frustrated with his attitude.

'I'm sorry I didn't mean it, I just like thinking about what you might look like while you're responding to me. You probably have your brows pinched together looking utterly offended and maybe even blushing from embarrassment'

'I'm not embarrassed!' I retort.

'Why don't you look in the mirror pretty, I've got you blushing without even being there don't I' I get up frustrated, determined to prove him wrong but to my disgust I see my cheeks with a light dusting of pink.

'Fuck you' I reply indirectly confirming his suspicions.

"Anyway do you want to meet after the class you have after Chinese?' he suggests.

'Aren't you in that class too?' I question annoyed by the memory of him taking my spot for the second time that day.

'No I dropped the class, there was no way I was gonna stay in it and bring down my gpa, I just wanted to annoy you for a bit' he admits.

'Do you have another class after Chinese?' I ask curious as to what he'll do while I'm in class.

'Oh no I'm done for the day after that :)' he sends

'So you're just gonna wait around for me until my hour and a half class ends and then spend even more time studying together? Don't you have something better to do with your life?' I question, confused as to why he would do that.

'Not really, I just wanna spend some time with you. I wanna be friends remember?' he send with no hesitation.

Is this what friends do for each other? Waste a whole day waiting for your class to finish just to then tutor them afterwards just because you want to 'spend time with them'?

'You Jeon Jungkook are an enigma' I respond not bothering to acknowledge his continued efforts to establish a friendship with me for some odd reason.

'Thank you? Anyways what's your answer pretty?' he prods, not satisfied with my evasion of his proposition.

'First off stop calling me that, second I'll be there from 3-6 are you prepared to stay for that long?' I question trying to get him to rescind his invitation.

'Yep, I'll make sure to clear my schedule, see you then pretty ;)'

I groan audibly at his antics and close out the app. I guess this whole flyer situation can wait until tomorrow since he's given me a splitting headache from all of this. Who knows maybe he'll bring up the game tomorrow so I won't have to make them or swallow my pride, therefore making him come crawling back to me since he seems so eager to spend time with me.

Taking a deep breath to clear my mind I decide to go to bed early to prepare myself for the mystery this is to be my day tomorrow. My days used to be the same week to week, month to month through out my life with minor changes to my class schedules since I've been in college but ever since Jeon Jungkook decided to walk into my life it has been anything but ordinary.

I'm used to scheduling things down to the very minute and that has worked well for me. It's set me up for success in my schooling but also as an adult. My life is what some people might call boring but I find peace in my calculated existence. Whereas Jeon Jungkook rolls with the punches and lives in chaos. My world is in black and white and his is in color, my life is routine and his life is creative. Why has someone like him taken an interest in me when I'm the exact opposite. Why can't he just leave me alone? I guess the real question I should be asking is why can't I get him out of my head?

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buckyarchives · 2 years

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BuckyArchives Masterlist

Welcome! I know my username says ‘Bucky’archives, but I do occasionally post character other than him and outside of marvel! Anyways, I’m Sophie and I go by any pronouns, I don’t share too much about myself but I promise I’m friendly and my inbox is always open. Enjoy reading and below is my full Masterlist and almost everything you need to know! Notes, reblogs and comments are VERY important, i don’t know what readers life or don’t like if you don’t interact so please, I beg — interact with me. Even if it’s small.

DNI! basic dni criteria (racist, homophobic, misogynistic .etc) under 16. just don’t come here to just stir up drama, don’t like what you see? Scroll. Not hard to grasp.

My AO3 | want to request something? Click here!

GUIDE | 🎞️=personal favs. ⚡️=smut. 🍂= over 5k. 🎟️= unfinished

series

Metal Arms and Short Skirts ⚡️🍂

Waltzing in as the new head of Avengers medical decision, impressing everyone and… scaring Bucky Barnes your incredibly short skirts. While Bucky is having a hard time seeing his arm as anything other than a weapon, you’re more than happy to help him

The Balcony scene 🎞️🎟️🍂

The one where theirs two winter soldiers, and now it’s time to make amends. Untill you and Bucky Barnes run into a homicidal 5’4 talk problem

The Domestic Life of Living With a Runaway Assassin 🍂🎟️

You hate many things in life. You hate soulmates, you hate the avengers, you hate guns, you hate loud snorers and complicated relationships. Bucky Barnes is associated with all those thing yet you can seem to hate him (Soulmate!AU)

One-shots + Two-parters

The Trials and Tribulations of Getting Bucky Barnes a Second date.

Bucky Barnes hasn’t kissed someone since the 40s and he needs some practice…

Little mermaid🎞️🍂

A mission gone rogue and Bucky Barnes has to depend on you to save him, and a few of your unlikely friends found midst the Atlantic Ocean.

Bedless

Relapsing wasn’t great, ever. But Bucky Barnes is there. (SH WARNING)

Day After Tomorrow 🎞️

Bucky Barnes’ enhanced hearing is both a blessing and a curse. Eavesdropping, loud music, footsteps and when his sweet neighbor has been coughing her pretty head off all day.

First impressions ⚡️

Who’s would guess that meeting Matt Murdock’s best friends for the first time involved drunk giggling and impressive cock-blocking. (Male reader)

Second, first meeting 🎞️

After the meteor, Chishiya notices the all too familiar person. Their pull towards you - like maybe you’ve met somewhere? (GN reader)

Night Shift🍂

After months of Bruce Wayne being a regular at the waffle house you work at, you soon realize you have been messing up his order the entire time (GN reader)

Untitled

You don’t trust the new masked vigilante, the batman, but after a couple flirty interactions and him saving you from a possible mugging — you begin to change your mind.

Untitled 🎞️

After many stressful nights dealing with the riddler and his fathers past, all Bruce Wayne wants if for you to stay.

We’re not really strangers 🎞️🍂🎟️

You got cheated out of your life and now you can’t trust. Sebastian stan doenst know how to love full heartedly. He’s in a movie you didn’t write, but you did, but you want admit it - or do you? Loneliness begins to consume sebastian, as for you but you are two people from two different worlds: yet this tug is so intense it will eat you both raw

5 Years of Peace🍂

You and Bucky go to Vormir

Graceland too.

Ellie Williams didn't care much for trusting new people, she needed to keep the ones she had. Until you came around.

Just A Game

if anything, you and Bucky Barne's relationship was just a game. Who will win and who will break?

