#as a first time player who got to this fight pretty early it was rough 8')

[saph-y]

Baby Tarnished first trauma 😌⚔️

[rallamajoop]

Resident Evil Village: A needlessly detailed hour-by-hour timeline

Say what you like about Ethan Winters, that man can get a heck of a lot done in a day. Roughly the complete events of Resident Evil Village, just for a start – the timeline’s actually pretty clear on that front. Ethan stumbles into the village just before dawn on February 9, and fights his final boss battle with Miranda at just about the same time on February 10, the following day.

Look, he’s got a daughter to rescue, okay, he’ll sleep when he’s dead (almost literally, in fact – that period just before dawn after Miranda rips his heart out is all the shut-eye he gets).

Exactly what time everything happens within that day is a little less obvious – so naturally, it’s only after I’ve already posted a whole fic that kind of hinges on building a semi-complete timeline of every memorable injury Ethan receives that I went back to the game and realised, oh shit, there actually are specific times of day spelled out all over the place! There are clocks in some buildings, diary entries complete with date and time – and it (mostly) all stacks up!

I mean, up to a point – somewhere in Donna’s house, things get weird. But I don’t think that part will really surprise anyone.

And since I’ve already spent way too long piecing together disparate clues for my timeline posts about the ages of the four lords and when the Mia/Miranda switcheroo happened in the days leading up to the game, what the hell – let’s take it one level finer, and look at the hour-to-hour events of the game itself.

Our first major source is the in-game diary, which you can access via the maps page. I wouldn't take this thing too literally – I really doubt Ethan’s actually sitting down every so often to write about his day and sketch detailed pictures of whatever shit he’s just seen – it’s more here just to summarise recent events for any player who accidentally skipped some cutscenes or wants a quick refresher.

Times in the diary aren’t very precise, just ‘dawn’, ‘early morning’, etc, but they map out a rough series of events.

Dawn (or probably some time before dawn): Ethan wakes up after the truck crash in the forest Early Morning: Ethan reaches the village, encounters the old hag, etc Morning: Ethan reaches Luiza’s house, is put on trial by Miranda, escapes and reaches the castle Noon: Ethan escapes the castle and the Duke sends him on his quest Afternoon: Ethan defeats Donna and Moreau, and battles through the stronghold. Evening: Ethan sets off for Heisenberg’s factory, meets Chris, battles Heisenberg, etc Dawn: Final battle with Miranda

I’d have called it the middle of the night by the time Ethan finally battles Heisenberg, but the slight timeskip to dawn does make sense, since Ethan spends some time dead in the gap there. Also, damn, that was one busy afternoon! (Especially if you’re me, and squeezing all the optional bosses and side-areas into your schedule.) But maybe we can take it that not much actual time passes in Donna’s house – who knows how long hallucinations take in real time?

Anyway, those are the broad strokes, let’s get to finer detail: clocks!

The first clocks you’ll see in the game show up in the Winters’ home, both putting the time of day at 7:34 PM. Time for dinner, and to put the baby to bed.

There are no clocks available when Ethan wakes up in the snow in the dark, but the sun rises while he’s in the first hut you encounter just outside the village. The Internet would lead me to believe that sunrise in Romania in February is around 7:15 AM, so nearly 12 hours have gone by since our opening scene. So either that was a very long drive, or Ethan spent a lot of hours wandering in the woods in the dark, or he was "unconscious" for a long while after the truck rolled over (but then, I already got to share a few of my own theories about that one in that fic I mentioned above, so I get to feel validated there. *g*)

Note that Miranda also holds her ceremony to divide Rose into four crystalline pieces at dawn. The lycan attack on the village seems to have started before dawn even breaks (and I can only assume it's over by the time Eugen staggers home, presumably in too much of a funk to even notice, because there's no mention of it in his diary. But shhh, don't think too hard about that one).

As Ethan arrives on the outskirts of the village and sees his first view of the castle, an attentive gamer will hear a clock strike 8 times, so it's 8AM. Given the sun's just peaking over the mountains, that would about fit too.

There are no clocks that I’ve found in the village proper, probably so the devs don’t have to worry about updating them as the day progresses (though the light and position of the sun certainly changes through the day). But once you make it into the castle, there are clocks everywhere.

Most are either the large grandfather model…

…or the small, mantelpiece model.

There are also a couple of really small ones of a third model, which you can find in castle saferooms.

And they all tell roughly the same time, which is… er, 10:00? 10:05? 10:30?

Seriously, look at these things: the minute hands are pointing to the 5 (or 12 on the mantlepiece model, suggesting someone hasn’t synchronised their clocks perfectly), but the hour hands are consistently stuck midway between 10 and 11, which suggests it should be 10:30. But maybe this is just the devs' way of hedging their bets about the fact time passes while Ethan's in the castle. Or maybe this is just what happens when you eat the guy who comes in to do clock repairs before he’s even finished.

Still, let’s take this basically at face value: Ethan enters the castle around 10AM, and is out again by around noon (as per the diary).

Our next time-of-day indicator isn’t a clock, but the diary left by Chris’ team on the computer that shows up in the church.

So, sounds like the team legitimately arrived while Ethan was in the castle, around 11:35 AM. Presumably, Ethan isn’t supposed to be able to find the computer until after 1:10 PM (time of the latest entry). And while I'm here, I just have to point to that "Found evidence of EW" line ‒ found what evidence? A bunch of broken crates and dead lycans? A wallet dropped while frantically reloading his gun? Two severed fingers? We'll never know.

Also, for those keeping track: it is 100% canon that in the time Ethan needs to take out both Donna and Moreau, clear out the stronghold, battle his way through the factory, and defeat Sturm, all Chris has managed to do is futz around the factory for a bit, mess around with an old tank, and not-quite-finish planting explosives. Pff, loser. (Okay, I tell a lie ‒ he also shows up in the reservoir, so maybe he just procrastinated and hung out with his friends for a few hours instead of actually getting to the one job he promised everyone he was actually going to do. C'mon, we've all done it.)

Moving on, there are more clocks waiting for us in Donna’s domain, but here’s where things get… weird.

To begin with, the first clock you can find (ticking loudly by the stairs) thinks it’s 6 o’clock. Whether this is AM or PM, neither makes any sense here. But the fact it’s ticking suggests it’s working, and the time doesn’t change after Donna is dead and her hallucination-flowers are all wilted, so… I don’t know, maybe Donna and Angie just don’t live in the same mental time zone as the rest of us. Or maybe the devs just didn’t bother changing clock.asset from its default setting.

Downstairs, in the basement, you can find another clock in the workroom, and it’s not 6:00 down here, but 9:21. Again, the time doesn’t change as events progress.

More interesting is a smaller clock you might spot on a table in the hall on your way down, next to a lantern and a bowl of rotten fruit, which shows yet another different time.

What makes this little elaborate-portico-model clock interesting, though, is that it’s an asset from RE7 – cap below comes from the Baker house.

And like every clock in RE7, the one in Donna's house shows 10:15. The attentive player may even remember this, since in RE7 that time was part of a puzzle.

It’s not the only call-back you’ll find to RE7 down here – the ringing phone is other one I caught, very reminiscent of Zoe’s calls from RE7. The phone's actually not a reused asset, though – the RE8 version has an old-fashioned rotary dial, where the RE7 phones had buttons, making them substantially more modern.

I was thinking there were more RE7 assets down in this section – the torn floral wallpaper in a run-down corridor definitely has RE7-vibes, and the horror potential of sending Ethan back through a literal scene from his nightmares goes without saying. But I couldn’t find anything specific that was reused. Even the fuse-box puzzles use completely different assets.

Which all begs the question, are we supposed to notice that clock as an intentional callback on Ethan’s Hallucinatory Journey? Or is it just a casually reused asset without greater meaning?

In all honesty, I would not have noticed the portico-clock came from RE7 if I hadn’t seen it pointed out in a Reddit thread somewhere – and if we are supposed to notice it, it’s not the model I’d have chosen. The large grandfather clocks from RE7 are far more memorable (and, impressively, distinct from both the large-grandfather-clock models found in RE8). The portico clock is used in a couple of different places, but isn't super-memorable, and is easily missed.

You can find it there in the Daughter’s DLC as well (prequel set before the events of the game), though there it and all other clocks have been dutifully adjusted to show a different time (7:22PM).

What's much stranger is that there are actually two of these clocks in Ethan’s home back at the start of the game. And they read 10:15 there too, even though the main wall clocks read 7:34.

Heck, I even found this damn thing down in the Umbrella facility in the remake of RE2, still reading 10:15.

So… yeah, I’m gonna have to go with ‘clumsily reused asset’ for all appearances of this clock in RE8. And having now spent way too long down the mad rabbit-hole that is the clocks of House Beneviento, I'm forced to conclude: nothing means anything, everything is just here to fuck with me, and for all I know Ethan stumbles out of this place before he ever went in, IDEK.

It doesn't help that post-House Beneviento, I found no clocks anywhere, nor any more documents citing time-of-day. None in Moreau’s Reservoir, none in Heisenberg’s Factory (which doesn’t mean there aren’t any I didn’t catch, but I was definitely looking for them).

The sun’s pretty clearly setting by the time Ethan reaches the factory, and it’s set by the time you fight Heisenberg. What time of night it is while Chris is doing his mad run through the village is anyone’s guess, but presumably a bunch of hours go by somewhere, since the whole night has passed before our showdown. But then, as already established, Chris is a guy who can canonically burn most of his afternoon lost in one factory (granted, the place is one hell of a maze), so maybe he does the same down in the village.

The important thing is that the Duke’s here to get Ethan to his appointment with Miranda at dawn ‒ cue ending sequence and credits.

So, for those keeping track, here's the 'complete' hour-by-hour timeline for Resident Evil Village, as close as we can track it.

February 8 7:34 PM: Opening scene. Chris burst into the Winters' home, kills "Mia" and kidnaps Ethan and Rose.

February 9 Pre-dawn: Ethan wakes up next to the crashed truck. Lycan attack on the village begins. Dawn (around 7:15 AM): Miranda holds her ceremony to crystalise Rose and divide her into four pieces

8:00 AM: Ethan reaches the outskirts of the village, explores, encounters the the lycans and the old hag, etc Morning: Ethan reaches Luiza’s house, is put on trial by Miranda, escapes and reaches the castle 10:00 AM (approx): Ethan reaches the castle 11:35 AM: Chris' team arrives on site 12:10 PM: Chris' team infiltrates the village Noon (approx): Ethan defeats Dimitrescu and escapes the castle, and the Duke sends him on his quest 01:10 PM: Chris' team establish their base in the church and split up to investigate separately Afternoon: Ethan defeats Donna and Moreau, and battles through the stronghold Evening: Ethan sets off for Heisenberg’s factory, meets Chris, battles Heisenberg, etc Night: Chris fights his way through the village and discovers Mia in Miranda's lab

February 10 Pre-dawn: Ethan wakes up in the Duke's wagon Dawn (around 7:15 AM): Final battle with Miranda

So... yeah. Up to early afternoon on the 9th, the timeline here is surprisingly detailed. And considering what a chaotic fairy-tale mind-fuck of a game this thing is, that's actually pretty impressive. But beyond Donna's House of Extreme Mindfuckery, Ethan has lost all track of what's going on in his life, and I think we can all forgive him for that.

And now I will never be able to walk past a clock in an RE game without getting the urge to take a screenshot again.

[local-lesbrarian]

System Names Are Hard

But hey, at least we know our component parts :)

Quick rundown: We realized we were plural, most likely DID, in November of 2023. Lilith and Cass were the first to open up communication within our system. We've been doing our best to integrate everybody who wants to front into what we call the core. That said, we've still had alters coming forward in the last couple months as of writing, and some are still pinning down who they are/want to be. This is the most complete list we have at present, in rough order of how active each is:

Lilith (she/her): Longtime core gal, solo'd our life a lot from 2020-23. Took a lot of our steps in gender transition, including changing our name. (We use "Lilith" when interacting with the world because of this.) Pretty femme with a soft edge. Our best visual artist, loves drawing. Loves cuddling and being a puppy (probably therian). Meek and anxious IRL but can be very forceful in the system when her emotions are up. Total lesbian. In a romantic relationship with Cass.

Cass (she/they): Another longtime core gal, #1 line of defense both inside and outside the system. Big wall against our trauma. Soft butch metal lady and our best guitarist. Steps in when things get physically dangerous. Can't stand capitalism or injustice, quick to rant about that. Can be a bit quick to fight or taunt when it isn't called for. Stubborn as all get-out; wants to tank every hardship even when she's over the limit. Dyke, but a bit bi about it. In a romantic relationship with Lilith.

Kila (she/her): Big trauma sponge with an even more pronounced fight response than Cass. Fought and lashed out at all of us when she first started fronting because she was used to being pushed into the back and had a lot of pain to work through. Has hurt people IRL; working on forgiving herself. Not a monster (anymore). Also a full-on therian wolf with heavy species dysphoria and a true form in headspace. Protects us from following intrusive memories and sometimes makes sure we eat or sleep. Wants to be in the woods. Loves our partners, but still figuring out her relationship to other people in our life.

Nav (he/they): First self-aware words: "I'm the autopilot." Resident "Fine, I'll handle it" butch jock. Bit of a Gideon Nav introject. Like if she had childhood friends and was allowed to be a person. Laughs and jokes to cover up insecurities and separate himself from pain. Wants us to get on a workout regimen. Assertive driver. Sometimes refers to Cass as "Captain" and treats directives as orders despite our deliberate lack of hierarchy. Lesbian, still figuring out how involved they want to be in our romantic life.

Ryder (she/her): An old fawning mask, in her words. Was dormant between late 2016 and early 2024. The first of us to realize we were trans and express that. Disappeared in the ensuing panic attack and doesn't remember those seven-ish years. Grieves all that life she missed, but ultimately enjoys how much happier and better our life is now. Often fronts to help people through mental health spirals. Good bass player, much more keen on playing it well than Cass is. Gets a lot of vertigo. Ace femme lesbian.

Zenia (she/they?): Goes back at least as far as Lilith and Cass, but was dormant probably from 2014ish to 2024. Had no idea there was anyone else in here, didn't have access to others' memories, and understandably freaked out when she started fronting again. Felt like this was her body, her life, and we had somehow taken it from her, or that she cracked and went insane. Holding onto specific details and emotions relating to traumatic events. Had a hard time integrating into the system, but eventually got to having easier switches and more memory access. Still not able to be co-conscious though. Imprinted on fox art.

the fairy (they/them): Has no name, on purpose. Almost never communicates vocally. Wants us to learn ASL (which, tbf, we should do anyway). Good at getting tasks done, especially around the house. Loves to dance, usually making it up. Mischevious. Generally not super active, but never has a hard time switching in or accessing memories. (Although they have disappeared for a while on us.) Able to be alert and focused when the rest of us are too overstimulated to communicate effectively.

Aurora (they/she): Less active than most. Major trauma sponge--still holding onto a lot of internalized criticism abusive people instilled in us growing up. More bothered than others by sensory issues or bodily deprivations like hunger and exhaustion. Struggles with emotional regulation, prone to both self-flagellating and lashing out. Views themself as non-human, wanting nothing more than to exist outside of this shitty body. Ideally would be some of the space between stars. Poetic when she gets a mind for it. Aro/ace/agender.

There are a few others we refer to as the periphery; they front much less often than the rest of us and under more specific conditions and for shorter periods.

[mitchbeck]

HARTFORD WOLF PACK RALLY FALLS SHORT. LOSE GAME 3 TO PROVIDENCE BRUINS

By: Gerry Cantlon, Howlings HARTFORD, CT - The Providence Bruins received multi-point nights from Jack Ahcan, Oskar Steen, and Josiah Didier, and two goals from Justin Brazeau to deny a Hartford Wolf Pack comeback effort in a 6-3 win at the XL Center on Wednesday in Game 3 in the best-of-five series. The Wolf Pack lead the series 2-games-to-1 with game 4 to be played at the XL Center on Friday at 7:00 PM. "We didn't have the start we wanted to. We gave up chances. When you get guys back, and they return to your lineup, there's always a tendency that guys take a breath and figure they'll take over, that they will do it for you. "The players that got you here don't feel the need to play the way they were. In the third period, we had a good pushback. There was a chance to tie the game. We had opportunities. We were inches from tying the game up and going to overtime. "I saw something out there that was out of character for us. We didn't play the way we have. We're going to have to put it behind us and get ready for Friday," Wolf Pack Head Coach Kris Knoblauch said. The Pack's fourth-year bench boss gave props to the Bruins. "Players know it's going to be hard. That's a good team. They won the Atlantic Division, so to sweep them in three was pretty much unrealistic before the series started. We're not going to win that last game until we get back and play the game with the details, and we got away from the things we usually do," Knoblauch stated. "That will be addressed by the coaching staff. I don't think nothing much has to be said. They know it too. We'll be ready for Friday." THIRD PERIOD In the third period, the Pack scored a shorthanded goal early to cut the lead to one goal and began to rally a comeback that would ultimately come up short. Anton Blidh was able to get two shots on the net. Tim Gettinger followed in and blasted his second goal past a screened Brandon Bussi at 2:21. The Bruins restored their two-goal edge by taking advantage of a bad defensive change by the Wolf Pack. Ahcan was left alone, walked in, and registered his second point of the night on a clean breakaway. Ahcan put his shot over Dylan Garland's glove hand at 5:58. The scrums continued as they had all game. It helped the Bruins in slowing the Wolf Pack down. Connor Carrick, Lauri Pajuniemi, Ryan Carpenter, and Steen were all tagged with roughing minors at 7:49. "It's that time of year. Everybody has one goal in mind (to win). I like the physicality. We're not looking for big hits or big fights. If it comes, it comes," remarked Zac Jones. KEEP FIGHTING The Wolf Pack clawed back again. Lauri Pajuniemi was in front of the net. Jones sent a crisp left-point pass to Tanner Fritz. The Pack forward sent a pass in front from off the right boards to Pajuniemi, who buried it at 13:34. "We wanted to finish it off tonight, but we didn't," Fritz said, "We kinda beat ourselves tonight. We'll get back in the room and practice tomorrow and get ready for Friday." The Pack had a golden chance to tie as Bobby Trivigno won a one-on-one battle, came out of the right-wing side fired a pass over to Pajuniemi, who had an open half of the net. But instead, Bussi showed why he was one of the top goalies in the AHL with a remarkable glove save, reaching back to snare what would have been a game-tying goal with 2:21 left in regulation. It was the Pack's last gasp. "We had the setup. The bench stood up (we) thought it was going in, but it's a game of inches and we had other chance, a couple of back door plays, that got deflected or just missed. We had our opportunities in the third period. We're built to play 60 not 20 (minutes)," remarked Knoblauch. EMPTY NET GOALS Brazeau registered the first of two empty-net goals with 1:23 left. Then, with 7.7, Lettieri potted the second empty net goal to make the 6-3 final. Switching the netminder for Friday is a tricky proposition. "We have a great possibility (of winning) with either one of them. I have lot of confidence with both goalies. Dylan has played very well; tonight, we lost. Something we'll think about (goaltending) and make a decision tomorrow," Knoblauch said. He's scheduled a morning practice for 10:00 AM. "Louie (Domingue) was our starter for most of the season, till the last four starts when the playoffs started," Knoblauch added. The Bruins pressed hard with their forecheck and were all over the Pack. The pressure led to a 5-2 edge in shots. The score became 3-0 as the Bruins got to more loose pucks and converted them into opportunities. Achan came out of the Bruins' end, rushing through center ice. He fed Luke Toporowski, who went with speed down the right wing. He established an outside position and sped around Wyatt Kalynuk. Toporowski then snuck it past Garand off his post, on the short side for his second of the postseason at 14:03. BIG HIT The first of playoff nastiness occurred with 2:21 left in the second period as Clendening caught Fabian Lysell, crossing to the center from the right wing, and just after releasing the puck, clocked him with a brutal hit which left him crumpled on the ice. A scrum ensued, and Joona Koppanen came to Lysell's aid. Clendening received an interference major and a fighting penalty. Koppanen received two as the instigator and then five-for-fighting and a ten-minute misconduct. Jones scored for the Pack just seconds into their third power play. He blasted a shot from the right point with 24 seconds to go after a Jake Leschyshyn faceoff win. Jones nearly got another tally with 12.6 seconds left when he came in on a breakaway going backhand-to-forehand but ran out of real estate and was in too close, and failed to score. "I over-complicated it a little bit. I tried the same move in Springfield and it worked for me, tonight it didn't," remarked Jones. "It could have been a nice turnaround to score again just after we scored. We did that (early) shorthanded goal in the third. It was 3-2. We scored and then they scored. Jones played well if he got that goal at the end might have changed the outcome of the game at the end," commented Knoblauch. In the first period, both teams had chances, but both goalies stood their ground. The Bruins broke through as Libor Hájek, who returned from being part of the "Black Aces" in New York and replaced Blake Hillman. Unfortunately, he took a needless crosschecking penalty that would cost the Pack as the Bruins tallied on the early power play. Puck management left much to be desired. "No, we made plays we typically don't do and ultimately, we had less (offensive) zone time. We had to defend more than they did. Those turnovers cost us the game. A lot of times they do. The last goal they scored it did," Knoblauch recounted. Carrick fired one from the right point. Garand made the initial save with the left pad, but there were three Bruins in front, and Brazeau could find it and put it in at 15:54. The Bruins made it 2-0 in the dying seconds of the first period with 2/10ths of a second remaining with Didier at the right point. He took a shot off Lysell's pass. Steen deflected it and put it over Garand's glove for his first of the postseason at 19:59. There were numerous after-whistles and scrums in the first. LINES: Trivigno-Carpenter-Elson Fritz-Pajuniemi-Blidh Henriksson-Gettinger- Lockwood Cullye-Leschyshyn-Brodzinski Jones-Emberson Hájek-Scanlin Clendening-Kalynuk Garand Domingue SCRATCHES: Talyn Boyko #40 Adam Sýkora (healthy) Blake Hillman (healthy) Matt Rempe (upper body, day-to-day) Louie Roehl #4 (healthy) Bryce McConnell-Barker #8 (healthy) Brett Berard #27 (healthy) Parker Gahagen #35 Maxim Barbashev #18 (healthy) Ryder Korczak  #38 (healthy) Matt Robertson (upper body, may return in the latter half of this  round of the playoffs) Patrick Khordorenko (season-ending shoulder surgery). C.J. Smith (hip area surgery done for the season) NOTES: Providence was without Chris Wagner due to the birth of his daughter earlier in the afternoon. In addition, Marc MacLaughlin (upper body) is out for the series, with Lauko taking his lineup spot. Ex-Pack Vinni Letterieri has been nursing a lower-body injury suffered in Boston late season, and complications have arisen. Maxim Barbashev's older brother, Ivan Barbasev, of the Las Vegas Golden Knights, scored twice in a 6-4 win over the Edmonton Oilers in a track meet of a hockey game. Utica recalled former UCONN defenseman Jarrod Gourley from the Adirondack Thunder (ECHL). The Comets hosted the Toronto Marlies last night on Utica at the Adirondack Bank Center. Ex-Pack Carl Klingberg leaves EV Zug (Switzerland-LNA) and heads back home to play next year for the HC Frölunda Indians (Sweden-SHL). Reports out of the desert paint a grim picture for the Arizona Coyotes. The pending arena referendum may be defeated, prompting a possible relocation to Houston that keeps the NHL's 16 West and 16 East formulas intact. It's one of four reasons, despite great attendance numbers for the Quebec City junior team, the Quebec Remparts at the Videotron Centre recently built to NHL specs that Quebec City won't be getting the Coyotes or anyone else. Should they move, they will likely impact their AHL team out of Tucson and somewhere closer to Houston, which is heavily rumored to be the location they would be heading. Seven possible markets could see a relocated AHL team if NHL relocation comes to pass. One old AHL market, one old ECHL, and one current market, three old WPHL markets from the league that folded in the early part of this century. One city (Austin) became an AHL city. In no particular order. Beaumont, Texas, was an old ECHL market for five years early in this century. It's East of Houston on the Texas-Louisiana border that played in the Ford Arena in South Beaumont, seats 8,500 seats perfect for the AHL run by OVG along I-10. San Antonio, which saw the NHL strong-arm the AHL Rampage to be sold to the Avalanche to become the Colorado Eagles. The NBA's San Antonio Spurs run the AT&T Center building. It seats 18,000 and is easy access for Houston down I-10 Southwest of Houston and due South from Austin, now home to the AHL Texas Stars. The old WPHL market down the Southeast Coast in Corpus Christi, with a new one, is currently home to US junior A  hockey in the NAHL, the Corpus Christi Ice Rays. The original Memorial Coliseum was demolished a la the New Haven Coliseum in 2010. Another WPHL market on the radar is Waco. They played in the Heart O' Texas Coliseum (now called the Extraco Events Center) seats 9,000. San Angelo is home to the WPHL San Angelo Outlaws, who played in the central Texas city, and the arena, the San Angelo Coliseum (now Foster Communications Coliseum), seats 5,260. The Amarillo Rattler played in the Amarillo Civic Center seats just under 5,000. The wild card would be flipping the ECHL Allen Americans, a suburb of Dallas, to the AHL. The team calls home at the Credit Union of Texas Event Center, which seats 6,275. HARTFORD WOLF PACK HOME Read the full article