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tododeku-or-bust · 7 months

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I noticed your "fill my inbox" post so i wanted to tell you about my OCs that i've been working on lately, it might come across weird or maybe much and I'm probably going to seriously expose myself out of anonymity with the details but i hope you'll like to hear it anyways -- I saw a post that suggested more representation for fat emo girls (i misremembered it as "i want to see more fat emo girls") and I became really inspired so i made a sketch of a fat black emo girl. Her being black was just another case of my brain going "*hand raise* Do they have to be white/Would it hurt if they were black?" and the response is often "no" even "that would be more interesting" so I switch it up, and after searching through names, the name Ada stuck. I wanted to give her a distinctly black name because I felt like that isn't done enough and that it wasn't fair, but anyways. I had a character that I made previously, named Nia the Swift, made because I had a lesbian JoJo OC named Vivian (lost sister of Dio) and she totally kicked ass and tugged at my heart strings but I realized that she was the only confirmed lesbian OC I had, so I thought "I need to make another one" so I made him and I made him black and masc and I couldn't resist making him a fancy-dancy cunning vampire. Anyhow, I was thinking about Ada a lot because I got interested in emo subculture so whenever I would think about emo stuff, I'd think about her too. She's a gloomy character, but I didn't like seeing her sad/out of it all the time. A silly idea came up in my head of her getting her hand kissed by Nia and thinking "am i goth?" (subtext: because i think i'm falling in love with a vampire) and I thought it was great. When I made Nia, I didn't really think up any Scenarios for him for a little too long and I felt like he needed to be part of a duo, but I couldn't come up with any solid ideas yet, so I felt like Ada would make an excellent match. I'm swamped with a lot of big stressful things this month but I'm hoping to squeeze in drawing him being very very sweet and gentlemanly to her and her making cute meme emoji faces about it, and maybe some other things involving them. I've been learning a lot about hair lately for it (which is good bc my career seems like it could loom unexpectedly into the "hair" area) and it was nice listening to a tutorial on how to get good box braids while i was on an errand walk. I thought previously that box braids had more than 3 strands, maybe 4 hence the name "box" braids (no, also on closer inspection, no). Sorry for sending you so many big paragraphs and run-on sentences, but I hope maybe you can have my two vaguely described women living in your head rent free now

Yeah lol, I do recognize who you are now 🤣

Well, I'm glad you took the time to stop yourself and decide that she didn't have to be white! That is definitely the first step that very many people don't take!

As for "that would be more interesting", I encourage you to take those next steps and determine why. Why would it be more interesting? Them being Black shouldn't be the interesting part- that would make them sound like they're a token!

Have you done research in Black emo culture? Have you done research into fatness while being Black? Are those things that affect your character's life? Her decisions and her personality? Does it play into how people treat her? That's where we get into the intent! Because I'm not Black and emo, but I can tell you right now her being "gloomy" would definitely affect the way people treat her as a Black woman in reality. I do appreciate that you let her have other emotions though!

I do have an Auntie Ada (rip), and Nia is also a Black African name (it means 'purpose'). Did you know that when you named him?

And no lmao that is not why they're called box braids. I am very glad you took the time to look that up before saying it out loud, because that would have been quite embarrassing in front of the right (Black) people 🤣

Thank you for sharing your Black OCs with me, and I hope you continue to care for them!

#ask #anon

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the-everqueen · 8 months

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“Rose and the Corinthian are both people who need care, in different but complimentary ways, and i think that's part of what fascinates me about pairing them.”

I would say this ask is more of a “Thoughts on Corirose” one, based on your excellent quote/response here from LA Guard Dog part 1 👀

i do not remember saying this, which is funny to me because looking back at my comment replies on that fic, i was clearly burned out from final year of grad school. i'm way more loquacious now that my brain isn't running on fumes and spite. but i DO remember how much i appreciated each comment; those ao3 notifications in my inbox were little sparks of delight amid rejection emails and, later, a wave of onboarding paperwork.

anyways i stand by past me's words. i feel like fandom downplays how much Rose has lost: she's a young adult from a broken home, her mom died and left her with limited material resources to start her own life, she met Unity and then almost immediately lost her, she got her brother back but only after he's been through hell, and now she's his only living guardian. she's never really had a childhood. so it makes sense, to me, that deep down she'd really want to be cared for. she had to be The Responsible One with Lyta, with Jed, with the Endless. when is someone going to watch out for her? and yeah, the implication at the end of s1 is that she has this whole found family who are invested in her, but caring about someone is different from caring for them. also accepting care from people you feel have already given you a lot can be difficult when you're used to being self-sufficient and circumstances have taught you that the only person you can really trust to stick around is yourself. i skip ahead to post-comix in LA guard dog, but even with some distance from the events of the Doll's House arc, she's still a mid-20s woman in a parental role for a traumatized preteen. that's a lot for someone who isn't also a daughter of the Endless and the only remaining adult of her human bloodline.

enter the Corinthian. he's useful for Rose in a few ways: he can't die, he can shoulder some of the responsibilities involved with raising a kid (at very least the stuff that takes minimal skill but maximum brain space, like school schedules and chores and packing lunch). also he's an utter hedonist, which is great for getting Rose acclimated to the idea of having things she likes rather than just what she needs. look, he wanted a fancy coffee so he got her this fancy floral pastry. extrapolating from the comix (including the dreaming run, but i'm cherry picking there), he's very much a person who shows feeling through action, even when that's at direct contradiction with his words. and that's great for Rose, who i imagine has had a lot of people say nice things to her and then utterly fail to show up for her in the ways that matter.

i'm talking about him like he's a tool, which admittedly is how Dream still conceptualizes him to some degree in this au. but he's aware this time around that's not what the Corinthian needs, hence giving him to Rose. i don't know that Rose can think of the Corinthian as an object, based on her experiences and who she is as a person. Rose imagines possibilities that Morpheus could not. so her idea of care for a Nightmare looks different, too, and the crux of the LA guard fic pt. 2 is the question "is that enough?" idk! but i think it matters to the Corinthian. there's a moment in the dreaming comix, during Coco's Year As A Real Boy, where he muses that his bf Sila has become more than a distraction to him--i think someone seeing the Corinthian as a person, beyond his function as a mirror (aka what he can do for/to them), is the realization of a story he's been telling himself for a long time. about him and the Dreaming, about him and Dream.

tl;dr: Coco and Rose are both people who have been positioned as non-subjects in their respective worlds and that means they're both weirdly able to affirm each other's subjectivity.

#ask games #violetoftheendless #sandman #cocorose #rose walker/the corinthian #SO many thoughts on ''thingness'' in relation to my fave sandman characters and how they grapple for agency

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acoldsovereign · 7 months

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FOR THE MAN WHO WEARS HIS HEART ON HIS SLEEVES.

// @scarlxtleaves / @thuganomxcs / @peoplcshope

---

{{ Happy Birthday, you fuckin' fucker! (I say this with love). I remember when I first came to the DBZ RPC months ago and I was so shy I didn't know how to communicate properly. People scared me. Following people scared me. People following me back scared me. I was freakin' scared of EVERYTHING. I even unfollowed a person I followed (and then followed them back when they checked in with me) because I realized how bad that looked/how problematic it could be if I didn't address it. I felt so bad, and I still do sometimes. I'm so glad that mutual was understanding and patient with me, aaaaaaaa. Needless to say, ya girl had SO many issues in the beginning. I was a HOT MESS. Hell, I didn't even have all of my muse info up but you didn't give a shit about none of that. You just took one look at my blog, saw 'despot of the universe' on my header and said 'LET IT RIP' like Beyblade. DUDE, you were ballsy as fuck and I'm so glad for that! You gave me my first ever starter here!!! THAT made me remember you! Everytime I logged in, it was to respond to our Future Gohan/Maiz fight thread. (I'm actually looking for it now because that's gonna be something I continue after I reply to someone else first 👀). You're one of the first people I ever plotted with too, even if that intimidated me a little. I mean, granted it was after you gave me the starter because I was freaking worried about everything, which was why I was all over your inbox, "okay, so she can do this and that...", "i have no problem with them having this sort of dynamic", etc. Gosh, you were overwhelmingly sweet and kind to me and I appreciate that. I know this is not something I should apologize for, but I'm still sorry that I scared you slightly when I changed my username to acoldsovereign from maizthefemalesaiyan, and didn't tell you in advance. I didn't realize you wouldn't recognize me so I had to put the former name in my old promo post. YOU'RE why I did that. I didn't know what other accounts you had and I just wanted to let you know it was meeeeeeee! ;w; But then you forgot your password to the blog so we couldn't even communicate anyway! One thing I will say-- it is funny I recently posted about Toriyama and Future Trunks and what the latter means to me because guess what blog I found you on. Guess what reunited us. Yeah.