[rollicomp]

Eden eternal vendetta current servoer time

While also making it much much more accessible to the european players. In this case, their GvG fights would be at 12:00 and 16:00 during the weekends – whichs seems easily possible to me. (Maybe even 5 hrs earlier so they don‘t overlay with the GvG times on the awakened Server) Would it really hurt the american playerbase if we do the GvG ~4hrs earlier than on the awakened Server? So after seeing some specific times for the different regions above, i got the following question: The 4th is almost impossible for everyone who is a student or has to work since it‘s at 02:00 on Monday. The 2nd is barely manageable with 02:00 on Sunday. So far it has been hard for european players to enter 2nd and 4th GvG Battle. However, if we take both american and european timezones into consideration – i do think that a good compromise is possible. (Please please correct me here if i‘m wrong, but so far i haven‘t met a single asian Player) That might also be a reason why there seem to be so few asian players. Just what i said in the beginning you can‘t combine 3 different timezones in one server… I don't know if there are any decisions about when GvG will be, but before you decide, let me show you this:Įuropean Timezone (Germany): 02:00 (Sunday)Īsian Timezone (Hongkong): 08:00 (Sunday)Įuropean Timezone (Germany): 02:00 (Monday)Īsian Timezone (Hongkong): 08:00 (Monday)Īs things stand now, it seems to be impossible for Asian players to take part in neither TW nor any GvG Battle. At 16:00 the americant should be home from work/school and it's still early enough for europeans to take part without losing too much sleep. This is a great compromise for both american and european players for TW, in my opinion. I do like that the TW on the Classic server will be the same as the current Normal Class TW on the awake ne d server – as Jordan said in the General Discussion – PvP Times Thread („.That being said the current TW time will be the same time as a the current server normal class TW which is early enough.“ ). (I chose Server for American because… Server…, Germany for Europe since that‘s where i come from and it‘s pretty much in the middle of Europe, and Hongkong for Asia – all these are just a reference to get a rough overview)Īll of these Timezones are 6hrs from each other apart. I‘m using the current PvP Times of the Awaken Server to give an insight because that‘s what we‘re used to at the moment. I'll come to the actual suggestions later on, first, let me state some facts. PvP is one of the main reasons that keeps me tied to the game, however, it‘s really a bummer to know that I can rarely participate in important GvG battles due to my timezone so i‘d like to give some suggestions and present you the view of PvP of a european player – so I and my european fellows can hopefully really invest ourselves into the Classic Server. I know this has been discussed for quite some time now, for the awakened Server as well as the upcoming Classic Server, but I have been playing this game for years now (German Server, US Server, Vendetta and i‘ll play classic too) and am really passionate about this. So we all know that compromising between different timezones is a big issue on this server.

[graykageyama]

dream come true.

synopsis: when you fall in love, you fall in love deep. they become your world, while you became theirs. they’re your dream, and you are theirs. but all it takes is a change of heart to change the courses of your dreams, and maybe only one dream can come true. 

pairing: Suna x reader

genre: angst

word count: 3k +

Part 2: but you were my dream, too

“And then Atsumu never saw it coming. So he was running from his fangirls right? He ran like he was running away from an apocalypse. As stupid as he is, he never saw it coming. He ran straight to the gym and when he opened the door, he triggered the trap. Dude, got the whole floor wet.” Suna laughed hard as he tells you about his day - well trying as he can barely get the words out.

You glance towards his direction and you just cannot believe that this man is your boyfriend - he looks so ethereal under the glow of the street lamps lighting your way home before the dusk completely envelops both of you. With his gym bag slung over his shoulder and his other hand warming yours, his head tilted back as he tried to catch his breath, this was another rare moment where Suna -your Suna Rintarou- is completely carefree, defenseless and well, just him. His piercing, slanted eyes which usually intimidates most people, are now closed. Even with his awkward hair style still damp from practice, and hunched-over posture, you still think of him as your Mr. Perfect.

You’ve been  together since the start of your third year in high school, and honestly, this is so far your best year. Being friends with him and the twins since first year of highschool, you can’t help but to just fall for him. Despite his usually cold persona, he is always so sweet to you. He makes sure to walk you home everyday, since he always asks you to watch him at practice. It’s amazing really, how he can transform to this scary, intimidating middle blocker into an adorable fox always seeking for your affections. He loves it when you hand his towel, or maybe dry his hair with your gentle touches. You know he secretly loves how you cheer for him even in practice games. You also know to yourself that you would want to do these things for him even in the far future. Even if it would mean you would have to sacrifice your dreams to become Suna’s perfect wife, you know that you’re going to stay with him for the rest of your life. To become Suna’s number one fangirl is now your dream.

“Y/N?” Suna calls out, interrupting your thoughts. “Watch this. Ain’t he stupid?”He laughs again as he shows you the video clip of Atsumu being drenched with water, and his face flat on the floor. “Yeah, he is. He falls for it every time. Smart athlete on the court, but in reality, he’s pretty stupid. Kita-san and the other alumni must have had a hard time in handling you three. ”  You laugh along at his story. “He misses Kita-san though, the dude cries when he remembers how Kita-san took care of him when he got sick.”

“Well, Tsumu can be a baby sometimes, that’s why we love him” He faintly slows down his pace as he asks, “Come to think of it Y/N, I’ve never seen you cry. I mean, I wouldn’t want to make you cry or anything, but even when we were still friends, you never cried.”

Pinching his side, you giggle “I cry too, dumbass. I’m human too.I don’t know though, I just don’t cry easily I guess.” You shrug. “What about you? I rarely see you in tears, too.” You tease as you poke your tongue out. He smirks as he looks over at you,”I don’t easily get affected by my emotions and honestly I don’t need too, sweetcheeks. There’s no reason too. I always win.” He lets out another hearty laugh, as you think. That’s true. No one can really beat and outwit Suna. Maybe only the french fry from Karasuno, but I guess no one can easily faze him.  

Suna lets go of your hand as you both stopped in front of your house. He clasps your hands together with his one hand as he places the other on the top of your head, “I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah? Rest well, Miss I-don’t-easily-cry.” Placing a tender kiss on your forehead, you shut your eyes. This had been your routine with your boyfriend ever since you got together, but you would never wish for anything else to replace these moments.

---

As you both graduated from Inarizaki, you decide to follow your dream - your Suna - and support him as he aspires to be a professional Volleyball player. You go to a University near where he is training so that it would be more convenient for him to fetch you. Life goes by quickly. Your boyfriend trains hard day and night and hones his skills and game sense. You study a business course to help you land a good job, a job that can still be pretty flexible to work with according to Suna’s. You rarely see your boyfriend nowadays, but no doubts cross your mind as you are assured that you were Suna’s one and only, his love of his life. Whenever you think otherwise, you try to remember these evidence of his love and assurance.

----

You closed the door as you said your goodbyes to your mom. It pains you to see her get cheated on by your dad, but you couldn’t do anything about it. You sat on the couch and hugged your knees together. Forcing your eyes shut to keep you from crying and sharing her pain, but alas - your tears betrayed you as it streamed down your face.

How can the guy you loved for so many years, easily replace you?

Suna saw your broken state as he gave you a warm hug. He didn’t say anything, but you’re comforted by his silence and the small circles he rubbed on your back. You looked up at his eyes and cried, “It’s so scary, Rin. How one day you’re hopelessly in love with your best friend for so many years, but then they suddenly act like you are just trash - disposable, replaceable, and no longer wanted. They were so perfect in my eyes, you know? But why did he cheat on her? He just gave up in the middle of solving their problem. Why? I’m scared, Rin. Will that happen to us?”

Suna tilted your head to maintain the eye contact you had initiated. With his soft voice, he said “No matter what happens, I will never hurt you, leave you, and will never make you cry intentionally.” He wiped away your tears, then placed his hand on top of your head. Kissing your temple softly, he assured you. “I will never go away, no matter how rough it may become. Every single day for the rest of my life, I will be by your side.”

---

You both try to make your relationship work, spending all of your free time together. He is still the Suna you loved. Always affectionate to you alone, and always caring about you.

Things are going great to the both of you. You are now in your last months in university, and Suna gets scouted to play for the EJP Raijins, a V. League Division 1 team. You are so proud of your boyfriend. He is finally reaching his dreams, and your dream of seeing him so successful is also coming true. You understand how he puts more effort in his training, with him usually coming home to dim lights. But you try your hardest as his girlfriend to warm up the dinner you have prepared for him earlier. With only the kitchen lights lit, you always wait for your boyfriend to come home, to greet him with a kiss even if it is past 11pm. This is just the life of a professional athlete, and you, as his partner, should adopt this life too.

“Y/N baby, no need to wait for me. I’m not coming home tonight. Coach offered to let me sleep at his place since we’re just really fatigued from the hard training we had today.”

This slowly becomes a habit, and you are getting frustrated over the lack of attention you’ve been receiving. You understand this was his job, and he needs to work hard with the season coming up soon. But does he have to be away for almost every day of the week? You rarely get to see him now, with most encounters only at night. He’d usually go home at 1 am, and when you’re lucky, you get to feel your lover’s intimate touches again. But before dawn cracks up, he's out on his training again, and who knows when he’s coming home.

“Hey, Rinnie. I miss you so much babe, and I know you’ve been training really hard, but I’d like to spend some time with you.” You approached your boyfriend as you saw him packing his things up for training. “Maybe I could go by your gym and visit you! I could make some packed lunches for you and your teammates too, and maybe I can finally meet them.”

“I’ll try Y/N, I can’t say much now with our new training schedule.” He utters out rather coldly, while shoving his equipment down his gym bag.

“Ohhh okay. But are you able to come home early on Wednesday? Just for one night, pretty please? You’re rarely home these days and I--”

“Well, I just can’t laze around right? I’d have to work hard in order to feed the both of us. Can you stop being clingy, and act like a more understanding girlfriend. It’s getting pathetic how you’re acting like I’m not doing this for the both of us.” He zipped up his bag and slings it over his shoulder. He went up to your frozen state, and gave a light kiss to your temple. “Look, I don’t really want to fight. I’m sorry. But please be an understanding girlfriend for me, and stop being extra clingy.” He walked up to the door, and left - leaving you to blame yourself for being another burden to your partner. Although he said some hurtful things, he says he’s sorry right?

---

You love routines, and it makes you feel your life has a structure it has to follow. But this new routine was not one you would wish to have, to be honest, you did not know when did your old routines fall out. Suna’s rarely home, if he used to go home once a week, now, he only goes home to pick some of his clothes, makes love to you if you ask him to, and leaves the next day. His texts are getting drier each day, even taking hours to reply to yours. You’re scared. Even his words don’t seem to assure you now, he feels so far away. He’s slipping through your fingers, and you know you need to do something to keep your relationship together.

“Rin love, can you go home tonight? I just really miss you terribly, and honestly, I’ve been craving your touch for so long. Come home tonight, love.” (Sent, 2:51 PM)

“Ok.” (Received, 4:30 PM)

You’re ecstatic. You’re finally going to spend time with your boyfriend after such a long time. You prepare his favorite dinner, and you choose to wear his favorite nightgown for you. As you hear his steps outside the apartment, you greet him with your sweetest smile.

“Hi, Rinnie. I’m glad you’re home” You give him a tight hug, as you offer to take his gym bag.

“Let’s get this over with, Y/N. Go now to the room, I’ll just wash up.” He mutters as he steps out of his shoes. You stand frozen, as you suppress the tears forming in your eyes. “I made dinner, Rinnie. Your favorite, actually. Come eat with me? ” You try to invite him again, holding his hands as you try to lead him to the kitchen.

“Ï’m a busy man, Y/N. What more can you ask from me? You said you wanted my touches and love, right? That’s why I’m here. I need to go back to the dorms immediately, and honestly I just want to have it over with.”

“Rin,” you called out. “Can you at least spare me some time and attention that  you have been refusing to give me over these past months? All I’m asking is to spend time with you. I’m even trying my best to make time for you. Why are you like this?”

The eyes. The eyes you never had thought would frighten you as much as it did to the other players in the court, pins you down. Suna glares as he seethes through his teeth, “Make time for me? You don’t even have a job yet after graduating a few months ago. You stay here, enjoying your life as I worked hard to keep this up. You are demanding too much from me, Y/N. And now you are asking me for my share in this relationship? Well aren’t you one selfish woman.”

You cower away from his gaze, but you still try to express your frustrations. “I never asked for an expensive life. I just wished to be with you, Rin! To support you with your dreams.” You lift your head to meet his gaze.  “I’ll always try to take care of you, Rin. You are my dream. Seeing you pursue yours, makes me feel as if I’m accomplishing my dream too. But all I’m asking is for you to still treat me as your favorite girl, your partner, and I can give back ten times more than what you can give me, just please give me the small attention and love I have been craving for.”

“Well, sorry to disappoint you Y/N, but you’re the least of my priorities now. And aren’t you pathetic? Sacrificing your dream to support mine? You’re just lazy to pursue yours, and you’re just leeching off of me. I’m so disappointed in you, Y/N. You’re getting more pathetic each day.”

“I wanted to go and look for a job, but how could I when I don't know how you are lately? How is our relationship lately? It’s like it’s hanging by the thread now, Rinnie.”

“Well, just cut the damn thread, then!” He forcefully slams the counter as his eyes snap backs to yours. “Ï can’t deal with this right now. If you keep on acting up Y/N, just stop. Have some pity over yourself.” Suna picks up his things, and leaves. Shutting the door as hard as he could, the loud bang conceals the sound of your shattered heart.

---

Weeks go by slowly as you patiently wait for your boyfriend’s return. He wouldn’t leave me right? He promised .He promised.. Scrolling up to your text messages, you reviewed the texts you’ve sent him.

“Hey Rinnie, I’m sorry for the things I’ve said. I hope you’re taking care of yourself, babe.” (Sent. April 13, 8:53 AM.)

“Hey baby! Please don't skip your meals, and drink lots of water too! Drink your water, bitch!” (Sent. April 14, 10:14 AM.) You slightly smiled as you reminisced how both of you loved to tell that to each other after hearing it from a famous personality, finding it amusing and adding it to your routine.  

“Call me whenever your free, okay? Don’t forget to rest in between, Rinnie. I miss you.” (Sent. April 14, 8:42 PM.)

The text messages go on for two weeks, still with no replies from your Rinnie. As you are cleaning the apartment, you hear the awaited notification tone ring. You immediately grabbed your phone and checked out the notification. But it was not from Rin, it was from your friend from university calling you up.

“Hey, Y/N-san. Congratulations to Suna and his team for winning the pre-seasonal tournament. It’s all over the news right now.” Akaashi exclaimed over the phone. Your heart leaps upon hearing your boyfriend’s name. Rushing over to see the news for yourself, your heart flutters as you see your perfect man - in his wet jersey while holding the medal wrapped around his neck as the reporter angled the microphone in front of him. Your perfect man responds casually and smug, as usual.

I’m so proud of you baby. Always had, and always will. I knew you could do it, Rin.

But your thoughts are interrupted as the reporter asks, “Is there any special someone you would want to celebrate this victory with, Mr. Suna?”

Suna looks over at the camera and he smiles bright. Brighter than the ones you’ve seen when you were with him during these past months. “Yeah, actually I do.” He replies as he smiles back at the reporter. “She’s just the best and I’ve been training really hard for her, you know? Gotta make my baby proud.”

The spark of hope ignites within your heart upon hearing those words. Even when doubts clouded your mind, you still never fail to have faith in him. You always believe that everything will be perfectly fine, and your Rin will always stay by your side. He said he’ll never go away, and you know that you’re here to stay.  “I will never go away, no matter how rough it may become. Every single day for the rest of my life, I will be by your side.”

But what you see next finally wakes you up from your own self-deception. Suna Rintarou. Your Rin. Has his arms around another girl as he smiles back again to the reporter. “She’s the girl I’m talking about.” As if it wasn’t enough, Suna placed his hand on top of her head and placed a tender kiss on her temple.

I’m supposed to be that girl, that should have been me.  I should be the one greeting you back from your training. I should be the one with you as you receive your recognition. That should be me. That used to be me.

Even though it hurts, you stare at the couple in front of you and see how Rin was just casually cool and okay, as though he wasn’t the cause of your heart breaking.

All this time. While you have been fixing your own shattered heart, someone else is mending his - no, there was nothing to fix as it has been replaced. It’s so unfair, how can you be so fine? All the fights we’ve gone through, I even deceived myself that I was being a burden to you. Convincing myself to no longer bother you as it may faze you and your performance, too. It takes so much for me to just go through the day, and live for you, for us. But I guess you’re my dream, right? You win again, Rin. You always did.

Dreams do come true, they said. But it seems only your dream came true. And it’s wonderful to see you reaching your dreams, love. Even if it meant that my dream won’t come true.

A/N: HNGHHH, I am sorry for Y/N becoming so heads over heels over him, which is why she’s hurting so much!! But reality’s a bitch, there really are people who be martyrs for love :<  Would love to hear you thoughts uwu reblogs, likes, comments, asks and messages are very much appreciated! There will be a part 2!! Will try to post within this week, after doing my requirements T.T .  

Message me or send an ask if you want to be tagged for the update! <3

~juju 

[help-im-a-gay-fish]

Okay I had to do some stuff, but here I am rambling about relationship between Killer and Nightmare in Colours of LOVE.

Some of this I might mention before some of it might be your and Jann or Yuri ideas... Anyway!! The way I see that:

Even though this is soulmate au Nightmare and Killer aren't perfect fit for eachother. They are perfect fit in threesome - Ccino softens rough edges of both of them, and changes their attention from being mad on eachother to carrying about Ccino together (especially at first when he is really depressed). But before that... It was hard.

Killer is really open about everything he thinks and feels. If he founds someone who is attractive he will flirt. Even when he is already dating Nightmare. And also he always shows his affection to Nightmare everywhere, in public too. That's cute and sweet, but Nightmare is really closed person so that makes him really uncomfortable. Night often got jealous with Killer flirting with anyone else, got embarrassed with his kisses and all on public, and in general is a bit annoyed with Killer's actions. Killer on the other hand doesn't really understand why Nightmare is so "tensed" (he is not, Night is just much more calm, but Killer don't get it).

They were braking up and coming back again a few times, because they had argued a lot about everything and got tired of this. Right now they are on their "best days" - they started to date again a few weeks ago and right now they are through some stuff, they understand eachother better, and pretty chill about eachother weird actions. Like in the second page Night is a bit flustered by Killer's kiss but he almost used to that. Same as he is worried about being late, since Killer is almost always late, but he is more or less fine by that. On next page (which you haven't seen yet), there are an interesting dialog between them, and I will definitely write some of "subtext" about it when I will post it.

Actually if they haven't met Ccino they would break up again after a few months. And maybe come back again after a week.

Also! Interesting thing about third soulmate: at the beginning of the comic (before Nigh met Ccino) Killer is 100% sure that they have third soulmate, but Nightmare is sure for about 60%. Killer is existed about that, he knew knew that he is polyamorious for a long time, but Nightmare hesitates a lot, because he can't really imagine himself in polyam relationship. It feels weird and also he is soooooo jealous about Killer paying any attention to anyone except him, that he worries to become "third wheel". Will it be different with Ccino?? Who knows (. ❛ ᴗ ❛.)

Hi kotikaleo!!! This was super fun to read.

Firstly I'm going to tag @zu-is-here since she started the studio verse

It's definitely an interesting insight to your comic and the characters!

It reminds me a lot of an early version of my own ideas about the studio verse nightkiller relationship! And I can definitely see the way we have bounced headcannons of each other paying off.

Them still dealing with a softer kind of lovehate dynamic is an interesting one. It doesn't seem to be as extreme as my version, but it's interesting that it's still there.

The fact that they are meant to work as a 3 makes sense as well. If they are supposed to be bounded as a 3 it makes sense that three they their relationship would be unstable. They don't work as a two, but they are soul mates and something would always pull the two of them together.

I'm also curious, since Nightmare isn't 100% sure that the lack of colour is due to them being soul mated to another person. I wonder if he ever felt like the universe got it wrong? And that he'd been mated to the wrong person? Or perhaps he felt it meant that him and Killer don't have soul mates and that's why they have some connections.

It sad boy.

Also if Killer knows he's poly by nature, is that something that causes disagreements with the 2 of them?

And now for mine and @jann-the-bean version.

This story has been something that we mostly developed in tumbler DMs but both me and Jan wrote a story about it. Jan wrote

KillerNight(s)

And I'm writing

Round and round till we all fall down

Nightmare and Killer's relationship started off baddddd, it basically started as a mutual dislike for one another. This is due to their conflicting personalities and morals.

Nightmare was originally quite excited to meet Killer, as he'd heard a lot about the actor. But almost straight away he found Killer to be rude, childish and irritating. Killer found Nightmare to be stuck up, snobbish and entitled.

The two first met at an awards ceremony and got into a yelling match after a few drinks and were separated. From there their dislike for one another was made quite well known to the public because of a social media battle back and forth.

This only went on for a few months however, as the characters of 'Killer' and 'Nightmare' were cast to play together.

Nightmare and Killer agreed to be civil in order to function while working and get the filming completed as soon as possible.

As they worked together, their dislike turned into a playful banter and respect for one another. And then something else shifted.

Now Killer has a reputation for being a player and one who likes to sleep around, as you said, he's open about his interest in people when he has it and enjoys casually flirting with just about anyone.

Which came to include Nightmare.

Nightmare paid no mind to it really, though he couldn't understand why it embarrassed him so much.

Killer comes to find Nightmare to be very attractive and enjoys his reactions when teased, he rights him off though because he was under the impression that Nightmare was straight, and he'd never try to change that.

It was a day when they were talking about Killer's eyes and how it's caused him to struggle, that Nightmare tells him that he thinks his eyes are very pretty and that they are an attractive quality, and something in Killer breaks and he kisses him.

So Killer feels like he messed up and the two avoid each other. But it causes Nightmare to start questioning things about himself.

Nightmare at this point had only every dated women. He assumed that he was straight. But after that kiss a lot of buried feelings are dragged to the surface and exposed, and he realises that he's also attracted to men.

So Jan goes into full details about this, in the fic Killernights, but basically Nightmare confronts Killer about the kiss and Killer tells him he 'has a thing for him'

The two go back to Killer's flat to talk, but their normal banter, leads to flirting and then another kiss. And Nightmare who is curious and suddenly craving new sensations becomes lost to him. Killer who finds Nightmare physically very attractive, also gets wrapped up and the two of them sleep together.

Nowwww this is getting long so I'll try to shorten it down a bit.

Basically, it's an amazing night. It's passionate, enjoyable and a lot of fun for both of them. Upon finding out Night has never been with a man, Killer guides him carefully though the process.

After that night the two can't stop thinking about each other, even though they both planned for it to be a one time thing. Again, they avoided each other until talking after a while.

And killer admits his desires for the other, and offers Nightmare a safe environment to experiment with his sexuality, where he won't be judged.

To cut a long story short, this spirals into a passionate and carnal, on and off booty call/fling with each other that spans for years.

Other that time they grow very close with each other, and come to recognise the similarities that they share, and have soft moments of just enjoying being together with one another.

For Killer, Nightmare is the first person to ever tell him he had beautiful eyes and mean it. The first person who wasn't at all put off by them.

To Nightmare, it feels like Killer is the one person that will never pick Dream over him. And he makes him feel wanted and desirable in a way few have before.

However, their are still parts of their relationship that conflict. Of course a healthy relationship will always have some conflicts. But for Killer and Nightmare the conflicts clash and fight with each other.

That along with both of their past traumas, (I wrote about Killer's back story here) means they find it difficult to talk about genuine feelings and what's bothering them. Causing things to bottle up and blow up over time.

They also find it impossible to admit that they actually love each other deeply.

They tried to be in a full on committed relationship once, (which I'm writing about in Round and Round) but it didn't work out for these issues. As well as the fact that Killer is poly by nature, and therefore gets anxious and uncomfortable in a relationship with one person only. Which he won't talk to Night about for the reasons stated above.

Enter Ccino.

Now Ccino is the missing piece for Nightmare and Killer.

He's soft and gentle spoken, which easily helps them calm down when things get heated between them. He also provides a safe and loving space to open up about what things are bothering them.

Nightmare and Killer's also, as you said, spend more energy caring for and sometimes worrying about Ccino, so they have less energy for the constant fighting.

Ccino was the missing piece. He's the person who will cuddle and read books with nightmare, but also the one who's super into affection, which Killer loveesss.

A relationship would never work between just killer and Ccino, since Ccino wouldn't be able to keep up with Killer's libido and killer doesn't know much about Ccino's mental health. And Ccino wouldn't work in a relationship with just Nightmare because Night's colder and more straight forward personality would leave him affection staved after a while.

They just work together! They are basically soul mates in this universe as well!

P. S Nightmare in this universe was also very veryyyyy jealous when Killer showed interest in Ccino. Which is something he took out on Ccino till Killer stopped it. After falling in love with Marshmallow he regrets this a lot.

I'M SO EXCITED FOR MORE. COLOURS OF LOVEEEEE

[alovesthis]

all of those things // sam wilson

all of those things // sam wilson oneshot (also on my AO3 - pinned on my tumblr)

summary: Every single thing about Sam Wilson had made your stomach flutter with uncontrollable butterflies. The way he spoke and carried himself. His bright smile and the way he laughed. All of those things are what made you fall in love with him. But, you had some questions on why and how he loves you -- which leads Sam confessing every single thing he loves about you.

word count: 3.3k 

warnings: none

requests: send me a message, or an ask on my tumblr! I don’t have any prompts, but feel free to send me any ones you have on your mind! Marvel, SPN, Peaky Blinders. Just note, I’m currently mostly writing MCU characters!! specifically, Sam, Bucky, Steve... 

newly edited; may 24th 2021

Every single thing about Sam Wilson had made your stomach flutter with uncontrollable butterflies. The way he spoke and carried himself. His bright smile and the way he laughed and how it reached to his eyes. All of those things are what made you fall in love with him, but falling in love with your best friend was tricky.

For years you both stood in touch despite how many states you lived from one another. After Sam came back home and started living in D.C, you got a job there and he was fucking thrilled. You struggled to find a place to live, despite Sam’s efforts to get you to move in with him, as you wanted to do things on your own. But when it got extremely difficult, you gave in. How hard could it be to live with your best friend?

When you first asked yourself that, you didn’t really think anything of it. It was easy for the first few months. He was a clean person, kept things organized and had a great set up with his record player. That was one of the many things you adored about him. His love for music and the way he would always show you music you’ve never listened to. The way he’d cook breakfast early in the morning for you before the two of you went off to work. The way he’d say ridiculous jokes and laugh the hardest.

There wasn’t a thing you didn’t hate about him, or dislike. Sure, as best friends you’d annoy the shit out of each other from time to time. But, it never made you want to be without him. Even when times got rough, he was still there for you even if he was the one to make you upset. That was just the type of man Sam Wilson was; caring and the utmost loving human being. He’d gone through a lot, and that was an understatement.

Before The Snap even happened, you were scared you lost him forever. He was helping Steve find Bucky with some others and you had to stay on the sidelines, helping them find places of safety and running from everyone who wanted their hands on Bucky and them. You went months without seeing him because of that. And when The Snap happened, Steve came to you and explained everything. It hurt you because you knew that was going to happen: losing Sam.

Those five years were the longest years of your life. Family members dying, moving and you on your own in the apartment. It made a huge difference with the most warm person you knew was gone. Everything was cold and empty, no smile that could light up the room was there to be seen. No contagious laugh or someone to confide in. No more Sam. Although you two have been apart in life because he went on his tours, something was different about him being gone. No communication, no location. But still, the feeling you’d never see him again would linger in your heart, heavy on your mind. The picture frames were still there to remind you of him and all the memories you’ve shared.

Sometimes, staring at pictures of the two of you and listening to his favorite records made you cry. It made you regret that you never got to tell him you loved him. More than a friend, more than just because you were grateful for him. It was because you were utterly in love with your best friend.

For years, you couldn’t stand to be alone. And Sarah, his sister, knew how much you were suffering alone. No job, no immediate family around...so she made you pack up some stuff and move down to Delacroix to Sam’s childhood home. Sarah, and pretty much everyone who knew you and Sam, knew how you felt about him. And although you were oblivious to how Sam felt towards you, everyone knew how he felt about you. They all saw it. The way the two of you would brighten up either of you walked in a room. The way no one else took his place or yours.

During the five years he was gone, you would hang with Sarah and her kids. You were back and forth between D.C and Delacroix from time to time, whenever you could afford it. She never liked to ask for help, but you helped out because you wanted to. Sarah was a sister to you, and those kids were something special. Watching them grow up when Sam was gone, they reminded you of him. So did Sarah.

When Sam came back, there was no wasting time jumping in his arms. After the final war with Thanos (Sam told you everything about it), there was Tony’s funeral. Natasha’s. Everyone came together, including you. If that wasn’t enough to make things and everyone feel down, Steve left and it broke Bucky. Sam was in for a surprise when he was handed the shield.

For months, Bucky left and you and Sam went back to Delacroix. Although he went back into working after being pardoned, you worried for him and Bucky. You didn’t want them to overwork themselves and jump back in after fighting and running for so long.

But as you looked out for Sam, you realized he was okay. Even if you were worried about him every day (I mean come on, he’s your best friend), you knew that Sam was never to keep things bottled up. It was rare, but right now he told you he was fine but if he needed someone, he’d obviously come to you. As time went on, he went on missions. You stood back, working at home (in Sarah’s house) as a journalist for credible news sources in New York and D.C. Although you were grateful to have this family and them letting you stay, you were missing Sam too much. Sure, he wasn’t working everyday 24/7, but there were missions where he was gone an entire week.

After talking to him one night about it, he saw how concerned you were. He would change his schedule slightly, in order to make sure he wasn’t ever becoming work obsessed. He knew your family as a kid would be so invested in their careers, that you were somewhat neglected a childhood.

The things he’s done for you made you swoon for him. Sometimes, it made you feel guilty and selfish for asking for more time with your best friend. As you confided in him about little things like that, Sam would laugh and reassure you that you shouldn’t ever feel selfish or sorry for wanting him to be around.

He started taking it easy on work. Not only because you felt like he was working too much, but because the family business was struggling and he wanted to help out a lot more. This led to family time, which Sarah and you gossiped about while packaging plates for customers. Sarah would argue that Sam working is fine, and it’s better that he’s away from home. Although she understood your feelings for him (you didn’t think she knew, but Sarah had really good intuition), she didn’t want you or Sam to worry about the business, boat or home.

So yeah, he still kept taking time off work but that meant his missions were more tough and extremely longer than most. Even though that was a change, there were still those nights you both cherished. The ones where it was just you two, alone, staying up all night watching the classics you two both loved.

He caught you staring at him one night. Sitting on the couch together watching the third movie of the night. You stared at the way his smile made his cheek bones prominent, the way it reached his eyes. He would huff out laughs and his sculpted body would move up and down. You didn’t realize you were staring so hard, until he turned his head to react to a joke from the movie.

Your cheeks were set on fire and you were utterly embarrassed. The way his wide smile began to slowly fade as he watched your eyes glare down to his lips and back up to his eyes. Coughing, you quickly turned back to the screen with your breath hitching in your throat. You bit your lip and began bouncing your leg in anxiousness. Trying to watch the movie, you felt Sam’s stare burn through the side of your face.

“What?” Sam smirked.

“What?”

“What’s going on?” He asked softly. You didn’t answer, which makes him sigh and grab the remote so that the movie didn’t distract you. “Y/N?”

“Nothing. It’s nothing.” You stood up, hesitating whether or not you should head to bed or sit back down. “I’m gonna go to bed. I’m just exhausted.”

Sam had this thing about him. He knew when people were having a hard time, and he knew much better than to just let you walk away without letting you talk things out with him. He gripped on your wrist and pulled you down to the couch. You let out a tired sigh, and fell into his side.

“You gonna keep sighing or are you ever gonna tell me what’s wrong?”

“It’s been so hard these last few months.” You gulped, hoping it would stop you from being over emotional.

“You came back after all these years, fought against Thanos and Steve left the shield to you. And then you didn’t take it, so I thought maybe you would’ve taken it easy for a while. I worry about you every day, every time we’re not together. I kept trying to tell you every chance I had, but I scared. I got mad at myself for not telling you, but I was scared if I did I would ruin everything. I got mad at myself because I knew if I didn’t tell you, I could probably lose you one day on a mission and you’d never know…Sam, I-I’m-”

The nerves shoot up and down your body, making you anxious

“Hey, hey…” He pulled your hands from your face, making you look at him. “Tell me what? Is everything alright?”

Sam’s heart starts to drop in his stomach, worried that something was wrong and you didn’t tell him a thing about it.

“I’m in love with you. I really, always...truly love you.” 

You spilled your heart out, embarrassingly so, you try to leave his grasp. But he doesn’t let you go. He wants to listen, he wants to make sure you know that he feels the same way. So, he does.

He said your name lovingly, “I love you.”

Stunned, you tilt your head trying to make sense of those three little words you had no idea he’d say to you...in that way. He waited for your response, biting back a smile as he thought it was cute that you were flustered.

“I can’t...you?”

“Talk it out, baby, that’s alright.”

You swooned at the nickname, your heart pounding against your chest. Leave it up to Sam Wilson to make you melt by just speaking.

“I can’t believe you love me.”

Sam laughed lovingly, “What? Why’s that?”

“Fuck, I said that out loud.” You hid your face in his chest. The heat rises into your cheeks as you squeezed his biceps in embarrassment. “Sam, I’m serious. I just-”

“Look at me.” He tugged on your waist. His hand had started to glide from your hip to your jaw, caressing it gently. “Come on, I’ve loved you since we were kids. I thought all the flirting and back and forth was obvious! I love you now and I’ll continue to love my girl forever.”

Your eyes shoot up to his.

“Yeah, my girl.” He smiled, his eyes flickering down to your lips and back to your eyes. “This explains a lot too.”

“What?”

“Never bringing home anyone. Dates, sure. But the fact that we both knew inside we couldn’t bring anyone home, or came up with excuses.”

“You came up with excuses not to bring anyone home? Or date people? Jesus, Sam...why?”

“You’re telling me you haven’t?” You shook your head at him. “I thought so.”

“But why?”

“You really gotta ask me why?” He sighed, raising his eyebrows in concern. “Oh baby. I was gone for a second, but I lost years and so did you. I can’t ever imagine how that must’ve been for you, or Sarah and the kids. I’ve been thinking a lot lately, more than ever, about how the life I had before Steve walked in my life. All the people we had to fight, and save and run for our lives….That was hard. Being away from you for so long that sucked.”

“It did. So, I guess we both know how it feels when we’re away from each other for so long.”

“Yeah, and that made me realize I don’t want to waste anymore time. I love you because it’s always been you. The people I’ve met, all those dates or whatever they were: it didn’t work because they weren’t you. No one can even amount to you.”

You shook your head, “No, Sam. I’m not that special-”

“Don’t do that. Don’t think you’re not. Don’t do that self deprecating thing, because I know you know how I’ve seen you. How Sarah sees you, how those kids look up to you. Shit, even Bucky sees you. He won’t return my calls or texts, but somehow you get through to him. You’re special. The way you have the strength to get up early in the morning with me before I head off to work. I mean, who would really wakes up at five in the morning for someone and they don’t gotta wake up for another four hours?”

“You’re the only person I’d wake up early for.”

“See. It’s little things like that.”

“What?” He squinted at you, a smirk playing on his face.

“I mean...no matter what you do, or where we are. I just, it’s those things that made me fall for you. Much to my surprise, I didn’t think I’d ever tell you. Or even hear those words come out of your mouth.”

“Why?”

“For starters, you’re my best friend and probably the closest thing I have to a family. I didn’t want to jeopardize that. Not only that but just...I’m just me.”

“That’s right. You’re just you.” Sam said, pulling you into him.

“That’s why I love you.” You shrugged. “You let people know that they’re good, that they’re beautiful.”

“You’re just as caring and filled with compassion.”

“Yeah, but there’s only one Sam Wilson.”

“That’s true.” Sam laughed. “And there’s only one you. That’s what makes you unique, and that’s what makes you the woman I love.”

“Sam.”

Everything about you, from the way you woke up with him in the early mornings, to late night movies, cooking together was things he loved about you. From the way you passionately spoke about the things and people you cared about. The way you fumble over your words during a joke always made him laugh. The way you would stay up for him after his long missions and work, to make sure he was physically and mentally alright.

It was the little things and the big things in life that you did that made his heart grow even fonder of you by the day. And now, now that he had you here in his hold confessing your love to him...he really couldn't believe it.

He moved one of his hands to hold on your waist, as you sat together on the couch. He loved the way you said his name. Whether it was Sam, or Samuel, or Wilson when you were angry...or even when you called him Falcon in amusement, his mind couldn’t keep up with his heart that kept beating faster everytime he was with you.

“Y/N…” He said, matching your tone.

“You always know the right things to say, huh?”

“Yeah, and the truth.”

“Can’t argue with that.”

He laughed, then moved his fingers on your waist to comfort you. 

“Listen, I could list every damn thing and reason why I love you. Trust me, that list is endless. It’s always been you that’s made me feel things I’ve never felt for anyone, you know? The way you look in the morning, or anytime of day really. Your lips...whenever you’re concentrating on something you do that really damn cute scrunch of your face. You know, the one where your nose scrunches and your lips are pulled to the side. The way you listen to me. Whether it's my jokes, or going on and on about shit or just letting me open up to you. How could I not fall in love with my best friend?"

You closed your eyes, listening to the way he spoke. That’s another thing: his voice. Whether it was when he was joking around, or tired, or flirting...that voice made you feel more things for him than you’ve ever felt.

“Every, goddamn thing about you is what I love. Because it’s you.”

Suddenly, you felt his hand on your cheek and you open your eyes to stare up at him.

“You’re really warm.”

“You have that affect on me.”

“I know I do.”

You rolled your eyes at his confident flirting. Before you could even respond, his other hand is cupping your jaw. His lips gently grazed yours, slowly waiting for you to make the next move. But the fluttering in your stomach made you too nervous to even move. He caught on and with a faint smile, he leaned in more. You felt like you were frozen, in a dream. Your mind is still caught up in the ‘holy fuck my best friend, sam fucking wilson is kissing me.’ After a few seconds, he pulled away to rest his forehead on yours.

It stood silent between you too. Sam waiting for you to relax and realize what had just happened. He lets out a breathy laugh when he felt your hands start tugging on his shirt, asking him to come forward again. Your lips are instantly on his, and you finally feel it. The connection that pulls you into him, the love that you’ve felt for him for years.

Those butterflies in your stomach flutters up into your heart. Everything you’ve read, watched or heard suddenly starts to become true. There’s this wholesome feeling knowing you’re finally kissing this man you’ve had a crush on since you were kids. But then, there’s this loving and intense feeling that pulses throughout your body. His mouth opens slightly, allowing you to explore his. The nerves start up again, but you push them away once you feel confident enough.

Your lips detach from his for a second, and you both let out each others names in a low whisper. He felt it too. The way you were both vulnerable around each other more than other time. The way you both finally got those feelings off your chest, speaking them to each other.

Sam kissed you once more, just a peck but enough to make you feel weak all over. It was soft, but you felt him giving his all to you. And as he pulled away, it left you breathless and clinging tightly on his thick biceps.

“The things you do to me.”

“I could say the same thing.”

You leave a kiss on the side of his mouth, to tease him and for your own satisfaction. No words are spoken for the rest of the night. It gave you and Sam the opportunity to relax into each others arms.The two of you let out a relieved laugh, falling back into the couch together. He lets his hand wander from your head, down to your back, soothing you and making sure you know everything that had just happened was real. If you had the option of kissing him for the rest of your life, you would.

But right now, being in his arms and knowing that he loves you back, can suffice.

[nevervalentines]

(went looking for) a creation myth [read on ao3 here]

With the Vytal Festival just weeks away, Yang is left looking for answers to questions she is too scared to ask. 