FUTURE TRUNKS.

YOU SEE WHAT I MEAN?????? That man is always doing something for me! You would've thought he was REAL. But anyway, it was so cool to have you back on my dash again! It took me an embarrassing amount of time to realize who it was. I saw the name "Jay" on your promo post and it didn't cross my mind it was you, man. Not until I went down the blog and saw the writing style matched up. Remember how I just burst into your inbox and made some noise? And then you realized it was me? That shit was hilarious. We were so happy to see each other. Everything's been smooth sailing since then and we've created so many cursed memes, threads, jokes and storylines. Dude, we fuckin' made Rengakura. That little psychopath LOL. Well, moreso I made him but your response to that thread in particular made it so that he didn't come out any worse than he could've. Damn you for having Trunks make the right decision! (Again, I say this with love). At least in one verse, Trunks finally gets a happy-ish ending though. He lives with his mostly mellowed-out/former-tyrant for a wife and a pseudo-sane Saiyan-hybrid child on a spaceship, having space adventures. 🥺 Papa Trunks isn't something I knew I needed until I got it so thank you. I also did not know Maiz was actually capable of chilling the eff out-- THAT was a surprise to me. The fact that she's actually a decent mother is hilarious, considering all the fucked up stuff she's done before without blinking an eye. I also love how through our threads, you can see how she naturally came to care for him, even if she's sadistic and still messes with him from time to time. One of my favorites scenes with them unironically was when she offered to take Trunks to a tropical planet for his birthday. She was actually affectionate towards him the proper way more or less, but he didn't realize it because he was so used to her being busy/selfish/frosty/teasing. Bro thought he was dying. That was tragically sad yet funny all at once. I'd say more but this is already a lot and you already know how I feel about your Yusuke and our favorite assassin, Sanosuke.

Long story short- thank you for warmly welcoming me into this small, but chill RPC. I'll always love and appreciate you.

Happy birthday, Jaybird.

#Machismo (Sanosuke)#{{ i.... should probably make a tag for my edits huh. anyway take this. it'll always be love between us forever!!! have an amazing day!#OOC: Out of Limits

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kani-karumba · 3 months

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Can you do shalnark, Feitan, Phinks, chrollo, and illumi with a s/o who hates their birthday because something traumatic happened on their birthday? Thank you!

A/N: I'm so sorry for seeing this so late. I was out on vacation in my hometown and they don't have good internet so I didn't get a chance to check my inbox. Also for some reason my old fanfics have been deleted. I don’t know how that happened, but it's really annoying. So im very sorry if anybody really liked those works and now it's gone from there liked posts. But I'm officially back now. So hopefully you guys like this!!

Warnings: None, very SFW, mostly just fluff.

—-------------------------------------------------------------------

Shalnark

You and shalnark were heading back to base from a pretty easy mission you guys had. While you were zoned about why you guys needed 2 people for the mission, if it was an easy mission. Shalnark was whistling and walking beside you with a nonchalant expression. You decided to finally speak up what you’ve been thinking.

“Why do you think we were both assigned to the same mission if it was so easy?”

You spoke in a confused tone, and shalnark looked at you with a raised brow.

“You really don’t know?”

He said in a pretty surprised tone himself because you didn’t even know it was your birthday today.

You shook your head but looked at him curiously, since you wanted to know why.

Shalnark stopped whistling and stopped walking and turned to you, which also made you stop your movement with a confused facial expression.

“I asked chrollo to send us both on a mission together”

You looked at him with a pretty surprised facial expression, but then a little sense of worry washed over you.

“Oh no, is it like our monthly anniversary and i didn’t know, because if we were supposed to get a gift. i'm sorry to tell you, but i'm empty handed right now”

You spoke in a gullible tone, not even acknowledging the other options. And Shalnark gave you an unimpressed look.

“You can’t actually be serious right?”

He said with a sigh

“I did it for your birthday”

The last word made you shit bricks, your face was stone cold as you began to zone out. Your parents never caring enough for you on your birthdays made it feel like it was an uneventful day to you, the only person who ever said it mattered was your brother but he had died the same day when he was fighting against an opponent once.so now you swore to yourself that you’d never celebrate something that felt like a curse.

Shalnark waved his hand in front of your face.

“Earth to ____, you there”

The sudden action made you blink and suddenly realize you had zoned out and your eyes were watering.

“Are you ok? You look like your about to bawl your eyes out”

Shalnark asked in slight worry because you had never reacted like this, not even in death threatening situations, and you looked up at him while scoffing.

“I was just staring for to long and my eyes began to water”

You murmured while wiping your eyes and pouting.

“Anyways you didn’t have to do all that”

You spoke in a frustrated tone.

“I wanted to”

He replied and began walking again while whistling

“Is that why you got me those sweets today?”

You spoke with a teasing yet curious tone

“No, i only got it cause i wanted”

He said while turning his head the other way to hide the very small shade of pink that spread across his cheeks.

as you looked at him, the more you smiled and thought that maybe your birthday wasn’t such a curse after all.

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

A/N: i might try making these in seperate parts becuase ive been trying to get back into writing after being away for so long. so i might make seperate parts and tag you in them if i can!

#fanfic #anime #anime and manga #request #hxh #shalnark #shalnarkxy/n #shalnarkxreader #shalnark scenerios

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hibernationsuit-remade · 6 months

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hello i am crawling into your inbox on all fours. whats the new lore. hows mars. whats goin on there. 🤲

HIIIIII thank u for asking oh my god :'3

backstory for the whole thing is that i've had two story ideas in my head that i rotated for a lobg while until tow hyperfixation appeared in june last year and i have barely given any thoughts to them

NOW for a while i've been, like, working more on toby's backstory and all and done some worldbuilding and started having thoughts abt pulling him out of being a video game oc and instead keep him as an original oc. which in turn led me to have some thoughts about the original stories. what i decided is to ditch the plots, combine the stories into one and throw toby & co. in there HEHE

Now what's happening in the story itself: basically Earth has been terraforming and colonizing planets for a while, and only after a while went "oh wait we also have Mars over there". So they go there like 100 years before the story plot starts and terraform it and it kinda starts to have it's own thriving colony & people are happy. Then Earth gets bored and kinda leaves it to be on its own (which Mars is kinda happy about honestly, Earth directives were starting to get annoying).