***

Yang and Blake, before. 

[7k words of a speed run enemies-to-lovers, roughhousing with bladed weapons, and sexually charged hair washing]

Blood is seeping through the fabric of her top, and her tan jacket is gritty with dust. It’s enough to staunch the tacky, rust-colored stain, but only just, and the cut stings with sweat and friction as Yang raises her forearm to run it across her brow.

She slicks her bangs out of her eyes, and reloads her gauntlets with a tight punch at her side, bracing her arms for the recoil as the shells drop into their chambers. Ember Celica is overloud in the sudden quiet of the clearing. Moss-dampened and studded with new spring growth, Emerald Forest is surprisingly silent, as if Yang hadn’t been booking it for her fucking life thirty seconds before.

Then, just there, through the trees – she sees it. Yang’s heart drops, and she risks a step forward, eyes scanning the mulchy cover of dead leaves and underbrush for a trip wire. There’s the potential for anything, from a steel-jawed bear trap to a cartoon-esque snare and net. She really wouldn’t put it past them.

She sees nothing and raises her eyes to scan the trees, finds only the pale underside of the arcing canopy and the gnarl of tangled vines. Grinning, she feels an early flush of victory, a rush of satisfaction that pounds like a second heartbeat. She might actually win this thing; the others be damned.

Bleeding side forgotten, fists held loosely at the ready, she is about to take the final steps toward her target when the metallic click of a safety releasing freezes her in place. Yang winces her eyes closed, breathes out shakily. She feels the mouth of a pistol nuzzle in between her shoulder blades.

Yang knows who it is without turning around. Which is to say: the worst-case scenario. She swallows, hard.

“You don’t want to do this,” she says. At a firmer nudge of the gun against her back, she raises her hands, obedient.  “You can just pretend like I was never here.”

“And why would I do that?”

She turns slowly in place, arms still raised above her head, and finds herself face to face with her captor, finds narrowed, golden eyes, Gambol Shroud pointed squarely at her chest. Blake is wrinkling her nose in the way that means she’s biting back a laugh.

“Because you love me?”

Blake bites at her lip, considers. Shrugs. “Maybe. But not enough to let you take our flag.”

“I was so close,” Yang whines. She pivots her head over her shoulder, pouts in the direction of the blue fabric hanging from a flagpole just a few yards away.

“If it makes you feel any better,” Blake says, stepping closer, until the heat of her thigh presses against Yang’s, “you really weren’t. Pyrrha’s had you in her sights since you crossed the creek.”

“Have you considered,” Yang says, flattening her hands against the back of her head in a way that she knows pushes her chest out, in a way that, without fail, means Blake’s eyes will flick down to her cleavage, “that I was just a distraction?”

Blake hesitates for just a second, but it’s a beat too long, and Yang lashes out her leg, timing the strike perfectly with Weiss’s rush from the trees on the far side of the clearing, darting from glyph to glyph, a lightning-crackling Nora close on her heels.

Yang and Blake go down in an undignified heap, and Pyrrha’s shot spears the space she was in just moments before.

The scramble at the base of the flagpole dissolves into an all-out brawl. A petal-blurred Ruby drops from a tree and gamely tackles Weiss, and her subsequent shrill scream makes an entire flock of birds flee their roost from the above canopy.

More players from both teams race into the clearing, skidding through dead leaves and debris, pant legs flecked with creek water and mud, more roughed up than a 50-minute long, single class period game of capture the flag has any right to make them.

From her spot on the ground, the sky wheeling overhead, Yang distantly hopes some people stayed behind to guard their own flag, but the odds aren’t looking good.

At the edge of the tree line, Juane trips one of the exact traps Yang had been wary of, something rigged so quickly and neatly it has to be Ruby’s handiwork, and it hoists him overhead by his ankle. He dangles, looking resigned, sword sliding out of its scabbard and thunking Cardin squarely on the top of his head.

Cardin goes down like a brick.

Juane cheers.

They’re on the same team, but no one seems to remember the red/blue delineations at this point. The flag all but forgotten, Weiss and Nora are facing off against an odd match-up of Ruby and Ren, and Yang tries to clamber off the ground, ready to provide back-up.

But in the split seconds it had taken the feverish mob to descend, Blake has twisted on top of her, and is driving the hilt of Gambol Shroud down towards Yang’s face. Breathing hard, knees hugged tightly at Yang’s waist, she’s all lithe and muscle – completely unlike close quarter sparring with Ruby.

Yang catches her wrists and squeezes, and Blake drops the blade and scabbard, until the two of them are grappling like teenagers, pressed too tight for Yang to feasibly use her gauntlets, just adrenaline-flushed and tangled limbs, Blake’s eyes flashing, mouth open in an unexpected grin.

“If you wanted to wrestle,” Yang says, twisting on her back in the dirt. “We’ve got beds back at the dorm.”

Blake cuts her off with a forearm to her windpipe, presses down. “I want to do it here.”

Yang knows Blake can be playful – has seen her gloat after a long-fought evening of board games, or loopy with lack of sleep after a few too many all-nighters, pulling dry jokes that make Weiss cringe.

But this – the full weight of her levered onto Yang’s chest, bursting into a laugh as Yang’s hips jump, hands and legs meeting in a mishap of strikes and punches that would make Glynda weep – feels so young. It’s like the tether that tugs at Blake, forces her eyes over her shoulder, knots her brow with worry, has been cut free. Like just for a moment, just for now, it’s only the two of them tangled in the sun-dappled clearing.

They manage to roll to their feet, and Yang shakes her hair out of her face, cocks her fists loosely in front of her chin. Gestures Blake forward.

“Let’s see how nicely you play without your toys, Belladonna.”

Blake’s mouth pulls tight, and she drops into a crouch, leaving Gambol Shroud half-buried in the leaves.

Despite the weight of it, Yang barely remembers Ember Celica exists. It’s been an extension of her own body since her first years at Signal, but suddenly she’s much more preoccupied with how to best get both of Blake’s hands back on her.

“Yang,” Blake says. She flashes teeth. “Stop stalling.”

Behind them, Ruby and Ren are gamely losing, and Pyrrha melts out of the trees, cutting Juane down from the branch with a smile and a well-placed spear throw, catching him before he can hit the ground. All the partners had been split onto opposing teams, but Pyrrha leverages him gently to his feet anyway, backing up a few steps before gesturing for him to challenge.

Cheek smushed into the forest floor, Cardin has begun to drool.

With the full weight of Blake’s attention on her, Yang feels that same second-heartbeat-flush, better than any almost-victory. It’s a feeling she has been careful not to examine too closely for fear of what she will find.

They’ve been partners now for almost two full semesters, and she’s spent too much of it avoiding stating the obvious – avoiding the thing building in between them as if averted eyes will stop the pot from boiling over.

The few slip ups she chalks up to chance, to hormones, to a laundry list of excuses that Blake’s own silence seems to affirm.

It’s working, she tells herself. It’s working, it’s working.

Hair a tousled ripple down her back, Blake’s black cravat had dislodged at some point during the game, leaving her neck bare, skin shining with sweat, glistening in the hollow of her throat. She flicks her bangs out of her eyes and tenses under Yang’s gaze, firming her jaw until the muscle pops, half-smiles.

If Yang didn’t know any better, she would think Blake is enjoying this.

Blake moves on the offensive first, and it catches Yang off-guard, forcing her to step back to dodge a flurry of quick jabs before taking a fist squarely to the jaw. Blake flinches harder than Yang when she lands the hit, immediately backing off.

“It’s okay,” Yang murmurs. Her aura absorbs the punch, and she can feel her semblance simmer, heat lighting under her skin like the kiss of a match against a gas burner. “You can even go harder next time.”

Blake rolls her eyes, but acquiesces.

Even sparring, Blake is careful not to touch her hair – and part of Yang wants to tell her to stop taking it easy, to grab it, pull it. She wants to know what it feels like when Blake plays dirty.

Inevitably, always, Yang comes out on top, breathing hard, the both of them breathless with laughter – unsure what to do with her victory. She knows both of their aura levels are sinking, and Ruby – all but fleeing from Weiss across the clearing – has dropped dangerously low.

When a shrill whistle interrupts the scramble – the flag still dangling untouched, she and Blake immediately deflate, the fight going out of them as easy as it came. Yang heaves a noise of exasperation, drops her forehead onto Blake’s chest. When she lifts her head, Blake’s arms have wrapped loosely around her back.

“Call it a draw?” Yang says, digs her chin hard into Blake’s sternum. “I pretty much had you.”

“Nice try,” Blake says. Her words reverberate in her chest, and Yang feels every moment of their conception, the slight intake of breath into her lungs, the buzz of them as they carry through her throat.

Professor Port’s voice is like a bucket of cold water. He’s standing at the edge of the wood, brandishing a silver whistle, looking at them with ill-disguised exasperation.

“Class,” he says, “I believe the directive was to steal the other team’s flag, not to scrap like children on a playground.”

“Who won?” Weiss pipes up. She’s scraping her hair back into a neat ponytail, standing over a prone Ruby who must have fallen, and has wisely chosen to stay down.

“Everyone lost,” Port says, cheerily. “Back to the school. After that display, I don’t trust you all out here after dark.”

Despite the game’s failure, he seems in good spirits, clapping Juane on the back, and chiding Pyrrha about helping the opposing team mid competition. As punishment, Juane is saddled with Cardin, likely concussed, and directed to help him back to the infirmary.

Hauling herself off the ground, brushing clinging soil off of elbows, picking leaves out of her hair, Yang reaches for Gambol Shroud without thinking. It’s half-submerged in the close-knit groundcover, and she untangles it from curling tendrils of green, robotically sheathing the blade back into the blunt scabbard.

Only after, does she freeze, halfway to her feet. It’s an unspoken taboo to handle other huntresses’ weapons, certainly not without express permission, and here she had done it so casually, tactless.  

But Blake, one arm stretched over her head, shoulder muscles rippling, doesn’t bat an eye. She accepts it from Yang gratefully, fingers brushing as it passes between them. She slings it over her back, and reaches toward Yang, pulls a twig free of her hair.

Wordless, they head toward the group, Yang trying to gauge if she’s going to have to piggy-back Ruby to the dorm room. Still lying prone, Weiss is poking at her with the toe of a boot.

It’s only then, so brief she almost misses it, that Blake reaches between them, brushes her fingers over the cuff of Ember Celica. It feels like the answer to a question Yang hadn’t known how to ask, and the last of the fight, the tension she didn’t know she was carrying, coiling at the top of her spine, ebbs entirely.

They fall into step easily, automatically, and together reach down to help Ruby off the ground. Like a top-heavy punching bag, Ruby lists once she’s on her feet, limbs weighted with exhaustion.

Though Yang reaches out, it’s Blake who steadies her, one hand brushing Ruby’s bangs out of her eyes.

“Reunited at last,” Yang says, laughs at Weiss’s pinched expression. “Can’t believe that game had the audacity to tear us in two.”

“Shut up,” Weiss grumbles, but she’s smiling, and half-heartedly accepts Yang’s high-five. Yang bullies them into a bear hug before they join the others, an eight-legged jumble of girl-sweat and protesting laughter, leaning so hard on one another that when they begin to fall, they topple in turn, like dominoes.  

***

After Port’s dismissal, they troop back to the Beacon dorms leisurely. They have an hour of free period before dinner, and no one in seems to be in any rush to get to the dining hall, content to nurse bruises and grievances, ribbing each other good naturedly, flags forgotten.

Ren is quietly chastising Nora about what looks suspiciously like a human bite mark wetting the sleeve of his tunic, and Juane brings up the rear of the group, quietly sulking, a blessedly out-of-it Cardin’s arm slung over his shoulder.

The wooded forest bleeds into a scrubby grassland, and they wade through waist-high wheatgrass as the spires of Beacon come into view, dodging prickly burs and seedpods that cling stubbornly to their socks and hemlines.

Yang presses her palm to her side. It comes away tacky with old blood, and she grimaces. Her aura had strained to heal it, skin stitching together to staunch the flow, but the last of the fight had drained her reserves, and it reopened easily in the struggle. Catching the movement out of the corner of her eye, Blake grabs for Yang’s hand, frowns down at her skin like a disgruntled palm reader.

“How did that happen?”

What she doesn’t say, plainly written on the landscape of her face in a language Yang is just learning to read is: is that from me?

“My own fault, actually,” Yang says. “We really don’t need to get into it.”

She ignores the stinging pain in favor of Blake’s fingers, stroking carefully over the dips of her knuckles.

“She fell out of a tree early in the strategizing process,” Weiss says. She’s snuck up on them, appearing at Yang’s elbow, face drawn with disdain. Her voice lilts, obviously mocking. “Oh, don’t worry about it, Weiss. I’m just getting the lay of the land, Weiss. Those branches aren’t too thin, Weiss.” She sniffs. “You could have broken your neck.”

“See,” Yang says, slinging an arm around Weiss’s shoulder, pulling her against her side, “she does care.”

“I didn’t say it would be a bad thing,” she says. But Yang doesn’t miss the way she turns her face into her casual embrace, her hand coming up to tug at the back of Yang’s jacket affectionately, clumsy, like it’s an action she’s unfamiliar with.

Blake smiles, ducks her chin. “Don’t say that. I like having her around.”

Yang quiets her internal rejoicing to a silent cheer. She feels, helplessly, like a child picking petals from a wilting stem. She loves me. She loves me not.

She beams, bumping her shoulder against Blake’s. “From Blake, that’s practically a marriage proposal.”

Cheeks flushing, Blake tucks a strand of hair behind one ear, looks away. “Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

“Who’s getting married?” This from Ruby, fending off an assault from Weiss who is trying to pat down a stubborn cowlick in the tangled mess of her hair.  

“No one,” says Weiss. “You need a haircut.”

“Me and Blake,” Yang says, cheerfully. “She was the one to propose and everything, it was super embarrassing.”

“Congrats,” Ruby says, batting at Weiss’s hands.

“Long time coming, really,” Yang says. She smiles at Blake. “I’m picturing a summer wedding.”

Blake rolls her eyes, but smiles. A rare one, with teeth. Yang almost stops walking, just to take it in.

Clearly over their antics, Weiss lengthens her stride to catch up with Pyrrha, Ruby trailing behind.

It leaves Blake and Yang alone, shoulder to shoulder, picking their away along the muddy, tire-rutted path that meanders toward the eastern portion of the Beacon grounds. In the distance, the colorful, striped tents of the Vytal Festival fairgrounds are just visible, the encampment half-pitched in preparation for the festival, mere weeks away.

The skeleton of a mostly-assembled Ferris Wheel crests over the treetops, like the pale, bleached bones of a Goliath, its mechanical frame at odds with the verdant landscape.

“Excited?” Yang asks. She bumps her shoulder against Blake’s, jerks her chin toward the pennants lethargically drooping in the stagnant spring heat.

“Hardly,” Blake says. She peeks at Yang out of the corner of her eye. “The tournament might be interesting, at least.”

“All the people, the spectacle, the fried festival food,” Yang reels off, ticking up her fingers, “it sounds like your –”

“—worst nightmare,” Blake says.

Yang laughs. “Maybe so, but,” she shrugs, “meeting new people, smashing their faces in, it’s the huntress way.”

“Now that,” Blake says, “I can get behind.”

Ahead of them, Weiss seems to be trying to engage Pyrrha in an in-depth analysis of the capture of flag bout, looking seconds away from pulling out a notebook and taking notes on every one of Pyrrha’s absentminded observations.

“This is painful to watch,” Yang says, gleefully. “If Pyrrha touches her, she’s going to –”

Pyrrha sets a hand at the small of Weiss’s back, guides her around a rock pitting the dirt path.

“Oh, there it is,” Blake says. She’s actually biting her lower lip to hold in laughter, eyes squinting with mirth. “Someone check the girl’s pulse.”

Like this, sun-lit and flushed, wearing her in-on-the-joke smile, Blake is radiant. She’s a little roughed up from the fight, ribbon a dark, striped wreath around her forearms, her top mud-streaked, the single button of her vest undone.

Yang is enamored. She offers her an arm to use as a crutch, and Blake leans into, buries a laugh in her shoulder.

Ahead of them, Weiss seems to be staggering her way through a conversation about semblances, ponytail swishing. She only comes up to Pyrrha’s shoulder, and when Pyrrha pauses, blithely rubbing at a scrape of dirt on Weiss’s cheeks. Yang can see Weiss’s face blush and burn, even from ten feet away.

Ruby, lagging a few steps behind, looks chuffed to be the most intelligible person in the vicinity.

“Why don’t you look at me like that?” Yang murmurs. They’re winding their way through a spindly grove of peach trees, the last surviving vestiges of the orchards that used to grow on Beacon’s loamy, river-rich soil.

Unkept, the trunks fork and spur, rough bark splitting like over-risen bread, papering off in grey-brown patches. This early in the season, the fruit is small and green, but Blake pauses under the heavy boughs anyway, tilts her face upward.

“What?” she says, studying the waxy, canoe-shaped leaves, veins bleeding from the midrib in furrows. “Like I’m going into cardiac arrest?”

“No,” Yang says, teeth parting around a laugh, “like you adore me.”

Blake gestures Yang forward, touches a palm to her cheek, guides Yang to look up to the branches above where, inexplicably, Blake has spotted a single ripe peach.  

Without needing to be asked, Yang knits her fingers at her belt buckle like a basket, offers it to Blake who leverages herself up to grasp a branch, just high enough to pluck the peach from the stem. She lands lightly on her feet, offers it first to Yang, who cups the fuzzed, sunrise-bodied fruit in her palms.

“Maybe you’re not looking hard enough,” Blake says.

Reaching out, she lifts Yang’s hands, brings the peach to her own mouth, and takes a bite. Juice dribbles from her lips, wets Yang’s knuckles, the vessel of her palm. Blake does not meet her eyes.

A world away, the dinner bell clangs on campus, and the sound reaches them across the grounds. From just ahead, Ruby yells for them to catch up.

**

Yang’s sweating again by the time they enter the Beacon courtyard, the sun creeping west across the sky. Already, the moon, in fragments, hangs low over the horizon like a coin toss, illusory and half-spun. Heat shimmers off the gray cobblestones, a sun-stoked haze that blurs the geometry of fountains to a mirage, and she wriggles out of her jacket, stripping down to her orange tank, hissing when the rotation of her shoulder pulls at her side.

Blake looks at her, and immediately cuts her eyes away. Looks back, lingers. She has an affinity for Yang’s freckled shoulders, has said as much, and Yang exposes them around her as much as possible.

Between them, Blake’s fingers brush the back of Yang’s hand. She thinks, for a moment, that Blake might take her hand in her own, and the idea alone leaves her with a wanting so keen it embarrasses her.  

It’s compulsive, chemical, that Blake’s presence pulls her attention like gravity.

A touch curls at the inside of her elbow, and Blake tugs Yang gently toward her, sidestepping a water feature that looms, overlarge and obvious.  

“You were about to walk into a fountain,” Blake murmurs. One of the loops of her bow flicks, a smile ghosts the corner of her lips.

Yang jerks her chin up, begins to apologize, and Blake shakes her head. “As fun as that might have been, I don’t want to miss dinner because I’m drying you off.”

“I think I could have handled it on my own,” Yang says, leans into Blake’s touch.

“What kind of betrothed would I be,” Blake says, releasing her elbow and moving toward the mouth of the dining hall, “if I left you wet and alone in your time of need?” She only spares Yang a glance before stepping out of the final slash of the sunlight, into the shadow of the doorway.

Frozen, Yang roots herself into the flagstone – tries to parse apart if Blake could have possibly intended that as – if she would have ever said something so – and no, right? No.

“Blake – ” she says, helpless. But Blake is already disappearing inside with a light laugh, leaving Yang to flounder in her wake.

In the early evening sun, buffered by classmates on either side, Yang stares after her, desperately trying to do the math, imagines petals shedding like snowfall.

**

It’s Blake who offers, which surprises each of them, but most of all Yang.

They’re scattered around the dorm room after dinner and a short stint in the library, Weiss pulling her pajama top over her head, Ruby dangling upside down from the top bunk, while Blake smooths a bandage over Yang’s ribs.

In just a sports bra, sitting on the edge of her desk, Blake’s hands trailing over her side, Yang feels like she’s lost control of the situation. Blake mistakes her shuddering breath for pain, and winces in sympathy.

“I’m sorry.” She presses down the adhesive of the bandage with her finger gingerly, nails skirting the rungs of Yang’s ribs, prodding the skin as she checks for inflammation. “I’m almost done, I promise.”

“All good,” Yang says, strained. She’s trying to decide if flexing her arms, like, only a little bit, is going to be a dead giveaway. “Take your time, really.”

Across the room, Weiss scoffs. Yang tries to pin her with a glare, but Weiss evades, busies herself tidying her discarded clothes from the day. Weiss must be the only person in the world who folds her shirts before she puts them in the dirty clothes hamper. It causes Ruby endless amusement, and she swivels her head to watch.

Blake’s hands are cool, and Yang can smell the citrus-perfume of her soap, the soft cotton of her t-shirt rubbing against Yang’s bare shoulder as she leans closer to survey her handiwork.

“I think you’re going to live,” she says. She meets Yang’s eyes glancingly before her gaze drops down, hovers somewhere around Yang’s mouth.

Ruby clambers from the top bunk and comes up on her feet, shaking her hair out of her eyes. Weightless with static from the thick, wool blankets, it frizzes and wisps, too short for a ponytail, and too long to do anything but make her look like a disgruntled miniature pony.

Pulling away from Yang’s side, Blake turns to Ruby thoughtfully. Yang, immediately missing the warmth of her, falls back onto the desk, her muscles popping gratefully with the pull of the stretch.  She examines the pulpy, drop-tile ceiling studiously, trying to calm her heartrate, embarrassed at the rush of longing Blake always seems to leave in her wake.

“You know, I could cut it for you, if you wanted,” Blake says. This to Ruby, whose eyes go wide, a little shy, a little pleased.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Yang turns her head, grinning again, shrugging the melancholy off like shedding a second skin. “Now this, I’ve got to see.”

***

Blake drags a desk chair from the bedroom, positions it in front of the sink. She’s spinning a small pair of silver scissors on her pointer finger when she ushers Ruby into the bathroom, and Yang and Weiss troop in as well, like it’s a given.

With the four of them crammed in the tiny bathroom, it’s a tight fit, and Yang leans with her back against the door, Weiss perched on the edge of the tub.

“I didn’t realize I would actually have an audience,” Blake says, quietly, but she isn’t successful in hiding her smile, mouth turning up at the corners.

The sink is running, and she dips two fingers under the flow, waits for it to warm, flicks water in Ruby’s face just to tease.

Shoulders relaxing, Ruby barely grumbles as Blake pushes her gently down into the chair, tilting her head back until her hair wets under the faucet’s flow.

“Too hot?” Blake asks. She cups water in her palms, diverting it until it wets Ruby’s hair to its roots, slicking her bangs out of her face with careful fingers.

Ruby shakes her head, bare feet swinging over the tiles. “S’nice,” she slurs, lashes fluttering against her cheek. “Mom used to do this, remember?” This to Yang, one eye cracking to look at her before closing again.

Arms crossed, Yang nods. “I do.”

Her voice sounds strange, swollen, even to her. She clears her throat, looks to Blake who is looking back at her, gaze soft and steady. The mirror over the sink is fogging with heat, and Yang is stupidly glad not to see her own expression reflected in the glass.

The memory is blurry with overuse, and she feels selfish for hoarding it, something she and Ruby talk about so rarely – the short window of domesticity, the four of them, together.

Blake must sense her discomfort and leans over Ruby, carding through her hair gently, warm water swirling down the drain.

“We’ll just do a trim, okay?” She tilts her head, considering. “Just enough to get your bangs out of your eyes.”

From her spot on the lip of the tub, Weiss is watching the them with open interest, dressed in her slouchiest pajamas, hair loose around her shoulders.

Blake looks back at her. “What do you think?”

Weiss looks surprised to have been asked to weigh in, and shifts unsteadily, pinning her hands under the backs of her thighs, lips tucked into her mouth.

“It will look nice,” Weiss ventures. Then, unsteadily, like she’s unsure if that’s the right answer: “Fine, I mean. It will look fine.”

“Weiss thinks I look nice,” Ruby says, dreamily, eyes still closed.

Yang laughs. “Anything to stop you from going into fights blind should do the trick.”

Blake is methodical and careful, her movements practiced, and Yang watches her hands closely, fascinated by the routine of her gestures. Her long fingers are sure as she brushes out Ruby’s hair, fixing the lengths of hair between two fingers, snipping, tendrils of dyed red spiraling to the bathroom tile.

“You’re good at that,” Yang says, careful not to pose it as a question, even if her curiosity is clear.

“After I left home,” Blake says, tilting her head to frown at Ruby’s hair, thoughtful, “there weren’t places where – well, there weren’t many places that would be willing to serve Faunus, let alone cut our hair.”

Focused on her task, Blake fits two fingers under Ruby’s chin, lifts until she’s staring straight ahead. She hums, approving. When she began to talk, Yang, Blake and Weiss each stilled, incremental, like curious children unwilling to startle a flighty bird.

It’s rare for Blake to offer much from before, even after all these months, and Yang squirrels away every piece of information she manages to glean, coveted closely in a well-hidden corridor in her chest.

“It was a necessity at first, we were moving around a lot, but I like it now,” Blake says. “It’s soothing.” She scrubs her hand under the fall of Ruby’s hair, appraising her work. “I wish we had some clippers, you would look really good with a, like, undercut.”

Tilting her head to look back at Blake, Ruby grins. “Yeah?’

“Oh, yeah,” Blake says. “Very edgy.”

Ruby’s eyes flutter closed again and she leans back into Blake’s hands, accepting the easy touch, pleased.

Watching her like this, the baby round of Ruby’s cheeks, her deep-set eyes, so like Summer, Yang’s heart pangs and pulls. She looks so young, and it’s been so long since she’s seen Ruby find comfort and closeness in groups like this. At Signal, she was always worlds apart.

Too young to hang out with Yang and her friends, and too buried in her comics and starry-eyed dreams of far-flung heroism to mesh easily with the other kids her age. Weiss is watching, too, almost hungry. She is starved, Yang has come to realize, in similar ways – for family, for acceptance, for the way Blake look back to ask her opinion, listening intently when Weiss ventures an answer.

“Okay,” Blake says, steps back. “All set, I think.”

Ruby pops up out of her seat, swipes a hand through the mirror’s condensation to look at her reflection, tilting her head this way and that, before grinning, bright.

“It’s perfect.” Then, shyly, “thank you, Blake.”

“Anytime,” Blake says. “We can pick up dye next time we’re in Vale, recolor the ends.”

Yang groans. “Don’t get her started, she’s been threatening more drastic dye jobs since grade school. I’ve had to talk her out of lime green more times than I can count.”

“The red suits you,” Weiss says, pushing off of her perch to more closely examine Ruby’s bangs. Ruby obediently stops fidgeting, submits to Weiss’s hands, but not before shaking her wet head like a dog, sending water droplets flying.

Aghast, Weiss hisses a chastisement, but cards her hands through her hair, all the same.

“I could cut yours,” Blake says to Weiss. Appraises her, head tilted. “It’s getting long.”

Weiss looks shocked at the sudden kindness, turning a gradient of shades, from a light pink to a dark red the longer Blake looks at her.

“Oh, no,” she says, haltingly. “I have a standing appointment at an Atlas salon but,” she trails off.

Blake nods, that tiny smile still evident on the puzzle-box mystery of her mouth.

Ruby looks on with interest, pokes at Weiss’s cheek, but knows better than to comment.

With a final thanks, the two of them troop out of the bathroom in a snippy caravan, Weiss already haranguing Ruby about an assignment due in the morning, Ruby loudly asking Weiss if she’ll brush her hair before homework, anyhow.

Their departure leaves a vacuum, a pocket of silence, just Yang and Blake, who both seem to realize how close they are standing at the same time, all excuses having fled the room on the heels the others.

“Thank you for doing that,” Yang says, quietly, she reaches out hesitantly and takes Blake’s hand, rubs her thumb across her knuckles. “It’s nice not to do all the mothering, for once.” She shakes her head. “I tried to cut her hair once, must have been about 13. Dad almost had to shave her whole head.”

“She would have loved it though,” Blake says. She doesn’t pull her hand away.

Yang laughs. “Yeah, probably.” She steps closer, emboldened by their hands clasped between them, by the way Blake tilts her whole body toward her, magnetic.

“It was really nothing,” Blake says. “Ruby restitched, like, four pairs of my leggings last week, anyway.”

“It was sweet of you to offer a trim to Weiss, too.” Yang lowers her voice, though the other two are well out of earshot, having closed the bathroom door behind them. “I don’t think she was ready for you to send her into a full-fledged sexual identity crisis.”

Blake throws her head back in a laugh, exposing the long line of her throat, cheeks dimpling. “Oh, no. That’s what Pyrrha is for.” A beat. “I don’t think I’m her type anyway.”

“How?” Yang blurts, clumsy and unthinking, tries to amend it with – “I think you’re everyone’s type,” which really just digs the hole deeper.

Blake looks at her steadily, in that awful way she does, and shoves a little bit at Yang’s shoulder, bullies her toward the chair.

“You should let me do you next,” she says. She must misinterpret Yang’s expression – which flatlines at an alarming speed, elevator music starting to play behind her eyes – and hurries to correct herself. “I mean, not a cut. I know how you feel about your hair, but I could wash it?”

“Wash it?” Yang looks at the sink, back to Blake. The air in the bathroom seems to be getting thinner, and she can’t stop looking at Blake’s forearms, the flex of them as she toys with the scissors, running her thumb lightly over the tapered point.

“You’ve still got leaves in it from earlier,” Blake says, words taut with amusement, “and if you lift your arms over your head, you’re going to undo all my hard work anyway.”

The cut is mostly healed, barely a pale scar at this point, and they both know it. Yang wonders how long they will continue to run round these excuses.

It’s working, it’s working, it’s – “Let me touch you,” Blake says. She presses down on Yang shoulder, guides her toward the chair. “You look like you’re about to pass out.”

The chair creaks under Yang’s weight, and her outstretched legs butt up against the opposite bathroom wall. To maneuver around her, Blake has to step between her legs, her hips pressed tight against the inside of Yang’s bare thighs.

Unsure, Yang leans her head back, feels the porcelain cold against the back of her neck. “Like this?”

“Just like that.”

Blake turns on the faucet, and the lull of running water, the warmth of it, is enough to make Yang drowsy and pliant, hands clasped obediently on her lap.

“I love your hair,” Blake says, quiet, confessional. She runs her hands through it, pulls gently, the sensation sending tingles to Yang’s scalp. Yang’s eyes close, and she breathes out through her nose, shifting unsteadily in the chair.

She hears the plastic click of a shampoo bottle, and lavender perfumes the air. Yang thinks of gardens, of soft-petaled flowers, of sunlight and checkered blankets.

“We should have a picnic,” she murmurs. Her muscles feel putty-soft, and Blake’s hands, slick with water and suds, are drawing tiny circles under the fall of her hair, thumbs pressing ecstatically into the corded muscle at the base of her neck.

There’s laughter, barely hidden, in Blake’s voice. “Come again?”

“A picnic.” Yang doesn’t open her eyes. “Just you and me.”

“Did I knock you too hard in the head today?” Blake asks. “Give you a concussion?” Her fingers slip up to prod at Yang’s temples before her fingers firm, massaging there. Yang groans. For her sake, Blake pretends not to hear it.

“I’m not concussed,” Yang says. Against the back of her eyelids, there’s a constellation of color. Blake sluices warm water through her hair, washing out the last of the shampoo. Yang’s hand ventures from her lap, hooks her fingers in the soft cotton pocket of Blake’s shorts. “I just like you.”

She still doesn’t open her eyes, worried that if she does, reality will solidify, transport her away from the dreamy-liminal of this unspoken space, Blake’s hands in her hair, Blake’s body warm against her thighs.

“I like you, too.”

“Actually, I think you said you loved me earlier.”

Blake laughs. “I didn’t. You said I loved you.”

Yang does open her eyes now, finds Blake startlingly close, her gold-flecked eyes, the laugh lines that crease the corners of her mouth like the seams of a love letter, folded over, then folded over again. She steps out of the bracket of Yang’s legs to fetch a towel. Yang reaches to take it, but Blake pushes her hands away, preferring to towel at Yang’s wet hair herself, leaning across her body, her chest pressing against Yang’s shoulder.

Embarrassed now, Yang squirms, but submits to the attention, lets Blake dab away beaded water at her hairline, droplets dripping into her ears, wetting the shoulders of her t-shirt.

“But you were right,” Blake says, so matter a fact, Yang almost doesn’t understand her meaning. Comprehension pales in comparison to the sheen of water on Blake’s hands, her wrists, as she wipes them dry, her hair spilling long and dark around her shoulders, the ends wet where she had leaned over the sink. Blake tosses the towel underhand toward the hamper behind the door, reinserts herself between Yang’s legs. “I do love you. I really do. And yes.”

“Yes?” Yang asks, dazed, still stuck halfway inside the feeling of Blake’s body, pressed up firmly against her own.

“Yes to the picnic,” Blake says. “Just the two of us.”

She loves me.

Yang shifts to prop herself upright against the body of the sink and frames Blake’s hips in her hands, guiding her firmly into the V of her legs. Blake concedes, arms wrapping around Yang’s neck, petting through damp hair. The hem of her shirt scrunches under Yang’s fingertips, slipping up to reveal the unblemished hollow of her hip, the skin of her sides, goosepimpling under the duress of Yang’s touch.

“We should do that thing again,” Yang says, a wish, a confession. Said aloud, she’s worried, like memory, she’ll bleed away the magic of unspoken things, but it only seems to strengthen the energy between them, the accumulated weight of all that they never talk about.

Blake plays dumb, but she’s smiling, ducking close even as she asks, “what thing?”

Her breath is warm against Yang’s ear, and she presses her mouth just there, against the round of Yang’s cheek.

“Close,” Yang says. She exhales, grip tightening.

Blake drags her lips to Yang’s jaw. Then to the dimple of her chin.

“Closer.”

Blake kisses her, proper, all it takes is a tilt of her head, nose nudging into the plush-round of Yang’s cheek. They both breath twin sighs of relief, like the pressure of playing coy has been alleviated in a single moment. Blake’s hands knot in Yang’s hair, fingers threading.

Yang smiles, murmurs: “just like that.”

It isn’t their first kiss, but it’s close. New enough that Yang still isn’t used to the shape of Blake’s mouth, the rhythm of her kisses, or the taste of her breath. New enough that this alone is enough to alight a heady, perfect rush, the thrill of two whole, perfect things slotting into place.

Her hands slide to the small of Blake’s back, splaying wide across the ridge of her spine, and Blake whines low in her throat, tilting her head until their mouths catch in full, her teeth scraping against Yang’s bottom lip.

Blake swings her leg over Yang’s hip, then the other, settles on her lap. The warmth of her body like a weighted blanket, her chest pushed flush to Yang’s. Pulling back, breaths ragged, they survey each other, eyes bright.

Blake drops a kiss on the bridge of Yang’s nose. Again, on her mouth. Yang tilts her chin up, submits. Nods lazily into another kiss, rolls her tongue into Blake’s mouth.

They don’t talk about it, but they never do.

In the crowded, humid heat of the bathroom, the silence is enough, both smelling like the same shampoo, like lavender, trading kisses until their mouths are slick and pink, until Blake has a strawberry bite under the collar of her t-shirt, and there is no excuse they can make to Ruby and Weiss to explain the lost time.

Exiting the bathroom feels like stepping through a portal – the air of the bedroom is stale and cold, and tastes like the bitter-metallic spit of the cranky window unit that churns, futile and constant.

They shouldn’t have worried. Ruby and Weiss are passed out on Weiss’s bottom bunk, tilted into each other, Weiss’s head leaned up into Ruby’s chest, a textbook open on her lap.

Blake smiles at them, soft, and Yang presses a finger to her lips. Sound asleep, neither stirs when Yang removes the book or when she shifts both of Weiss’s legs to the bed, pulls the lip of the comforter up over their bodies.

Weiss does move then, but only to turn her face into Ruby’s throat, fingers curling into the sleeve of her shirt.

Across the room, Yang watches Blake walk through the final stages of her night time routine. Removing her rings, one-by-one, setting them into a china bowl at her bedside. Toeing off her socks – because anyone who sleeps in socks is a serial killer, yang – and turning back the cool underside of her covers.

Yang, suddenly shy, mythical, waits for an invitation.

“It’s only fair,” Blake whispers. She shifts over to make space against the hollow of her body. “Turn off the light.”

Yang does, the room plunged to darkness, and she feels that little-kid thrill in the few steps it takes her to cross to the bed. By the time she reaches it, she fears Blake will already be gone, leaving her only with under-the-bed monsters and grasping hands.

She shivers into the sheets, and it’s Blake’s warmth that accepts her, slinging a long, bare leg over her hip, claiming her cheek with a warm palm, stroking her bangs out of her eyes.

“We need to talk about it,” Yang whispers.

She can see Blake’s eyes gleam in the darkness, a flat sheen. Yang swallows, wriggles closer until she can insinuate her thigh between Blake’s legs, suddenly desperate to be close. She would swallow her whole if she could, sink themselves inside of one another, like nesting dolls, like palms cupped in prayer.

Yang’s eyes adjust in the half-dark in the time it takes Blake to answer, moonlight shredding through the parted curtains. When Blake opens her mouth, the wet of her mouth refracts light, the uncurling of her tongue.

“I know,” Blake says, voice small.

Their hips-stomach-breasts bully into one another, until every breath is a part of a cycle.

“If we don’t, we’re just going to keep colliding until something breaks.”

“I know,” Blake says, again. “There’s just so much I haven’t told you yet.”

Yang runs her hands up and down Blake’s side, slips her palm under the hem of her shirt to feel the blanket-heat of her bare skin.

“We have time,” she hushes. She tilts in, her lips find the corner of Blake’s mouth, press there. Retreat. “After the Vytal festival, then. We can have our picnic. We’ll talk about all of it.”

Blake nods, nose pressing into Yang’s. She giggles, readjusts, turns her mouth into Yang’s cheek. “Okay. After the festival.”

Pinkies twined under the covers, they seal it with a kiss. Blake nods more kisses against her mouth, slips a tongue behind her teeth, until the taste of her lingers well into Yang’s dreams.

Yang won’t remember falling asleep.

[okaybutlikeimagine]

Come Inside, It’s Ok

Desc: Hop realizes that Billy is a lot like him when he was a teen- based on the song Thirteen by Big Star (bc that’s a Jopper AND a Harringrove anthem, tell me i’m wrong)

TW: referenced past child abuse, referenced homophobia, every dad in Hawkins sounds like an abusive asshole in this fic i didn’t mean it 😞

you can also read this on AO3 right here!! ♥

~*~

James Hopper hated his father more than anyone else hated the man. More than his uncle who had to grow up with the jerk. More than his mother who threatened to divorce the deadbeat seven times. More than anyone.

Hopper’s father was abrasive and loud. He joined the army because he wanted to. He gave up his individuality willingly. He shaved his head and licked the boot of The Man and acted superior for it. He looked down on a young Jimmy Hopper and barked in his face and ordered that he become a man. Quicker. Jim was only 7. He had just broken an arm at football practice. He needed reassurance and comfort. He got condescension and a mother threatening to leave. Loudly.

James Hopper was sure he was the only son in the world who hated his own father. He felt sure as hell about it when he stuck his jaw out and looked past his nose at his father who always seemed to tower over him. Even when the man only had an inch on him, he was larger- always looming. He felt sure as hell about it when he’d narrow his eyes and refuse to listen. He felt sure as hell about it when he talked back to him, and got into yelling matches with him, and slammed the door on him.

He felt even more sure the one night he got hit.

He was more than certain he was the only one. Standing there, staring this horrible bulk of a man down, Jimmy knew no one else had ever felt such a thing before. This wasn’t TV or the movies. This wasn’t a family love you cherish by the fire on a cold Christmas night. This wasn’t a father with kind eyes and a stern voice who comes into the house in the evening with his suit on and his briefcase in hand, kissing his kids and smiling brightly. This was different and he knew it.

And all of that anger and stress and feeling of certainty made him take too long to realize something crucial. Because he didn’t realize you can know something and yet still be so wrong.

That is, until Phil didn’t come to school one day.

Jimmy figured he was sick. A couple days later he figured it was that nasty stomach bug. A week later and he figured his family took a trip. A week and a few days had him itching with worry. He asked his best friend as calmly as he could. That friend looked at him like he was nuts.

“You didn’t hear?”

“Hear what?”

“He moved away. His mom took him out of the state last weekend. They just left.”

Jim couldn’t understand the words for a second.

“Why?”

“You didn’t know? His dad has been roughing him up for years now. He got the mom too, I think. Why do you think he was always wearing sweaters all year long?”

Jim’s heart stopped.

“His mom finally got him out. They left.”

“Why did no one say anything about it?”

“Because you don’t talk about that stuff.” Jim’s friend said, hushed and knowing, eyes turned solemn and hiding a world Jim didn’t know lived in there. In his most outspoken, lively friend. In his friend he’d known since they were toddlers.

You don’t talk about that stuff he said like he had a whole world of pain to tell. Jim knew his friends were like him- dads who were tough as nails and grunted more than spoke. It was why they all got along so well. But they never mentioned their fathers being… Jim was so sure he was the only one. Everyone else did things with their family. Everyone else seemed so perfect. At the very least they seemed better. Jim was sure.

Why did no one say anything about it? quickly morphed into Why did I never even ask?

Starting there, Jim kept a critical eye out. He watched his friends and what they were wearing. The way they moved and the changes in those movements. The words they spoke about their parents. He noticed differences and fluctuating emotions. But stil, he was only a young teenager- he never knew what to do. His mouth couldn’t form around the words he felt he should say. His brain could barely provide them. So he did for them what he would have liked- just took them out to empty fields and deep into the woods. He provided them beer and music. Sometimes, when they were splitting at the seams, he’d fight them a bit. He’d egg them on so they could fight it out. Get the anger out. Help, somehow. Inadvertently. Lord knew Jimmy sometimes just needed to punch shit. Turns out, his friends felt the same way, and often.

When his daughter Sarah came, he handled her gently and spoke to her even softer. He got into fights with his now ex-wife over his not being strict enough but Hop couldn’t find it in himself to have any kind of gruffness toward someone so soft and so innocent and so pure. She was the light of his life. She left so quickly. Even his softness and kindness couldn’t save her, and he couldn’t very well beat the shit out of her enemies like he had wished to.

And when he met Billy Hargrove on the side of the road that one dark night, having pulled him over for speeding drunkenly down the lonely streets on the outskirts of town, every red flag flew up. Every worry and fear he found within himself when he was a teen found its place once again inside of him for this boy. For his bruised face and exhausted eyes. For his lightly cut chin and short breath. Hop became young Jimmy yet again, analyzing and fearing for a world of pain he couldn’t see and couldn’t ask about. He searched hard for words this time and found all the wrong ones. He exhausted the poor boy with his inability to articulate his fears and was successful in taking him in only because he had worn him out so badly.

Still, since then, he’s been here. He’s family now. He’s out of there. In all his fumbling Hop did something right.

And yet, things still feel wrong. Billy still walks tentatively around him, like the cabin is going to crash down above him and any relationship they’ve built up is going to shatter.