Meanwhile Toby's (and others') backstory stays the same (though some details r changed, like corporations and projects, how Earth works and all), and so kinda does the reason for Tobias to leave Earth. The managers of the project he was working in as a lead chemist were doing some fucked up unethical shit and he tried to whistleblow them and almost ended up getting killed by the lead guy of the project for that. The corporation the project was part of wasn't really pleased w it but decided to deal with the lead guy instead and leave Toby alone (partly bc Klara has a very high rank in their intercorporational relations + Toby has some friends in internal affairs).

At the same time Klara got an offer to move to Mars bc their corporation's daughter company is having some problems she would deal with very well, and while Toby didn't really like the idea at the beginning, they did realize that it would also be a good way for him to "start a new chapter" (and also get away from ppl who really don't like him). Plus it's said that Mars is really doing better than Earth in some way.

And so they decide to go there. Yay 🤍

EXCEPT THAT IT IS NOT DOING BETTER SJFKKFSHFJJFJX Mars is in fact, kinda fucked up in a way that it's very divided, kinda dangerous and has a shitty government that only cares about money. Plus there's some rebels who want to get rid of their current government. But hey at least there's a gian ocean on the north side of Mars! woter

When they arrive there their transport gets ambushed by said rebels and they, for some reason, take Klara w them. Toby tries to start a fight and is left on that spot until found by local government officials. They kinda know why he & Klara arrived here and r thus somewhat nice with him, BUT since the corporation Klara is working for is kinda against the local government, they aren't That Nice. When he asks them to help him out get Klara back they laugh at his face and go "lol get a job and calm down."

And so he decides to do it all by himself (+ teams up with some other people). And so the story begins!*

and that's all i've figured out so far properly

ANYWAY!!!! i am soooo excited about this one oughhhhhh thank you for asking <3333 i think i'll post the more official writing things on my writeblr once i sort it out, but mostly i'll also talk about it here and post art here or on my art blog TEEHEE <3

*meanwhile klara is having a surprisingly ok time btw. the rebels apparently wanted her to do smth they need her skills for and she is treated sooo well. much better than at her own job <3

#asks

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stobinesque · 1 year

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WIP Wednesday!

Tagged by @eriquin and @steves-strapcollection, thank you!!

THE RULES

In a reblog (or new post w/ rules attached), post up to five (5) filenames of your WIPs; not titles, file names.

Post a snippet from one of them. Snippet must be words you wrote in the last 7 days. We’re posting progress here. If you haven’t made any, go make some and come back to post!

After you’ve posted, people can send you an ask with one of your file names. You must then write 3 sentences in that file. If the filename is one you can’t share from (for example, an event fic), write 3 sentences on it anyway, and then 3 more on another to share.

That’s it! You can invite others to join in, or just post. If you tag me in your post, I will send you an ask request!

THE WIPS

Jeff is Steve's Bi Awakening AU (fwiw I already have two of these sitting in my inbox from a couple weeks ago)

wigwag [Steve's Big Gay Sex Adventure]

Wayfinder [S4 Fix-it, Lucas POV]

phryctoria bonus chapter 7 (marginalia and annotations of How To Have Sex in an Epidemic)

THE (no pressure) TAGS

@devondespresso @starryeyedjanai @xenon-demon @inairbinad @hellsfireclub @delta-piscium @steddielations @thefreakandthehair @skjachukson @steventhusiast -- and anyone else who wants to participate!

THE SNIPPET

uhhhh, I'm pretty sure most of the writing I've done in the past 7 days has already been shared in various asks (or my steddie microfic), so have a sneak peek at chapter 5 of phryctoria, which I spent a good chunk of today revising.

Robin yawns again, stretching her arms high above her head. “Absolutely worth it,” she says, sounding a bit smug.

Steve shakes his head, but can’t bite back the smile she brings to his face. He clicks back into a conscious awareness of their surroundings, and realizes they’re passing by Weathertop. (Try as he might to deny it, the kids’ names for locations around Hawkins have fixed themselves in his mind.) He pulls off and parks the beamer on the side of the road, circling around the front to pull Robin out of the passenger seat. “C’mon, Bobbin, we’ve got a hill to climb.”

Halfway up, Robin turns to him and starts flapping a hand against his chest. “Hey, hey! How’s that song go? The hills are alive, dah-da-dah daaah dah, you know?”

Steve smirks. “Aren’t your ears supposed to be little geniuses? Robs, the next lines are literally the title of the movie.”

“Pretty sure it was a musical first.”

“This does not actually help your case, you know that, right?”

“Whatever, dingus. Just tell me how the song goes.”

“You sure you wanna hear me sing?”

“Okay, you’ll notice how I didn’t say ‘sing how it goes for me,’ you could just tell me the words.”

“No, no, now you’re going to be subjected to the musical stylings of the Harrington family singers, because,” Steve leans into her space and starts singing, sickly sweet, “My heart wants to sing every soooong it hears.” His head is almost fully resting against Robin’s shoulder as he looks up at her with a shit eating grin.

“Oh, my god, get off me,” she says, shoving at him while she laughs.

He lets himself be pushed away, taking a couple of dramatic, stumbling steps away from her before righting himself and drifting back into her space. “You know the next lines have always been my favorite though?”

“Do you have the whole song memorized?!”

“...yeah?” Steve frowns at her. “Robs, it’s one of my favorite movies! I thought that’s why you asked!”

Robin shakes her head, looking at him a little dumbstruck. “Nope, I’m pretty sure I would have remembered that little Harrington factoid.”

“Well…yeah. My mom really loved it, so I guess I just watched it a lot growing up? Especially when my dad was out of town—before she started going on the trips with him—because then we could sing along.”

Robin opens her mouth to say something, before seeming to make the conscious decision not to approach the whole ‘you couldn’t sing along to the movie about not being allowed to sing?’ thing with a ten foot pole, and snapping her mouth shut again. “Huh.” She takes a couple more striding steps forward with a pensive look on her face. “So...how does the next part go?”

He smiles at her, and even without being able to see his own face he can tell that it’s radiant. “My heart…wants to beat like the wings of the birds that rise from the lake to the trees.” He looks at her, and he can feel the way his gaze has become just a little too intense.

“Birds, huh?” She knocks his shoulder with her own, a gentle smile on her face. “Yep. Always loved ‘em,” he says, his heart feeling a little gooey in his chest.

#wip wednesday #read writes #phryctoria #i maybe listened to the whole sound of music soundtrack on repeat yesterday

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frenchfrywrites · 1 year

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Georg, Sunny D, hiiii, yeehaw partner!! 🤠 And Musty Wail (but not really)

Ok so, I'm not really waiting for you to post something similar, because that seems rude and stress introducing. I would still follow you no matter what you post, so this is more just me rambling about some of your posts I REALLY like. Ahem.

"Pounding the characters so hard the bed breaks" this one I find SO funny, and it's so well written!! Often when I write my hcs I think back thus post and try to make it as well written and funny lol.

"Beel's favorite beverage" I'm not rhat into piss drinking but man. (Picture of horse looking at ocean). You really convinced me. It is soooo hard to find Beel smut in this Fandom, never mind sub!Beel smut, never mind AMAZINGLY WRITTEN SMUT!! I don't even have a piss kink but I would let Beel drink my piss after this.