Hop thinks about it so often. He thinks about Billy and sees his own friends from high school. He sees parts of himself, but sadder, angrier… more helpless. He thinks endlessly on what he can do to fix it.

~Won’t you let me walk you home from school~

A song starts playing through his record player and he’s lost again in the world of Jimmy vs. Billy. He thinks of how life used to feel simple.

This song always whisks him away to high school. The early days when life was confused and wandering and he was just coming into his own with football, not nearly a “star” yet and Joyce… Joyce was young and wide eyed and wandering just the same. By that point she hadn’t even met Lonnie yet. She was awkward and yet still so beautiful. So quiet and so stunning. Her laughter rang through the hallways and he swears he can still hear it.

This song feels like it’s for them. When he first heard it, he saw her face back when they were freshmen and then sophomores, when he used to walk her home. He always used to walk her home, before he got his car and before she got Lonnie. They’d walk so slow, wandering through the streets, lazily strolling past stores and getting slightly distracted by the people zooming past on their bikes.

He sits forward on the couch and he looks down at the tattered carpet and he hears himself as Jimmy.

”C’mon Joyce… we can hit the pool this weekend.”

“I’m busy.”

“Then… then maybe Friday I can get a couple tickets for that dance.”

“What?”

He gave her his biggest, brightest grin, knowing he caught her off guard. He smiles a little now at the thought.

”Yeah, c’mon, Joyce. I’ll take ya. I’ll get a monkey suit and you can wear a dress-”

She had laughed that bright, ringing laugh. It made him smile every time.

“Yeah, I think I’ll pass.”

“You’re gonna pass up a chance to dance with me?”

“Don’t tell me, you’re the best dancer in Hawkins?”

“You’ll never know if you don’t come find out.”

“You’re really full of yourself, aren’t you?”

Hop has a hard time thinking of himself back then. He felt so sure of everything. Of himself and what he was doing, even if he knew he didn’t know anything at all. Still, he chuckles now as he sits here, thinking about Joyce’s smile and her little nod. Thinking about him buying those tickets. Thinking about the night they had together, awkward and fumbling but bright still. His first real kiss that had real feelings to go along with it. The way Joyce walked so quickly as they headed to her home because she was so nervous. The way she never let him walk her up to her house because she was so scared her parents would ground her.

Lord does he remember the fights. The stress and the struggle of dealing with Joyce’s parents. When they came to an after-school event and Jimmy said hi to her and her dad gave her hell for it and her mom worried herself sick for a bit. She got grounded and started avoiding him. He got angry and figured fine because Gloria from his History class had been eyeing him up lately and helping him with a pretty friendly smile so it didn’t even matter.

It wasn’t more than a week that had passed before he cornered her after school and convinced her to let him walk her home again.

They wandered downtown and he guided her behind a store building, the store she now works for if he remembers correctly, and asked about that night. Asked about what he said wrong. Asked about what he did wrong.

She shook her head, said it was just her parents being “crazy, I don’t know”. He couldn’t find it in him to worry that much. When they kissed, it was still with so many feelings attached. Hop can’t remember when those feelings faded.

It wasn’t until a couple years later when a rumor started going around about Joyce’s dad being a grade A asshole like Phil’s was all those years ago that made Jim take her aside very seriously and ask her if she was okay- those couple of years ago and that day. By that point she was with Lonnie and he was getting serious about Diane. He and Joyce hadn’t talked for over a year. Still, he was worried. She insisted that her dad just liked to huff and puff and yell enough to shake her ears, but he never touched her. It wasn’t until years and years later that Hop realized that really isn’t any better. Nowadays she insists she was and is fine and he’s just found it in himself to believe her.

When Hop finally got a car, they would sit in it and listen to the radio and talk music. She was the only person who’d sit with him and actually think about lyrics and feelings and words. She was always so headstrong about… well everything but especially human rights. She wanted equal rights for everyone. She fought so hard it made Jim tired. Maybe it started with her father but it truly never seemed to end. They used to sit and theorize about meanings behind words and the messages of songs.

”Tell your old man what we say about Paint It, Black. That’ll mess him up.”

Joyce hit him with a chuckle. That was the last time in high school they really laughed together. He can still remember her laugh back then- light and free from any weight these years have brought to it.

But now Jimmy is Hopper, and life isn’t the same. It doesn’t wander and linger and hide behind stores for extra kisses that feel electric. He knows life just doesn’t work that way anymore. He feels like life has only continued with all of the bad parts and none of the good.

In the slow guitar interlude of the song, he hears voices where they shouldn’t be- distant and slightly muffled and outside the window that’s opened a bit to let some air in.

“Yeah, he’s home. The cruiser is there.”

“Then I should go-”

“No, wait-”

It’s Billy and another voice Hop thinks he can recognize. Sounds like the same cocky, lilted tone of Steve Harrington. He knows they’ve been fighting for months now. They always seem to be fighting. Hop used to get called into the school because Billy was always shoving him around that one year. Since then there’s been whispers of them causing a ruckus all over the place but Hop never gets called to check it out. He doesn’t like to ask too much about it. He’s still trying to handle Billy gently and there’s so many more things to worry about. He doesn’t have the words to ask about that.

He doesn’t have the words to explain why they’d be here, together and clearly not at each other’s throats. Why bring a fight all the way back home?

“You uh… got anything planned this weekend?”

“Nope, nothing planned.”

A pause.

“There’s uh… a stupid dance or something-”

“Billy-”

“Look I just… we can’t go, obviously but maybe… we can do something on our own?”

There’s another pause. Longer this time. Hop used to be so sure and suddenly he’s realizing yet again maybe things are the same as they were when he was young- because yet again, he doesn’t know anything.

~Won’t you tell me what you’re thinking of~

“C’mon Harrington….” there’s the confirmation Hop didn’t need. “Say something at least. Don’t just stand there thinking.”

“Billy we can’t keep running around and hiding.”

“Why not?”

~Would you be an outlaw for my love?~

“What if people find out, that’s why not! What if my dad-”

“Tell your dad to fuck off.”

“And Hop?”

Hop’s heart stops. Everything comes crashing to a halt because suddenly he’s being made to face the very harsh fact that he’s not Jimmy anymore. He hasn’t been for a long while. He’s Chief Hopper and Chief Hopper belongs to the “other” part of these young kids’ minds. Billy’s and Steve’s and El’s and Mike’s. He’s the man they’re meant to rebel against. He’s the one that doesn’t “get it” like they do.

And apparently he’s the one that Steve is worried about.

He doesn’t blame him. He doesn’t even know what to think. He knows people like that exist. He thinks he used to go to school with a few guys who were… well, into other things. He never had much to say or even think about it. Joyce was friends with them. She went out to a protest or something once in their senior year. He saw her in a car with them while he was taking Diane to the movies.

It’s not the fact that they like each other or that they want to spend time together. That’s better than them beating the snot out of each other and getting his guys called on them. It’s the fact that they’re worried about him and the fact that they have every reason to be. Hop is part of “The Man” now, and people around here don’t exactly like differences.

“I’ll figure it out.” Billy says, but Hop almost misses it, it’s so quiet.

“Billy-”

“Are you gonna fight for this, or what? Or is this just a one time thing for you to find yourself or some bullshit?”

Hop hears Jimmy in Billy’s words

”Are you not gonna fight for me?”

“Fight for you?!” Joyce had yelled. Oh, how she yelled. ”Are you serious? I… I pick and choose my fights Jim, okay? I have to.”

“That’s not very fair to me.”

“Not fair? No shit it’s not fair, it’s not fair for me either! And you… you’re not being fair to me, y’know!”

And that was it. They went separate ways. It’s so vivid in Jim’s mind- the way she stormed away and Jim drove himself home. He doesn’t remember how long it took until Lonnie joined Joyce’s picture, but it felt too soon in Hop’s ever bitter mind. He couldn’t look at her for weeks. He shoved Lonnie in the hallway any chance he got. The kid would snarl and sneer at him, but he was as scrappy as a dog and scrawnier than a toothpick- no way did he ever pick a fight. He spat words and Jimmy lunged and that was that. Hop doesn’t remember when the feelings faded, but he knows he never stopped hating Lonnie’s stupid face.

Then he started to date Diane and things were just… over.

“Alright Steve, I see-”

“It’s not that easy for me, Billy.”

“And you think this shit is easy for me?”

Hop feels bad for sitting here, still listening, but he can’t get his muscles or limbs to move him. He feels stuck, somewhere between here and the past, picturing all the ways he’s still the same and yet so wildly different.

“Well it is different for you.”

“Just because my shit’s different doesn’t mean my shit’s better. Shit is still shit, Steve.”

All the times Hop thought he had it the worst anyone could ever possibly have it.

“You don’t know what it’s like.”

“Try me, Harrington! Just try me.”

All the times Hop thought maybe his friends were exaggerating about Phil’s past. Maybe Joyce was being dramatic about things at home. There was no way a kid could feel so threatened. Not a kid as big as Phil. Not a kid as headstrong as Joyce.

There’s a longer pause from the two outside the window. The voice that comes is quieter now.

“It’s scary Billy.”

“I know it is! I… fuck I know it is.”

Not a kid as big and headstrong as Billy. It took years for Hop to believe it could happen and still, with an example living in his own house, it’s still hard to understand.

“Don’t you think it could be worth it?” That’s Billy’s voice. Hop feels his heart sink even deeper. They’re talking like they’re going to die if they’re caught. How many more times can he tell this boy he’s safe here? What does he have to do to convince him? To convince them both?

“Maybe… I think so.”

“Look, I can’t make you do anything, Steve. But if you wanna try… then let me know, alright?”

Billy sounds so tired. Hop wants to tell him to lay down and take a nap. There’s such a long pause that follows and fills the space between them.

And then suddenly there’s something blocking the sun from the window. Jim gets the wherewithal to turn and see that the two boys have got their hands tangled in the front of each other’s shirts, just like they would if they were gearing for a fight, but instead of fists flying it’s their lips locked- worlds of frustration still heavy on their brows.

Jim wants to protect these kids until the day he dies. They’re here and they’re wandering too, but their walk home is covered in speed bumps and potholes and hell maybe even spikes that he and Joyce never knew. Whatever he can do to give these kids the time and place to wander like the kids they are, he’ll do it.

Then they separate, their breathing clearly labored and mingling. Then they turn and see Jim in the window, caught like two deer in big bright headlights.

A split second later, Steve is running for the hills and Billy is left with his fists grasping at the air. Hop can’t help but laugh.

[lifeofkaze]

When Stars Ignite - Chapter 3

HPHM Rockstar AU

A/N:

General Warning: This whole fic has a general warning of being NSFW / 18+. We will give specific warnings for every chapter in itself, but several adult themes will be more or less present in every chapter, may it be explicitly or in mention. These include sexual topics, drug abuse, (ab)use of alcohol, smoking and a whole lot of cursing.

Specific Warning: Mentions of alcohol, mentions of NSFW content, suggestive NSFW content

~~~

Find the masterpost here, the previous chapter here and the next one here. The songs featured before every chapter can be found on this pretty badass playlist here.

~~~

This work is a collaboration with @the-al-chemist

Taglist: @slytherindisaster @carewyncromwell @night-rhea

Chapter 3: Dirty Little Secret

I’ll keep you my dirty little secret

Don’t tell anyone or you’ll be just another regret

Hope that you can keep it

My dirty little secret

~ The All-American Rejects - Dirty Little Secret ~

All three girls watched as Orion left the private area of the nightclub, two of them looking confused, one of them trying her hardest not to laugh.

“What’s got into him all of a sudden?” Merula asked, looking baffled.

“Seems like Jameson’s show rattled the poor guy alright,” Skye cackled.

Lizzie joined into her laughter. “As if. I don’t think anything could shake him, let alone me.”

She hid her smirk by taking a sip of her cocktail.

The next fifteen minutes felt like an eternity to Lizzie. She passed the time by listening to Skye and Merula’s chit chat, sipping her drink and nodding from time to time. She had to fight the urge to bounce her foot in impatience and not glance at her watch repeatedly. Not quite succeeding, Lizzie caught herself tapping her finger against her glass to the beat of the music; she willed herself to stop.

When she had finally finished her drink, she rose from her seat, stretched her already aching back and smiled at her remaining two friends.

“I’m afraid Orion had a point earlier, I always forget how exhausting playing a full show is,” she yawned and reached for her bag. “I’ll get a cab back home to get some sleep in.”

“Alright, let us just finish our drinks and we’re ready to go,” Skye said immediately, but Lizzie could tell she wanted to stay for a little longer; she always did.

“No, it’s alright, go and have some fun. Once we’re out of London there won’t be much time for that anymore.”

Skye scowled at her. “You sure? Not that keen on you going back all by yourself.”

Merula rolled her eyes. “Just let her go, if she wants to. If she gets kidnapped, no one can chew their captor’s ear off with that awful cheeriness like her. We’ll have her back in no time.”

Usually she would have shot back at Merula but right now Lizzie was glad she was playing into her hands. She was buzzing to get out of the nightclub, so when Skye tried to speak up again, she just shook her head.

“I’ll be fine. I’ll text you once I’m back, alright?”

Without giving Skye another chance to reply, she smiled at both of them, turned around and walked towards the exit.

The cool air of the summer night felt wonderful compared to the stuffiness of the packed nightclub as Lizzie stepped outside. She buried her hands in the pockets of her leather jacket and bowed her head as she passed the group of photographers always present in front of high profile establishments like this.

It was her luck that they cared more for soap stars and minor starlets stumbling home on the arm of a football player than one relatively sober person leaving all on her own. It was only a few clicks and flashes she had to make her way through before the mob had already focused on the next familiar face emerging from the doors behind her. She just hoped she had waited long enough for no one to make the connection.

Checking the message on her phone telling her where to go, she quickly walked a few steps away from the crowd until she reached the entrance to a small side street. Turning her head, Lizzie made sure no one was watching her before she stepped into the darkness of the alley. Anyone still in possession of half of their senses would have told her to stick to the main street, but Lizzie knew where she was going.

A smile stole onto her face as she walked towards the figure stepping out of the shadows.

“What the hell took you so long?”

Ignoring his question, Lizzie sped up her steps until she had reached Orion, grabbing him by his jacket and pulling him towards her. Her lips crashed onto his and his arms immediately went around her as he kissed her with the same desperate hunger she was feeling herself.

She buried her hands in his dark hair and sighed against his mouth as she felt his hands wandering over the curve of her waistline before his fingers hooked through the loops of her jeans.

“So fierce tonight,” she chuckled as they broke apart for a moment. Both of them were breathing heavily, Orion’s skin feeling hot to her touch. There was a fire burning inside his eyes that made her shudder.

“You did keep me waiting,” he murmured into her ear. His breath ghosting over the sensitive skin of her neck was giving her goosebumps all over and he knew that full well.

“I couldn’t really down my drink in one go and run after you, could I? Your fault you left so early.”

She would have loved to go straight after him but that would have been way too suspicious; their little affair - if one could even call it that - was a secret both of them very much intended to keep from the others.

“After that show you’ve given? What did you expect?”

She had to laugh at his words, her eyes twinkling with promise as they found his. Her finger traced the line of his jaw, the stubble of his beard biting into her fingertip.

“I knew you’d love it.”

She rose onto her tiptoes to reach his ear as she whispered, “Want me to remind you what else my tongue can do?”

“I don’t think I’m the only one eager for that.”

Despite herself, Lizzie’s breath hitched and she bit her bottom lip as she felt Orion’s hands travel downwards from her waist. He stopped over the back pockets of her trousers, squeezing her bum as he captured her lips in another searing kiss.

Her head spun for a moment, dizzy from exhaustion, alcohol and Orion’s touch. She had to will herself to break away from him again, this time taking a step back out of his reach.

“Come on then,” she purred, twirling a strand of her hair around her finger as she looked him up and down, “What are you waiting for?”

But Orion knew how to play her game as well. Mirroring her grin, he simply walked past her in the direction of the main street, not sparing so much as another look. He passed so closely that he was almost brushing against her; the electricity between them was palpable and Lizzie felt her mouth go dry as she watched him from behind.

Orion waited a moment before motioning for her to follow him when he was sure no one would pay any attention to them.

While they were waiting for their cab, not being able to touch Orion when all she wanted was to feel his lips on her skin almost killed Lizzie; judging from his tensed shoulders and nervous fingers drumming against his leg during their ride home, that feeling was mutual.

It was no use, though; as long as they were in public, there was nothing they could do. Making out in the alley with a bunch of reporters around the corner had already been a hell of a risk.

The drive to Orion’s place in Nottinghill felt like an eternity; by the time they had finally reached his flat, Lizzie’s skin was positively tingling. Not being quick enough for her taste, she plucked the key from his hand and unlocked the door herself before stepping into the dark hallway first.

She turned around in the doorframe, shooting him a cocky smile over her shoulder.

“Are you coming? I think I promised you a show.”

***

The pale sunlight of the early morning seeped into the room from the skylight above Orion’s bed. Falling onto Lizzie’s face, it made her stir in her sleep, slowly waking her up from her dream. She tried holding on to it for a moment longer, but it drifted out of her grasp as her body was waking up until it was completely out of reach.

Sighing wistfully, Lizzie turned around and propped herself up onto her elbows. Her lips curved into a smile as her eyes fell onto Orion, who was still sleeping next to her. He was lying on his stomach with his face buried in the fluffy white pillows, his breath deep and even.

Now, in the light of the new day, Lizzie could see the bright red scratches running over his shoulder blades. She blushed a little; maybe she had gone a little overboard in the heat of the moment.

The sight of Orion’s maltreated back made the memories of last night return to her. The thought of his rough fingertips exploring every inch of her body, the sweet bite of his unshaved cheek against the inside of her thighs sent a pleasant shiver down her spine even now. The way she had relished the feeling of his skin against hers as he had coaxed wave after wave of pleasure from her body made her realise how starved she had been for his touch.

It almost surprised Lizzie how quickly sleeping with Orion had become her favourite way of winding down after a show. The sex was fantastic and the fact that no one knew what they were doing was only adding to the excitement. They were aware that it was one of the band’s most important rules they were breaking time and time again: No meddling with the other members. According to Ethan, getting involved with each other could cause nothing but trouble.

However, Lizzie was enjoying their time together way too much to just give up on it like that; free from any form of commitment, it was a bonus to their friendship neither of them wanted to miss. She could definitely confirm that Orion’s fingers weren’t only nimble when it came to playing the guitar.

Without really thinking about it, Lizzie reached out towards him. Her fingers were tracing the lines of the tattoo covering the whole of his back, from the now slightly scratched eagle wings spanning from shoulder to shoulder, down to the woven circle of the dreamcatcher the eagle was carrying in its claws. Her fingers tiptoed lightly over the pattern, joining up the beads worked into the web. Orion had told her that each of them represented a memory dear to him; she noticed he had some new ones added since the last time she had seen it.

Some of the inked feathers flowing down from the circle past beneath the eagle’s tail were new to her as well. Her fingers were wandering over them, dancing across his lower back.

Completely consumed by what she was doing, Lizzie hadn’t noticed Orion waking up. She jumped as he spoke to her, her eyes flying towards his face.

“What are you doing?”

Orion’s head was turned towards her, his eyes still closed, but a cheeky smile was playing around his lips.

Lizzie was spared an answer when he opened his eyes to look at her. “I’m surprised you’re still here.”

Realising how his words must have sounded, his smile turned softer as he closed his eyes again. “Don’t stop though.”

Setting her hand onto his back again, Lizzie let her fingers wander up his spine. She lightly tapped them to a rhythm only she could hear and noticed the tiny shiver running through him when she brushed them downwards again, her fingernails grazing his skin ever so gently.

“You never stay the whole night when we’re touring,” Orion murmured sleepily.

Lizzie hummed in response, not taking her eyes off the beautiful picture painted on his skin.

“I missed this,” she murmured under her breath, more to herself than to him.

“I missed you.”

Caught by surprise at his words, her movements stopped abruptly. Orion’s eyes were soft as he watched her, taking in his shirt hanging loose on her body. Her open hair was still a tangled mess from last night

“Why would you say that?” Lizzie laughed, trying to mask her being caught unaware with a poke to his ribcage.

Orion laughed along and evaded her by rolling onto his side. He quickly caught her wrist and held it away from him. A grin formed on his face as he shrugged.

“Because it’s true; nothing relaxes me more than you do.”

Lizzie snorted. “Is that so?”

With a laugh, he let go of her hand and let himself fall back into the pillows. “Do I look not relaxed to you?”

“If anything, you look overly smug to me,” Lizzie shot back.

She grabbed her pillow and hit him with it before quickly jumping off the bed to get out of his reach. She searched her jacket that was among the pile of clothes littering the floor for her phone and a hair tie, all the while feeling Orion’s eyes on her.

When Lizzie had found what she had been looking for, she tied her unbrushed hair back and straightened up again. Unlocking her phone, she quickly scrolled through her messages.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Orion getting up as well, stretching his back.

“Come to think of it, I might have overestimated how balanced my body is this morning,” Lizzie heard him complain, “my muscles hurt like hell.”

She didn’t even bother looking up from her phone. “Tell me about it.”

Orion finally caught her attention when he stepped closely behind her. “I could do something about that, you know.”

Lizzie had to stifle a sigh when he gently began rubbing the tension from her shoulders, knowing exactly where her tight spots were; he had developed a knack for this she had come to appreciate.

Enjoying his touch for a moment longer, Lizzie pulled herself together and shook his hands off. She turned around, holding her phone up for him to see.

“Forget it, I have a breakfast date.”

“With Charlie, I presume?”

“Charlie is busy interviewing that new pyro guy.”

Orion tilted his head. “Who else then? Someone I need to be jealous of?”

Lizzie chuckled at the notion. “Only if you consider Skye as competition. But we both know you’re not the jealous type,” she shrugged. “And why would you be, anyway?”