"Holding their dick when they pee" LISTEN LISTEN TO ME. LOOK ME IN THE EYES. I. DO. NOT. HAVE. A. PISS KINK. (Or if I do I only have like, 10% of a pisskink. A pisskink with a few hard lines)

But....

Listen, this is one of my Weird Kinks that most people wouldn't even *consider* is a kink but. Taking care of a character?? Helping them out with things they don't Need help with, but doing it anyway? Either because they're your little baby or because they're too dumb to it themselves??? Amazing. 10/10. No notes. And this checks off a lot of this boxes. I just want a subby demon who can't get their own dick out of their pants to pee so they need me to do it for them.

"April showers day 6: pissing in public": I'm pretty sure I've come into your inbox and talked about this fic before, but I am doing it again. This is like, the Book of Mormon of piss kink to me, personally. You knocked on my door and showed me this fic and I was like "maybe I CAN indulge in a little piss kink". And now here I am. 3/4 posts on here containing piss kink. You're converted me. Ok but this is absolutely my favorite fic of your and I frequently go back to it. This definitely ticks off my "taking care of kink" and was probably part of the reason I realized that I hard that kink.

Anyway, you have so much cool stuff but I've felt like I've rambled on enough lol.

OHO SO MANY!

And wahhhhhhhhhh!!!! This ask is so sweet !!!!! You've got me rolling around on my bed and giggling and shit!!!

I'm so so so so so happy to hear about the posts you like so much!! Idk if u relate but i find it really easy to forget how my work has affected ppl lmao. Needless to say there's many of your posts that linger in my mind and that i go back to over an over again!! (You have so many good Lucifer fics! And ur hcs.... Devine)

Some of these posts especially surprised me! I'd no idea u liked the bed breaking post of mine! I went back and reread it bc it's sooo old and i was like damn u know what this is kinda silly. What an oldie tho like wow that sent me back hfhsjskajs!

And omg yes on the kink of taking care of people!!!!! Idk that's just so much fun and I'm sure it's glaringly obvious that i love it, but yes yes taking care of ppl to the extreme is so good!!!! (Looks hard at your bathing HCS and sighs dreamily)

Oh! And u should embrace ur piss kink!! 😇💖 Even if u have hard limits surrounding it, liking piss even a little bit is awesome and sexy and so much fun!! And I'm so happy u like so many of my piss fics 🫂💖 sometimes my fics are just so self indulgent that again i forget that other ppl would like them lol

Ahh this ask is just so nice i could cry really really thank u so much 💖 ‼️

#re: hiii.. i know you!! it doesnt have to be parasocial.. it can just be social 💖🫂#gosh im gonna have to save this ask somewhere #so when im feelin so so bad abt my writing and or feelin unappreciated i can look n be like. im doin it for you!!!#ask game #obey-me-headquarters

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incarnateirony · 2 years

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Wait can you share more on the Gayle thing and what M&G was? If you've already discussed can you share the post please.

Is that why she didn't post the Misha panel?

The TLDR is Gayle is part of a stream of people connected to 2po. First of all, even when there WERE NDAs, Gayle was breaking them (along with suzanne/miamigirl) to feed him pre-butchered M&G info.

During Vancon, suzanne showed up drunk, threatened hellers for daring to ask heller questions in the M&G (threatened to cut them up), and then got busted with an open bottle on premise and given a warning she tried to laugh off with a closed-bottle op later, because that's how grown ups act.

Anyway, shortly after that, a user in my server was doxxed. 2po was trying very hard to find out who my sources were (while publicly claiming I had none), and went on a search for, essentially, Someone That Looked Like They Might Be A Misha Assistant, because they simultaneously think he's telling me everything BTS but isn't involved at all.

Anyway their target was someone that Gayle overheard having a personal conversation with Misha that they then searched for, targeted, found that she worked in publishing, decided "that's adjacent" and started spamming her old (thankfully disconnected) phonenumber in random inboxes.

Now, Gayle magically isn't covering some panels and is whining about having an Incident(TM) in a M&G vaguely in a way to pretend she's a victim, but realistically, what happened is Gayle is now known as being part of a revenge doxxing campaign directly associated to a personal threat incident and open bottle incident at a con in a related clique that was terminally violating NDAs while they were active.

*That's* what the fuck happened. She knows she's on a tightrope.

But hey, thanks for the doxxing. The lass managed it so well we became real friends figuring it out as these assholes fucked up and left their fingerprints everywhere live time, and we became besties, and then i became a simp, so thanks i guess.

but what's happening is they realized their M&Gs aren't safe for their games. I just didn't care about it until they gave me a triggerpull when they fucked up, because this whole mess blew open the contents and proved in public with other members agreeing, he was deadass lying about and warping the contents.

Now, they know my crows are everywhere, even if I usually considered the cons beneath me, and now they're stuck watching their steps real close-like while pretending they're still in charge as the new kids prepare to roll into town.

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thetaylorfiles · 11 months

Note

This whole 'friend dating Taylor' thing reminded me of something else from way back in the day - didn't you have a friend who took a photo of Taylor and Karlie when they happened to be at a gym at the same time as her? Or am I remembering incorrectly and that's a different tumblr account altogether? Anyway, been following you for ages. Whenever Taylor does something, I check your tumblr to see the takes on Kaylor nonsense lol

Aw! I love that you come back here. I miss this place a lot just because I had so much fun with you guys. Sometimes my inbox would be so full I literally couldn’t answer them all. You guys and interacting and laughing is the best part of tumblr and conspiracies and Kaylor and everything!

Please note that TTB is TayTaysBeard who got kicked off tumblr for her antisemitism and outing and doxxing of people. When she got shut down, she came back as Spade Riddles. TTB = Spade. They’re the same person

As for the rest, yeah, that was me. The person you’re talking about was a woman who lived in NYC and her husband works very closely with Josh at his company. She got to see Karlie a couple times at business dinners and parties.

She also went to the same gym as Taylor. She ran into Taylor and Karlie in the same class as her one day and snuck a photo.

Here’s where it gets weird. Before she and I started talking, she had been a curious Kaylor. Since she personally knew Josh, she was fascinated by TTBs blog and Kaylor. She believed for a few weeks or months and then realized it couldn’t be true because of what she knew from real life vs what nonsense TTB was spewing.

TTB has always maintained that Josh Kushner is gay and with his best friend Mikey (who is married to a woman with a baby). She’s also always maintained that Josh is a criminal on par with his brother Jared. And TTB claimed that Josh has had gay rumors for ages, everyone knows Karlie is a beard.

So my friend, after a while, and after actually communicating with her, she was like, “I’m out. This bitch is nuts. No way is it true.” Back then, there was no Gaylors. It was Kaylor or Taylor is straight. Nothing in between.

So my friend sent TTB that picture she took of Karlie and Taylor and had shown it to TTB. She said she could post it and say what she’d overheard them talking about, which was just normal stuff. Except at one point, I guess Taylor was talking about some app and said to Karlie, “oh! You should tell Josh about this!” Pretty harmless. But to TTB image thought that if taylor had suggested showing Josh, they must be amicable. But TTB needed Karlie and Taylor to hate Josh for keeping Karlie under lock and key, due to her contract.

That used to be a thing, btw. There were years where the narrative was that Karlie got duped by Josh when she was a teen. He needed a beard to do business with Saudis. According to TTB and Kaylors, Saudis won’t do business with anyone who’s gay. So Josh needed a beard. That’s why he’s with Karlie.

My friend knew this part was bullshit too. Her husband is high up in Joshs company and TTB was spewing bad fiction.

Anyway, sorry so long! Almost done!

TTB refused to post the pic my friend took and instead sent it around to the other big Kaylor blogs at the time, making up a better story around it and using it as “proof”, saying the person who took the pic confirmed Kaylor was together. Which never happened.

So I posted the pic and told my friends story for her. She was literally scared of TTB. TTB had her real email address and she was freaked out she’s dox her and mess up her husbands career. And we know TTB has doxxed and outed people before which is so fucked up.

I think that’s it? This was way back during the time when Karlie and Taylor were still friends.

The pic is on this blog along with the story. I may not remember it all perfectly.

Thanks for being around so long. And thanks for reading to anyone who made it this far!

#TTB #taytaysbeard #spade riddles #Kaylor

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per-aspera-ad-astra-zine · 1 year

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It's been a while.

Hello everyone, like the title says it's really been a while. I don't know if this post will ever reach anyone but it's worth a shot. The mod team has long disbanded and I was just logging in to possibly delete the blog (yes, after all these years) and I saw some messages in our inbox and realized with dread that we never explained anything on here and just posted on Twitter. As some of you may already know we outsourced our shipping organization to someone who wasn't officially in the mod team; well, that turned out to be a mistake. Around the end of March 2020 we basically lost all contact with this person but still tried to help everyone we could at the best of our possibilities. So if you have ever experienced any issues with your orders, that's probably the reason; at first we didn't want to air our dirty loundry but we were put in a tough spot and decided to come clean. I want to personally apologize for all the trouble this has certainly caused to all of you, even if it's definitely too late now: I'm sorry it happened, probably we should have known better, I hope you can forgive us. Then the strangest thing happened. In November 2021 this said person conctacted us again with the receipt for the other half of the donation (because we were able to donate only part of the money because it was split in two accounts) and with an explaination and an apology. Better late than never I said, mostly because at that point everyone was tired, the accounts were alredy closed and we all collectively wanted just for this story to be over. As of today we're no longer in contact. What I take from this story is that I'm never ever gonna mod a zine again 🥶 This said, again, I am deeply sorry if you never got your order, I'm sorry if it got demaged, if you were fed up with our crap, if we didn't really give you an explainantion (at least on here). I got the chance to get to know some of you through our dms and you were all wonderful people that didn't deserve this poor treatment.

I'll keep this account up for a while still just to be sure but anyway this is finally our last goodbye. Thank you everyone, from the bottom of my heart, for the purchases, for the support, for the patience. I wish you all the best.❤️💜

Go, Be great.

#sheith zine #text post #goodbye

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justsome-di · 1 year

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Nobody Ends Up Dead In a Bathtub, Everyone Keeps Their Organs: Chapter 20

Summary: Alex is an ordinary, highly-introverted office worker. He clocks in and out and goes home to his little apartment he shares with his younger sister. He hasn’t dated in years by the time his co-workers set him up on a blind date.

The only issue is he and his date are not on the same page. At all.

While Alex thinks it’s a normal date, Damián is under the impression Alex is a client who paid to be there. No-so-quickly, they realize something is up. It’s all a prank. Damián is a sex worker Alex’s co-workers hired as a sick joke.

After reassuring that they’re both okay, Alex decides he wants revenge for both him and Damián. The plan is to use the stigma of sex work and start a 6-week, scandalous fake dating scheme with a big finale at the office Halloween party. Alex’s co-workers will be too horrified to try to prank him again. At least, that’s the plan.

You can also read this on AO3. If you don’t want to wait for new chapters, the complete story is on Patreon for only $4 with bonus stories! If you’re enjoying the story and want to support me in other ways, consider dropping me a message in my inbox or reblogging this post!

The following Monday, Alex was wasting time in the staff room with Martin. He poured himself a cup of coffee from the stained, slightly-leaky pot that nearly burned Alex every time he tipped it over for a mediocre, burnt serving of poorly-roasted grounds. They were a very successful business that raked in a lot of money every year. They should have been able to update some of their appliances. It was just one of his many gripes that he forgot about once his paycheck came through.

“Then Sam actually found that coffee in Target this weekend and was like shit. It’s supposed to be sold out everywhere at these bougie shops—and it’s just in stock at Target? She bought three bags before anyone else noticed.”

Alex didn’t mention that coffee had an expiration date. Even if it wasn’t pre-ground, if it was still the beans, coffee didn’t stay good forever. How long would it take them to go three bags? Surely, not quickly enough.

“So, did she make the tiramisu? Was it everything TikTok promised it would be?” Alex asked.

“She hasn’t made it yet. She wanted to save it for guests. Anyway, this is us asking if you and Marcus want to join us Thursday for the Tiramisu debut. Kris and Clara will be there.”

“I’ll have to check if Marcus is free, but I think we’d both be down if we can make it.”

Alex was pleased to get another invitation. He could start looking forward to regular after-work hangouts to get him through the week.

He would have to cough up more money for Damián to go with him, but he was willing to do it for another night with Damián. He would give a year’s wages to Damián if it meant he was getting to spend so much time with him. Maybe he’d keep hiring him after the party. Or maybe that would be weird.

You down for another night with Martin and Sam this Thursday?

Hold on let me send you some nudes.

Alex waited for whatever was coming, knowing full well he was not going to get a lewd picture of Damián. At least he hoped not. Sometimes Damián struggled with knowing that people worked at 1 pm on Mondays.

But even then, Damián wouldn’t send nude pictures of himself to Alex of all people. They weren’t actually dating.

A couple of seconds later, a professional picture of a bowl of ramen was sent through. Nudes. Noods. Noodles. Alex got it. He didn’t laugh.

Can we get ramen for dinner tonight? I just found this new place, and it looks so good.

Of course! Can you answer my question about Thursday?

I would 100% be down to see them again, but I have a client :( Let me know if they want to do any other night, I’m free a few nights this week.

Once he and Damián went their separate ways, Alex hoped that and Martin could keep up some type of friendship—that he wasn’t only valuable to Martin and Sam because he was part of a couple.

“Sorry.” Alex spoke while typing out his reply to Damián. In hindsight, it was a bad idea. He should have put all of his focus on either conversation. “Damián has to work.”

“Damián?”

Alex looked up. Martin was throwing him a confused smile.

Shit.

His face went numb.

“Uh.” Alex didn’t know how to correct himself. It was too late. “Marcus. Marcus has to work.”

“You said Damián,” Martin said. He laughed a little. “Is Marcus his work name? That’s okay. I get it.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah! When he hired him, we assumed he wasn’t giving out his real name. But you kept calling him Marcus, and I started to think you guys just weren’t comfortable with anyone knowing his real name yet. I won’t tell anyone, though. I’ll play along with you guys.”

Alex was going to suffocate in that little staff room. “Yeah?”