She started gathering her strewn about things. “In any case, I need to get ready. I could really use a hot shower.”

Looking down at herself, still dressed in Orion’s shirt, she plucked at the collar and chuckled. “You’ll get this back another time.”

She turned to leave but didn’t make it far. Orion’s arms closed around her from behind, his lips nuzzling against the exposed skin of her neck. “Your wish and mine don’t necessarily rule each other out.”

Goosebumps were spreading all over her skin at his touch but she pulled herself together and broke free of his embrace.

“Tempting, but no. I can’t really show up at Skye’s place wearing last night’s outfit or, even better, your shirt.”

Her smile turned into a smirk as she looked him up and down, taking in his bronzed skin, lean but still muscular build and tousled black hair, regretting her decision already. “I might take you up on that massage later, though.”

She tried to leave a second time before she could change her mind, but Orion caught her wrist, pulling her back towards him.

“Do I get a kiss?”

Lizzie was already smiling; she had anticipated the question. He always asked it before she left, and her answer was the same every time. “You already got much more than that.”

She took a step back towards him, rose to her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek. “Maybe next time.”

Orion laughed as he finally let her go. “I’ll get my kiss one day.”

Lizzie dipped her head back as she laughed and turned towards the door. “We’ll see about that.”

[reogou]

Dating HCs with Kotaro Bokuto

pairing: kotaro bokuto x fem!reader

genre: fluff, nsfw at the end

warning/s: nsfw, smut, pegging, finger-fucking (?), overstimulation

a/n: this is for @janellion for her prize! I'm so sorry it took me so long to make your prize 😭! I think the nsfw was a lot longer than the sfw, just like what you wanted. i hope you enjoy this! ily bb!

credits: to @westxrlund​ for the header’s bg

SFW

Relationship with this owl is tiring but fun. For real. You will have no sleep. You will literally wake up at 3 am because he messages you to say he misses you.

3 am escapades are your relationship goals. He's craving for ice cream? He'll message you in the middle of the night that he'll be there in front of your doorstep in 15 minutes. You miss him? He'll take you to the beach and will make you sit in front of the car while he wraps his arms around your waist, sharing both of your favourite drink while staring at the sea.

But maybe if he's too lazy to drive, movie marathon in the living room while watching your favourite movie with a single blanket covering the both of you. Or if you want to, he'll cuddle you in bed if you cannot sleep.

But if there's an important event tomorrow, like a practice or official match or exam, you'll be the one to make him go to sleep or study because this man has no limits in his clinginess. Baby just want hugs and cuddles please spare him from the pain of having to study-

But even if he's clingy sometimes, he does know that school and match is important. He, after all, wants to become successful for you and your future together.

When you're inside the school, little notes and love letters are never forgotten when it comes to Bo. He'll slid in small notes inside your locker or your bag after you both finished eating lunch together. This man, despite his chaotic self, has good penmanship. And y'all can't tell me otherwise. Though there might be a few messy strokes here and there.

His notes and letters are a bit over the top but that's what you love about him. Though all the contents of it are just him telling you how beautiful you are and how much you love him or just some lame pick-up lines or vines he thought of or saw in the internet.

Mornings with him will probably consist of you being awake so early in the morning because Bokuto wants to jog with you. I swear your legs would be dead by the end of your jog because of how far this man jogs.

This guy loves to eat your cooking. May it be good or bad, he won't let the chance slip of getting to taste the food you cooked no matter how bad it is.

Also, expect music marathon with him too. You'll both be sharing a single earphone while eating chips and reading books or blasting them in the speakers while you two dance under the afternoon sunlight from the windows.

He knows you love reading so when he became a professional player, he uses some of his money sometimes to buy you books you're dying to buy. Will also bring you in a reading café so you both could read while chilling.

During summer, expect beach dates too. He will invite his friends over to go on a vacation with the both of you for a week or two. He loves barbecue so there'll be like barbecue party every two days. Will sneak inside you out on the shore to invite you over a walk by the sea.

Texting with Bo is sweet and funny sometimes. But often times, you just send cheesy text to each other or he'll just send you random funny videos or memes he saved on his phone.

You always make sure to be on his every game to support him and cheer for him. Everytime he scores, his names escapes your lips in a shout to show your undying support for him. Whenever he feels down, you always make sure to cheer him up so that he wouldn't sulk during the game. You are his energizer and personal cheerleader after all. When the game ends, hugging him has always been a ritual for the both of you. If they won the game, you always give him a kiss in the lips as a reward. However, if they lost, your shoulders are always ready for him to cry on while you calm him by running your hands on his back.

Whenever he's down, ice cream with you is always the solution for him. Sitting on the couch while you both enjoy the cold sweet treat as he snuggle close to you and become the small spoon have always been perfect for him.

But of course, there's no such thing as perfect relationship. There will always be a time where you both will have a fight or a misunderstanding, and during those times, you both try your hardest to understand each other and explain both of your sides. Bokuto doesn't like fighting with you. Because he believes it's pointless. But even so, whenever you two got into a fight, Bokuto may be pissed and you may be angry too, but a day or two of clearing up the both of your heads has always been the answer. After a day or two, one of you will step out of their comfort zone and say sorry to the other, depending on who's fault it is.

NSFW

warning/s: please be warned that after this note, nsfw content will greet you. Read at your own risk.

As calm as you both are in the outside, sex with Bokuto was never vanilla. You both always manage to spice things up weather it may be major suck as blindfold or minor such as changing positions. And you always love it. After all, this man has big d energy and you can prove it down there.

His favourite position is you, on all fours, while he rams his cock inside you. He likes seeing your sweaty back, just like how you love his back too. The way your back arc when he hits that sweet spot inside you, he loves seeing it so much, resulting to him pounding you even harder than he already is.

Most times, he likes it sweet and slightly slow. The first time you did it, he was so slow and caring that it was the best experience for you. He likes to see you squirm beneath him while you moan in pleasure, sometimes begging him to go faster. Of course, he would give it to you since he wants you to feel pleasure.

However, this guy can also be so so rough when it comes to the sheets. He'll be ramming his cock deep inside your wet cavern until you can't say anything other than chant his name over and over again. Marks and bruises would be present on your hips and neck cause why not? He loves marking you.

Overstimulation? You got it. This man can make you come almost two times just by his fingers alone. The squelching sounds motivating him to go deeper until he hits that spongy spot you love the most.

He can also be a little shit sometimes. Teasing you by brushing his fingers to your overstimulated front, giving you orgasm denial just so he can see those pretty crystalline tears rolling down your cheeks.

He loves putting hickies all over your body. So much. He will literally bite you everywhere just so he can gaze up and stare at his beautiful handiwork. He also have sensitive neck, and the first time you bit him on the neck, a loud whine escaped his lips from the pleasure.

Sexts is also an often occurrence in your relationship. When he feels horny and you're not together, he would text you in ungodly hours and will tell you how much he misses the feeling of your walls around his fat cock. You would shush him, saying its inappropriate to send horney text, but one message from his commanding you to take off all of your clothes and send him a lewd photo was all it took for you to get horny and obey him. You both end up on a video call while you masturbate and he watches you, hands palming the beast under his boxers as his eyes ogled on your fingers thrusting in and out of your hole, lewd expressions forming on your face.

He's a dom, all the way through. But he has a dirty little secret that he hides from you. He can't see you dominating him, but it's not really impossible. Bokuto hides it, but he's curious about pegging. He had so search the meaning of it in google and when he knew what it meant, he lowkey got hard when he imagined it. You, behind him, while wrecking him with tat straps of yours.

He knows how much of a sub you are, that's why he hid at most of the time. When he tried to tell you about it while you two were cuddling on the bed after 3 rounds, you were a bit shocked. You? Dominating him? Bokuto, who's a hard dom? You were stunned. So shocked that you can only nod your head when he asked you if you're okay with it.

The first time you two did it, Bokuto was so shy that you have to come out of your shell and convince him that it's okay. You both don't know what to do, but Bokuto did some research to help the both of you.

When you put on the strap, it was kinda...awkward and uncomfortable at first. Add the fact that you don't know how to put it on, Bokuto have to help you. When you get somewhat used to it, you reached for the bottle of lube and squirt a good amount on your hands.

Bokuto was lying on his stomach in front of you, his ass high up to help you somehow. When you pressed your fingers on his puckered hole, he jolted in surprise that you almost jumped to. Once he was calmed down, you started spreading the lube around his hole and slowly inserted your finger.

Bo's moan was so good, so erotic that it made your cunt wet just by hearing his moans. When you started thrusting your finger in and out, his moans got more louder from the new pleasure he's feeling. After a while, his hole started relaxing and it was now super easy to insert your finger inside him.

You tried to insert another finger, attempting to imitate his motion when he's the one finger-fucking you. And the reaction made your hole clench, your juices dripping down the strap on your hips. Once Bokuto gave you the go sign that he's already prep enough, you started inserting the dildo inside him.

As first it was a bit hard, since it was your first time and you're still not used to using the strap. But when you found his hole at last, you started inserting the dildo inside him. A loud moan escaped Bokuto's lips, one that's so erotic that even porn actors would envy. It was so erotic, so cute that you got lost in the moment and inserted almost half of it in, making him squirm below you. When he looked over his shoulder to tell you to be more gentle, his face was full of tears, cheeks so red from crying and from too much pleasure he's feeling.

You can't help but to feel so good and started fucking him, but still in a slow way so as to not hurt him any further. His moans were echoing on the four corners of the room, so lewd and so good that you can't help but to thrust a little bit faster. The whole experience was so fun and enjoyable to you even though it was a bit uncomfortable using the strap. But it was worth it nonetheless, since you get to see another side of Bo that you've never seen before.

But man, the aftermath was that your hips and legs were hurting so much as well as your back when you both finished. It was so painful that all you could do was lay on bed. Bokuto felt a little guilty but you assured him that you're okay and that it wasn't his fault. To make up for it, he decided to eat you out.

You were on your back, your legs spread apart as Bokuto dived in on your cunt and licked your clit, making you squirm. He held your thighs firmly to keep them apart and started fucking you using his tongue. The pleasure was so good that tears started forming on the corners of your eyes as Bokuto pleasured you.

Bokuto has always been so good in using his tongue that it was not a surprise that you squirted on your 3rd orgasm. He doesn't want to tire you even more so he stopped and cleaned you up before lying beside you and pulling you close to him, naked bodies locked together between his strong arms.

[boolproppin]

UGH, I want to ask all of them for Adam and Helmi (because they are my favorite) but I will behave and only ask... all the even numbers. akjsdaskdjas I'm sorry I just want to know all the things. ;-;

I will answer all of them for you my friend <3 

1. Who’s the one who’s reckless and always getting into trouble while the other gotta pull em out

They are both very level headed, however if one of them got themselves into trouble it would more likely be Adam who would follow his ideals and being a standup guy (unintentionally getting himself into a pickle). Helmi would need to talk some sense into him and help him see the grey area.

2. Who’s the one to send the other “I love my gf/bf” memes

This would so be Adam! He’s only recently learned about memes and gets a pretty good kick out of them. He would absolutely EMAIL them to Helms.

3. Who’s the one who listens to a music genre the other doesn’t like and how does the other react

Helmi listens to indie pop which Adam just can’t seem to get into. He usually has a confused look on his face and then “recommends” putting on some Fleetwood Mac. 

4. Which one spoils the other more and do they ever get competitive to show the other more love

Adam! They aren’t competitive though, they both have a very sweet way of spoiling each other in different ways. 

5. How many years did it take to get married or was it just not for them

This is still up in the air ;) 

6. What was their wedding like

IF they got married it would be low key, minimal, and a small group of friends at an outdoor celebration. Their first dance would be to I Only Have Eyes for You by The Flamingos

7. Is their friends/family supportive

Helmi’s family and friends are very supportive of her meeting and starting a relationship with Adam. As far as Adam’s family...ehhhh, but his bestie Rayland is all for him moving forward in his life and being with someone he adores.  

8. How does one comfort the other when the other is in distress/having a panic attack/crying

Adam to Helmi: blankets, tea, and cuddles Helmi to Adam: words of affirmation and hugs

9. Which one dissociates

Neither 

10. Which one stares at the other’s booty like “damn” and how does the other react when catching them

Adam fo’ sho. Helmi just shakes her head, “there’s nothing even there to stare at!” 

11. When they live together what kinda place do they live in? What does their home look like?

Small home with mid-century modern feel. 

12. What do their dates look like

Randomness! Adam and Helmi have so much to show each other with the age gap. A night out to the movies ends up being an adventure of watching buskers, stopping at random bazaars, checking out random shops. 

13. How does each act when getting drunk

Helmi- flirty and DTF  Adam- Sadsies, but easily coaxed into a better mood ;)

14. Which one rolls over in the morning to wake up the other one just to give kiss them

Adam for sure, he’s an old man so he gets up early.

15. Have they saved each other’s lives before

I think they both did in a sense, they aren’t just existing anymore. 

16. Does one have an interest the other think is weird but wants to listen to it regardless

Yes! Adam is insanely obsessed with Fleetwood Mac/Stevie Nicks (probably why he just thinks Helms is the most gorgeous thing he’s ever seen). Helmi just loves how he lights up and gets excited when talking about them/her. 

17. Which one uses cropped hentai as reaction images

NEITHER LMAO

18. Does one of them kinkshame the other

I think Helmi would vanilla shame Adam, “you know they’ve invented more positions since missionary?”

19. Is one of them self conscious about their body? If so how does the other comfort them

They are both pretty content, however I could see Adam getting self conscious if he met some of the models Helmi is around.

20. Say they were cuddling on the bed while listening to record player playing the background. Which song is playing?

My Girl by The Temptations

21. What is their song? Like the song that gives them overwhelming feelings?

Bring It On Home To Me by Sam Cooke

22. What song do they listen to while going on a joyride

Renee by SALES 

Adam likes the “hey you got it” part.

23. What kinda joyrides do they go on? Relaxing ones or wild ones?

Relaxing. Visit a small town or go to a beach nearby. Stop by some of the shops along the way.

24. Where would they vacation for a honeymoon

Brindleton Bay

25. Do people ever get annoyed of their pda

Not at all, they are the couple that holds each others hands or are close to each other, a peck on the cheek or lips. 

26. Would they live in the city or the country

Country but not too far from the city.

27. Which ones the red which ones the blue

Helmi is red, Adam blue

28. Are either of them mentally ill, if so how do they help one another cope

Adam has depression and Helmi has anxiety. They help each other by listening, going to counseling, and checking in with each other. 

29. Does one have a spot on them where they would melt when the other kisses them there

Helms melts when he kisses her hand. 

30. Do they dance together

Oh yes, many an impromptu dance sesh when the record player is on.

31. Do they sing together

Yes and they both are HORRENDOUS singers.

32. Which one is better at cooking than the other and makes most the dinners

Adam is a better cook so he would definitely make more of the dinners.

34. Are they a reckless couple or safe

Safe!

35. What be they kinks and do they try each other’s kinks

Adam would love to do the deed while Helmi wears his lettermans jacket. As for Helmi she loves the thrill of having sex in public.  As far as trying each others? We’ll have to see!

36. What would their valentines gifts be to each other

Adam would get the old school boxed valentines cards (the kind you took to elementary school) and would write something sweet along with a box of chocolates.  Helmi...probably in his letterman’s jacket waiting for him to come home. 

37. Do they get into fights often? If so what do they fight over and how do they make up?

Not often. They would most likely fight about Adam’s idealistic tendencies or insecurities. Making up would consist of apologies and cinnamon rolls.

38. Which ones top, bottom, verse

Het couple so verse?

39. What kinda sex they be having (gentle rough whatever)

Gentle but also a tiny bit rough at times.

40. Who would fight in honor for the other if someone would insult them

Both! No one messes with theirs! 

41. Which one has a favorite movie that they have the other watch with them again and again

Helmi does which is 50 First Dates

42. How would one react if the other was to die

Inconsolable. I don’t think either of them would ever move on.

43. Who dies first

Helmi

44. Do they want kids

Adam can’t have children and his only child Rhiannon was conceived with IVF, but that is no longer an option. Helmi is okay with not having children, she’s never considered having her own. 

45. How would they spend their last moments together

Dancing while the record player is on.

[mcwriting]

The Marriage Project (4)

Hi everyone! Sorry this came late! I was soooo busy this week that I had to push this chapter back but I’m hoping to drop chapter 5 on Friday next week like normal. As listed in the warnings, this chapter has some heavier topics than the other 3 but the scene is relatively mild and not too descriptive. 

Story Masterlist

Word Count: 2808

Warnings: Mentions of verbal s*exual harassment, mentions of fighting/injury, strong language, angst 

% approximately the last weekend in September %

You sat at the back of the team bus on the way to the hotel, since the tournament was all day Saturday. You shared a row with Julia and was working on some calculus homework and listening to music while she talked to someone across the aisle.

When you finished, you took out your headphones and looked over at her. She was now playing on her phone.

“Hey, do you wanna bunk together tonight? I don’t feel like sharing a bed with Emily this week.” you whispered, making sure the freshman sitting a few rows up couldn’t hear you.

“Yeah sure. I was actually gonna ask you the same anyways.”

You were one of only two seniors on the team, so you and the other senior, Anna, were asked to split up and chaperone the girls whose parents weren’t coming to the tournament. Both of your rooms had three other people.

Once the team got checked into the hotel, you all went to dinner at a nearby chain restaurant where you, Julia, Anna, and a few other girls sat at a table together joking around.

After dinner, the team headed back to the hotel and were allowed to either hang in the lobby or your rooms, so long as you weren’t disruptive and stayed in pairs. You stayed in the lobby for a while but decided to go prepare for bed around 10.

Julia tagged along as your buddy, not saying much as you rode the elevator up. 

After changing and brushing your teeth, you sat at one corner of the bed looking into a wall-mounted mirror as you combed your hair to pull it into a braid. Julia had been watching the TV when she piped up.

“Hey, y/n?” 

“Yeah?” you didn’t look back at her.

“What’s going on between you and Tom?”

You paused mid-braid, then continued. 

“What do you mean?” your brows furrowed as you finished off the braid, wrapping the end with a hair tie.

“It’s just… you guys have seemed super close lately, and Sam said you’re at their house pretty much every weekend now. I thought you guys hated each other or something.”

You turned your body to look at her.

“Uhhhh we definitely still hate each other. We’re just partnered up for this semester-long marriage project in home ec. It’s whatever.”

“Oh. Okay then. It just seemed like something else I guess.”

Something else?

“Wait, what are you trying to say? Do you think we’re, like, dating or something?”

“Well you guys go to almost every one of each other’s games. And Sam said their mom loves you so it just seemed like… I don’t know.”

“Whoever thinks we more than hate each other is wrong. Just the idea of him and I together grosses me out so much. Once this semester is over, he and I probably won’t speak to each other again until the day I’m chosen valedictorian over him.”

“Okay, well, I’ll let Sam kn-” 

She was cut off by the sound of the door opening as the two freshman girls who were taking the other bed came in giggling.

Glad to finally be out of that conversation. 

After a few more random conversations, you all decided to go to bed and rest up for the tournament early the next morning.

It’s when you rolled over onto your side to face the wall that thoughts of your conversation with Julia began racing. Did people really think something other than a fake marriage was going on with Tom?

Exhaustion got the best of you before you could dwell on it further.

%

You sat in calculus Monday morning listening to the announcements. Your name and a couple others were listed off from the winning sports. The team had won, and you’d gotten tournament MVP.

The class congratulated you, so you jokingly did a royal wave around the room, stopping to look at Tom.

“That’s how it’s done. You guys may have won too, but I think I beat you out this time.”

“Yeah, good job.”

What. Why was he congratulating you?

“Uhhh. You don’t have anything else to say? No insult, no witty clapback? Who are you and what have you done to the Tom Holland I know and hate?”

He shrugged.

“I just don’t have anything negative to say. I mean, you got MVP and the team won. That’s pretty impressive.”

Now you knew something was up. In all your years of knowing Tom, he’d never been this nice. Sure, he’d sometimes say “nice shot!” when you scored more than one goal in soccer but he usually was able to find a way to pick on you at the same time.

You were working on a new sewing project in home ec later, sharing what happened with Alexis.

“Maybe he’s just not feeling well or something? He probably just couldn’t think up something fast enough,” she suggested.

“You don’t get it, Lex. It was so not like him. After Thursday, and what Julia said Friday night, something weird is going on, and I’m going to get to the bottom of it.” 

Wondering if anything was out of the ordinary with him now, you looked over to where he was, only to find him looking back at you.

Weird.

In senior art that afternoon, you worked on an acrylic beach landscape you’d been doing with a palette knife. 

You were listening to music and intently focused when you felt a presence loom over you and noticed a hand resting on either side of you.

You ripped out an earbud and turned to see Tom leaning over your seated position, looking at your artwork.

“What the- Tom! What in the hell are you doing?” you pushed him off you and he stepped next to your chair, arms folded over his chest.

“Just looking to see how you were doing, princess. I think it needs a sailboat.”

“Okay first of all I’m not even done but like… why were you leaning over me like that? I was kinda in my zone there.”

He uncrossed his arms and pointed one had around the canvas.

“Well I was mostly coming over to say you had a little something right,” he poked a finger from his other hand onto your nose, leaving a dot of paint, “there.”

“Thomas Holland. If you don’t get the hell away from me and my artwork right this second I will literally beat you up in front of this entire class. You know it’s true too.” you threatened through grinding teeth.

“Are we having a problem over here?” your art teacher interjected, causing you to both look at her. You pointed at your nose.

“Mr. Holland here doesn’t know how to keep his hands to himself.”

“Tom. You know how I feel about messing around with art supplies. Now go sit down, you still have a lot to go on your own painting.”

He sighed and headed back to his seat. 

“Y/n, why don’t you go wash that off real quick. I’ll keep an eye on your canvas for you.”