“Yeah! And honestly, Alex, I know Sam and I got off on the wrong foot with you guys, but we promise we’re trying to do better. And Kris and Clara are already cool. You guys would be safe using his real name in front of us—if he’s comfortable with it.”

“Okay.”

“There’s no reason to pretend like he’s working when he’s not. If it’s just us—I mean, if you trust all of us, and I know that might be hard—you guys can relax. You don’t have to pretend.”

Alex stared at Martin. Fuck. The downside to making new friends was that he felt bad about lying to them.

Martin had grown so much in just a matter of weeks. He had become so aware of boundaries even when no one told him about them. It was incredible how just a couple of interactions with Damián and getting away from Andrew had completely changed him.

“We’re not actually dating.”

Alex didn’t mean to say it. There was immediate regret when he saw Martin’s face change from soft acceptance to furrowed confusion.

“What?”

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Alex was in too deep now. It was spiraling. He was going to die right there in that office.

“What do you mean you’re not dating?” Martin asked. “You and Marcus—Damián? You’re not dating?”

“No.”

“Then why have you been saying you’re dating?” Martin laughed, but it was awkward and nervous. “Sam and I literally introduced to you our friends as a couple.”

“It’s complicated.”

“Complicated as in ‘we’re not doing as well as we thought we would, and now we can’t define it?’ Or ‘we never really wanted a label on it?’ Or is it complicated as in ‘we’ve been lying?’”

Alex squeezed the handle of his coffee mug. His knuckles burned against the ceramic. “Complicated as in ‘we’ve been lying.’”

Martin stared at him for a second.

“What the fuck?” he whispered. “Why would you lie about that?”

“Okay, hold on, you’re the one who set us up in the first place as a prank—“

“And I’ve apologized, and I’ve been working really hard to make up for it. I invited you to my fucking home.”

“Can I explain?”

“Yes. Please. Quickly.”

Alex set down his mug. His hands were so sweaty and shaky, he might have dropped it and gotten shitty coffee all over the already-stained linoleum.

He should have been consulting Damián before he went any further, but he was in so deep he just wanted to explain himself before Martin hated him forever.

“The night Damián and I met, we decided that we would pretend to be dating for real until the office party at the end of the month,” Alex said. “Like, as revenge. We thought it would disgust you three, so we wanted to mess with you. When you apologized, we thought we’d keep up the whole thing to make it more believable. I think it just went further than we thought it would.”

“Christ, Alex,” Martin said. “That’s evil.”

“Is it?” Alex had a sort of manic momentum. “Do you know how Damián and I felt the night of your prank? Do you know how scary it is for a sex worker to find out he made advances on a man who had no idea he was a sex worker?”

Martin looked to the side. He mumbled, “No.”

“It was cruel,” Alex said, quietly. “To me and Damián. We were just planning on a little revenge and then putting the whole thing behind us after this month.”

Martin shoved his hands into his pocket. He didn’t look at Alex. “I’m sorry. But you didn’t have to accept our invitations to dinner and to our apartment. You could have said no. Everyone sees you and Damián leaving the office together every week. That would have been enough.”

“We could have, but I—this sounds so stupid—after a week, I wanted to spend more time with Damián. That’s why I kept saying yes. It wasn’t totally manipulative.”

“And you couldn’t have just told him you want to be his friend? You had to create a whole Fake Dating Universe and pull me and my wife and our friends into it?”

“I couldn’t have just told him.”

“Why not? He obviously likes spending time with you. Why else would he play Trivial Pursuit for three hours?”

“Probably because I’m paying him for all of this.”

“Whoa. Stop.” Martin crossed his arms. “You hired him for three hours of a board game? How much are you paying him?”

“I think I’m up to $625. That’s for the two dates with you and Sam and the party date. Plus a planning fee.”

“What?” Martin leaned in closer and lowered his voice. “He charged us $550 for one night. How are you paying barely more than that for three nights?”

“You paid $550?” Alex slapped his hand over his mouth when he shouted it. “For one night?”

He vaguely remembered Damián telling him his regular charge was $250 per hour, but it had sort of been filed away to the back of his brain. They had spent so much time together, surely Alex should have been up in the thousands.

“He’s a pricey escort,” Martin said. “Not the priciest. God knows we found people who charged insane rates. But he said it was $250 for the dinner alone. After that, the other $300 was for the—you know. What would have been sex. We put a lot of thought into our budget. And, might I add, we didn’t want to hire just anyone. We wanted to give you a nice experience.”

“Thank you?”

“Have you been unaware this entire time that he’s, like, a really good, in-demand escort? He’s not charging you his usual rates for a reason,” Martin said. “He likes you. He’s going easy on you.”

“He might just feel bad for me. This is all probably a pity discount.”

“There’s no such thing as a pity discount. I really think he likes you. Kris and Clara were going on and on about how sweet he is to you. So, he’s either the world’s best escort and needs to start charging way more, or he does genuinely like you—and at risk of sounding like a middle schooler, I mean he likes you.”

Being liked by Damián was so much worse than what Alex thought it would feel like. It was something he had secretly wanted, but now that it was a real possibility, Alex could only think how horrifying it was. If Damián really did like him, then Alex no longer had an excuse for not pursuing anything. Feelings were mutual. Alex might no longer have to be single, alone, the state he found painful solace in.

“Good news for me, I guess, is that you guys were shit at lying to us,” Martin said. “I don’t think I feel so hurt knowing you two actually fell for each other.”

Martin was still angry. He deserved to be. But Alex didn’t want him reverting back to the person he was only a week ago—blindly following Andrew and Stu, a little malice tucked away in his heart.

“I’m sorry,” Alex said. “Can we still keep this all between us?”

“Yeah. Whatever. I won’t tell anyone.”

Martin took his coffee and walked past Alex, out of the break room.

The worst part of it all was the text Alex immediately sent to Damián.

Damián, I accidentally let Martin know that we’ve been lying, and I accidentally told him your real name. I’m really sorry. I don’t know how I let it slip, and now his feelings are hurt. I’m really, really sorry.

Alex walked back to his desk, set down his coffee, stared staring blankly at e-mails. Damián didn’t reply for a while, but Alex could see three dots periodically appearing and reappearing on the bottom of his screen. There was nothing he could do but wait. He refused to start typing out a self-deprecating apology. It would only make things worse. Besides, he was paralyzed with fear.

What if Damián hated him? What if it was a huge violation of his privacy—and it was—that would get Alex blacklisted, and Damián would drop him as a client? And a friend.

He sat frozen at his desk for an hour trying to convince himself he hadn’t lost both of his new friends to the same fuck up.

Finally, a text came through.

I’ll see you later, and we can talk about it then.

Okay. Not terrible. It wasn’t the worst thing Damián could have said.

Damián sent him an address a minute later.

Meet me at my apartment.

Okay. I’ll see you then. I’m really sorry

Alex had to go through the rest of his day alone. Damián didn’t text him anymore. Martin steered clear of him. It was what he was used to, at least.

He pretended to work and pretended like he wasn’t spiraling. The day ended, and he gathered his jacket and his bag, and he followed the address on numb legs to an apartment complex not all that far from his office.

Damián answered his door with a frown, arms wrapped firmly across his chest.

“I would have liked a little heads up before you did any of that,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” Alex said.

Damián turned around and led him inside the apartment. Walking out of the entrance hallway, Alex hid his shock at how nice of a place it was. Not that he had assumed Damián was living in a bad place. Just that he had assumed that his own apartment was pretty average for a single man in his 30s—tiny, cramped, one window—and that Damián must have been living in a similar setup.

But Damián’s apartment was spacious. Alex believed that Martin and the others paid over $550 for a single night. There was no other way Damiàn would be able to afford such a place on his own. It momentarily distracted Alex from the vague feeling of wanting to vomit.

Damián had a living room that could actually hold a sizable couch, a coffee table, and a chair. It wasn’t too close to his kitchen which had a table. A table! Alex had never had a kitchen table of his own.

And on that table was a brown paper bag of takeout. Damián dug into it and pulled out two plastic bowls. He held one to his chest.

“Tell me why you did it and then you get your ramen,” Damián said.

“I didn’t mean to,” Alex said. “I really didn’t. I slipped with your name, he was understanding, and then after that, the rest just. Spilled out of my mouth. I couldn’t stop it. I felt guilty about lying to him.”

Damián didn’t relax his hold on the ramen. “Is he going to tell anyone else my name?”

“No. He promised he wouldn’t.”

“He isn’t going to go back to pranks now that he knows we’ve been deceiving him?”

“I don’t think so?”

Damián held the bowl out. Alex accepted it, knowing full well he didn’t deserve it.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated.

“It’s fine, I guess.” Damián sat down and pulled out his own bowl and two packets of wooden chopsticks. “You didn’t mean to. Accidents happen.”

“You don’t have to forgive me.”

Damián looked up and smiled with half of his mouth. “But I will. You didn’t mean to. I’d rather you hadn’t revealed my identity to a man I just met, but I think it’ll be fine.”

“He won’t do anything harsh.”

“We better hope not.”

Alex tucked his hands between his knees. Damián cracked open his lid. Steam rolled up and covered Damián’s face.

“I don’t have time to properly scold you, anyway,” Damián said. “I have a client tonight.”

“I thought you didn’t take clients on Mondays.”

“Well.” Damián scooped noodles onto his chopsticks. “I usually don’t, but I’m setting money aside for Leo’s tuition next year.”

Alex never offered to help Eve with tuition. But then again, they had parents and Damián and Leo didn’t seem to be totally in touch with theirs. Or if they were, it must have not been a situation where Leo could ask for help. But regardless, it made Alex feel like an inferior brother.

“Can I try to make it up to you?” Alex asked.

Damián sighed. His face relaxed. “It’s really not a big deal. It was an accident. Martin doesn’t strike me as the type to try to ruin someone’s life over this, either. What’s the worst he’ll do? Tell his wife?”

“It would make me feel better if you let me at least try to make it up.”

Damián always had such a soft, tender look about him. He set his chopsticks down on the edge of his plastic bowl and linked his fingers, setting his chin on top of them.

“What do you want to do?” he asked.

“Anything you want from me.”

Damián pulled his hands apart and laid one across the table, palm up. Alex unclasped his own, brought them up from between his knees, raised one above the table, and finally laid it, shaking, in Damián’s. It was the first time they had held hands since the first night they met, when Damián led him down the hallways of the hotel.

Alex’s face was hot. Little tremors shook his whole body.

“If you insist on making it up to me,” Damián said, “you can let me take you out somewhere that’s not just cheap dinner or ice cream.”

Alex liked their cheap dinners and their single ice cream trip. They were so ordinary, so easily fit into his normal routine, that it had made Damián feel like a solid part of his life. He had settled into Alex’s days so easily, like he had always been there.

Damián folded his fingers over Alex’s hand. They were warm and soft. Alex’s were still chilled from the outside.

“If you let me take you out for a night, I’ll forgive you,” Damián said. “Not a hired appointment or anything. Me genuinely taking you out.”

A date. That was what Damián was asking for. A date. A date!

The little bit of residual trauma from last month let itself be known, and Alex immediately felt a rush of panic. What if it was another prank? What if it was all going to be fake in the end?

But he remembered what Martin said, and he thought about all the days he and Damián had already had together.

“When do you want to go out?” Alex asked.

Damián pulled his hand away. Alex missed it immediately. His palm felt cold, and his fingers wanted to curl back around something.

Damián scrolled through his phone calendar.

“Okay. Friday. My stupid client canceled Friday because he felt bad about cheating on his wife. Is Friday good?”

Alex ignored the cheating comment. “My parents are visiting Friday, but they’ll be gone by the evening. They’re taking Eve back home with them for the weekend.”

Damián’s eyes were bright. “Perfect. Friday it is! Have you ever been to Dorothy’s? The club?”

“No.”

Alex hadn’t been to any clubs before. They weren’t really his scene. People who went to clubs were sexier and had better wardrobes and liked being in big crowds. Alex was more of a stay at home with Netflix and Twitter type of guy. Though, he had to admit the promise of going out with Damián made him willing to try something new.

“It’s a gay club,” Damián said. “It’s one of the best on this side of the city, I swear. Best drag queens, best DJs, best drinks.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Damián tilted his head. “Have you been to a gay club at all?”

Alex’s chest tightened. He had been to so few queer places in his life. He had taken Eve to pride events, of course, but never a place like a club. There were so many queer spaces that were noisy and crowded—and that was great! Alex loved that queer people got to take up spaces and be loud and get to exist with such force and strength. It was great. It was lovely. Alex was so proud that he got to be part of a community that, after trauma and tragedy, still went out to party in large masses.

But he still didn’t like clubs.

“No.”

“Want to try one out?”

“Uh.”

“You don’t have to.”

“No! I will!”

He might have fun after all. Alex trusted Damián. He trusted him a lot. And it would probably do him good to hang out in a queer space. He needed a little more socializing, he had realized, after micro-dosing a social life with Damián.

“Okay,” Damián said, nodding. “And whenever you want to leave, we can. But I promise you you’ll have fun. Dorothy’s is a good space. If we go early, it’ll be chill. There won’t be any huge crowds.”

“Can I ask a few questions?”

“Of course!”

“What do you do at a gay club?”

“We chill. Watch other people dance. Get drinks. If we stay late enough, we can watch a drag show.”

Alex had always wanted to see a drag show live.

“What do you wear?” he asked.

“What do I wear? I’ll probably wear a crop top. I just bought a new one, and I haven’t had a chance to wear it yet. You can wear whatever you’re comfortable in. But fair warning, nightclubs get hot. So, don’t wear a sweater or anything like that.”

“Can I wear a t-shirt?”

“Yeah! Perfect.” Damián took Alex’s hand again and squeezed tight. “This is so exciting! I’ve never taken anyone to their first gay club before.”

Alex would have never expected to be excited to go to a club, but he was. He was wildly excited at the idea of being around other queer people—so many queer people. And a drag show! Every second that passed, he was getting more excited about seeing a queen perform live.

“I’ll ease you into the whole scene,” Damián said.

And best of all, Alex would be spending the whole evening with Damián. Martin was right. He and Damián had totally fallen for each other.

#nobody ends up dead #writblr #original writing #writing community #queer fiction #mlm #gay #lgbt

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