You got up, brushing past Tom. First, he’d been super nice this morning, and now he was putting paint on your nose like a little kid? 

It was infuriating to think about.

Wednesday, it was like he was even worse.

He flipped between being the nicest guy ever to trying to humiliate you every chance he got. 

The final straw was during your free period when you’d typically have volleyball practice (it was a game day). You’d walked by some of the football team who were practicing on the field and some players tried to catcall you, yelling disgusting sexist comments and whistling. Instead of sticking up for you, Tom just looked at you sheepishly as they laughed.

You just stuck up a middle finger and kept walking, as you were running errands for your volleyball coach and didn’t want to be too long.

After school, you stormed out of the school building and caught sight of him leaning against his car talking to a few of the guys from before as his brothers stood around nearby.

When you were about 20 feet away when you yelled out at him.

“Hey Tom! What the hell?”

His conversation paused and he turned to you. The other guys laughed and waved him bye as you approached.

“I’m sorry, but what?” he asked when you reached his car. You tossed your volleyball bag onto the asphalt.

“What is wrong with you? First you’re super nice to me, then I catch you staring at me in class and then the whole paint thing, and that was just Monday. Then today you flip from nice to asshole, and just sit idly by when your friends fucking harass me!?”

“I was just messing around like we always do! And come on, it was just a whistle and a couple jokes, y/n.”

“That’s the thing! It’s not just a whistle or a joke! Call it that when you read the countless stories of women who are attacked for simply ignoring a guy or trying to stand up for herself! I SHOULDN’T HAVE TO BEG YOU AND EVERY OTHER MAN FOR SOME SIMPLE RESPECT!” you were yelling and breathing hard. “I guess I thought that after the past few weeks we had come to some kind of an understanding, but apparently I was wrong. You’re still the biggest asshole I know.”

“Y/n, please. You know I would never do anything to actually harm you, right? I’ll talk to the guys and figure it out. I mean, what else do you want me to do?”

“Maybe we should get a ‘divorce’ on this stupid project. It’s obviously not working out,” you spat.

“I- okay.”

You were taken aback. Did he really just agree?

“Okay? That’s all you have to say? You really want to go through with it?”

“Well, if it’s what you feel is best, I’m not going to stop you from talking to Mrs. Flynn.”

“Okay, then. I’ll see what she wants us to do.” you said, much more calmly.

With that, you picked up your bag and walked off, wanting to cool down before your game.

“Damn, Tom. That’s rough,” Harry said once you were out of earshot.

“Yeah, dude. You should’ve stood up for her. That’s not cool,” Sam added.

Tom hung his head for a minute, not sure what to think, then straightened up, shaking it angrily. 

“You’re right. She’s right. I need to find those guys.”

%

Things had cooled down for you by the time you’d eaten a snack and hung out with some of the team for a little bit. You didn’t tell anyone what had happened, but by the way Julia kept looking at you, you figured Sam had told her.

An hour before game time, you went to go put on your kneepads and volleyball shoes. As you passed through the gym, Julia hopped up from her seat next to her boyfriend and rushed up to you.

“Whatever Sam said, I’m over it now. I’m just going to channel it into the game” you told her before she could get a word out.

“I just wanted to make sure you’re okay. Sam said you seemed pretty shaken up.”

“Look, jules, I know you’re trying to help, but now isn’t the time. I just need to focus on one thing at a time, okay? Let’s just win this and then maybe later we can talk.”

You sped up past her to where the group was in a circle, already doing stretches. You felt bad for blowing her off, but you had other things to worry about.

%

Your team lost the first set for the first time all season. You just couldn’t get your head in the game. You had fumbled a few sets and sent your hand into the net while hitting not once, but twice. You’d even sent a serve straight back to the wall on the other side of the gym.

You were now sitting on the bench listening to your coach yell at you, taking it all in. You were looking at her directly when a figure coming through the door caught your eye. It was Tom.

You tried to pay attention to coach, but the second she turned her attention to someone else, you glanced at him sitting by his brother. 

His lip was split and he caressed one hand in the other. His hair was also all over the place and one cheek swelled slightly.

Did he get into a fight?

Even though you were still mad, something inside you appreciated his presence. You also felt concerned, but obviously couldn’t do anything about it from the bench.

You instead decided to do what you knew best, which was win. The team came back in the end and did just that. A few people were congratulating you when you saw Tom and Sam leave the gym.

“Uh, sorry guys but I need to go do something. See y’all tomorrow though!” 

You jogged into the hall, frantically looking both ways before seeing them.

“Wait! Tom!” you called, running to catch up with them. They stopped, Tom not making eye contact with you when he turned as Sam watched cautiously.

He looked worse up close. 

Where his cheek had only seemed swollen before, now there was a blue and purple bruise beginning to form, surrounded by pink inflamed tissue. His bottom lip also was red and puffy around the split, and when you glanced at his hands you noticed the darker bruises on each knuckle.

“Tom…” you said softly, scanning him. “Are you okay?”

“What does it matter to you? We hate each other don’t we?”

Sam took that as his cue to go back to the gym, you assumed to find Julia.

You let out a sigh and looked away. 

“I don’t ‘hate you’ hate you. Yeah I hate when you’re better than me at something or you’re acting like a douchebag, but I don’t, like, want you dead or anything. I mean, you know that, right?”

You searched his face for a sign that he was getting you. After a few seconds of him staring at the ground nervously tapping his foot, he replied.

“Well I don’t hate you either! Yeah, you can have an ego and it gets on my nerves, but I’ve always thought we had just a playful hate-love thing. Like… I don’t know... Doofensmirtz and Perry the Platypus.”

You let out a chuckle at that one. 

“That… actually. Yeah. That pretty much sums it up. I never actually wanted to hurt you, and I’m sorry that I did but what you did today was so not cool, man. I thought we at least tried to look out for each other a little bit. That stuff hurts. A lot. Because being a woman means I don’t know when it might cost me more than just being the butt of a joke.”

“I realize that now, and I’m so sorry for trying to trivialize you. I didn’t really think about it in the moment because it’s never affected me. I might be in trouble tomorrow because of it, though.”

“What do you mean?”

“After you left, I was so mad at myself. I marched straight over to the guys, who were then trying to laugh about you coming to talk to me, and I just… swung right on Harrison. He’s the first guy that whistled.”

“Tom…”

“And then I may have gone after the other two while I was at it. They tried to fight back, which is why my face looks like this, and I just went nuts. They gave up after realizing I wasn’t gonna back down.”

You tried to hold back tears. You always knew in the back of your mind that Tom cared a little bit, but not like this. One slipped out onto your cheek.

“You didn’t have to do that,” you whispered, trying to keep a steady voice. He reached out and brushed his thumb over your tear.

“Yes I did. Who else was going to teach those dickheads, huh? Obviously no one else in their lives have cared to.”

“Well thank you. It means a lot… and I didn’t go talk to Mrs. Flynn after our little spat outside. I wouldn’t mind staying as your ‘bride,’ if you’ll have me.”

He looked at you skeptically for a few seconds then smiled.

“Yeah, alright,” he pulled his necklace from his shirt. “Who else would rub icy hot on my back and make pie with my mom?”

“Ugh, don’t remind me of the first one,” you laughed.

After a few seconds, you held out your arms.

“We good?” 

He grinned, taking your offer for a hug and wrapping his own arms around you.

“Yeah, we’re good.”

%

A/N: Thanks for reading! Like I’ve mentioned in the past, this will not be the last of heavy topics and some future scenes will actually be more descriptive, but I will make it explicitly clear where those scene are so you can have discretion. Love you all so much!

Tag List: @jackiehollanderr, @one-big-fangirl, @l0lmk, @primadonnasdream, @bookworm06, @thenoddingbunny-blog, @agentnataliahofferson

[friendlyneighborhoodpsyop]

Quotes about Kaz Brekker:

Every act of violence was deliberate, and every favor came with enough strings attached to stage a puppy show.

The boy called Dirtyhands didn’t need a reason any more than he needed permission.

He was a collection of hard lines and tailored edges.

“Who’d deny a poor cripple his cane?” “If the cripple is you, then any man with sense.”

“I’m a business man,” he’d told her. “No more, no less.” “You’re a thief, Kaz.” “Isn’t that what I just said?”

“I’m not here for a taste. You want a war, I’ll make sure you eat your fill.”

The boy he’d been talking to had been cocky, reckless, easily amused, but not frightening—not really. Now the monster was here, dead-eyed and unafraid. Kaz Brekker was gone, and Dirtyhands had come to see the rough work done.

“You’ll get what’s coming to you one day, Brekker.” “I will,” said Kaz, “if there’s any justice in the world. And we all know how likely that is.”

“Well I’m the kind of bastard they only manufacture in the Barrel.”

Inej was always trying to wring little bits of decency from him. “When everyone knows you’re a monster, you needn’t waste time doing every monstrous thing.”

“Greed is your god, Kaz.” He almost laughed at that. “No, Inej. Greed bows to me. It is my servant and my lever.” “And what god do you serve, then?” “Whichever will grant me good fortune.”

“What’s the difference wagering at the Crow Club and speculating on the floor of the Exchange?” “One is theft and the other is commerce.” “When a man loses his money, he may have trouble telling them apart.”

“You’re a blackmailer—“. “I broker information.” “A con artist—“. “I create opportunity.” “A bawd and a murderer—“. “I don’t run whores, and I kill for a cause.”

“You see, every man is a safe, a vault of secrets and longings. Now, there are those that take the brute’s way, but I prefer a gentler approach—the right pressure applied at the right moment, in the right place. It’s a delicate thing.”

“I’m sure you’ve heard the stories.” “Each more grotesque than the last.” Brekker’s hands were stained with blood. Brekker’s hands were covered in scars. Brekker had claws and not fingers because he was part demon. Brekker’s touch burned like brimstone—a single brush of bare skin caused your flesh to whither and die. “Pick one. They’re all true enough.”

Kaz was not a giddy boy smiling and making plans for a future with her. He was a dangerous player who was always working an angle.

“Please, my darling Inej, treasure of my heart, won’t you do me the honor of acquiring me a new hat?”

Brick by brick. It was a promise that let him sleep at night, the drove him everyday, that kept Jordie’s ghost at bay.

Kaz’s servant, greed, luring them South like a piper with a flute in hand.

“Being angry at Kaz for being ruthless is like being angry at a stove for being hot. You know what he is.”

“I wouldn’t trust you to tie my shoes without stealing the laces.”

Matthias knew monsters, and one glance at Kaz had told him this was a creature who had spent too long in the dark—he’d brought something back with him when he’d crawled into the light.

“The easiest way to steal a man’s wallet is to tell him you’re going to steal his watch. You take his attention and direct it where you want it to go.”

“You can’t spend his money if you’re dead.” “I’ll acquire expensive habits in the afterlife.”

“I don’t want to die.” “I’ll do my best to make other arrangements for you.”

“You came back for me.” “I protect my investments.” Investments. “I’m glad I’m bleeding all over your shirt.”

Matthias suspected that Brekker would drag the girl back from hell himself if he had to.

He’d gifted her her first blade, the one she called Sankt Petyr—not as pretty as wild geraniums, but more practical.

“Kaz told me...he said it was my choice, that he wouldn’t be the one to mark me again.”

Because I’ve been looking for an excuse to talk to your for two days.

He needed to know she believed in him.

“What to do you want, then?” The old answers came easily to mind. Money. Vengeance. Jordie’s voice in my head silenced forever. But a different reply roared to life inside him, loud, insistent, and unwelcome. You, Inej. You.

Kaz would always remember that moment, when he’d seen greed take hold of his brother, an invisible hand guiding him forward, the lever at work.

There could be no judgement from a boy known as Dirtyhands.

“Let’s say the mark is a tourist walking through the barrel. He’s heard it’s a good place to get rolled, so he keeps patting his wallet, making sure it’s there, congratulating himself on just how alert and cautious he’s being. No fool he. Of course every time he pats his back pocket or front of his coat, what’s he doing? He’s telling every thief on the Stave exactly where he keeps his scrub.”

It was because she was listening so closely that she knew the exact moment when Kaz Brekker, Dirtyhands, the bastard of the barrel and the deadliest boy in Ketterdam, fainted.

He’d heard there were sharks in these waters but they wouldn’t touch him. He was a monster now, too.

He’d imagined his death a thousand ways, but never sleeping through it.

It was as if once Kaz had seen her, he’d understood how to keep seeing her.

“If it were a trick, I’d promise you safety. I’d offer you happiness. I don’t know if that exists in the barrel, but you’ll find none of it with me.” Better terrible truths than kind lies.

He knew he was being reckless, selfish, but wasn’t that why they called him Dirtyhands? No job too risky. No deed too low. Dirtyhands would see the rough work done.

A good magician wasn’t much different than a proper thief.

She could see it took every last bit of his terrible will to remain still beneath her touch. And yet, he did not pull away. She knew it was the best he could offer. It was not enough.

“Some people see a magic trick and say, ‘Impossible!’ They clap their hands, turn over their money, and forget about it ten minutes later. Other people ask how it worked. They go home, get into bed, toss and turn, wondering how it was done. It takes them a good nights sleep to forget all about it. And then there are the ones who stay awake, running through the trick again and again, looking for the skip in perception, the crack in the illusion that will explain how their eyes got duped; they’re the kind who won’t rest until they’ve mastered that little bit of mystery for themselves. I’m that kind”

“You love trickery.” “I love puzzles. Trickery is just my native tongue.”

“Do you know the secret to gambling, Helvar? Cheat.”

There was no part of him that was not broken, that had not been healed wrong. There was no part of him that was not stronger for having been broken.

Her eyes were shut, her oil-black lashes fanned over her cheeks. The harbor wind had lifted her dark hair, and for a moment Kaz was a boy again, sure that there was magic in the world. She’d laughed, and if he could have bottled the sound and gotten drunk on it every night, he would have. It terrified him.

You’ve cheated death too many times. Greed may do your bidding, but death serves no man.

He needed to tell her...what? That she was lovely and brave and better than anything he deserved. That he was twisted, crooked, wrong, but not so broken that he couldn’t pull himself together into some semblance of a man for her.

“Saints, Kaz, you actually look happy.” “Don’t be ridiculous,” he snapped. But there was no mistaking it. Kaz Brekker was grinning like an idiot.

“I can hear the change in Kaz’s breathing whenever he looks at you.” “You...you can?” “It catches every time, like he’s never seen you before.”

“How will you have me? Fully clothed, gloves on, your head turned away so our lips can never touch? I will have you without armor, Kaz Brekker. Or I will not have you at all.”

“I’m not big on bluffing, am I, Inej?” “Not as a rule.” “And why is that?” “Because he’d rather cheat.”

Inej wanted Kaz to become someone else, a better person, a gentler thief. But that boy had no place here. That boy ended up starving in an alley. He ended up dead. That boy couldn’t get her back. I’m going to get my money, and I’m going to get my girl.

“A proper thief is like a proper poison. He leaves no trace.”

There were no good men in Ketterdam, Kaz said. The climate didn’t agree with them.

“If you don’t care about money, Nina dear, call it by it’s other names.” “Kruge? Scrub? Kaz’s one true love?” “Freedom, security, retribution.”

“It’s pragmatic. If I were cruel, I’d give him a eulogy instead of a conversation.”

“You haven’t been alive long enough to rack up your share of sin.” “I’m a quick study.”

Patience, he reminded himself. He’d practiced it early and often. Patience would bring all his enemies to their knees in time.

“You’ve got the devil’s own blood in you, boy.”

Kaz was going to have to find a new language of suffering to teach that smug merch son of a bitch.

“I would come for you. And if I couldn’t walk, I’d crawl to you, and no matter how broken we were, we’d fight our way out together—knives drawn, pistols blazing. Because that’s what we do. We never stop fighting.”

“My mother is Ketterdam. She birthed me in the harbor. My father is profit. I honor him daily.”

Desperate for some sign that he might open himself to her, that they could be more than two creatures united by their distrust of the world.

They could continue on with their armor intact. She would have her ship and he would have his city.

Sure, a lock was like a woman. It was also like a man and anyone or anything else—if you wanted to understand it, you had to take it apart and see how it worked. If you wanted to master it, you had to learn it so well you could put it back together.

He always liked returning to a home or business he’d had cause to visit before. It wasn’t just the familiarity. It was as if by returning, he laid claim to a place. We know each other’s secrets, the house seemed to say. Welcome back.

“When people see a cripple walking down the street, leaning on his cane, what do they feel? They feel pity. Now, what do they think when they see me coming?” “They think they’d better cross the street.”

“We can endure a lot of pain. It’s shame that eats men whole.”

“I don’t hold a grudge. I cradle it. I coddle it. I feed it fine cuts of meat and send it to the best schools. I nurture my grudges, Rollins.”

It was as if Kaz had a secret map of Ketterdam that showed the city’s forgotten spaces.

“I’ve taken knives, bullets, and too many punches to count, all for a little piece of this town. This is the city I bled for. And if Ketterdam has taught me anything, it’s that you can always bleed a little more.”

Was Johannus Rietveld meant to be his Jakob Hertzoon? Or had it been some way of resurrecting the family he’d lost? Did it even matter?

“I wreak all the havoc I can until my luck runs out, use our haul to build an empire.” “And after that?” “Who knows? Maybe I’ll burn it to the ground.”

Tell her to get out, a voice inside him demanded. Beg her to stay.

Kaz thought he knew the language of pain intimately, but this ache was new. It hurt to stand here like this, so close to the circle of her arms.

“These things don’t wash away with prayer, Wraith. There is no peace waiting for me, no forgiveness, not in this life, not in the next.”

Two of the deadliest people the barrel had to offer and they could barely touch each other without both keeling over.

A black glass boy of deadly edges.

A bit of entertainment, the dramatic end of Kaz Brekker, the humbling of Dirtyhands. But this was no cheap comedy. It was a bloody rite, and Per Haskell had let the congregation gather, never realizing the real performance had yet to begin. Kaz stood upon his pulpit, wounded, bruised, and ready to preach.

“You have two minutes to get out of my house, old man. This city’s price is blood, and I’m happy to pay with yours.”

“What is wrong with him,” Nina grumbled. “Same thing that’s always wrong with him. He’s Kaz Brekker.”

“Rich men want to believe they deserve every penny they’ve got, so they forget what they owe to chance. Smart men are always looking for loopholes. They want an opportunity to game the system. The toughest mark is an honest man. Thankfully, they’re always in short supply.”

“Well, Brekker, it’s obvious you only deal in half truths and outright lies, so you’re clearly the man for the job.”

“What do you think my forgiveness looks like, Jordie?” “Who’s Jordie?” “Someone I trusted. Someone I didn’t want to lose.”

He put his gloves back on and didn’t take them off. He became twice as ruthless, fought twice as hard. He stopped worrying about seeming normal, let people see a glimmer of the madness within him and let them guess at the rest.

The rage inside him burned on and he learned to despise people who complained, who begged, who claimed they’d suffered. Let me teach you what pain looks like, he would say, and then he’d paint a picture with his fists.

That was what destroyed you in the end: the longing for something you could never have.

“I will kill you, Brekker. I will kill everything you love.” “The trick is not to love anything.”

“Suffering is like anything else. Live with it long enough, you learn to like the taste.”

She smiled then, her eyes red, her cheeks scattered with some kind of dust. It’s a smile he thought he might die to earn again.

“He doesn’t say goodbye. He just lets go.”

“Ketterdam is made of monsters. I just happen to have the longest teeth.”

[kikiskeysgame]

Going into last night’s game, I had a feeling that the Calgary Flames wouldn’t be an easy team for the Blackhawks to try and beat given their record lately. Although they worked hard (especially during the 2nd period), the Flames ended up getting the best of the Hawks.

In the first period, Dillon Dube gave the Flames an early 1-0 lead. Brandon Hagel responded with his 6th goal of the season and tied up the game (with assists by Ryan Carpenter & Reese Johnson, who got his first NHL point); however, the Flames were able to regain a two-goal lead with a goal by Milan Lucic.

In the second period, Reese Johnson scored his first NHL career goal to tie up the game again, but by the third period, goals from Matthew Tkachuk, Trevor Lewis and Johnny Gaudreau ultimately gave the Flames another victory.

I would say that one of the issues that the Blackhawks struggled with during their four-game road trip is consistency (which is something that they have been struggling with on and off for the past couple of seasons).

As I’ve mentioned before in my past keys to the game, the Hawks need to try to keep themselves consistent through three whole periods of hockey, not just for one period.

According to Coach King: “We did all the little things right. We played a certain way that this team needs to play. And then the 3rd period, we just got away from it again. The consistency of playing a certain way is not there yet, but it's getting there."

One of the players that has been consistent in the line-up is Brandon Hagel, who scored two goals in back-to-back games. I thought that his goal in last night’s game was outstanding and he has putting in a lot of good work in his last two games. I hope that Hagel can continue to keep himself consistent back on home ice.

It was nice to see Reese Johnson get his first two NHL career points with a goal and an assist. So far this season, it’s been a bit rough for him being in & out of the Hawks’ line-up, but despite that, he still continues to work hard and it paid off in a positive way for him.

Even though he didn’t get any points last night, Kirby Dach had a pretty good game and was also very noticable, especially in the first period when he got into a fight with Blake Coleman. I admit I was shocked to see Dach fighting. Although it was good to see him sticking up for Alex DeBrincat, he needs to be careful getting into fights given his past history of injuries.

Coach King was impressed with the way that Dach played last night, saying: "Dach had some fire. I really loved his game tonight. He did a lot of good things. He's made strides. He's starting to get a little more consistency in his game and just hopefully he continues to play that way. And it's good to see a little emotion from him, it's awesome."

After last night’s game, the Blackhawks are back on home ice on Friday afternoon as they play against the St. Louis Blues. The Hawks need to be able to play with more consistency and be more productive than they were the last time both teams faced each other. 

Until then, go Blackhawks!